revmontoya | Rev. Shane Montoya

An Untamable God

An Untamable God

Preached by Rev. Shane Montoya on May 6^th, 2018

Scripture: Selections from Job 38-41, John 11: 32-45

The storm rages.

Four friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and Job, lounge around a hearth, frustrated and angry. The fire blazes, driving away the worst of the storm.

One, in particular, is torn with rage and grief, having buried 10 children just a few weeks ago, in addition to losing a lifetime’s work in a single day. To add injury to despair, Job has been afflicted with terrible and painful boils that cover him from head to toe. Already, his wife has told him to give up, curse God and die.

Yet still he persists.

Persists in terrible grief, in terrible pain, persists in wondering the most eternal of questions: Why do bad things happen to Good people? Why does evil exist? Why me, oh Lord, why me?

Before the night is through, these men will have an answer. Not necessarily the answer, but an answer: The universe is a wild and terrifying place, with a God who is not to be bound by human reason or emotion. Their God, our God, is not one who denies evil’s existence, but a God who is our Good Shepherd, willing to journey beside us in our dark valleys. But that night is not yet through.

Earlier, Job’s friends, spent a week in silent mourning with him, what I believe to be one of the most heroic acts in the entire Bible. After this period of mourning, Job once again tries to make sense of his pain and suffering, crying out in rage and grief.

His friends respond to his pain by slinging platitudes at him.

“Job, you must have done something wrong!”

“Job, you’re undermining good religious values by being mad at God,”

“Job, your complaining means you’re really an Atheist.”

They tell him this is so because it is only the wicked who ever receive such punishments from God, that we should never be allowed to be angry at God.

Job, for his part, parries and dismisses all of their complaints, arguments, insinuations, and insults. He counters them with brutal efficiency, reminding them that good things happen to wicked people, that his suffering and agony are real and cannot be dismissed.

Throughout his response, Job challenges God to answer, calling God to account in the same way that the prophet Micah puts God on trial, for the scattering and destruction of one of the Kingdoms of Israel. The same way that Jewish survivors of the concentration camps in World War II put God on trial after the horror of the holocaust. This time, God responds.

God responds by speaking through the storm, through the whirlwind. This is not the voice of God that is still and small, barely heard by Elijah, but the voice of God as heard in the wildest aspects of nature, that which we have no control over.

God responds, not with moral and metaphysical arguments about the nature of suffering. Nor does God respond with a philosophical treatise about the problem of evil. No, God responds with a tour of the most primal of forces, the creation of the earth and the seas, the dawning light of the sun and the passing of the seasons.

God asks if Job as ever been with a young lion as it hunted, had ever been there for the birthing of a deer. God then ends with a long description of the Behemoth and the Leviathan, the kings of the beasts of land and sea, fantastical creatures which defy any human attempts at domestication.

This response has long puzzled commenters and theologians.

“Why doesn’t God just respond to Job?”

“Why doesn’t God tell us why bad things happen to good people?”

“Why does God go into an in-depth look at the natural world?”

“What is God trying to say here?”

Some have said that this might be a dismissal of Job’s concerns, a string of non-sequiturs. I disagree. I believe that God is trying to tell us something quite profound about the nature of the universe. I believe that God is attempting to impress upon us three things: humility in the face of natural wonder, God’s impartiality, and God’s untamability. When God gives Job, and us, a tour of creation, God reminds us that the universe is very very large, and we are very, very small, and that our world is still a dangerous and chaotic place.

As modern folk, it’s easy for us to become complacent about the natural world. We’ve tamed and caged animals, cracked open the earth and dug deep to procure the minerals which fuel our modern lifestyles. In West Virginia, it’s no longer “economically viable” to dig coal mines underground anymore. Instead, they just remove the entire mountain top. It goes without saying that this is devastating to local ecosystems.

So God’s reminder of the wildness and immensity of the world around us can be a hard one for us to swallow, especially when combined with God’s second point.

God notes that God is with young lions as they hunt their pray, lying in wait with them. God hears the cries of those who are hungry, be they animal or human. Yet God is also there when mountain goats and deer give birth, the animals that one day become the food of those young lions.

This reminds us that God is not just my God, God is not just our God. God is the God of people I don’t like, of things I don’t understand, and those who oppose me. God is more than a totem to invoke when I feel bad, but the ground of being itself, from which all arises.

This is not to say that God is not with us – but it is a call to remember that God only once promises that suffering will cease. God makes that promise in the next to last chapter of the last book of the Bible, in the book of Revelations, Chapter 21, after the apocalypse, when history as we know it has come to an end, when there is no need for churches or temples, for God dwells with us.

Before those verses, God never promises that our lives will be easy, that the roads we travel will be straight and flat, but only that God will be there with us, just as God hunts with the young lion, and cries out with the hungry raven. That we assume that we can bend this overall impartiality to our will, fit it into our boxes, brings us to God’s last point, God’s untamability.

God tells Job about the terrible power of the Behemoth and the Leviathan. The Behemoth and the Leviathan are the archetypal king of beasts, who cannot be tamed. No one can bridle the behemoth, nor fish or farm the leviathan, the great sea beast. These are creatures beyond the power of humanity to control, to domesticate, to make into prizes and ride.

This untamebility is an important reminder for Job, who used to be a successful farmer and rancher, owning thousands of sheep, along with herds of cattle and horses.

For if Job cannot control the Behemoth and the Leviathan…

What makes Job think that God is something to be domesticated? What makes us think that God is someone we can defang and ritualize into submission? What makes us think that we can prescribe one certain way to talk to God that will make God conform to our will?

That if we pray to Saint Anthony we will find our lost goods, that if I spread my hands at the altar, that I can summon God and transform the bread and wine and juice into the body and blood of God Almighty?

What kind of creature are we to attempt to create God in our own image, rather than to realize and remember that we are created in God’s Image? So God reminds Job that the world is still wild and dangerous, that even at his most prosperous, Job’s control over his life was an illusion at best, and a lie at worst.

But.

God also reminds Job that God is always, always with us during our journeys through the shadows of the valley of death, just as God is with the young lion and the hungry raven.

God reminds us of this, reinforcing this idea to us as Christians through the ministry of Jesus Christ. Our second bible story reminds us of this, as Jesus is called to attend to Lazarus, the brother of Mary, Mary who sat at Jesus’ feet and scented him with perfume.

Jesus does not come immediately, when he could have prevented Lazarus from death, but waits until three or four days later, when Lazarus’ body was starting to stink.

This, Jesus says, is for the glory of God. The road to God’s glory, however, sometimes hurts. When Jesus and his disciples enter the town, they are met with a populace that is sad and angry.

“Why didn’t you come sooner?”

“You could have saved him!”

But God, especially in the person of Jesus Christ, does not act on our timelines, but on his own. Even Jesus Christ, born lowly in a manger, meek and mild, is not to be tamed. Nobody, not even his mother, tells him what to do.

And Jesus, seeing what death has wrought in this town, in the community, becomes greatly agitated. Death, which God has participated in since the dawn of creation, causes Jesus Christ pain.

Oh death where is thy sting?

It is here, in this town, with these people.

And Jesus begins to weep.

Maybe he weeps in sympathy, or in empathy, or out of rage and grief, but cry he does. Perhaps these tears are part of God’s Glory, terrible tears that show us a God who wants to be with us, who is with us in death’s dark valleys,a God who becomes present at the communion table not through my action, but through an invitation to make visible, tangible, and physical the grace that already exists inside of every Christian who yearns for God.

For as much as we yearn for God, we have a God who yearns to be with us all the more. And although that doesn’t make all of the evil, all of the destruction, all of the harm ok or good.

It does make it bearable.

And sometimes that’s enough.

“Wounded and Risen”

Listen along as you read!

Wounded and Risen

Preached by Rev. Shane Montoya on April 8, 2018 at Edwards Church Framingham, in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s Assassination

Scripture: Psalm 133, John 20: 19-31

I saw a comic recently on Facebook that featured three men in ancient clothing talking to one another. One of them says to the other two, “All I’m saying is we don’t refer to Peter as “Denying Peter”, or Mark as “Ran away Naked Mark”. Why should I get stuck with this title?”

To which one of the other men in the cartoon responds, “I see your point, Thomas, but really, it’s time to move on.”

This is true church: it’s time to move on from Doubting Thomas.

This is partly because of the simple fact, The word “Doubt” doesn’t actually appear in the original Greek text of our Gospel reading.

This is especially pertinent to us, because when we modern folks think of doubt, we think of intellectual arguments, of skepticism and testing done by scientists in labs.

This is not what this passage is about.

Thomas wasn’t having a theological debate about the nature of the trinity or the ontological implications of the physical resurrection. We know this because the word that we translate as believe or faith in the New Testament, “pistis”, is not about intellectual agreement, but about trust and faithfulness.

It’s the trust that children have for their parents, an utter dependence on God’s grace and mercy. So Thomas was doubting doctrine. No, Thomas was full of despair. Despair that his friend and teacher had abandoned him and only him, that he would not share in the bounty of grace which God had promised him and his community.

Thomas, though, Thomas didn’t abandon his fellow disciples in his hour of despair, nor did they abandon him. Instead, even though he was in the midnight of his soul, he still gathered with his people. I think that’s quite notable.

And if there is one thing we do know about our God, it is that God keeps promises. Jesus, seeing Thomas’s despair, does the work he said he would do as the Good Shepherd, following after the one who was alone and in pain even when the 99 had been seen to.

Thus, Jesus makes a special visit, just for old Thomas, who is the depths of his despair. Thomas sees Christ, and, after feelings with his hands Christ’s wounds, proclaims “My Lord and My God!” He is not suddenly convinced of the Nicene Creed through an academic paper. No, what happened to Thomas was that he encountered his Lord and his God both wounded and risen, fully human and fully divine. In doing so, his despair is turned into trust and faithfulness. His love and trust in and for Jesus Christ is restored.

This isn’t in the bible, but history tells us that Thomas would go on to start the Christian church in India, a community of millions that has survived persecution, from local rulers and from Europeans, and isolation.

So I don’t try to use Thomas as a foil so much anymore. Sometimes, I wish that I could be as faithful as Thomas, making the leap of faith to preach the gospel in a distant land. Me, I just made the arduous journey from Natick to Framingham.

Indeed, in considering Thomas’s behavior, throughout this whole episode, I find him to be something of a hero.

Sometimes I wish that we would “doubt” as well as Thomas did. For, if in seeing with our own eyes the wounded and risen Christ, in his full humanity and full divinity, that we would be faithful and trusting as Thomas was, I would consider that a faith well lived.

But for me at least, this begs the question:

What if we “doubted” our neighbors, our fellow humans the same way?

50 Years ago this past Wednesday, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

It shocked and horrified our nation; some of us in this room remember that day. The country convulsed with what some historians have called the deepest civil unrest in this country since the Civil War.

It was the tragic end of a life that was dedicated to the liberation of his people from the bondage of Jim Crow, a vision of equality that many, did not want to hear.

He did it by making racism a moral crisis in this country.

He knew that White Folks in this country, even, and especially well meaning and good hearted folks in the Northeast and West, were not truly aware of the full scope or implications of the murderous regime of terror that African Americans lived under in the Jim Crow South.

There were stories, and news reports, sure. There were the horrific scenes of violence over the integration of the school systems in Little Rock, Arkansas and other towns and cities in the South.

And, of course, MLK also knew that White Americans were a people who were very good at turning away from what was going on “over there.” After all, if it was so bad, why didn’t they just leave? I’m sure it wasn’t really that bad, they said. “If they followed the law, this wouldn’t happen.” “The truth must be somewhere in the middle.”

So MLK decided to force the issue, setting out to destroy even the perception or possibility of moral ambiguity about conditions in the South.

He felt, no, he knew that if the wider public knew the full extent of the brutality of life in the Jim Crow South, even under “moderate” leaders, then folks would become so shocked and horrified that they would demand change.

Dr. King believed that when White America saw the wounded, and especially the risen nature of African Americans, in the American South, enduring with solidarity, and dignity, that Whites would finally see them as fully human.

And for a historical moment, an all too brief historical moment, the strategy worked. Americans were awaken from a moral slumber during the freedom summer, and watched with shock and horror as black and white protestors were savagely beaten by racial segregationist city and state governments.

For a moment, White Americans looked at wounded and risen African Americans and believed them. Collectively, we said, “My God, what has happened here?”

This sparked the passing of the Voting Rights Acts and Civil Rights Act of 1964, which were truly massive accomplishments, but did not eliminate the many differences and disparities, especially economic, that African Americans lived with.

Indeed, in the years after these bills were passed, public sentiment started to turn against MLK and the cause of Black freedom within the United States. This was partly because of deliberate efforts of the United States government to stir dissension; this is not a conspiracy theory- it’s well documented that the FBI wanted to discredit MLK and other African American Civil Rights leaders. The FBI even sent an anonymous letter to MLK, encouraging him to commit suicide.

Part of it was also because of his early campaigning against the war in Vietnam, which was still popular at the time. Images of burned out villages were just starting to appear on American televisions, but the widespread opposition to the war that would galvanize the country in the late 1960s had not yet appeared. In1966, MLK had a disapproval rating of almost 63%.

By the time he was killed in Memphis 50 years ago, White politicians as prominent as Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, would say on the day of MLK’s funeral, “that his death was ‘a great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order and people started choosing which laws they’d break.’”

This, in effect, blamed MLK for his own assassination, equating murder with civil disobedience.

It would be nice if I could say that after MLK’s death, things got better for African Americans, but in many cases, they did not. Trends in the United States, including the closure of factories, stagnation of wages, the HIV epidemic, and the rise of prisons as places for private profit impacted African Americans disproportionately.

No longer were we saying, “My God, what has happened here?”, and worked to better the lives of African Americans and others who were suffering. Instead, we began to say, “I don’t believe you.”

If only we had trusted, and believed.

If only now we would trust, and believe.

If only like Thomas the truster, Thomas who did not abandon his community, even in the midst of his despair, we would believe.

We would believe the poets and artists and activists who are opening their wounds to us, to see and touch their wounded ness and their risen ness, and to proclaim, “My God, what has happened here?”

We would believe and surround with the strength and hope of community those who were struggling with depression and anxiety and other mental illnesses, not trying to fix them but simply being present with them.

We would believe that new life is possible and sometimes probable for those whom society has written off.

We would believe that our God is not just a transcendent God worthy of our praise and majesty from a distance, but one who would appear to someone he called friend not in the form of an majestic angel, but as his friend whose wounds were still visible and who would invite him to touch them.

And if that is our God, what does that say about who we should be in the course of our love? Our God who is glorious and vulnerable, fleshy and fantastic? Is that not what love is?, to be vulnerable to one another and then to believe each other’s pain?

Believe the Good News, Friends, believe that Christ is risen and wounded, and that we can be too.

Amen.

Tradition for Progressives

Church, I must confess.

I made a mistake.

I got into an argument about communion on the internet.

My advice: Don’t do it. Never, ever, ever. Folks who are normally extremely charitable and loving can become petty, smug, and vociferously uncharitable. This is especially true among clergy.

That said, it does give us an opportunity to think about the role that tradition plays in our theology, and especially in the life of the church.

To define what I mean by tradition, I turn to GK Chesterton, an early 20th wit who wrote in his book “Orthodoxy” that tradition was “…giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.”

Although I believe that more often then not, our interactions with tradition should resemble a dinner table discussion rather than a parliament, the sentiment stands.

Note the distinction between and language that is being used here: tradition should serve as a conversation partner, a voice in the room, not necessarily the sole decider. Tradition is invitation to for the past to have a seat at the table, not that they should run the whole show. Tradition is not a dictatorship of the dead.

Traditions reckons that the dead have a place in our democracies.

This does not make me some kind of hardboiled reactionary. Sometimes our ancestors did very bad things, and sometimes we are only beginning to realize our (and their) complicity in systems that have hurt people.

Sometimes our ancestors left us with legacies that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, or imperialist. Most assuredly, these legacies should be grappled with. But it is hard for me, at least, to pass ultimate judgement on them as people without listening to their reasoning, if its available.

After all, most assuredly our children and descendants will think the same of us one day, and I hope they give us the same benefit of the doubt.

I also hope that we are good conversation partners when that time comes.

Christ is Risen!

When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality,
then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
-1 Corinthians 15:55-57

“Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!”
-St. John Chrysostom, “Easter Homily”, Circa 400 AD.

Christ is Risen!
Christ is Risen indeed!
These words are said at the beginning of every Easter service at Edwards Church. They are known as the Paschal Greeting and are being said all around the world today. In Greece, they say “Christos Anesti, Alithos Anesti”. In Spain and Latin America, ¡Cristo resucitó! ¡En verdad resucitó!, and in Chinese 耶穌復活了，真的他復活了 (Yēsū fùhuó-le, Zhēnde tā fùhuó-le!)

However we say it, this day connects us to the truth of the Good News of Jesus Christ that calls out to us through the ages. It connects us to a group of scared women who were the first witnesses to the resurrection and left the tomb “sore afraid”, and to whom the men in their lives did not listen.

It connects us to those who are hurting and whose hope for healing seems distant; it connects us to those who are struggling and for whom faith is their last garment of protection against the cold, against cynicism, against despair.

That Christ is Risen means our stories are not done, that God still has more in store for us, even when all seems lost. On this April Fool’s Day, if there is a great joke in Christianity, it is that the forces of evil, disconnection, and isolation think that they have won.

But they haven’t, for Christ is Risen,
Christ is Risen, indeed.

Prayer: Oh Risen Christ, Oh Heavenly God! There are days to mourn, there are days to weep, but today is a day when we are reconciled with you and we can celebrate. Even as we encounter the suffering in this world, we do so with the faith that you are with us. Your holy name be praised on this day and evermore, for Christ is Risen!

On Guilt and Shame

Preached on Good Friday, March 30, 2018, at First Baptist church of Framingham, for the ecumenical Good Friday Service. Note I first learned of this distinction between guilt and shame through the work of Brené Brown.

Feel free to listen along! Note that I do improvise slightly from the manuscript as seen below, but not much.

Scripture: Matthew 26:69-75

Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant-girl came to him and said, “You also were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before all of them, saying, “I do not know what you are talking about.” When he went out to the porch, another servant-girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.”^[h] Again he denied it with an oath, “I do not know the man.” After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.” Then he began to curse, and he swore an oath, “I do not know the man!” At that moment the cock crowed. Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.

Tell me if you ever heard these words growing up from a mama, Grandmama, or an auntie after you did something: “You should feel ashamed of yourself. I brought you up better than that.”

Now, our Grandmamas and aunties and mamas are so often full of wonderful wisdom, so it pains me to have to disagree with them, but I will right here. I wish that instead of emphasizing the shame that should feel when we do something bad, that instead we were taught to feel more guilt.

This may seem hairsplitting, but guilt and shame are two very different things. We feel shame when we feel bad about who we are as a person, and we feel guilt when we feel bad about something we’ve done. Think about that difference: feeling bad about who we are as a person, verses feeling bad about the things we have done.

Shame happens when we are concerned mostly about ourselves. Guilt happens because we are concerned about others. Shame says that I, that we, can never be good, that we will amount to nothing. Guilt tells us to pick ourselves up, shake the dust off our shoulders, make right what we did wrong, and do better in the future.

In this scripture passage, Peter denies Christ three times in words that I’m pretty sure all of us have said at one point or another “Oh, I don’t know that guy.” “Oh, I’ve got nothing to do with those folks.” And with the crowing of the rooster, Peter remembers what Jesus said that he would do exactly that. In that moment, Peter feels guilt.

He feels guilt because in denying his friend, his teacher, the messiah, he has hurt him. No, worse, he has betrayed him. Maybe not as bad as Judas did, but when no one is speaking up for you, staying silent is a betrayal.

And yes, Peter might have felt some shame, a sadness that he had become the sort of person who would do such a thing. But we also know that shame would not be the overriding factor in Peter’s life. For Peter did not fall into the pit of shame that said he would never do any good in this life. No, Peter, who three times denied Christ when Jesus needed him most, wept bitterly over how he had hurt Jesus, and then picked himself up, and went on to do marvelous things in Jesus’ name. He went on to baptize, to do miracles, to found and lead the church in the city of Rome.

The hurt he had done others did not prevent him from making amends, from doing good to others. Instead, it inspired him to do good and to reconcile with his God and with his friends. Through the grace of God, the shame that might have plagued him was banished, and his guilt transformed into a sincere motivation to do good.

So I ask us- when are our Peter moments? And what will we do with them? Will we wallow in shame, convinced of our innate badness? Or will we allow God to work in our lives, to banish shame and through God’s Grace transform our guilt into faith and hope, so that we can do the work of love in the world?

Amen!

5 Things Every Good Church Website Should Have

I’ve looked at quite a few church websites in my day, as someone looking for a church, as a denominational official, and as a pastor.

Here’s five things I believe every church website should have.

Worship Times Visible On Every Page
Pictures of church members being joyful in worship
Pictures of church members and guests interacting in positive ways outside of worship (including coffee hour)
Video or Written Testimonies about life in the church, and what it means to be a part of it.
Staff Names and Contact Information, available through one or two links from the home page

If you notice, this includes a lot of visual media; don’t be scared of this! If your church doesn’t have any professional or amateur photographers or videographers, someone probably knows someone who would do that work, and do it well. This is also a great project for teens and youth to get involved with.

It’s worth it. A website (and facebook page) is a virtual front door and window into your congregation. If all visitors see are pictures of your empty building, they might assume that your church is more of a historical building preservation society (which it’s not!).

When I go to a website, I want to be able to imagine my family there, worshiping with you. I want to feel the warmth of a passing of the peace that goes on too long, or a hymn that is sung with gusto (but a little off key). I want to know how YOUR church can become OUR church.

The Body of Christ, Y’all

Now y’all are the body of Christ and individually members of it. –1 Corinthians 12:27

In the Sunday Morning Bible Study, lately we’ve been going through Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. The church in Corinth is a troubled one; we believe this is so because the advice that Paul gives throughout the letter points to a church that is divided by wealth, spiritual gifts, and factionalism based on favorite leaders.

I believe that many of the church in Corinth’s problems have, at their root, the problem of hyperindividualism. Members of the church saw themselves as followers of Christ as solo practitioners, disconnected from the spiritual needs and gifts of their fellow church members. Over the course of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Paul time and again urges mutual deference, care for each other, an interconnectedness that is put to the forefront in this famous metaphor about what and who a church is.

I put in “y’all” in the Bible translation to draw attention to the fact that each person of the church is not the body of Christ- yes, we are individually members of it, but the church is one of those things that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Through our relationships of mutual accountability, caring, and respect, we live out being the body of Christ present on Earth. Let’s make space for each other, so we can become whole and holy as the church.

Prayer: Dear God, ground of our being, remind us that each of us is a part of you, and that we need each other as we grow closer in Holy Communion to you. Let us remember that this faith is team sport, and that we all need to help each other get across the finish line. We pray this through your son, whose body we are one in. Amen.

–Rev. Shane Montoya

The Wisdom of Humanity

“For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.“ —1 Corinthians 1:25

“Faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ sets an inquiry in motion, fights the inclination to accept things as they are, and continually calls in question unexamined assumptions about God, our world, and ourselves.”

~Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding

I’m a geek, a nerd, an academic, an intellectual. Those who know me know that I’m pretty unapologetic about these aspects of my identity. I love church history and reading academic theology. I sit at the proverbial feet of a long line of thoughtful and faithful theologians, pastors, and committed Christians, trying to make sense of the Gospel and it’s relationship to the world around me.

So it hurts when I see Christianity maligned as an anti- intellectual faith. I think Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Catholic Priest and formulator of the Big Bang Theory would be surprised to learn of this.

That said, the heart of faithfulness is not in the head, in proper formulations of the Trinity and in nigh incomprehensible academic speech, but in the closeness of the human heart to a God who wants to know us.

One of my professors once said that we should strive for a “complex religion, but a simple faith.” I strive for a simple faith, focused on Jesus Christ’s birth, ministry, life, death, and resurrection. I also hope that this faith doesn’t end discussion, but rather serves as the beginning of all my questions.

Prayer: God of Wisdom beyond our understanding, may we have a simple faith in you, and a religion that recognizes the complexity of the world around us. We pray this through the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ. Amen.

–Rev. Shane Montoya

Kyrie Eleison: Lenten Devotional for Sunday, March 4, 2018

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Psalm 107: 1 O give thanks to the LORD, for God is good; for God’s steadfast love endures forever.

At our Ash Wednesday service, we drew upon the wisdom of our Eastern Orthodox cousins in faith, who showed us a new understanding of the word “mercy.” In the words of Benjamin Williams in his book, Orthodox Worship:

“The word mercy in English is the translation of the Greek word eleos. This word has the same ultimate root as the old Greek word for oil, or more precisely, olive oil; a substance which was used extensively as a soothing agent for bruises and minor wounds. The oil was poured onto the wound and gently massaged in, thus soothing, comforting and making whole the injured part. The Hebrew word which is also translated as eleos and mercy is hesed, and means steadfast love. The Greek words for ‘Lord, have mercy,’ are ‘Kyrie, eleison’ that is to say, ‘Lord, soothe me, comfort me, take away my pain, show me your steadfast love.’ Thus mercy does not refer so much to justice or acquittal a very Western interpretation but to the infinite loving-kindness of God, and his compassion for his suffering children!”

How beautiful! What if we had a God who was less a judge, and more a divine doctor, tending to our wounds?

What space could we make for another source of healing in our lives? How could we be a source of healing to others?

Prayer: Oh, Divine Physician, may your divine mercy and lovingkindness heal our wounds. May we learn from your example and heal others and this world with the same mercy you show us. In the name of the most Holy Trinity, who has given us life, who has overcome death through the resurrection, and who has continued to sustain, provoke, and heal us, Amen.

–Rev. Shane Montoya

Blessings, Curses, and Vulgarity, Part 1

So this image has been circulating lately around my pastor friends on Facebook. It certainly rings true, for the most part, with some friends commenting that the blue slice is entirely too big (thanks, Rachelle), or that the Orange should have a footnote that includes profusely apologizing for earlier “cussing’ (thanks, Claire).

I would also add, considering the spaces I often find myself in here in progressive Massachusetts, there should be another sizable chunk that is “Assumes I’m a judgmental bigot who hates them for their gender identity, sexual orientation, or non-Christian religious beliefs.”

But there’s a couple of serious questions and theological questions that arise for me from this meme. They are: “What is cursing?” and “What should offend us?” In this post, I’ll address the first question.

Cursing is one of those Biblical words with multiple meanings in English, and one of those special cases that a formerly ancillary definition has become the main one in popular use.

In the Bible, cursing is the opposite of blessing. A blessing typically is an invocation that God should keep whatever it is being blessed in His sight and favor. Some famous blessings in the Bible include, the priestly blessing from the Book of Numbers, That said, blessings are also a recognition of the holiness that already exists in something- hence the Taize chant, “Bless the Lord, my Soul.”

Thus, a curse is an invocation or acknowledgement that God rejects something. My favorite cursing in the Bible is Amos’ cursing of the surrounding tribes of the Kingdom of Judah for war crimes, as well as Judah and Ephraim(Israel) for damage done to the poor(Amos 1-2).

Blessings and Curses are especially associated with the biblical prophets; prophets are folks who stand as intermediaries between the people and God. Typically, they see problems in the world around them and declare oracles and prophecies, warnings of what will happen if and when the people do not get back into right relationship with each other and with God. Amos’ curse upon Israel and Judah is a public declaration of the rending of the relationship between God and the Israelites because of their treatment of the poor.

This comes not only from the Hebrew Prophets, but also from Jesus, who stood firmly in that tradition, and the Apostle Paul. The Beatitudes and the larger Sermon on the Mount is quite literally a list of blessings and curses, a description of who is favored in God’s sight and who is not. Paul, for his part, calls out the Corinthian church for not sharing the Lord’s supper (then practiced more as a potluck and shared meal than the more ritualized, but equality driven version we have historically practiced) in an equitable manner(1 Cor: 17-22,32-34). Although this isn’t a direct curse, his letter does imply that those who fail to carry through with this will have God’s favor withdrawn from them, with consequences including death (1 Cor 11: 27-32). As such, I believe Paul clearly stands in this tradition.

That cursing now almost exclusively refers to vulgar language is a sad evolution of language. Rev. Dr. William Barber is reminding us, first through the Moral Mondays movement, and now through the revival of the Poor People’s campaign, that we have a duty to call out evil in society, cursing that which damages the poor and destroys our relationships to each other.

So yes, pastors, prophets, poets, Christians, we are allowed to call out the evil which exists in this world and curse it, particularly if it involves those who are hurting most. Do this through discernment within the context of your communities, and with consultation in scripture, prayer, and through listening to those who are hurting.

Oh, and if you’re using vulgar language to get a rise out of me, it probably won’t work…But more about that next time.