“O body
that has become the spirit’s dwelling place; enough is enough: how long can the
Sea abide in a water-skin?”
-Rumi, Masnavi
VI
The next two chapters of the book are massive compared to the others! This week’s is about Jesus’s death and resurrection, a weighty subject if ever there was one.
Helminski
notes that the early church tended to portray Jesus as Pantocrator, Ruler of
All, in iconography, showing him as having conquered death. We have seen that over
time, probably due to the horror of the Black Death, artists and theologians
began to put more of a focus on Jesus’s suffering on the Cross to bring comfort
to those who suffered during the pandemic.
To this day,
many Christians struggle with this part of the story: Why did God allow this
terrible suffering? How exactly did this accomplish our salvation? Helminski
writes,
“Whatever our theological beliefs may be, we witness in the story of this moment a journey through intense suffering and the possibility of immense transformation. …The possibility of a human soul’s victory over the power of death through complete immersion in Spirit, the joining again of earth and Heaven in spiritual nobility and humility of personhood within the palpable Presence of Reality, frees the heart and soul like a column of Light bursting into the Infinite.”
As Christians
many of the Gospels and the letters of Paul encourage us to model this
transformation in our lives (Matthew 16:24; Philippians 2:5-7a). Rumi writes through
a different lens but with the same spirit:
“Whoever
shall strive in tribulation for Our sake,
Heaven will
give support to [their] feet.
Your outward
form is wailing because of the darkness;
your inward
spirit is roses within roses.”
(Masnavi IV)
Personally,
I find deep meaning in the wisdom-sharing we can trace through the Gospel of
John, the most mystical of the Gospels. Starting with Chapter 12 verses 1 through
8, we see Mary of Bethany anoint Jesus’s feet with spikenard, gratitude for Lazarus
pouring out in an act of pure prophecy. In Chapter 13, verses 1-17, Jesus washes
his disciples’ feet in a precious echo of Mary’s act. If we believe in the
Incarnation, this is a shocking moment: God, the Ground of Being, has learned
from us. God received an act of love from a woman and modeled it for the male disciples.
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea offer the gift back again once Jesus has been
crucified, showing that they don’t understand that he will be raised. Mary
Magdalene comes to the tomb to weep, and leaves with the incredible message “I
have seen the Lord!” Like Mary of Bethany, she disappears from the story after
her act of prophecy. It seems clear that both experienced their own
transformation:
“I am
cramped like the embryo in the womb…
My mother,
my bodily nature,
With its
death throes is birthing Spirit,
So that the
lamb may be released by the eye,
And begin to
graze in the green fields.
Come, open
your womb, for this lamb has grown big.”
(Rumi, Masnavi
III)
One can then
argue that we are called to be in perpetual dialogue with the divine, who has
learned from us and is continuing to share the gifts of wisdom and new life
with us.
I’m on a lot
of email lists; I imagine you are too. One of mine is a Substack, kind of like
an online journal or magazine, belonging to Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. Rabbi Danya
is a very cool lady, quite active on social media and a prolific writer on
Judaism and how it interacts with sexuality, politics, and justice. Her recent
book On Repentance and Repair is on my list and based on the buzz I’ve
seen so far is a must-read.
The article
she wrote for her Substack on February 9th of 2017 was about
sacrifice, and it was in my mind as I prepared for today’s sermon.
In the
article, she details her experience marching with 18 of her rabbinic colleagues
in protest of the Trump administration’s travel bans and policies targeting
refugees and immigrants. It was, they believed, the largest mass-arrest of
rabbis in modern history.
She writes,
“It was a profoundly holy experience for me, marching down Broadway and over to the Trump Hotel singing with hundreds of my colleagues and community members, sitting in the street with my teachers and colleagues, and the arrest itself – offering myself up to the State, fully vulnerable.
But it was always abundantly clear to me what this arrest was, and what it wasn’t.
In the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, my ancestors offered animal sacrifices to God. It was both a way of asserting that life is the most profound thing that we can give over, and a statement that we could not, should not, offer our own lives. Other ancient cultures engaged in human sacrifice, but it was brutal, immoral; the move to animal sacrifice was an attempt to recognize the sanctity of human life.
And yet, animal sacrifice was still deeply embodied – visceral, bloody. Sacrificing an animal was not the same as giving up our own lives, but it was a powerful symbolic substitute.”
Rabbi Danya Ruttenburg
After the
forty days of purification required by the Law of Leviticus, Mary, with Joseph
and baby Jesus, comes to the Temple in Jerusalem to offer two pigeons in
sacrifice.The background to this ritual as recounted in this story is
somewhat uncertain, for Amy-Jill Levine writes that there was no recognized
custom of bringing babies to the Temple for this dedication rite.She
tentatively links it to Exodus chapter 13 verse 2: “Consecrate to me all the
firstborn; whatever is the first to open the womb among the Israelites, of
human beings and animals, is mine.” Verse 13b reiterates that all firstborn
children specifically should be redeemed.
And then it
says:
“When in the future your child asks you, “What does this
mean?” you shall answer, “By strength of hand the Lord
brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery. When Pharaoh stubbornly
refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn
in the land of Egypt, from human firstborn to the firstborn of animals.
Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord every male that first
opens the womb, but every firstborn of my sons I redeem.” It shall serve as a
sign on your hand and as an emblem on your forehead that by strength of hand
the Lord brought us out of Egypt.’”
As modern
peoples, this might sound unspeakably alien, but there is a powerful message
cradled within, one which points us to the story of the Exodus, Israel’s great
liberation at the hands of a God who heard their cries of pain under slavery.
We remember
that historically, children born to enslaved people belonged to the
slavemaster, and their freedom had to be purchased. What a powerful act of
worship and liberation to proclaim, “The only person to whom I owe redemption
for this child is God, the Liberator and the Giver of Gifts.”
So again, with
the great and holy desire to embody this truth, particularly as they marked the
mystical nature of the pregnancy, Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple to
perform the rite. They are greeted by Simeon and Anna, a perfect balance of
prophecy as embodied in male and female bodies and lives, come to testify to
the specialness of this child.
Simeon sees a
sign of completion and salvation, and says as much. While we don’t receive
Anna’s words, the author uses the word “redemption,” or in Greek λύτρωσις (lee-tro-sees), again linking us back to the Exodus story
and placing the rite of sacrifice in context.
And here is
where the Christian journey begins to take its own detour – for we are now
invited to contemplate the paradox of the Redeemer of the world being literally
redeemed.
This is
where the beauty lies.
We get
caught up so often in God’s towering, masterful presence, and as our Lord said,
we are right, for that is what God is. But in this season of Incarnation we are
invited to imagine God as small and vulnerable. Power and might is only one
strand woven together with weakness and suffering. They’re woven together in
the Christian story and if we forget, there is no good news.
The
Liberator was born into the world in flesh, in skin, in diapers. Like all great
orators, he needed to be taught to speak. Like all great societal movers, he
needed to be taught to walk. Like all great liberators, he needed to be
redeemed.
But the
profound and disturbing work of the Cross is not transactional. It’s a gift.
Sacrifice looks
like a transaction. But really, it was the only way for the human creature
in the ancient world to mark how un-transactional the gift of life is.
Nothing can
be given for life, except life.
And so we
ourselves have been woven into a grand tapestry dancing in the whirling wind of
the Holy Spirit, dancing between giver and gift, back and forth, forever.
Now for some
– for me – this is incredibly good news. It means I don’t have to do anything.
That transactional relationship has been completely overturned. This is
anti-capitalism at its finest! God and I are not provider and client. We are
not slave and master.
We are in
love.
But for some,
it’s deeply unsettling. We’ve been taught so fervently to see things in this
transactional way. And if there’s nothing to be done, in the echo of
that incredible gift, to earn our blessedness, then what even is the
purpose of Church? Heck, what is the purpose of life?
I would
argue that life has no purpose, because the greatest gifts have no purpose.
Life is not
a crock pot or a new pair of shoes. Life is an experience. Experiences can have
purpose…and surely we can all agree that they’re so much more than that.
Life is a
love story. Love stories can have a purpose, and they’re also so much more than
that.
But Jesus
wasn’t betrayed, imprisoned, and lynched for a simple love story. Jesus, raised
a Jew, knew and demonstrated that once you truly understand that God and love
are not transactional, you start to question the norms and rules demanded to create
an orderly system within Empire.
Like all
good prophets, he figured the message was more important than its vessel.
Like all
good prophets, he decided to go all in.
He could,
because of the strange moment of redemption and prophecy we remember today.
Liberation
is an invasive species.
Prophets like
Simeon and Anna know that, but you better believe Empire knows that too.
That’s why
it tried to cut that love story off early, before the best part.
Good thing
it didn’t!
Good thing
it never will.