It’s good to see all of you, and to see some of my local family and friends here at St. Martin’s, which is in so many ways my spiritual home.

This summer I have been working as a chaplain intern providing spiritual care to a rotation of patients at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield. When I visit patients, I mostly listen to them, and sometimes I pray with or for them. I meet with people of many faiths and none, at all stages of diverse spiritual journeys. My job is to serve and comfort them, and this much I was expecting when I signed up for the summer program, but there are some things for which I was not fully prepared.

During my time at Baystate I have been tending to the highest acuity floors in the hospital, working with patients who face serious pulmonary or cardiac disease. A few weeks ago I had a patient–we will call him Greg, suffering from heart failure, among other things. Greg is approaching fifty years of age–five zero–which is extremely young for a patient on any of my assigned units.

During my initial visit with Greg, I found him sitting up in the lounge chair in his room. This was a little surprising because most of my patients are lying down, and a fair number are intubated and catheterized. But Greg patient was sitting up, speaking freely, and watching sports on television. I greeted him and the nurse in the room and introduced myself as usual. Greg shared about his family, his partner and children, and he told me about his faith. He doesn’t go to church anymore, but he believes in God and the power of prayer. I prayed for him, I felt good, I felt hopeful for Greg.

Our next visit was different. I walked into Greg’s room and found him lying in bed, now intubated, and there was a team of nurses tending to him, not just one. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “What happened?”

The nurses were unfazed. One said, “Eh, he’ll be fine.”

I learned that Greg had just received an LVAD, a Left Ventricular Assist Device. Again at fifty years of age, the left ventricle of his heart had been replaced by a mechanical pump that runs on a battery. I did not know that was possible. I went to Greg’s bedside and looked down at his face, and it was the first time all summer that I felt fear.

To break up the gloom, I said, “Greg, blink twice if you want me to bust you out of here!” The nurses laughed, and of course the patient blinked twice. But then I saw a tear roll down his face, and I asked if he would like to pray again. He nodded with his hand, since he could barely move his head, and we prayed.

When I looked up from our prayer, I saw that Greg was drooling profusely. Intubation is not a neat and tidy experience. At first I went to get a nurse to clean him up, as I had done for other patients before, but the staff was literally running around, doing a million things I barely understood, and it didn’t seem like I should interrupt. I suddenly felt annoyed at the recent layoff of staff members across twenty-two departments, and the constant stretching of nursing teams just about everywhere in the country. I felt angry that this meant my patient’s drool was not a priority, and I thought about how anxious I would feel if I couldn’t help but drool down my face onto my neck. I prayed again, silently, this time asking God what I should do, feeling a little silly and helpless in this unfamiliar situation.

Then the Spirit spoke to me in my heart and said, “You do it.”

This may sound obvious, but every day at the hospital I find myself asking how much I should touch the patients, how much I can help them, and what might be harmful. You can’t blame me for being worried about wiping a patient’s face around the tube that was keeping him alive. But I took a deep breath, and I carefully wiped the drool off my patient’s face with a paper towel, trying my best not to touch any life-preserving measures.

This is going to sound a little crazy but, when I was wiping my patient’s face, I suddenly felt that I was touching the face of Jesus. And I don’t say that to brag. I wish I was more saintly than I really was in that moment, acting out of pure intentions, but I was frustrated at the medical system, and felt a tiny bit of annoyance at the staff, warranted or not. I share this with you, not to fish for kudos, but because I believe the Creator of the Universe offers us unexpected and profound grace like this all the time, to God alone be the glory. Through the fear, frustration, and pain of that moment, Love broke through and God appeared to us. Listen, I have never actively wanted to wipe up someone else’s drool in my entire life! But GOD was revealed on that hospital bed in an act of love that was not my doing, but rather a sacred surprise.

In today’s Gospel, the disciples almost miss their opportunity for a sacred surprise. They follow Jesus to a desolate place where he and they presumably want to be alone. As the persistent crowd appears, following after Jesus, the disciples ask him to send the people away.

Wait just a second. You know the people who follow Jesus; they are sick and poor, they are demoniacs, lepers, and epileptics, they are sex workers and tax collectors, doctors and lawyers, just to name a few of our favorites...and they are all following Jesus! They follow the Great Physician, seeking healing, forgiveness, and nourishment. But his disciples, precisely the people who are supposed to get it–they say no, send them away, we have nothing to offer. We have no food, we have no money, we already gave to charity this month. When will these people get back on their feet, earn a living for themselves, and go back to their own country?

Do you hear it? Jesus hears it. And he answers them, just as he answers all of us today in the Gospel reading. When we bring our problems to him expecting an easy solution he says, “You do it! You give them something to eat.” Stop asking me to send them away, stop praying instead of acting; “you give them something to eat.” You wipe up his drool when there isn’t a nurse with a second to spare. You shelter the homeless, you feed the hungry, you clothe the naked, you visit the incarcerated. You open your arms wide to the refugee, the asylum seeker, and the immigrant. You stop the bombs falling no matter the cost.

St. Teresa of Ávila put it like this: “Christ has no body on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours!”

I know this is hard because, when I was writing this sermon, I started thinking about my wallet. It’s empty! I don’t have much to give. Most of what I have these days was given to me by you people sitting here. But Jesus wasn’t thinking about our wallets when he told his disciples to feed the crowd. Charity is good, but Jesus did not instruct the disciples to take up a collection of coins. Offerings are good, but Jesus did not pass an offering plate. In our Gospel, Jesus instructs the disciples to simply take what they have, whatever it is, and share it.

And it’s not about the miracle. I believe in miracles, trust me, I love a good miracle, but this miracle story is not about the miracle. Jesus is not walking around Galilee, Judea, and Samaria doing party tricks. This Gospel teaches us more about the lie of scarcity, than about some miraculous abundance of food. The lie of scarcity needs to be corrected. We need to tell ourselves the truth about what we have.

Here’s the truth: we have more than enough. Collectively, globally we have a lot more than five loaves and two fish. Humans throw away enough food every year to end world hunger twice. The problem is not what we have or don’t have, the problem is not our broken system. The system is working exactly as intended–hoard wealth for a few while most suffer, and Jesus Christ will flip that table in time, don’t you get too comfortable. The real problem is that supposedly good, supposedly faithful, supposed Christians, who possess a large share of the wealth in the world, would rather turn to Jesus and pray for him to fix it than do anything about it themselves. Prayer is good, I love prayer, and Jesus is listening. Now hear his answer. Find where your heart breaks for those in need–that is where the Spirit is leading you. Follow that lead and hear Jesus say, “You do it.”

English below. Haga clic aquí por Español.

GOSPEL:

Matthew 13:24-30,36-43 (NRSVue)

Jesus put before the crowd another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”

ENGLISH SERMON

At last! The parable of the wheat and the tares or, in our new translation, the wheat and the weeds. Most of us know this parable, we’ve heard it many times, and we know what it means. In this parable, just like the sheep and the goats or Lazarus and the rich man, some go to heaven and others go to hell. Sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell. Poor Lazarus is in heaven, the rich man who neglected him is in hell. The weeds get bundled up and burned, and that sounds a lot like hell. The wheat is harvested and taken into the storehouse, and that’s gotta be heaven. Christian theology, as it has so often been taught to us, lays it out clearly: believe in Jesus and do your best to live by the Spirit so you can go to a place called “heaven” when you die, but reject Jesus and live by the flesh, and you will perish, God forbid.

Is that really what Jesus says? And if we are people who care what Jesus really says—and we sure are—then we want to know if our idea of him is a bit off from the reality, right?

Ok pause for a moment and focus on the context, the frame of the story. Ignore the parable, what is happening in the scene? Jesus shares the parable of the wheat and weeds in public. Jesus and his disciples go into the house, away from the crowds. Now in private, where they will not be too embarrassed, the disciples ask what the parable means. Finally, Jesus explains the parable. He just tells them what it means, right?

Okay, no...not really. His “explanation” is a key to interpretation—he tells them what each symbol represents, but he doesn’t tell them what the whole parable means. Some of it seems obvious: Jesus says that the one who sows the seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom, the weeds are the children of the evil one, the enemy who sows is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, the reapers are angels, and that should be enough for us. But no, we still have no idea what is going on. What are children of the kingdom? What is a child of the evil one? What does it mean for an age to end—does that happen for each of us individually when we die, is it something that happens periodically on earth, or is it literally the end of the world for all of us? What is going on with the barn? Jesus leaves us with more questions than answers.

Our Sunday school teachers would have made it very simple for us: the children of the kingdom are Christians, the weeds are those who reject Jesus, Christians go to heaven, those who reject Jesus, not so much. But it isn’t Jesus saying that. If we just stick to the story, Jesus never really gives us the punchline.

This leaves us with two questions, and I promise we are actually going to answer them: Why does the master in the parable leave the weeds alone? And how do we get into the kingdom at the end? Regardless of how long an age is, or what kind of gardening angels are involved in, that is what we really need to know, and we might be tempted to add a subquestion: is heaven a barn?

A confession: I have weeds in my life, and so do you. There are people in our world, sometimes on the news, who seem like the spawn of satan! We all have people in our lives who irritate us, who have hurt us, who hate us, or who are straight up wicked. Why doesn’t the Master tear up these weeds already and throw them in the fire? Like angels, we expect judgment, we want God to make it right, where are you Lord, when we need your fury? And don’t you feel like a little divine fury might do a lot of good right now?

Why does the Master leave the weeds alone? There are three possible answers, and the parable tells us the first one: “in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.” If God poured out wrath on our world, if all the wickedness of our generation were swallowed up in a glorious moment of fire, if every terrible thing that grieves our hearts were suddenly engulfed...we’d all burn too. People are like grass, our roots are all interwoven, our fates are intertwined, and when you start tearing up the grass over there, you better be ready for the grass over here to wilt and die.

A second possibility: What if—now just hear me out for a second—what if the wheat and the weeds aren’t people at all? What if the weeds and the wheat are so bound together at the roots that we are all a little bit wheat and a little bit weed? When the harvest comes, Jesus isn’t plucking out bad folks for the fire before he gathers the good ones into the barn, he’s purging our wickedness, all my wickedness and all of yours, so that all people may enter the kingdom.

Finally, a third possibility, and this is really the best news: The Lord can do whatever he wants. He can tear up the whole field and start again. And if you think that sounds mean or ungodly, you need to open your Bible to Genesis 6 and the following chapters, where God floods the whole earth, killing everything, so that Noah and his descendants can start over. The Lord can do whatever he wants, and he does.

But since the coming of our Lord Jesus, something is different. Now the Lord is among us. Living among us, the Lord imparts to us a share in his glory, and even the most vile sinner, the most wicked enemy has a part in that glory, because Jesus Christ has not merely redeemed me and you, and you, and you—he has brought redemption to the whole of creation. It’s different now, because we have Imanu-El (עמנו אל), God with Us, Blessed Jesus. And so, when the angels are all worked up and ready to stamp out the grapes of wrath, the Master restrains them and says no, don’t you dare touch a single blade of grass. In his infinite mercy, the Master delays judgment, not only leaving the good untouched, but also giving the wicked a chance to grow and change. God does not desire the destruction of even a single soul.

Well, you might say, that’s all well and good, and I’m sure they teach you that sort of high and lofty thing in seminary, but what are we to do in the meantime? Those of us who try our best to be wheat, but are beset by weeds? What about those of us who really are mostly good, but we get slandered and excluded, harassed and strangled, detained and shot by those we know to be weeds? And how do we get into the barn? I did promise you an answer to that question.

Well, first of all, I don’t know what to tell you about suffering. The truth is, we suffer. It’s a part of life. We suffer, sometimes because we make poor choices, and other times because justice is not a guarantee in this world. (Otherwise what sinner among us could survive?) What is guaranteed is that our suffering can be an opportunity to enter into deeper knowledge of Christ, if we so choose. Not everyone can do that all the time, sometimes it’s just too much, but there are moments when we offer up our suffering as a sacrifice before God, and God draws us in closer. We die with Christ so that we may be resurrected with him.

Second, getting into the kingdom? It’s not what you’d think based on a typical reading of the parable: Just be a good stalk of wheat and you’ll get in! Well, the parable never said that the barn was the kingdom, did it? Jesus never really clarified the barn symbolism. If you go back to the beginning of the parable, Jesus does not identify the kingdom with any place at all. Instead he teaches this, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field...” The kingdom of heaven may be compared to SOMEONE, not something, not somewhere, someone. And who is that someone? Jesus tells us that he is the someone, he is the kingdom; heaven is no faraway place, but union with Christ himself.

What does this have to do with wheat? Well, what is Christ’s body? On one hand, we are all the Body of Christ, and the Body is made up of all of us. But we come into this body through one central act of worship, don’t we? And that act is consuming the Body of Christ in the bread, made from wheat, of the Blessed Sacrament. St. Augustine said of the Eucharist, “Behold what you are, become what you receive.” Union with Christ is as simple as coming together around a table and opening your hands.

My siblings in Christ, children of the kingdom, take and eat.

EL EVANGELIO:

Mateo 13:24-30,36-43 (DHH)

Jesús les contó esta otra parábola: «Sucede con el reino de los cielos como con un hombre que sembró buena semilla en su campo; pero cuando todos estaban durmiendo, llegó un enemigo, sembró mala hierba entre el trigo y se fue. Cuando el trigo creció y se formó la espiga, apareció también la mala hierba. Entonces los trabajadores fueron a decirle al dueño: “Señor, si la semilla que sembró usted en el campo era buena, ¿de dónde ha salido la mala hierba?” El dueño les dijo: “Algún enemigo ha hecho esto.” Los trabajadores le preguntaron: “¿Quiere usted que vayamos a arrancar la mala hierba?” Pero él les dijo: “No, porque al arrancar la mala hierba pueden arrancar también el trigo. Lo mejor es dejarlos crecer juntos hasta la cosecha; entonces mandaré a los que han de recogerla que recojan primero la mala hierba y la aten en manojos, para quemarla, y que después guarden el trigo en mi granero.”»

Jesús despidió entonces a la gente y entró en la casa, donde sus discípulos se le acercaron y le pidieron que les explicara la parábola de la mala hierba en el campo. Jesús les respondió: «El que siembra la buena semilla es el Hijo del hombre, y el campo es el mundo. La buena semilla representa a los que son del reino, y la mala hierba representa a los que son del maligno, y el enemigo que sembró la mala hierba es el diablo. La cosecha representa el fin del mundo, y los que recogen la cosecha son los ángeles. Así como la mala hierba se recoge y se echa al fuego para quemarla, así sucederá también al fin del mundo. El Hijo del hombre mandará a sus ángeles a recoger de su reino a todos los que hacen pecar a otros, y a los que practican el mal. Los echarán en el horno encendido, y vendrán el llanto y la desesperación. Entonces los justos brillarán como el sol en el reino de su Padre. Los que tienen oídos, oigan.

SERMÓN EN ESPAÑOL

La parábola del trigo y la cizaña, o en esta traducción, del trigo y la mala hierba. La mayoría de nosotros conocemos esta parábola. La hemos escuchado muchas veces y pensamos que sabemos lo que significa. En esta parábola, igual que en la de las ovejas y los cabritos o la de Lázaro y el hombre rico, unos van al cielo y otros al infierno. Las ovejas van al cielo; los cabritos, al infierno. El pobre Lázaro está en el cielo; el hombre rico que lo ignoró está en el infierno. La mala hierba se ata en manojos y se quema, y eso suena mucho al infierno. El trigo se recoge y se guarda en el granero, y eso tiene que ser el cielo. La teología cristiana, tal como muchas veces nos la han enseñado, lo explica así de manera simple: cree en Jesús y haz todo lo posible por vivir según el Espíritu para ir al cielo cuando mueras. Pero si rechazas a Jesús y vives según la carne, perecerás. ¡No lo permite Dios!

¿Pero eso es realmente lo que Jesús dice? Y si de verdad nos importa lo que Jesús dice —y claro que nos importa— entonces vale la pena preguntarnos si la idea que tenemos de él coincide con la realidad.

Ahora hagamos una pausa y pensemos en el contexto. Dejemos por un momento la parábola a un lado. ¿Qué está pasando en esta escena? Jesús cuenta la parábola del trigo y la mala hierba delante de toda la gente. Después, él y sus discípulos entran en la casa, lejos de la multitud. Allí, en privado, donde no tienen que pasar vergüenza, los discípulos le preguntan qué significa la parábola. Finalmente, Jesús la explica. Simplemente les dice lo que significa... ¿verdad?

Pues no... no exactamente. Su “explicación” es más bien como una guía para interpretar la historia. Les dice qué representa cada símbolo, pero nunca les dice cuál es el sentido de toda la parábola. Algunas cosas parecen claras: Jesús dice que el que siembra la buena semilla es el Hijo del Hombre; el campo es el mundo; la buena semilla son los hijos del Reino; la mala hierba son los hijos del maligno; el enemigo que la siembra es el diablo; la cosecha es el fin del tiempo; los segadores son los ángeles. Y parece que con eso basta.

Pero si somos sinceros, todavía no entendemos del todo. ¿Quiénes son los hijos del Reino? ¿Qué significa ser hijo del maligno? ¿Qué quiere decir el fin del tiempo? ¿Es algo que sucede cuando cada uno de nosotros muere? ¿Es algo que pasa de vez en cuando en la historia? ¿O es literalmente el fin del mundo? ¿Y qué representa el granero? Jesús termina dejándonos con más preguntas que respuestas.

Nuestros maestros de escuela dominical probablemente nos lo habrían explicado de forma mas simple: los hijos del Reino son los cristianos; la mala hierba son quienes rechazan a Jesús; los cristianos van al cielo y los demás no. Pero eso no es lo que Jesús dice. Si nos quedamos con el texto, Jesús nunca nos da realmente el punto central. ¡Qué lástima!

Eso nos deja con dos preguntas, y les prometo que sí vamos a responderlas: ¿Por qué el dueño del campo deja crecer la mala hierba? ¿Y cómo entramos al Reino al final? No importa cuánto dure un “tiempo” ni exactamente qué hacen los ángeles en la cosecha; eso es lo que realmente necesitamos saber. Y hasta podríamos añadir otra pregunta: ¿es el cielo un granero?

Una confesión: yo tengo mala hierba en mi vida, y ustedes también. Hay personas en nuestro mundo, a veces las vemos en las noticias, que parecen salidas del mismo infierno. Todos tenemos personas que nos desesperan, que nos han herido, que nos odian o que simplemente hacen mucho mal. ¿Por qué el Señor no quita ya esa mala hierba y la echa al fuego? Como los ángeles, nosotros esperamos el juicio. Queremos que Dios ponga las cosas en su lugar. ¿Dónde estás, Señor, cuando necesitamos tu justicia? ¿Y no sienten ustedes que un poquito de justicia divina haría mucho bien en estos tiempos?

¿Por qué el Señor deja crecer la mala hierba? Hay tres posibles respuestas. La primera la da la misma parábola: “Porque al arrancar la mala hierba podrían arrancar también el trigo.” Si Dios descargara toda su ira sobre nuestro mundo, si toda la maldad de nuestra generación fuera consumida en un instante de fuego, si todo aquello que nos rompe el corazón desapareciera de repente...nosotros también quemaríamos. Los seres humanos somos como la hierba: nuestras raíces están entrelazadas, nuestras vidas están unidas. Y cuando empiezas a arrancar la hierba de un lado, tienes que estar preparado para que también se marchite la del otro.

Hay una segunda posibilidad, y esta cuesta un poco más aceptar. ¿Y si —escúchenme un momento— el trigo y la mala hierba no fueran personas? ¿Y si estuvieran tan mezclados en las raíces que cada uno de nosotros fuera un poco trigo y un poco mala hierba? Cuando llegue la cosecha, Jesús no estaría separando primero a los malos para echarlos al fuego y luego reuniendo a los buenos en el granero. Más bien estaría quitando toda nuestra maldad —la mía y la de ustedes— para que todos puedan entrar en el Reino.

Y hay una tercera posibilidad, que en realidad es la mejor noticia. El Señor puede hacer lo que quiera. Puede arrancar todo el campo y empezar de nuevo. Si eso les parece demasiado duro, recuerden Génesis capítulo 6 y los que siguen, cuando Dios envía el diluvio sobre toda la tierra para comenzar otra vez con Noé y su familia. El Señor puede hacer lo que quiera, y lo hace.

Pero desde que vino nuestro Señor Jesucristo, algo cambió. Ahora el Señor está con nosotros. Viviendo entre nosotros, comparte con nosotros su gloria. E incluso el pecador más grande, el enemigo más cruel, participa de esa gloria. Porque Jesucristo no vino a redimirme solo a mí, ni solo a ti, ni solo a ti. Vino a traer redención a toda la creación. Ahora todo es distinto porque tenemos a Imanu-El (עמנו אל), Dios con nosotros, el bendito Jesús. Por eso, cuando los ángeles están listos para ejecutar el juicio, el Señor los detiene y les dice: "No. No toquen ni una sola planta." En su infinita misericordia, el Señor retrasa el juicio, no solo para proteger a los buenos, sino también para darles a los malos tiempo para crecer y cambiar. Dios no quiere la destrucción ni de una sola persona.

Tal vez alguno diga: “Todo eso está muy bien, y seguro que eso es lo que enseñan en el seminario. Pero ¿qué hacemos mientras tanto? ¿Qué hacemos los que tratamos de ser trigo, pero vivimos rodeados de mala hierba? ¿Qué pasa con quienes intentan hacer el bien, pero son calumniados, excluidos, acosados, encarcelados o incluso asesinados por personas que parecen ser mala hierba? ¿Y cómo entramos al granero? Usted prometió responder esa pregunta.”

Bueno, primero...no tengo una respuesta fácil sobre el sufrimiento. La verdad es que sufrimos. Así es la vida. A veces sufrimos por nuestras propias decisiones, y otras veces porque la justicia no está garantizada en este mundo. (Porque, si lo estuviera, ¿qué pecador de entre nosotros podría mantenerse en pie?) Lo que sí está garantizado es que nuestro sufrimiento puede convertirse en una oportunidad para conocer más profundamente a Cristo, si así lo queremos. No siempre podemos hacerlo; a veces el dolor es demasiado grande. Pero hay momentos en que ofrecemos nuestro sufrimiento a Dios como un sacrificio, y él nos acerca más a sí mismo. Morimos con Cristo para resucitar con él.

Y respecto a entrar en el Reino...la respuesta no es la que uno esperaría después de leer la parábola. No basta con decir: “Sé una buena espiga de trigo y entrarás.” La parábola nunca dice que el granero sea el Reino, ¿verdad? Jesús nunca explica qué representa el granero. Si volvemos al comienzo de la parábola, veremos que Jesús ni siquiera identifica el Reino con un lugar. Lo que dice es esto: “El Reino de los cielos se parece a un hombre que sembró buena semilla en su campo.” El Reino se parece a una persona, no a un lugar. ¿Y quién es esa persona? Jesús mismo. Él es el Reino. El cielo no es un lugar lejano; el cielo es estar unidos a Cristo.

¿Y qué tiene que ver eso con el trigo? Pues, ¿qué es el Cuerpo de Cristo? Por un lado, todos nosotros somos el Cuerpo de Cristo. Pero entramos en ese Cuerpo por medio de un acto central de nuestra vida de fe, ¿verdad? Ese acto es recibir el Cuerpo de Cristo en el pan, hecho de trigo, del Santísimo Sacramento. San Agustín decía sobre la Eucaristía: “Mira lo que eres; conviértete en lo que recibes.” Unirse a Cristo puede ser tan sencillo como reunirse alrededor de una mesa y abrir las manos.

Hermanos y hermanas en Cristo, hijos del Reino: tomen y coman.

Read the Scripture lessons here. I prefer Track 2, in this case, but it is the same Gospel in both.

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The Gospel for today begins, “For it is as if…” Which is a little confusing if we don’t know what came before, what Jesus is referencing. Well, if you go all the way back to the previous chapter, you’ll find that Jesus is describing, at some length, the nature of his coming. To the utter horror of the disciples, he would not take up arms against the occupying Roman legions, he would not liberate and restore the religio-political Kingdom of Israel. In fact their Messiah would die, and they would follow close behind. The Temple, the focal point of Jewish peoplehood and worship, would be destroyed.

In a series of fables that feel more like riddles, Jesus exhorts his disciples to be alert and resist complacency, for he is coming soon, like a thief in the night. Soon after the Ascension, sure enough, Jesus “returns,” in a sense, to receive each one of them as an oblation, a sacrifice—in death. When we read the Parable of the Talents, it is not a mere cautionary tale, a simple warning against envy. It is not fodder for an argument that poor and stupid people deserve to get poorer while the clever rich get richer. It is not an indictment in the opposite direction, either, a prooftext for the so-called “Social Gospel,” laying all the responsibility for the ills in our society on the rich.

Despite the layered and mysterious nature of the literary genius that is the Parable, the point is rather straightforward, and it is the same today as it ever was:

Your world is about to end,

you are going to die for your faith,

here is what you must do.

And if you don’t think this applies to you - here - today, I’m not sure what planet you are living on. This is what is happening.

Now let’s back up for even more context. This Parable of the Talents is not unique to Jesus. Like other m’shalim, other parables, it is somewhat canned and multivalent, a Jewish storytelling device. There are standard forms of the mashal that can mean a lot of different things with just a little adjustment; this one just happens to be employed not only as pedagogy, but also as prophecy. This is what is coming, Jesus says, be ready.

The source material for this parable is probably a common ancestor of both the Gospel of Matthew and one of the earliest pieces of rabbinic literature preserved in the Mishnah—the teaching of Rabbi Tarfon:

“The day is short, but the work is long; the workers are lazy, but the reward is great; and the Master of the House is knocking.” knock, knock, knock

Can you hear it? The knocking? Can you feel the sudden anxiety evoked by the pattern of the parable? There is so much to do, not enough time to do it, and I really don’t want to do the work anyway, despite the promises attached. And now, what was that sound? The Boss is here for an inspection.

I would say, “Lord have mercy,” but the Lord is the one who devised this system and assigned our roles. Does this feel like good news? It is, I promise—we will get there.

Quick historical trivia question, how much is a talent?

Generally a unit of measure for gold or silver, the Judean talent in the Second Temple period was one hundred and thirty pounds. That is at least seventy-four thousand dollars if silver, and upwards of five million USD on the current gold market, and here is the first part of the good news: The Master has given the slaves quite a pretty penny. Even the one who receives the least has been given very much, and the disciples would have known this when Jesus told them the parable.

The bad news, or so it seems, is that none of the slaves actually own their talents—they all belong to the Master. And so all are truly equal in their poverty, mere agents for the one who owns them, that is, the slaves themselves. What the Master offers is not so much a range of riches, but a range of opportunities, all of which are actually quite good, but none of which are anyone’s private property.

When the Master returns, what does he say to the single-talent servant? The one who buried his five million in the dust?

“To all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

From those who have nothing? Nothing? You gave him seventy-four thousand dollars, at the very least! How on earth can this slave be said to have nothing? Rabbi Tarfon is once again helpful if we compare our gospel with his next teaching. Once again he says:

“The day is short…the work is long…the workers are lazy…and the Master of the House is knocking,” knock knock knock

AND, the Mishnah adds:

“[Rabbi Tarfon also] used to say: It is not on you to finish the work, neither are you free to neglect it. If you learn much Torah, you will receive a great reward. The Master of your work is trustworthy to pay you the reward for your works. Know that the gift of the reward of the saints is in the time to come” (my translation, for both mishnayot, see Pirqei Avot, 2:15-16).

Matthew is not exactly missing something from the end of the Parable of the Talents, but Rabbi Tarfon certainly seems to supply useful instruction for understanding it: The second part of the good news is that the Master is trustworthy, and this is what the poor slave has missed. God, he thinks, will reward him according to his works, and he’s right. Sorry, fellow Protestants, but if you take Jesus seriously, if you take Paul seriously, if you take parallel literature seriously, then it is abundantly clear that God will reward us according to our works in “the time to come.”

So then what is the slave’s complaint?

The Master has not leant him the same amount as his peers. The Master was by no means stingy with the slave, but he was more generous with the others. The wicked slave is jealous, and wouldn’t you be too?

The slave has forgotten that the Master was with him the whole time, true to his word. He has forgotten that the talent given was not only sufficient, not merely abundant, but excessive for the task at hand. He has forgotten that he never owned the talent in the first place, it was only leant to him for the task at hand.

I talked a lot about the slave today, but don’t think you’re off the hook. Here are my questions for you:

Do you know that the Master is with you?

Do you know that what you have been given by God is sufficient, with a little investment, for the purpose to which the Lord calls you?

And do you understand that everything you have—your wealth, health, and happiness, your very body and soul—was never yours in the first place, but is the sacred holding of the Most High God?

Today we are in a turning of the age much like the time of the Apostles in great and many ways. What was once assumed invincible is crumbling, the bonds of social order are falling apart, every sacred cow or high temple on a hill will fall, not one stone left upon another.

If you want to follow Jesus, and there is no better choice, this is what you must know: you can trust God. You can trust God! More than you can trust any human being, more than you can trust me, more than you can trust the church, and more than you can trust in your government to have your best interest at heart, you can trust Jesus who provides whatever pounds of silver you think you own. You can trust the Spirit that guides you all of your investments for God’s purposes. You can trust, even if you are led to suffer or die for your faith, that you will only be suffering with and for Jesus, and here is more good news: the Lord takes nothing back which he did not give in the first place.

Against the din of our loud, vain, and individualistic culture, it is difficult to hear, but it does not make it any less true: you are not your own. And this is good news, because no one else may own you either. You do not belong to this world, you do not belong to any other man, you belong to Trustworthy Jesus, and there is no greater end than this.

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When I told my friends and family that I was moving to Tennessee to attend the School of Theology at the University of the South, the reactions were almost all the same: “Tennessee? The South is so racist.” And I have to admit that, behind my defensive response that “racism is everywhere,” I was sure that they were right. I also must admit that, when I thought about the South, my first concern was not race. I’m white; racism is disturbing to me because it hurts people I love and because I aspire to be an antiracist, not because I suffer the material impact of racism that Black, Brown, and Indigenous people know in their bodies. Perhaps this is a radical idea in our time, but I do not think something should have to impact me directly for me to care about it deeply.

I am also queer, so when people brought up southern racism, it was often followed by, “Will you be okay? Will you be safe there?” And I was not sure that I would be safe, though let’s be honest, my safety has never been sure anywhere.

I grew up with a high degree of economic privilege in Massachusetts, home of Elizabeth Warren, neighbor to Bernie Sanders, rather solidly blue. I was proud of my state that banned slavery in 1783 and did away with segregation in 1855, while countless Black people were still enslaved in other parts of the country. My father told me stories of resisting southern segregation while he was in training in the Army. It was something I couldn’t imagine ever happening in my home state.

When the Black Lives Matter movement ramped up, I marched. I laid my white body down on several Boston streets because I knew that it was time to put privileged bodies in the way of the economic and governmental machines that perpetuate oppression. I was not afraid. I was not afraid because I was a (white) Bostonian in Boston. I had the privilege of imagining that this was our city, a good city, and that most people were on our side, even many politicians and officers of the law. I was proud of Massachusetts for legalizing gay marriage more than a decade before Obergefell v. Hodges. It confirmed for me that we were the good guys.

So yes, when my family and friends heard my plans to move to Tennessee for three years, and when they expressed surprise and concern that I was moving to a queer-phobic and racist part of the country, I defended my decision, but I also understood what they were saying. I was from the North, the Union, the victors who wrote history, and we were, of course, the good guys. We are not perfect, never were, but surely it is better for Black people and better for Queer people to live in our state than to go “down there.”

For the past eight years or so, before coming to Sewanee (the University of the South), I lived in Providence, Rhode Island. While there I took a class on the Baptist history of the state and learned a bit about the compromises that were struck with enslavers to keep Newport onboard. I knew that there were likely buildings in my city built with slave labor, and I knew that a huge amount of the wealth generated by enslaved people was concentrated there, but that was all so long ago, and we had set it right. Our sons had bled and died for freedom and justice! Again, not perfect, but better.

Maybe a week after I arrived, I was at Home Depot with a housemate, also white and queer. I don’t think we are the most obviously queer people on earth, but something tipped off the cashier we were talking to and she lowered her volume and leaned in closer to us. She said, “I just want you to know, that this is a welcoming place. We have all kinds of people here.” And that very moment, my entire perception of the South began to unravel, and it has been unraveling since. What I could not have anticipated was how my perception of the North would turn inside out just the same.

Counting Coffins

I somehow survived my first semester of seminary, and returned to campus from Christmas break for a class road trip to Montgomery and Selma, Alabama. This was our “Civil Rights Pilgrimage,” the more intensive component of a pilot Education for Ministry (EfM) curriculum. We were the guinea pigs, in other words, and I will be candid about my experience, even though it may initially seem harsh, because it highlights the transformation I experienced.

As explained above, I had gone from BLM protests where I laid my body in the street in front of a police vehicle to chatting about Rosa Parks in a Tennessee classroom with a bunch of people whose grandparents probably would have spit at her. At first, I felt like the curriculum, while it had its insightful moments, was Racism 100. I did not need some southerner to tell me about the history of Black liberation in this country, I knew it well because we championed the movement! Sure, there were some white southerners involved too, but few and far between, right? It was pressure from the north which carried the country forward.

The bus arrived at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, and I stepped onto the street thinking, “Alright, another basic lesson in the racist history of this place.” I had seen the memorial in pictures, with the coffin-looking metal boxes hanging from the ceiling. I remember seeing pictures from the grand opening, and I remember thinking, “Wow, there are so many coffins. Hundreds of people must have been lynched in the South.” As we approached security I noticed that the staff were all Black as far as I could see, and as we began to explore the memorial, I noticed that the stories posted on the walls were told from an explicitly Black perspective. I wondered if this might be Racism 102, and I started to unclench, to open up a little bit, to prepare myself to learn something. A painful experience, but increasingly common these days, like breaking a bone that did not set quite right.

Then we turned the corner and began moving through the strange fruit, metal coffins hanging from the ceilings, and that door which I had cracked open in my heart came flying off the hinges in an explosion of terror and shame. The coffins were not representative of Black individuals who were lynched, the way I thought they were from the pictures I saw online; they represented counties. Each coffin was a county where lynching had happened and each held a whole list of names, when such records were available. From 1865 to 1950, less than one hundred years, the documented victims numbered about 6,500, with estimates for additional undocumented lynchings in the thousands. What’s worse, the coffins were not all southern counties that held onto slavery until the good Yankees saved the day, the way I wanted them to be, there were coffins for New Jersey and New York. New Jersey and New York? I began to wince at the idea that I would turn a corner and see one for Massachusetts or Rhode Island.

My very chatty group was silent by the time we got back to the bus. There were tears, mouths agape, crests fallen. I pride myself on my education, my historical understanding, especially about racism. How could I be so surprised? Something was happening in my brain and my body, my factual knowledge was descending from my brain into my heart and my belly, the feeling organs. The violent oppression of Black people could not remain an idea in my head. It had to become real and embodied—incarnate, and thus human.

Point of Departure

Our next stop was a museum, another of the “Legacy Sites,” where we would learn about the history of slavery and its continuation today in the mass-incarceration-industrial complex. I wondered if we were getting closer to Racism 200 level after the experience at the memorial. The museum was powerful. One part I remember most clearly was a picture on the wall of a plantation where many Black people were enslaved. Then I saw a picture next to it of a prison where many Black people are presently incarcerated. I could see the point they were making, or so I thought, that imprisonment of Black people and exploitation of their labor was a backdoor into modern slavery. Sure, that’s Racism 200, got it. And then I looked at the placard explaining the two pictures.

My brain just about melted when I read it. Fear spread across my body, a kind of fear I have never experienced from looking at a picture. The two pictures showed the same location. The plantation did not conceptually or metaphorically become the prison, the prison is the plantation, no becoming necessary. The plantation survives, it continues enslaving Black people under the guise of criminal justice. I felt nauseous. I thought I knew, but what I knew was an idea, I knew data and information. I studied Facing History and Ourselves, I took a class on Liberation Theology, I saw Shaun King speak in person and shook his hand! (Before all the controversy.) But it was not real, because it could not be real for me. It could not be real for me while I lived in my great white northern bubble.

And then there was the video. I had seen it before: a map of the Atlantic, with little black dots emerging from the coasts of Africa, representing the slave ships that carried African people to the Americas and Europe. There they would be used and abused for profit, and their descendants after them. I knew the numbers, how many millions were moved, how many died on the way. I knew that it was as if the Holocaust had happened to Black people over and over again for centuries. I knew it all, but I thought that I was one of the good ones. I watched the blips move from East to West, carrying people, human beings across the sea like cattle. “Just terrible,” I said, performing my antiracism like a good, white progressive.

But the next video was new to me. It was the same map of the Atlantic, with the same little black dots representing the same slave ships, but this time the dots were not coming from Africa and going to the Americas, because the ships were on this map were empty of cargo. This map showed the ships leaving the Americas and sailing toward Africa to pick up enslaved people.

My defenses fell as I watched them leave their respective port cities; my conceits, my pride, and whatever scrap of patriotism left in me died. In this moment I was filled with wrath, divine and justified wrath, but also shame that I had ever imagined that I or anyone else could be “good,” whatever that means, while millions of Black people suffered for our benefit - for my benefit. I figured, when I read yet another placard, that these ships would be sailing from the coastal South, and many did. But what brought on the despair of disillusionment was the incredible volume of little black dots which so obviously originated in Boston, Providence, Newport, New York. My home, my bastion of liberal decency had not merely benefitted from slavery or the trade, we owned the trade and coordinated the trade. At least as much as anyone else, we Yankees were the enslavers.

The truth hurts, but it is so very necessary. Hundreds of thousands of people were enslaved by ships leaving from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The ships did not stop when slavery was banned in those states, because the law was never enforced at point of departure. When the import of new slaves was made illegal in all of the United States, the value of enslaved persons inflated dramatically and the trade was internalized. As northern states banned slavery, the enslaved, who were supposed to be liberated at that point, were shipped south to be resold. Many Black people who had escaped North were captured, re-enslaved, sold out by the people who took pride, I’m sure, in their progressive governments and histories.

Conclusion: the Necessity of Pilgrimage

The most important point I want readers to take away from this is: information is not wisdom. Simply knowing about the terrible things that happened in the past, and deeply impact the present, does not make us or our society good. Knowledge, by itself, is susceptible to manipulation, and it does not become wisdom without a great deal of self-awareness and testing in experience. My knowledge of history was rather complete, if we only consider the curricula of primary and secondary education, but I had no awareness of the quality of that data, and no experience of the truth in my body. For my antiracist ideas to become antiracist wisdom, I needed to do more than read a book or take a class—I needed to become a pilgrim.

Pilgrimage is not tourism, it is a spiritual practice, it is embodied prayer. Pilgrimage is a physical relocation, moving our bodies to draw knowledge down into the nervous system so that it may truly become wisdom. To those asking, “When will it be enough? This all happened so long ago. Let’s move on.” It was not nearly as long ago as you think, not so far gone as you have been taught, and the oppression of Black people is very much alive today. Black people experience this oppression not only in their minds, but also in their bodies, and white people need to do as much as we can to meet them there, though we will never fully understand anyone else’s experience. It will not be enough, and we cannot move on, until we bring these truths into our bodies and respond to them from our souls. If you are white, and you do not understand what you are supposed to do to oppose racism, then it is far past time for a pilgrimage.

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I am just thrilled to share with you the endorsements for A Tranquil Body, my forthcoming book from Morehouse. I can’t describe the feeling of receiving endorsements from these people I deeply respect and admire. You can preorder the book here, and make sure you are subscribed on Substack so you will receive updates when there is a book event near you. Endorsements below!

Peace,

Joshua Maria

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Life in Christ—life to Christ—is a journey not a destination. Richly descriptive, and filled with ideas to deepen and make the journey our own, Joshua Maria Garcia has given us a personal, non-judgmental, and inspiring invitation to take a deep breath, relax into the depth of God’s love, and walk our journey with Jesus with gentleness and grace. - J. Neil Alexander, IX Bishop of Atlanta

Joshua Maria Garcia writes, “If we are hopelessly lost, then getting found has more to do with accepting lived experience than denying it in favor of manufactured optimism.” A Tranquil Body meets us where many of us are, carrying the stories in our bodies of exhaustion and hope, and provides a path for the times when we are lost from ourselves. This book is for anyone wanting to live fully, simply, and faithfully as a spiritual being, searching for home in their body. - Sara Ardrey-Graves, Associate Dean for Spiritual and Professional Formation at the School of Theology, University of the South

What might it look like to be at peace with our bodies? Written with vulnerability and compassion, Joshua Maria Garcia’s A Tranquil Body invites readers to engage with our bodies not as a burden but as a divine gift. I can already tell that I will return again and again to the reflections and practical exercises Garcia offers in my personal life, and I look forward to sharing them as a resource in my pastoral ministry. This is not a book to be read with our mind alone but to be savored through the experiences of our senses as we move from the trend of ‘wellness’ to embracing God-given wholeness. - Rachel Kessler, author of Nerd Faith: 60 Second Sprints of Spiritual Guidance for the Occasionally Uncool

I assume most people on my mailing/subscriber list know who I am, but just in case, I’m Joshua Maria Garcia, a seminarian at the University of the South/Sewanee. Seminarians need a lot of support, and that support is not evenly distributed. I have found that, in order to make ends meet, I’ve needed to hustle and sometimes beg. Good practice for parish ministry!

Why support a seminarian? First of all, the Episcopal Church and the world have a priest shortage. This program is preparing me to be a healing presence in the lives of many people, by the grace of God, and I feel incredibly privileged to be on this path. What if you aren’t an Episcopalian or Christian? I think we can probably agree that all religious institutions need more compassionate and open-minded leaders, and that is what I am striving to be.

So, if you are still here, I have five ways you can help at this time, and not all of them involve money!

1. Pray for me. This is the first and most important thing you can do for a seminarian. I can confirm, confidently and without hesitation, that your prayers are heard. Please pray that God will gently open my heart to be formed in the way that God knows is best. Pray that I will build healthy, supportive relationships with my colleagues and teachers. Pray that God will bless me with just enough material support to survive the next couple of years without acquiring more debt.

   

2. Donate to my GoFundMe. Second to prayer is direct financial support. I hope to raise $2,184 to fund my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) over the summer, and there is a long way to go. My semester here ends IN THREE WEEKS, believe it or not, and CPE starts immediately afterward.

3. Go buy a rosary or a piece of jewelry from my shop. Amazingly, Etsy is one of the quicker ways to get money from you to me, and purchases from my Etsy shop tend to accumulate other orders. The algorithm loves a purchase. The Easter Week sale is on, and a selection of chaplets, devotional jewelry, and my ebooks are 30% off.

4. Subscribe to my new podcast! While slightly delayed, the first episode of diáLOGOS comes out this Saturday, God willing, and following really does help me expand my audience. It doesn’t necessarily pay off immediately, but we play the long game too. I have provided the Spotify link here, but you can get my podcast on almost any platform, just search “Joshua Maria Garcia.” The podcast will occasionally remind you that you can also donate for the upkeep of all these projects via Venmo.

5. Last but not least, you can use this link to preorder A Tranquil Body, my first book from a conventional publisher. It is coming out at the end of July, and preorders are very, very important. This is another long game option, but super helpful.

Whatever you decide to do, please remember to pray! I am praying that God will continue to bless and sustain all of you who have helped me so much in my journey already, and that this Easter season will restore our souls and bring more peace and love into the world.

Peace,

Joshua Maria

Sewanee requires CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) and a Cross-Cultural Experience for graduation, and these are usually done over the summers. I’ve been admitted to a program in Western Massachusetts, and I’m very excited about that. I will also be interning part time for a local parish, teaching and guest preaching in English and Spanish. The university is covering the tuition for the CPE program. I am at a loss, however, about how I will be able to afford gas and food.

And so, just as I asked for money last year for the move south, I am asking for money to get back to New England and survive the summer, working more than full time on CPE, with no pay, in addition to planning a number of events to promote my forthcoming book from Morehouse/Church Publishing. And listen, I know, a royalties check is in my future, but the typical range for royalties starts around 6%. Writing A Tranquil Body was an amazing experience, but having one book out there is the beginning of a rewarding career, not a path to quick earnings.

If the Spirit moves you to contribute, you can do so here. My eventual goal is to raise $2,184, but my short term goal is $500. I look forward to the day—and it is coming soon—when I will no longer have to ask family, friends, and strangers to give me a leg up. I will instead ask parishioners to donate to replacing the roof of a church, God willing. . . For now, humble pie it is.

My forthcoming book from Morehouse/Church Publishing is available for preorder now, and plans for release events, book talks, and contemplative gatherings are well underway.

A Tranquil Body: Finding the Peace of God in Breath, Movement, and Awareness teaches embodied contemplative practice for everyone—all bodies, all neurotypes. While presented in a Christian framework, these exercises are highly adaptable to your particular context and needs.

The best way to support my work when you preorder is on Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate: click here to reserve your copy. And make sure you are subscribed to Sacramentalia to get updates on events in your area. . . Keep reading for a sneak peek.

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An excerpt from A Tranquil Body:

The word “tranquil” was not my favorite in the list of possible adjectives, but the Spirit does not speak to us only as individuals, she speaks to us as a community, one Body, even one whole universe. Tranquility is what we landed on—author, editor, publisher, and Spirit of God—so I began to meditate on this word.

The first image that came up for me was a horse being tranquilized for a medical procedure. I know, what a horrible image for a spiritual journey. Horse tranquilizer, really? But then I realized that this is such a useful image to bring up and get out of the way before we get into the deep and beautiful parts. Popular spirituality often seems like a horse tranquilizer to me, a chemical agent for suppressing any and all feelings which are inconvenient. Feelings can be inconvenient for you, your family, your friends and neighbors, or they could be inconvenient to a white lady “guru” who wants to sell you a supplement. “Breathe in gullibility, breathe out resistance to my will.” Every spiritual teacher is just one ego trip away from starting a cult, and I wish that were a joke.

What separates real tranquility from a drug that makes everything seem okay is truth, honesty, radical acceptance. People who understand that life includes suffering—and that love, not happiness, is the most rewarding and fulfilling pursuit—don’t tend to join cults or buy endless supplements. People who are pursuing love, not sedation, are less vulnerable to manipulation.

There is another image that surfaces for me which does not involve equine sedatives. When I think about tranquility, I see a deep blue lake, motionless on the surface, surrounded by trees on all sides, with tall mountains in the distance. The sky is clear, except for one wispy, white, drifting cloud, and the occasional soaring bird. The lake is so still that you might imagine it to be devoid of life. Then you hear the gentlest plop as a nearby frog leaps from its hiding place among the reeds. The frog’s fearless plunge into the world beneath disturbs the surface with gentle ripples. They reflect against stones and tree trunks for a minute or so, then the water gradually smooths out, and the world falls silent again.

The most delicate breeze wafts across the lake now, and a leaf falls down to the water from a high branch. The leaf does not sink, but floats like a boat, its curvature converting wind to thrust like a rudimentary sail. If you were very tiny, the size of a ladybug, you could float on this leaf boat, and you would not have to wonder where you were going or how long it would take to get there. From one end of the lake to the other, until the tender winds carry you to shore, you are free to simply be. In fact, there is nothing else to do.

It may seem quite boring at first, but there is plenty going on in the environment that we may not notice when all seems so still. Beneath the surface of the water there are plants growing, fish swimming, turtles doing . . . whatever turtles do. Some of the things down there are eating plants, some are eating each other, and others are mating! Life happens beneath the surface, with plenty to marvel at and ponder, much of which usually goes unnoticed.

In the air above, birds are flitting from tree to tree and slowly soaring across the sky, and some of them are eating each other, just like the creatures in the lake. If you are lucky, you may see a bird swoop down, like a bat out of hell (but those come at night), to take up the most unlucky and bewildered fish as its lunch. Trees grow around the lake, forest critters collect nuts, build nests, spin webs, or lay eggs—and eat each other, breed, live, and die, and it doesn’t seem so boring now. But this is still tranquility, when you can see it all, when you zoom out to behold the whole lake in the center of mighty mountains, a protected place where life does its many things.

At first it might seem like this is some sort of lesson about perspective. If I focus on where I am, just being, on my floating leaf, then I experience the lake as tranquil. Here I find the peace of God amidst the chaos of my surroundings. Alternatively, I could focus my attention on the sex, drugs, and creaturely life unfolding around me, lose my grasp on tranquility, and fall out of my leaf, God forbid. I would be a wet ladybug, if not a dead ladybug. I don’t know if fish eat ladybugs, but that would be one way to go. Focus on peace, and you find peace, focus on chaos and that is what will surround you.

I’m sorry to disappoint, but that is just not true. You can focus on tranquility all you want, and some curious snapping turtle might come up to your leaf and give it (and you) a life- threatening chomp, God forbid. You cannot control your surroundings with sheer force of will or anything at all. There are no guarantees in this life, no fast tracks to happiness, health, and wealth. Think peaceful thoughts, just be aware that the silence on the surface will remain just that: superficial.

Then there are those very strange people, like me, who feel more at peace in busy places with lots of noise than they do in their own homes, sitting alone in the silence of night. When we think about the diversity of human experience, we realize very quickly that we cannot think ourselves into a permanent emotional positivity, and it may be dangerous to do so. Our awareness of danger and disturbance is important if we want to stay alive. Pretending it away is willful stupidity.

The reality check continues: Some of the most optimistic, kind, and truly caring people I know have died of cancer. Their focus on the good did not save them from biological woe, their kindness did not bring about an escape from harm. While the people I have lost to illness or age were surrounded by love in their final moments, I have also lost friends to suicide, people who died alone without experiencing the final kindnesses that they certainly deserved, or at the very least needed. And even “deserving” is a tired social construct, a set of rules we make up about life so we can make sense of it. Reality does not know what it means to “deserve,” life is not fair.

There is an unforgettable scene in the 1996 movie Twister, in which Bill (played by Bill Paxton) tries to console Jo (Helen Hunt) as she scrambles to save a meteorological experiment in the face of an active tornado. Jo lets us see how her childhood trauma fuels her passion for storm chasing, when she screams at Bill, “You’ve never seen it miss this house, and miss that house, and come after you!” Her father died protecting her and her mother from a tornado, and she needs to know why—why did it miss this house, and miss that house, and come after her? Of course, the tornado did not come after her or miss anything, because tornados do not aim. The tornado just exists and Jo and her family happened to be in the space where it was existing. Cancer, age, depression, and tornados do not murder our loved ones, they just exist, and that means that people die sometimes. We all die at some time.

Tranquility is not pretense, it is peace. We do not find it by ignoring what happens under the surface. Ignorance is not bliss and you absolutely do know what you are missing. People that hide in forced positive thinking do not stay hidden very long, but are quickly brought to reckon with the harsh unpredictability and seeming injustice of nature. We are all Jo in Twister at some point in our lives. Jo reckons with more than the one tornado that killed her father; she wrestles all the tornados that keep on killing people, the need for new understanding to provide earlier warning to potential victims, and the fact that she still loves Bill. Here’s something that might shock readers who have seen this movie: I think Jo is the most tranquil character in the show, despite her sometimes-stormy emotional presentation, because she is most aware. The ladybug on the leaf finds true peace in knowing the monsters of the deep, much more so than she would in choosing to ignore them. The terrible truth she grapples with at some level of her consciousness is that monsters exist either way; snapping turtles, birds of prey, and tornados exist, even when we shut our eyes and pretend.

So much of the spirituality of the past few decades taught us to fake it until we make it, which is why the term “spiritual shortcutting” has risen in popularity at the same time. For me and so many others, finding God takes us beyond blind belief in a list of spiritual claims into confrontation with reality, a commitment to return to truth over and over again, no matter how much we would like to turn away. God is merciful and grants us peace for sure—God has shown me profound peace beyond the capacity of my intellectual mind to understand or articulate— but this peace comes with knowing, not ignorance. This peace, because it is true, is reliable and stabilizing, unlike the happiness which only comes with happenings. . .

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Dear Governor Ivey,

My name is Joshua Berkowitz and I am a Tennessee resident and student at the School of Theology at the University of the South. I am writing to thank you for your just decision to commute the death sentence on Sonny Burton who, despite making a terrible decision so many years ago, has not done anything deserving of the death penalty. I hope you will work with the Alabama legislature to ensure that the death penalty will only be an option when the convicted person has killed another person, and not only participated in an illegal act which led, indirectly, to a murder. That would be the fullness of justice for Mr. Burton and the family of those impacted, who also favored this commutation. [continue reading below]

I am a Christian, lay minister, author on devotional spirituality, Hebrew scholar, and aspiring priest in the Episcopal Church. But I was baptized in a Baptist church, the church of Jonathan Edwards, and my education in Christian history began in the First Baptist Church in America, Providence, Rhode Island. I am deeply engrossed in the biblical values, and particularly the Baptist values, that historically underpin our nation’s governance. I understand that the Word of God holds the possibility of capital punishment for various crimes in the Law given to the people of Israel. As you can see from my last name, I am of Jewish descent, and my paternal grandmother was a direct descendent of Aaron the High Priest. My Christian faith is informed by my Jewish heritage and the formal Jewish education I received before my conversion to Christ. What I know from those studies is that the authority to impose a death sentence was never given by God to secular authorities. It was given to a specific group of religious leaders, with narrow evidentiary thresholds. The historical record we have from that specific group (the Sanhedrin) indicates that they seldom used their authority to put a person to death. The Talmud teaches that a court execution once in seven years, or even seventy, was considered extreme. Our country has, in this year, executed at least 46 people.

What I know as a follower of Jesus: “he who is without sin may cast the first stone” strips our authority to pass such judgment. As the Apostle Paul teaches us in Galatians, we were “under the law until faith would be revealed.” But now faith has been revealed most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ, and he has clarified that the will of God is not that we will exact eye-for-eye punishment. We absolutely have a responsibility to protect our neighbors and ourselves but, despite my studies (I am presently in my third, graduate level religious studies program), I have not been able to reconcile the existence of the death penalty in the United States with the notion that ours is a government in which most of those in power identify as “Christian.”

A completely different angle, which is less urgent but still important, is the financial burden of capital punishment, which I am sure you can appreciate in this era of reducing wasteful spending. The US DOJ Office of Justice Programs itself informs us that executing a convict is about six times more expensive than life incarceration. Even in the extreme cases where we must keep a convict permanently closed off from free society, it does not seem that there is either a moral or pragmatic reason why the state should be empowered to kill.

Thank you for your time and again for your decision, which I imagine was very seriously considered, and for which I praise the Lord. You will be in my prayers in the coming days, and I ask that you pray for those incarcerated or facing death in Alabama, in the United States, and around the world.

In the Peace of Christ,

Joshua Berkowitz

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My name is Joshua Berkowitz [that is my legal name, under which I am registered to vote] and I am a constituent of yours in Franklin County. I am a devout Christian who sincerely hopes that every child will not only learn about the Ten Commandments and their importance in history, but will also come to know Jesus Christ, who is the Word of God. For this reason, House Bill 47 should be a no-brainer for me, but instead it has raised serious concern.

First, I am not opposed to the bill in its entirety. Displaying the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, or other founding documents of the United States makes sense for a public institution of education. I hope it will spark conversation, and cause students to wonder if our country has attained the high standard set by our founders.

What I object to as a Christian is the display of Christian scripture in a public classroom. I am concerned that posting the Ten Commandments, or any Christian Scripture, is an invitation to anti-Christian sentiment and misrepresentation of our faith.

Politically, this is a losing move. There is no question that this is a bill meant to close ranks along party lines, and that Republicans are trying to assert their power in the culture wars. The vast majority of Americans, on every part of the political spectrum, are sick and tired of this political game. We are not stupid, and we know that these issues are a distraction from Democratic and Republican failures to deliver on promises of a strong economy and defense of American freedom and opportunity, all of which are quickly eroding.

Here is your opportunity to stop playing the game and take a stand against the madness that has poisoned both parties. What’s more, the American people and the people of Tennessee do not want to pay for pointless litigation over issues that are more than settled in the Constitution and case law of our country. Such an embarrassment will only reflect negatively on Christians. The growing narrative that we are stubborn, oppressive, bigots with no respect for the law of this land is starting to make sense to a lot of people who might otherwise be drawn to Christ in love.

Finally, I ask these questions with sincere curiosity: If this were to pass and somehow survive the judiciary, what will stop other religions from putting their documents up in our classrooms? Will our classrooms become community bulletin boards for various religious sects to advertise to our children? And what will the next batch of elected officials be able to do as a result of opening that door?

The people of Tennessee are watching, the demagoguery we see from Washington will not work here, and there is already a blue shift underway, as demonstrated in a recent election, which I’m sure your analysts are watching very carefully.

Peace in the Lord Jesus Christ,

Joshua Berkowitz

But today I am convinced that active participation in media buzz is destructive to my soul. I sense the Spirit calling me to disengage, not from being informed, but from arguing about the merits of a fascist takeover or even whether or not it is happening right before our eyes. My conversation style in the past couple of days has been harsh and contrary to my better angels. Last week I spent two days in Alabama learning that my understanding of slavery, lynching, and racism was severely limited and whitewashed, despite my best efforts. I feel angry and disillusioned, and that shouldn't come out through fighting with random strangers online.

However...the conversation is changing. There will be a point when the American people decide that business as usual is untenable while our neighbors lie slain in the street. We are remembering that when someone “else” is hurting, I am next, or as Baldwin said, “If I am starving, you are in danger.” It has happened before, and I believe it has started again. Civil discourse seasonally gives way to violence, and the government learns to fear the people again, as it should, and terribly. I am not called to the warrior path, the Spirit has called me down a different path to action, but I also trust that it takes all kinds. Bhagavad Gita (a discourse between Krishna and Arjuna in the Mahabharata) offers rich contemplation on that.

I don’t want to see a violent uprising in America, because I think that most of those who would be harmed are already suffering the most. But I do not believe that all violence is inherently wrong, or that no one is called to violently defend the vulnerable. I don’t often compare myself to Bonhoeffer, but I embrace the tension he held between killing as sin and our duty to defend the vulnerable. This is a tension I see in Holy Scripture, and one I wrestle with in myself. Consider the Iranian people, burning down government buildings, dying in the hundreds for a glimpse of freedom. The American illusion that we will never be Iran is dying, if not dead. Western powers made Iran, and our own transmutation into a theocratic dictatorship is God’s judgment on the West, Lord have mercy.

Americans will bleed and die for freedom again, and this time we will not leave Black, Brown, Trans, Disabled, or any other bodies in the dust. We have a decision to make, there will be many different approaches to participation, but there will be no option to sit on the sidelines at Judgment Day. This is not a plan, or even a suggestion - do not misunderstand me - but a prediction. The end is extremely f**ing nigh.

I’m angry, and I am called by God to love, yet these are not opposites. I notice that, when a child is threatened, the loving parent takes up weapons to save it. All our children are threatened, we are all their loving parents, there are many options for weapons - metaphorical and otherwise - but there is no other option than to take them up. May God fill the empty and send the rich away.

Here is Genesis 4:8 (with my translation):

That ellipsis in my translation is really there in the text. There seems to be a whole clause missing from the verse. What on earth did Cain say? The text of the Torah falls silent. The text introduces direct speech from Cain to Abel, but follows it with a total non sequitur. This is mostly a problem in Hebrew, since the Septuagint (Greek) puts the phrase, “let’s go out to the field,” into the mouth of Cain. Targum Onkelos (Aramaic) leaves the puzzling text as is, and Targum Jonathan (also Aramaic) adds a full paragraph of conversation. The LXX or Septuagint can sometimes preserve a version of the text that seems more “complete” than the MT or Hebrew Bible, and other times it appears to be more complete but is in fact amended. Generally speaking, though, texts that are easier to read and make more sense are less likely to be “original” than texts that are confusing or hard.

The rabbinic commentators each offer their own characteristic comments on this lacuna (fancy word for gap). Rashi says, “He entered with him into words of conflict and found cause to kill him. And there are legendary midrashim about this, but this is what the Torah means.” Rashi is sympathetic to the desire to read more detail into the text (he often accepts these readings in his commentary), but he is also vocal when he thinks there is a simpler path to the plain (pshat) meaning of the text. His comments betray a sense of frustration with interpretations which are almost too creative to be believed. Rashi also projects a legal argument onto the text that in some way deepens Esau’s guilt. What we would have interpreted as second degree murder, a crime of passion, Rashi transforms into premeditated fratricide. Rashi eliminates the pretext for mercy, suggesting that we are not meant to feel sympathy for Cain.

Ibn Ezra take a different and somewhat surprising approach: “It is apparent to me that [Cain] said to [Abel] all the rebukes with which God rebuked Cain.” In other words, Cain transfers the divine scolding from the previous verses onto Abel. While this is not so apparent to me from the text, I wonder if what Ibn Ezra means is that the vayomer (then he said) in 4:8 refers back to the quoted rebuke, as if it means, “Then Cain also said the same to his brother Abel…” We can justly accuse Ibn Ezra of putting words in Cain’s mouth, but it might be possible to read Cain’s speech as a regurgitation and transference of God’s own condemnation, rather than a missing chunk of text.

Ibn Ezra then gets sassy, “And they ask - those born on a stormy day (i.e. at a dull, unfortunate time) - they ask how he killed him, because there weren’t any swords! This is a vapid (tohu) question, because he killed him by choking with his hands, or there were a thousand trees (probably meaning “bits of wood”) and stones to be found.” It is as if Ibn Ezra has said, “Libras are dimwits who suppose that Cain cannot possibly have killed Abel without modern weaponry, when he could have used his bare hands, the savage, or perhaps a stick.”

While reading this the first time did cause me to chuckle, we can also read this comment as a rejection of extreme literalism. Rabbinic commentators are capable of swinging both ways, rejecting interpretations of the text which are overly inventive on one side, while scoffing at readings which are too simplistic on the other. Genesis 4 does recount the invention of weapons, but it doesn’t happen until the generation of Cain’s descendent Tubal-Cain, so it follows that some persnickety readers wills say, “Aha! How did Cain kill then?” Of course in this case, the derided nativity would be Virgo or Gemini, rather than Libra, and Ibn Ezra’s response to them is “calm down.”

If I were to come up with a moral to this story, it’s that our post-Enlightenment society has a lot to learn from ancestral thinkers. Notice that neither Rashi nor Ibn Ezra shy away from polemics. Rashi acknowledges a conflicting opinion only to reject it, Ibn Ezra calls his opponents in this conversation dumb and possibly cursed by the omens of their birth. At the same time, these rhetorical devices do not eliminate the opposing arguments, in fact they preserve them, and this is not an accident of rhetoric, but the substance of classical Jewish commentaries. The tradition intentionally, purposefully maintains winning and losing stories, arguments it deems correct and true alongside those it found to be false or deficient. Jewish tradition, in other words, is not reductive, it does not fit into a post-Enlightenment scientific epistemology. But neither do most things, neither does life. As a society, we need to approach Truth with a broader lens, understanding that different narratives, even opposing narratives with which we strongly disagree, have a role to play in our learning, and therefore ought to be preserved and understood.

It has been a beautiful, challenging, awakening month. Moving to Tennessee was quite the adventure and I did a subpar job documenting. I’m not a picture taker on most days, I prefer to just enjoy whatever I am doing. When I do take pictures, they are hardly ever of people, and even less frequently of myself. This has been the case since I was a child and my mother would lament the expense of film only to look at trees and buildings when we got home. Now I understand where my mother was coming from with that, but I love looking at trees and buildings to remember my travels. I can take a selfie at home! And sometimes I’m barely in those.

Recently I have found that just collecting the pics I’ve taken over the past few days to weeks is a great way to stop and reflect and remember how very blessed I am to be here, not because God is doing me a special favor, though this feels very special, but because God has given me the grace of awareness in these little moments.

The first picture at top left is a rosary made of real pearls, a dream of mine for a long time. My dear friend Noelle bought me the pearls, and I strung them together into a Servite rosary. The Servites (Servants of Mary) have been fascinating me lately, as the Spirit tugs on my heart to do penance for the world and more deeply engage in the tools of monastic and eremitic traditions. I’ve been meditating on the Seven Dolors of the Ever Blessed Virgin, the core of Servite devotion, to center myself on the Passion of Christ through the eyes of his Mother. The picture just beneath the finished rosary is of me and my roommate making rosaries in our living room.

The remaining pictures represent various moments of connection and transition throughout the past month: the arrival, encountering a buck in the woods, going to class robed for the first time, and connecting with my peers through a fun prompt left in the common space at the School of Theology. This has been a month of uprooting and transplanting, raising anchors and also setting sail. It is, necessarily, a destabilization, but one that promises bold adventure.

If you are wondering how you can support me at this time of great transition, I ask your prayers first and foremost. I believe that prayer has a real impact on our lives. Prayer helps the one who prays, prayer helps whomever we pray for, and prayer binds us all together in a common life in Christ. Prayer works - always in the way that is best for us according to God’s infinite wisdom and understanding - and the Spirit bestows her grace upon us to trust the One leading us forward, if we are willing to receive.

If you have the means to materially help a young seminarian respond to the call of the Spirit, I have a Seminary Wishlist with some items I need. It is really incredible how expensive relocation is and I don’t know what I would do this semester if I did not have the kindness and generosity of my home parish, fellow parishioners, friends, and family. Should you choose to gift something from the list, be sure to “claim” it at the link provided. Please also send me a private message for the shipping address, which I have declined to share publicly. And remember to pray for me! Beloved, I am praying for you.

Peace,

Joshua Maria Garcia

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Since Bar Harbor, I have traveled through Montpelier, Vermont and Northampton, Massachusetts, visiting friends and family along the way. My visit to Northampton was especially interesting as my obsession with beads was reignited and I began making some of the rosaries I’ve always wanted. My dear friend Noelle was kind enough to gift me two strands of AAA+ very round, freshwater pearls, which will someday become one such devotional item, but right now I am honestly a little apprehensive to start that project! I plan to beef up my beading skills a bit more before tackling literal pearls.

I did create a lovely chaplet from bloodstone and white jade. I assembled it with the centerpiece and crucifix from an old rosary from Fatima, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Marian apparition to three shepherd children there. My Portuguese heritage compels me to venerate Our Lady of Fatima, and of course I say the Fatima prayer at the end of each decade of the Rosary. This chaplet, though, was made to serve the secondary purpose of saying the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, and this past week I had the amazing opportunity of going to the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy with my new beads. They were blessed with the relics of St. Faustina Kowalska, making my little rosary a third class relic! Maybe you will find it strange that an Episcopalian takes such things seriously, but I find that relics help make our faith real. The saints are not ancient ideas, they were living people of faith with whom we share the Body of Christ. Having a physical connection to them is so special to me.

This week I also signed a publishing contract for A Tranquil Body, my new book on Christian meditation. I suspect it will be out next summer, but one can never really know. It took me a year to come up with the proposal, and now I have to finish the manuscript in just a few months. Time is not real, Jeremy Bearimy - an obscure reference, but a good one.

My next stop, this Sunday, is Herkimer, where I will be camping (in a tent!) for a few days and mining for semiprecious gemstones with a literal pick. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and Herkimer has massive deposits of the most beautiful quartz specimens I have ever seen. While my past life in the New Age world has definitely come to an end, there are tidbits of wisdom that I will always carry with me.

A Story: When I was working at Inspirit Crystals in Northampton, a rabbi friend of mine came in. He looked around at the stones and then back at me and said, “You don’t believe in all this do you?” I was a little surprised, because this rabbi happened to be none other than David Seidenberg, who wrote THE BOOK on Jewish mysticism and environmentalism. He certainly has the soul of a mystic, but in that moment it did not seem to extend to crystals from metaphysical shops.

So I said, “It depends what you mean. The stones are real, they are part of God’s creation and, as all things, are refractions of God’s light being shone into the world. So they, like anything, have a purpose in creation. In that sense, yes.” It might be my ego conveniently editing my memory, but I think he was pleased with my answer. No, I don’t think every claim about stones is legitimate, in fact I reject most of the spirituality around stones as a gimmick used to sell books and rocks. My birthstone is a garnet because someone needed to sell more garnets, not because garnets have any inherent relationship with the month of January.

And yet…Another Story: I had a friend who was recovering from alcoholism and she wore an amethyst necklace. Amethyst comes from the Greek word for “sober,” and we call it that because the ancient Greeks thought that it could be used to ward off unseemly drunkenness. I’m not sure my friend’s necklace was magically deflecting a relapse into addiction, but I am quite sure that it helped her as a reminder of her commitment to better living. I could share a hundred other examples like this one, and I would rather people be wishful in their thinking than not have any wishes at all. Hope is important! As the second theological virtue, I pray for it every time I say the second Hail Mary on my bloodstone rosary. And while I am not convinced that bloodstone energetically grounds me while simultaneously opening my heart, it does remind me of the love of Jesus Christ poured out on Golgotha, and that certainly has the desired effect.

This trip has included many unexpected turns. At the same time, like a bloodstone, it has grounded me and opened up my heart. I am reminded that I know how to take care of myself, and God knows even better than I do. I’m finding a new strength and stability, if a little ironically, in taking a month to wander around the country without a permanent place to lay my head. Here is a random smattering of beautiful pictures from my more recent escapades:

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As many of you know, I have left my home-away-from home in Providence, Rhode Island on a grand relocation adventure. I am road tripping for about a month as I make my way to the University of the South, where I will begin my Masters of Divinity program and continue the journey toward priesthood, God-willing and people consenting.

First Stop: SSJE

My first stop along the way was the Society of Saint John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I prayed (and ate) with the brothers for six days. The brothers were incredibly generous in granting me a scholarship which covered my stay and travel expenses. It was a holy and restful experience that deepened my sense of intimacy with God and affirmed a lot of the discernment work of the past few years. SSJE was also the spiritual hospital (a more accurate description than “retreat center”) that put me back together when I converted to Christianity and left rabbinical school ten years ago, so this visit really felt commemorative for me, a celebration of spiritual and emotional growth.

Some brief but meaningful vignettes from my stay:

1. The rooms at SSJE are named for saints, and the room I was assigned just so happened to be named for my patron, St. Stephen. This felt like a little nudge from the Spirit as if to say, “Hey, you really are coming home.”

2. While my car was in longterm parking in Cambridge, someone hit it with their car and did not leave a note. The damage is minimal, thank God, but the really amazing part was that I did not get all that upset. At first, I thought I might melt down, but then the thought occurred to me that, in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter all that much. I don’t know if it’s the Stoicism podcast I’m listening to or just sitting in prayer for a week, or both. Everything just feels alright in a deeper sense than ever before.

3. While walking around town with my dear friend Elizabeth, we happened upon a series of strange but hopeful posters, and you will see my goofy fascist-fighting pose in the last image below.

“God works in mysterious ways” is a phrase that keeps coming to mind during this time. I’m used to hearing it as a cheap dismissal, a platitude used to excuse oneself from deeper theological seeking. What happens when the mystery is lifegiving, exciting, better than what I could have planned? God works in mysterious ways, and I am so grateful for that. If I truly knew what was coming next, that might give me time to mess it up.

Now in Bar Harbor

My cousin Steven (there’s that name again) lives in Bar Harbor, Maine, so I am currently staying with him where I belong - on a mountain in the woods. We have spent some time exploring Mount Desert Island, but today we are both occupied with our own projects and I found a cute little coffee shop called Milagro where I now sit and work. The walls have all these little paintings of nuns doing different activities, which is just perfect. Maria la Milagrosa ruega por nosotros.

As Steven expressed last night in a drive around Mt. Cadillac, this place has a different “energy,” and I quite agree. There is something wild about Acadia and the surrounding area, something holding out for a late Anthropocene return to the bosom of Nature. I have felt it here before, and also in parts of Quebec, and at the herbal apothecary worked at by the very same name (Acadia Herbals in Northampton, MA; now closed, but check this out for my friend Jennifer’s continuing work).

The Bible suggests that nations have angels assigned to them, and I believe Acadia has an angel bearing boughs of balsam in her arms, a fragrant offering to the lord. A crown of wild blueberry encircles her head and sweet fern springs up in great patches beneath her feet.

To be honest, I have been too enamored with my surroundings (even though I’ve seen this all before) to take many pictures, but here are a few:

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23). When in the presence of the Angel of Acadia, it is easy to trust in this, because no matter how many times I witness the splendor, it never fails to inspire mouth-gaping wonder.

The Book

Some of you are probably thinking, that’s really nice, but what about the book? I do plan to complete the first draft of the manuscript this month, but this past week or so has been mostly physical rest and recuperation from packing (poor back and shoulders) and spiritual rest to grieve the places I’m leaving behind. But the Spirit is stirring again and words are flowing, as you can probably tell if you have read this far!

The book does not have a fixed title yet, but I look forward to sharing ideas and samples of writing with you as I work my way toward a deadline of November 1st. The bulk of the writing is split between two purposes: 1) teaching people how to meditate, especially within the context of Christian faith, and 2) unteaching people (so that they can unlearn) the obstructive habits of mind we internalize from our surroundings. Too much of the material we already have on meditation and embodied spirituality set unattainable standards of practice and self care for their readers, especially for mentally and physically disabled readers. I want to offer - I believe the Spirit and my editor are guiding me to offer - a fresh approach which is accessible, radically accepting, body positive, all the good things.

Meditation is the opposite of difficult! The problem we face as westerners approaching a meditative practice is that we have been inculcated with a terrible falsehood: that healing or wholeness requires great effort. Sometimes, yes, we must exert effort to find those undernourished parts of ourselves and resuscitate them and reintegrate them, and I’ve learned a lot about that to be sure. But the practices I offer in my book (anticipate it from Church Publishing sometime next year), are specifically designed for stress free progress toward knowledge and appreciation of self, creation, Creator, and our bodies, however our bodies happen to be. I hope this will serve as a corrective for the elitist and ableist toxins that a few meditation teachers have unfortunately introduced to the American meditation “scene.”

I Need Your Help!

Now I need your help. I’m consolidating my online presence and beefing up my following, putting out new content to reengage. I am doing this because I want to feel more connected with all of you during a transition that has the potential to be a little uprooting, but I’m also doing this because I need to. My online presence is the point of origin from which so many of the present opportunities emanate, and I need to show the very generous sponsors of my present work that I am growing that presence, maturing it, fine-tuning it.

You can help by sharing this article, my TikToks, my free YouTube classes, or my ebooks with friends, family, or parishioners who might appreciate such things. You can also use some of these materials as conversation starters for sharing the Good News.

If you feel led, you can also help with a financial contribution to my GoFundMe, which I have recently relaunched. Every little bit counts, from one dollar to thousands, and I pray for each and every contributor and try to reach out personally as well. My parish has been incredibly generous toward me in the past few weeks, but I am living at a deficit right now, and most of the funds raised recently will be gobbled up in the incredible expense of moving into a new apartment a thousand miles away.

Thank you for reading, thank you for sharing, thank you for supporting me in whatever way you can. I truly have a community that believes in the work I do, and I trust in the God who makes it possible.

In Faith, Hope, and Love,

Joshua Maria Garcia

Third Sunday after Pentecost/Proper 8

Lessons: 2 Kings 2:1-14; Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62

“Courage is fear that has said its prayers.” You may remember that the Reverend Linda brought us this Anne Lamott quote in her sermon last week, and hearing it got me wondering if there are certain kinds of prayers that better lead to courage. Is simply showing up to pray good enough, or are we expected to come before God in a particular way when saying our prayer, and which particular way transmutes fear into courage?

My grandmother taught me how to pray when I was a young child. Sitting on the edge of my bed, she would ask God to take care of each and every one of our family members, as many as she could think of to name, and sometimes I would help her complete the list. Then she would thank God for something good or ask a special favor. These were prayers of thanksgiving and petition, simple but no less beautiful, remembering our dependence on God for all things. “Thank you, God; now, I need something.” This is an ancient and valid form of prayer, but this was not the only way that Grammy said her prayers. She was a loving and complicated person, prone to frustration. When she was tired, worried, or flustered, she put her hand in the air and cried out, “Lord!” One word, like a mother calling her child by his full name. He knows he’s in trouble, now! She called on the Lord with force, invoked him almost as if commanding his presence, sometimes a hint of anger in her voice. And then she would fall silent. I think that, in those moments, she was waiting for fear, disappointment, the shock of realized need – to become courage.

How could she pray like this, calling out to God with such temerity? Then again, Elisha does much the same in our Old Testament reading this morning. After he promises to follow his mentor three times, refuses to be turned away on three legs of the journey, and ignores the company of prophets who discourage him either out of pity or annoyance – after all this, he witnesses the death of Elijah. All this loyalty, all this love, and for what?

Sure, Elijah “ascends,” whatever that means, but as far as Elisha and the rest of the living are concerned, the prophet is dead. Set aside the strange metaphysical questions here and focus on the interpersonal relationship, the traumatic impact this separation has on a deeply devoted protégé. We might imagine the ascension as a beautiful spiritual experience, the final exaltation of a good prophet, but stand in the place of Elisha, when the fiery horses and their wagon descend and wedge themselves between him and his beloved teacher, as if the Lord of Legions adds insult to this injury. As Elijah is going up, Elisha cries out, “Avi, avi – my father, my father…” This is loss, this is separation, and from the vantage point of the earth plane, this is death.

Elisha loved Elijah like Ruth loved Naomi. Three times Naomi tells Ruth to turn back, go home to her family, and three times Ruth clings to her beloved mother-in-law against all reason. Three times Elijah offers Elisha the opportunity to turn back, mercifully sparing him the wound of witnessing transcendence. But Elisha follows him to Beth-El, where Jacob saw angels ascending a ladder to heaven. He follows him to Jericho, where walls tumbled down for Joshua. He follows him as far as the Jordan river which reversed its course for the legions of Israel, only to watch God’s own legions take away his beloved. At the border between Israel and Moab they leave their homeland for enemy territory, they go over river Jordan, they part waters, they part the veil, and leave the land of the living to walk in a place of desolation. Elisha loves Elijah like Jesus loves Lazarus – he would descend into the grave to raise him up to life, but this is far worse than the death of Lazarus, for Elijah has not gone to some grave to await judgment, but directly to God. How terrible!

Elisha rends his garments, picks up the mantle of Elijah, and returns to the banks of the Jordan river, now it is up to him to find a way through. He watched Elijah do it before, he saw his spiritual father work wonders like Moses, wielding the power of a god. He knows the choreography, but now he embellishes the act according to the character of his own spirit. Elisha strikes the waters of the Jordan with the cloak and cries out, “Ayeh Adonai Elohei Eliyahu – Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” He does not say, “Where is my God?” Or, “Where is our God?” He says, “Where is the God of Elijah?” He reminds God what God has just done, essentially asking, “Where is the one my father served, the one who took my father from me.” I see my grandmother throwing up her hands in frustration and grief shouting, “Lord!”

A tiny segue: As Bible Study participants know, I see the opening chapters of Genesis as a kind of key for reading the entirety of the Bible, the whole plan of salvation foreshadowed in miniature. In Genesis 3, after the fall of humankind, God wanders in the Garden like one lost, crying out for Adam, “Ayeka?! Where are you? What have you done?” God lifts up an aye-ka, like Elisha’s aye-h, God asks “where are you” like Elisha asks “where is God now?” In response to God, Adam and Eve offer excuses and transfer blame for their transgression, motivated by their naked shame to bend and twist the truth. But perhaps Elisha has always known that he was naked before God, that there would be no point in hiding his truth from the Holy One. He comes before God with everything he has, honest and real, and demands Presence. God cries out to humanity, “Where are you?” And humanity, in Elisha, shouts back, “No, Lord, where are you?”

There is a Yiddish saying I learned recently that I quite like:

דײַן מזל, גאָט, וואָס דו וווינסט אַזוי הויך

אַניט וואָלט מען דיר די פֿענצטער אויסגעזעצט

“Dayn mazl, Got, vos du voynst azoy hoykh; anit volt men dir di fentster oysgezetst. You’re lucky, God, that you live so high; otherwise people would break your windows.” As my grandmother would say, that’s a bit “fresh.” But sometimes I wonder if what God would like most from us is a broken window. At least it shows that someone is paying attention.

Sitting here today, you may feel that there are some rocks you wouldn’t mind throwing at God’s windows, some mantles you’d like to slap against the river Jordan. So here’s your invitation: Do it! Get loud, be honest, God knows how you’re feeling anyway, because you are naked. It may feel weird or scary to imagine praying this way, but perhaps God is waiting for you to bring that kind of vulnerability into your spiritual life, to acknowledge without shame who you really are and how you really feel.

And this is how this kind of prayer works: In the bold and honest expression of our most difficult feelings, we connect with our real need for God, and find that God is also seeking us. This endeavor sometimes requires the solitude of a prayer closet, and other times the safety of beloved community. Our frustrated prayers are answered, not because we sufficiently grovel before the King of the Universe, but because we are real and honest before our Maker, and this plugs us back into the only reality where we can do the work that God has given us to do. Here, in the real world the real God made, we seek the Presence of God, and God is with us in our loss and suffering, our sickness and political turmoil, seeking to dwell in our hearts.

When we cry out, when we break ourselves open before God, then we make room for God to enter in. Hiding in the religious fantasy of a future beatific vision brings consolation, but little else. Attending church religiously in exchange for heaven while your neighbors suffer hunger, fear, and oppression, will not only fail to pay the entry fee, it will blind you to the heaven that is possible here on earth. Being a Christian has nothing to do with viewing righteous pageantry, even though I love pageantry very very much. True Christianity is a path of return to our total divine humanity, only possible in the context of an honest interior life.

So, back to Elisha – his prayer does not offend God, but rather brings Elisha into right relationship, not only with God, but also the world around him. It connects him with the power of God; he receives the double portion of Elijah’s spirit, not in spite of his raw display of anger, but because of it. We may think we know what happens when prophets lash out. We know that Moses was barred from entering the Holy Land for striking the rock at Meribah. We anticipate, perhaps, the outpouring of God’s wrath on a cheeky prophet, no longer restrained by his late mentor. But no, instead we bear witness to the undeniable sign of divine favor as the waters part at Elisha’s command, he crosses back over Jordan into the Promised Land, and the other prophets recognize him as the successor to their master. Far from incurring judgment, Elisha’s confrontation with God brings empowerment.

How could it be that God tolerates such behavior? What I want to tell you today is that God invites it, our God has been waiting for a long time for us to emulate just this kind of chutzpah.

In the Gospel today we hear that Jesus is approached by a would-be believer who echoes the words of Ruth and Elisha, “I will follow wherever you go.” But Jesus has a really excellent B.S. detector; he knows when our prayers are not honest. Jesus responds, “Birds have their nests…but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

We assume that when Jesus says “Son of Man,” he means himself. He is the Son of Man, as he is the Son of God, these two titles holding open the mystery of the Incarnation. But son of man also means “human being,” and it can refer to any human person. The Living God has nowhere to lay his head, and he desperately seeks after the love of his creations, entering into our world in a scandalous act of self exposure, self emptying, to save us and love us. The naked God meets us in our nakedness. And humankind has no place to rest in this world when we attempt this ephemeral transit without Christ, that is, without truth. We must hear God’s call to us, “Ayeka, Where are you?” And we must take time in solitude and time together to yearn for God, saying, “Lord! Where are you?”

“Courage is fear that has said its prayers,” but there is a certain kind of prayer that our fears and anger and grief need in order to yield the lifegiving substance that is courage. It is true prayer, if I may be so bold, which is daring and honest prayer, that invites God’s presence through the breaking open of the human heart. I learned this prayer from my grandmother, and I hear it in the prayer of a devastated disciple at the loss of his beloved teacher. I hear it in the prayer of a child who has lost her parents to bombings, politically induced starvation, or inhumane capture and removal.

Where is this God? We will sit on the dry riverbed of Jordan in the midst of mighty waters and, if we cry out boldly, honestly, truthfully, then God will be present there. I don’t know if we will get what we think we want when we pray this way, but we will get what we need. The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head but in our hearts and we in his. So let us cry out to him in the truth of our fear and frustration, and there we will see how he answers – through our empowerment and action. Amen.

What I did not anticipate was the question my father would ask me in the middle of the conversation: he asked me why I became a Christian. A bit taken aback, I said something to the effect of, “That is a long story for an in-person conversation,” and he understood. After our conversation I checked in with myself, wondering if I would know how to answer that if I had tried in the moment. What would I say? Would I give a social, intellectual kind of answer about church community, the robust support my parish has offered me, or would I give a more personal and spiritual answer? I didn’t know. Today, sitting in the Lady Chapel at my church for my Lenten quiet time, the Spirit moved me to articulate an answer in writing.

First of all, let’s acknowledge the giant blue elephant in the room: I converted from Judaism, to which I was profoundly dedicated ten years ago, when I offered my life to Christ. My conversion journey - in terms of articulating my relationship with God and creation as a Christian religious identity - was long and complicated. When I first encountered Christ, I couldn’t picture myself in any Christian community I knew of, so I came up with my own way to follow Jesus. That worked for a little while, but it didn’t solve the problem of needing to get over myself, and that is one of the principal benefits of the sanctification which unfolds from salvation. I then tried to be Messianic, because it was familiar to me and allowed me to maintain a sense of Jewish identity, however controversial. While the theology of some parts of the movement has come a long way since the early 2000s, there is still a strong element of pseudo-Judaizing cultists with which I can barely stand to have a conversation, never mind a community life. I tried out Evangelicalism again, which came close to answering the sacred yearning of my heart, but I found it lacking in theological nuance, too feverishly committed to Sola Scriptura, and convenient in it invocation of catholicity, only for the sake of condemning abortion and queer people.

After about three years of searching, I landed in the First Churches of Northampton, Massachusetts (UCC/ABC), where I joined a diverse congregation, wrestling sincerely with scripture and tradition, committed to doing the work of Christ in the world. My time at First Churches was formative, putting images in my head of what the love of Jesus looks like when lived out by human beings today. Those images are one of the measures I still use to discern the presence of Christ in any ministry. After spending a few months in that church and discussing my journey with the pastors there, I was baptized in Amherst, at Puffer’s Pond, on Pentecost of 2018.

Shortly thereafter I moved to follow my then-boyfriend to Providence, where I felt rather alone and without community at first. For some reason, what I knew of the local Christian circuit did not appeal to me, and so I started working in the Jewish community again, and gradually returned to a mostly regular Jewish practice. But Jesus would not leave me alone and, when the opportunity to work in youth ministry in a local church presented itself, I pursued it. It was at that time that I began to seriously pray the Rosary, and eventually wrote a small devotional manual for it. Then, at an Interfaith event at the local Reform synagogue, my current rector, the Rev. Mark Sutherland, invited me to St. Martin’s, where I found a church community that matched the shape of my soul.

I engaged church life at St. Martin’s deeply, joined the staff, and eventually found myself a week or so out from Confirmation, when I had something of a trauma response. It occurred to me that, in my Confirmation, I would vow to be a good Episcopalian. I would no longer be “just Christian,” but a member of what is essentially a lay religious order, having promised to fulfill specific obligations to God and God’s Church. I asked myself if part of me was holding onto something “other,” something I might need to leave behind in order to make that promise in good faith, or perhaps reengage for a time. I canceled my Confirmation, left the Church, and turned my attention to the emergent, radical Jewish leftists gathering on TikTok during the first COVID lockdown.

It was not until the easing of COVID restrictions that the sacred longing for Christ mightily resurfaced. I was mediating, praying for my ancestors to show themselves to me, though I think I was really asking God to show me who I am, who God has made me to be. The answer came, but it was an answer to a better question. Jesus and Mary appeared to me in my mind, and they said, essentially, here we are.

“No, no,” I thought, “not you. I’m looking for my ancestors.”

“Here we are.”

Puzzled, I gave in. I returned to St. Martin’s for an outdoor Sunday mass shortly thereafter, where it quickly came clear that I could not tolerate a life without Jesus. I would have to find a way to integrate my ethnic and spiritual experience with a love of Christ and a profound sense of vocation, a call to give myself entirely to him. I was confirmed on January 23, 2022, just over three years ago now. Since then I have been through a long and challenging personal discernment process, part of the diocesan discernment process for priesthood, and a second divorce. At the moment, I am in a period of grieving, resting, and listening for the Spirit. One very clear direction which has surfaced is to attend the School of Theology at the University of the South/Sewanee, and I will move in there on August 1st of this year. I have also discerned a call to incorporate the Evangelical Counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience into my life in some way, though the “how” for that “what” is still in development.

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I do not believe in one time conversion experiences. I believe that all of life is a conversion journey, a saga of change from the dust and ashes into which we are born into the glory of new life in Jesus Christ. Christ is drawing all people, everywhere, and at all times, unto himself. What happens when we cooperate with that draw is nothing short of miraculous, and it is this ongoing conversion experience which solidifies my choice to be a Christian. Just as the cells of my body regularly die and new ones are born to take their place, turning my flesh over and over into what I will become, the Spirit of the Living God raises every spark of light in my soul as I turn again and again toward Jesus. That is why I am a Christian, because God has changed my very being, and from the vantage point of this divine ontological renewal, I know that Jesus Christ is Lord.

My maternal grandfather’s family came from Normandy, England, and Ireland, likely for religious and economic liberty. My maternal grandmother’s family was English and Açorean, seeking much the same. While I abhor the violence inherent in settler-colonialism, we can’t blame individuals and families for finding something better in another place. But this is not the only reason why people came to America during the massive waves of immigration that brought my ancestors here, and it is not the only reason why people come now. In fact, I would argue that most people who come to America, and the United States specifically, do so with a great deal of reluctance.

My paternal ancestors’ migratory motives were more ultimative than opportunistic. Yes, freedom and success were what they would, and they were supposedly model immigrants, a real American Dream success story (*rolls eyes*), but that was not at the forefront of their minds when they decided to leave Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. They did know that they would die if they stayed. They knew that their Christian neighbors, stirred by a Good Friday accusation of deicide from a pulpit supposedly dedicated to the proclamation of Christ’s Good News, would burn down their homes, seize their belongings, and rape and murder men, women, and children.

My ancestors did not want to come to America. They were forced out of their homeland by the threat of extermination long before anyone knew the name Hitler.

The choice was made for these ancestors, not by them. They were religious Jews, faithful descendants of High Priest Aaron. They loved their land, where they tilled, sowed, reaped, and shared the bounty of the Eurasian breadbasket for over a thousand years. Bella and Nathan, my great grandparents, did not want to come; or, at the very least, they did not want to leave their homes. At the same time, they knew it was time to go if they wanted to see their children grow up and live remotely normal lives.

When they arrived in Boston on a ship sailing from Hamburg, Germany, in the time before Germany lost its liberal and intellectual edge to the virus of Nazism, they were met by customs and immigration officials who wrote their names down and let them in. I imagine they lived in tenements for some time before they were able to get on their feet, or with family who had come before them, but either way they quickly turned their misfortune into incredible success, the fruits of which are still being enjoyed by some distant cousins today (no such luck on my end).

No one in my family ever had a green card, no one took a citizenship test, they were not asked how long they would stay, because the answer was obvious - forever, bezras Hashem, with God’s help. They were not coming to America as business people but fleeing for their lives, it was more Exodus than opportunity.

And let’s be real, the contrast with immigrants “these days” who are “illegal” and “don’t want to work,” or who “smuggle drugs into our country,” is a convenient projection to cover up the much more complex truth that all our ancestors tried, and many succeeded, to skirt the rules. First of all, my ancestors were not “legal” until WWI, when the draft necessitated that they have some paper trail in the country. Even then, one family member used his status as only child of an aging or ailing parent to get out of the draft (though my great uncle of blessed memory would eventually serve in WWII). My paternal grandfather was involved in black market trade during the depression, a smuggler glorified only by conveniently distant memories, who likely participated in the illegal import of a highly addictive and dangerous substance. My family worked, but not by assimilating into the opportunities provided for them, since Jews, not yet considered white, were frequently excluded from jobs, housing, and membership in civic organizations. They made their own way, opened their own “ethnic” establishments in their own highly segregated ghettos, and were only viewed as “model minorities” in retrospect, again, by the glorified, soothing memories of the aging, for whom eventual assimilation is a bygone ordeal.

I am not saying it was easy for them, or that my ancestors had more opportunity for finding good work and a stable life - probably less, if we are honest, before the advent of a successful labor justice movement. But I want to draw a line through my inherited stories of exclusion and the kind of hatred which echoes all around us now, directed at Hispanic, Arab, African, and Asian immigrants who did not want to leave their homes, but were forced to look to America for salvation. What’s worse, these immigrants, unlike my family, are often fleeing political and economic realities which Americans have created, and for which we now refuse to take responsibility. Exclusion, suspicion, and threats are all part of my family’s American story, but apart from my cousin’s Brazilian husband, deported by the Obama administration, they never faced the unthinkable reality that America could simply kick them out. And while certainly experiences presidents who limited the flow of immigration, and attempt at reversal was simply not on the table. While the United States did reject thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis, to our shame, my ancestors did not have to contemplate the backwardness of refusing refugees from countries our own government has effectively destroyed. For my ancestors, whose path to citizenship demanded only their existence in the right place and time, there was an understanding that they were now American, with the same rights and privileges as any other, no questions asked.

The model immigrant American Dream is a myth, or worse, a nightmare. Let us remember our ancestors and the opportunity and privilege they were granted, the admiration with which we remember them. Whoever our immigrant ancestors were or are, whatever we think they did or did not do, they were imperfect human beings who all made a difficult decision to leave the known behind and risk everything for something that might be better. The vast majority of white Americans share these roots, and we therefore have absolutely no right to look down on others making the same moves we made. And western governments certainly have no moral ground to stand on in refusing refugees from the various global disasters of the West’s own creation.

God have mercy on our nation and our souls.

January 19, 2025

• OT: Isaiah 62:1-5

• Psalm: 36:5-10

• NT: I Corinthians 12:1-11

• Gospel: John 2:1-11

“…and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,

so shall your God rejoice over you.”

May I speak in the name of God + Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.

I was at the tail end of the Covid lockdown, attending spiritual direction on the phone, and my director would always answer the phone the same way: "Hi Joshua, who is God to you today?" To be honest with you, this question really got on my nerves. I would offer a canned response like, "God is Creator, Jesus is God," or, "I'm a Trinitarian!" Nevertheless, she persisted, asking me each month, at our scheduled time, "Joshua, who is God to you today?"

Finally, one day, I got fed up and I said, "What do you mean who is God? I am a Christian, you are a Christian, we both know who God is." And then I went on a rant about creedal orthodoxy and Trinitarianism. But my rant did not last long before my director gently interrupted and said, "I know all that, Joshua. What I am asking is, who is God…to you? How is God making God-self known to you today?" I paused, and did my best to open my ears to listen, and immediately I thought of my grandmother, who died around that time. I thought of her hugs, the way she embraced so openly, softly, and sincerely. I would sacrifice so much to have a hug like that again. I shared this with my spiritual director, and she asked, "Do you know that's the way God loves you?"

I don’t remember how I answered that, but it was something like, "Yes, of course, the Bible says…the evidence suggests…" I know in my rational mind that this is what I am supposed to believe. But that's not what she was asking. She asked again, "Do you know that's the way God loves you? How have you experienced that love of God in your life?"

Okay, hold that question in mind while we address some literary analysis.

The Wedding at Cana is not a story about a wedding. A wedding happens in the story, but that’s not what it’s about. As any good Bible commentary will tell you, Jesus’ miraculous transformation of water into wine is the first of John’s Seven Signs, which demonstrate the divinity of Jesus. But while the miracle has symbolic value, it is not the miracle itself which gets us in touch with the divinity of Jesus.

You will notice that John's unique telling, which appears nowhere else in the Synoptic Gospels, the other gospels, never mentions a bride and barely acknowledges a groom. In fact, few of the formal trappings of a wedding are present at Cana, and that should be very surprising to us, because first century Judaean weddings were seven days long. They involved processions, role playing, two written contracts, and yes, a lot of food, wine, and dancing. Jewish marriage was and is a sampling of the messianic age, and many of the scriptures cited during the marriage ritual allude to the coming Messiah, and the destruction and restoration of the Jerusalem Temple. Cana has none of that, at least not explicitly, and it's not a mistake. To a first century reader, this story screams, "Do you get it? It's not really about the wedding!" And as if to aggressively highlight that point, John has set the wedding in a town that does not exist.

There are at least four villages in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, all within historic Galilee, which claim to be the Cana of wedding fame. It will not surprise you to learn they have economies heavily reliant on tourism. But I think it's likely that John made up the name Cana, or Qanah, because it sounds like two other words in Hebrew. One is qniyah, which means “acquisition” or “wedding.” Considering this, we might as well rename the Wedding at Cana, “the Wedding at Wedding-town.” Not a real place! But the other word it sounds like is qinah, that is lament, and all these words apparently share the same Semitic root. John is playing with language, to signal to the reader that this story is symbolic.

He mentions no bride, but our ears prick up when Jesus calls his mother, "woman," which in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, also means “wife.” Now in English I know it sounds rude to call your mother “woman,” but this is only an English problem. In fact, it's literally an English problem, as in it comes from England. What John 2:4 says in Greek is, "Madam, what does this have to do with us?" Jesus employs the Greek gunai, woman as an honorific; he is not being rude but rather extra polite. Jesus sounding rude toward his mother in this story wasn’t an issue until the King James Bible, which bent the translation of his speech to intentionally diminish the importance of Mary.

You see, Catholics use the Wedding at Cana as proof of Mary's catalytic participation in the ministry of Jesus, as well as her intercessory role for the Church today. After all, the bartender doesn't go to Jesus about the wine, he goes through Mary. This deference to the Mother of Christ serves as the basis of the Latin teaching, Ad Iesum Per Mariam, to Jesus through Mary. With the Reformation in full swing in England, King James would not have liked that, and his translators changed it to "Woman, what have you to do with me?" Not only does it sound rude, it also disguises Mary's near equal footing in the original grammar of our verse. Jesus says, "Madam, what has this to do with me and with you," with both "me" and "you" in the same grammatical case.

The truth is, neither Jesus nor the author of John dismiss Mary by calling her "woman." Nor does John dismiss her by never using her first name in his entire Gospel. Instead, something deeper and more powerful is happening here, which we learn from the next three times that John has Jesus calling a nameless female character, "woman."

When Jesus meets the Samaritan at the well, he calls her "woman" and reveals himself to her as the promised Messiah. Do you hear that? He told some Samaritan woman before he told a Jewish man that he was the Messiah of Israel. But do you remember the rest of that story? Jesus specifically mentions that she has no husband, that she has been divorced five times, and is cohabiting with a lover. And do you remember any other Bible stories where a man and a woman meet at a well, and how those ones typically end in…a wedding?!

Later in John, when the scribes and Pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery to Jesus, he calls her "woman" and saves her life. Notice that there is no husband in that story to accuse her, which is very strange, because to be an adulteress in Jewish law, one must have a husband present to at least issue the charge. There must be an injured party for there to be a crime, since ancient marriage law is mostly about protecting property and assessing damages…and so is modern marriage law. Strangely, Jesus is the one given the opportunity to accuse her, he's the one put into the role of husband, and he refuses to play along. Like the kingdom of King Jesus, his marriage - his love - is not of this world.

Finally, when Jesus is dying on the cross, his mother and beloved disciple stand on either side of him, opposite each other, with Jesus between them and elevated above them. We couldn't make it look more like a wedding if we put a chuppah, a wedding canopy over it. Then Jesus gives his mother to his disciple, and he gives the disciple to his mother, because she has no husband anymore to take care of her after her son dies. And he says again, "Woman, here is your son! Here is your mother!" And then he drinks wine. It's a wedding scene.

But the crucifixion is not just qniyah, it’s not just acquisition of relationship, a cause to celebrate. Now it is also qinah, lament. Here the reader ought to recall what happened at Qanah, the Wedding at Cana, when Jesus said to his mother, "Woman…my time has not yet come." For here, on Calvary, his time has come, and this moment is what it all was leading up to - this is what his ministry, his suffering, Mary's suffering, the sword that pierced her heart - this is what it was for. It wasn’t for the miracles, to get the attention of a traumatized and cynical audience, and it was not to display the literary genius of John, or whoever authored the Johannine texts (it was probably a committee). All of this was for this cosmic, timeless moment when Jesus gives his mother to the disciple and the disciple to his mother. And Mary and the beloved disciple are nameless, so that we may see ourselves in them, so that we may experience his love for us. On the Tree, his tree of death, our Tree of Life, his arms spread wide open, to embrace us, we imagine, and yes, he does embrace us, but he also gives us to each other. In and through spiritual marriage and lament, I am yours, and you are mine.

Let’s recap. At Cana, Jesus rescues the bride and groom from a grave faux pas. At the well, he offers the Samaritan woman companionship and hope. He acquits the alleged adulteress, and her accuser is erased from the story, replaced by a lover who will never abandon her. I wonder: will Jesus replace my accuser to be a lover who will never abandon me? Maybe then I can overcome my need to sound smart, and just answer the question my spiritual director asks, "Who is God to you today?"

Today, God is here, revealed to us in this story, present with us in this place. God is in this community, this communion, because we have received the invitation, we have answered it. And we have brought our insufficiencies and shame, our guilt and grief, with all the good and bad we carry, the worry, despair, and hope. Here we are, some rejoicing at the Wedding, others grieving a Mother’s Lament, all of us deeply known and beloved disciples of Jesus. Love, divine love, is present with it all.

The story is symbolic, but I need you to hear that right: I did not say that the story is just symbolic, there is no such thing as just symbolic. In utilizing the tangible trappings of marriage, which are so culturally vital to the Jewish people, John crosses the comfortable boundary line we draw between sign and signified, between story and moral. As we dive deeper into storytelling, especially John's storytelling, we begin to wonder if this story of love is even more real than we are. Literary analysis is not about mastering literature, noticing how it emerges from human consciousness like a thing we construct. At a more fundamental level, literary critics are concerned with how human consciousness emerges from story.

John says, "You think the wedding is a symbol of the Church’s relationship with Jesus and his mother? Fine, but what if you are a symbol of the wedding." The Word of God does indeed emerge from human experience - someone had to write this stuff down - but more importantly the Word of God is a loving person from whom we emerge into being. The Gospel according to John is not a bunch of stories about Jesus, the way that we might like to read Matthew or Luke, who conveniently write along an almost western narrative arc. John shows us how Jesus, who is Love, is our story, and it is from him, from Love, that we emerge into existence, and it is to him, only in union with one another, that we return to union with God, that is our true marriage, that is salvation.

Did you hold the question in mind?

For the past few years, I've been seeing the same spiritual director monthly, with few interruptions. Without exaggeration, I can tell you that our conversation has been about that one question the entire time: "How have you experienced that love of God in your life?" My answer changes day to day, and minute by minute, but what I have been delighted to find, with so much support and guidance, is that such love, God’s love is life's only constant. There is no miracle so mysterious or impressive that it can prove to the intellectual mind what we say we believe, but dwelling in the sheltering shadow of the love of God, most explicitly expressed in the person of Jesus Christ and this his Church - that is better proof. Like a grandmother silently embracing her children, Jesus teaches us that there is at least one knowable thing, and we find it here, together.

Let us pray: Jesus you show your abundant love to every tender heart you touch. Soften our hearts today to receive you and embolden us to share you. Whenever we fail to love you, or one another, gently turn our eyes toward your wide-open embrace - mercy for our redeemed but broken world. We ask this in the holy name of Love + Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.