Whistle Blowers and Inconvenient Truths

This week the Narrative Lectionary serves up the story of the poor Gerasene man who Jesus freed from demons.  Jesus - perhaps with a twinkle in his Jewish eye - cast the demons into a nearby congregation of  non-kosher pigs. 

This week the Gerasene demoniac appears in Mark 5:5-14.

The same story, from Luke 8:26-37, was offered by the Narrative lectionary last June. 

In one of those unholy coincidences that agitate preachers, especially lay preachers and deacon interns like me, it so happens I preached on the Luke version in my church (St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Rye Brook, N.Y.) in June, and I am scheduled to preach the same story this week.

I realized immediately that I have nothing new to say on the subject. I said everything I could think of in June. 

Naturally, I turned to my spouse, the Divine Doc M, for advice. Martha – who, among other things in her vita, once served on the board of Habitat for Humanity – suggested I borrow an exegesis from Habitat founder Millard Fuller.

Millard drew a connection between the demoniac and the Prodigal Son, based on the idea that when pig slop began to look appetizing to a kosher-keeping Jewish young man that signaled that his soul was in turmoil. He no longer had a sense of self. 

Martha adds: “Millard wouldn’t have said or maybe even know this, but that thought dovetails well with Thomas Merton’s idea of the authentic self vs. the false self. Part of the healing was to get rid of the symbols of his spiritual turmoil. In Merton-speak, he was restored from a false to an authentic identity, which is our identity in God.”

So God’s love that rescues demoniacs, prodigals, and the rest of us who stray, and restores us to our authentic identity in God. 

Cool. 

I should quite while I’m ahead. But Mark’s gospel adds a postscript that does not appear in Luke. In Luke 8:26-37, the people of the Gerasenes were so afraid of Jesus’ power that they asked him to be quiet and leave. The curing of the demoniac was a story that threatened their lifestyle, and they didn’t want to hear it.

But Mark writes:

As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him but Jesus refused, and said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.” And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.” (Mark 5:18-20).

Given the number of times Jesus told a cured person to “tell no one” about the miracle, it would appear that proclamation is a matter of timing. 

The question about when to tell and when not to tell has become increasingly complicated today because churches, politicians, and other public institutions have so much good they want people to know about – and so much unsavory stuff behind the scenes they won’t want anyone to know. Whether to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is a public relations decision. And as one who was a church P.R. decider for many decades, I can avow that you never know whether you are making the right decision or not.

I can say that too many high ranking bureaucrats believe secrecy is the glue that holds church, society, and government together.

If so, we’re in big trouble. Three may keep a secret, Benjamin Franklin said, if two of them are dead.

That insight is hardly surprising from one of history’s garrulous gossips, but most of us prefer to think secrecy is both essential and holy.

The 2015 film Spotlight dramatized Boston Globe journalists courageous efforts to penetrate the archdiocese’ impermeable wall of silence protecting predator priests. 

The archdiocese – in fact, the whole church – strove mightily to keep clergy child abuse a secret for fear the reputation of the church would be irredeemably harmed. Only later was it obvious is would have been better if the whole truth had been revealed much earlier. It’s too bad Cardinal Bernard Law stifled the whistle blowers in the archdiocese. In institutions that fear the truth, the whistle blower is the most valuable person on the staff, the proper counter weight to the rest of the staff that believes that if there is something sinister to hide,  the less said about it the better. 

It’s astonishing how many otherwise intelligent people think secrets can be immutable. When I was 18 I was given a “secret” security clearance by the Air Force, the result, I immodestly think, of FBI interviews with my teachers and admiring contemporaries. I could have had a “top secret” clearance but didn’t, so I suspect my history teacher, Mr. Dodge, hinted to the FBI that I was a liberal, or my chemistry teacher, Mr. Palmer, leaked documentary evidence I was mentally sluggish. Even, I took my security clearance seriously and never told what I knew: that my Air Force base in England had tactical nukes stashed in Quonset huts. 

Oops. 

No doubt the Baader Meinhof Complex had its suspicions, but they never heard it from me.

Our justice system is also based on the idea that people can keep secrets. 

I cringe (secretly) when I’m on jury duty and the judge orders that the facts of the trial cannot be shared with anyone, including our spouses. Yeah, right. Even as I nod obediently I know I can’t wait to get home to the Divine Doc M to spill all the details, not only about the obviously guilty defendant, but about the sweet imbecilities that flow from the lips of lawyers and my fellow jurors.

I also cringe when school boards or church boards meet in “executive session,” which is to say, in secret. I was never the best investigative reporter in the world, but I rarely had difficulty finding out what goes on behind closed doors. There are three types of people who emerge from executive sessions: people who reluctantly reveal the details; people who can’t wait to reveal the details; and people who never talk about the details because of personal integrity or because it makes them feel powerful to know something others don’t. The third type is never much of a hindrance for reporters because the other two categories are so densely populated.

In church and denominational offices, there are many things that should be handled discretely – that is, kept secret – but there is little agreement what those things are. When I was a communicator for the Baptists, I thought it was essential to protect information about overseas missionaries that might compromise their safety. But my fellow church bureaucrats were also concerned to hide information that arguably should be public, such as the salaries, benefits and travel budgets of staff executives. Another secret area was the wide category of “personnel matters,” which was intended to keep evaluations and other awkward matters strictly between bosses and employees. But the personnel category may also hide when an employee is being treated unjustly by the employer, and more than one church organization cites “personnel matters” to hide the crimes of a sexual abuser in their employ.

And here’s the thing: the most carefully guarded secrets will always emerge, sometimes sooner than later. In the early days of my tenure as an American Baptist communicator, the photocopy machine was shared by the office of communication and General Secretary Robert Campbell. Whenever Bob announced a new staff appointment, he felt it necessary to embargo the news until appointees had a chance to inform their erstwhile employers they were leaving. He’d send his assistant to the lone photocopy machine to make copies of the announcement with strict instructions not to let anyone see it. But on more than one occasion, she would make the copies and leave the original in the copier. Quickly, the secret document would end up on my desk, giving me a chance to start gathering biographical information about the appointee for a news release, long before the announcement was official. I doubt Bob ever knew how I seemed to have an inside track to such things, and I never told him. I can keep a secret.

There are, of course, legitimate secrets, and no one wants to see leaks that will jeopardize the security of the United States or the lives of service men and women. The same goes for the church. But apart from the justifiable veil of the confessional, I suggest the church should operate as much as possible in the sunshine. For the most part, it might be said church secrets are ferociously guarded for the same reason academic politics are so vicious: because, as one institutional president put it, “the stakes are so low.” Surely persons in pews who contribute to missions have a right to know how much their church is paying its bureaucrats and whatever special benefits may accrue.

When it comes to secrecy, the church might look to the style modeled by Jesus, perhaps the most transparent figure in history. The incident of the curing of the leper early in Mark’s Gospel may have been a lesson to Jesus that secrecy is futile anyway.

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter. (Mark 1:40-45) 

There may have been many reasons Jesus didn’t want the leper running at the mouth, and sermons of yore have noted a few: It was early in his ministry and he wasn’t ready to attract premature scrutiny from scribes and Pharisees; he was busy going about his ministry and he didn’t want to be mobbed by admiring masses if word spread that he was some kind of miracle worker; he wanted the man to focus on the cleansing rituals at the temple. 

Whatever his reason for wanting the man to keep it under his keffiyeh, Jesus was not being off-handedly modest. He meant it. He warned the man “sternly,” according to Mark, which is to say: Go away and shut up about it.

But if a secret paper discovered on a photocopier is worthy of revelation, there is no way anyone is going to keep quiet about being cured of a dread disease. The fact that “he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word,” leaves little doubt what happened. The cured man leaped into crowds snagging every sleeve he could grab, perseverating the news. And he must have been convincing, because curious people swarmed to Jesus “from every quarter” and Jesus “could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country.” 

Because of the passionate public relations campaign of a cured leper, Jesus went overnight from being an articulate carpenter to a national celebrity. 

It was inevitable, of course, but perhaps it happened before Jesus was ready for it. He’s a little like a small business owner who has to scramble when the demand for his product exceeds early projections.

Certainly that’s the way it should have been and, besides, what were the alternatives? To take sick people into hidden corners to discretely cure them, or to clandestinely pantomime the reign of God? God sent Jesus into the world to be visible, to be apparent, and to let the truth ring out. The scenario of a secret messiah was never part of the plan. And once the word got out, Jesus never had another quiet moment unless he hid in the country.

That’s the kind of translucence Jesus models for the faithful. For the record, Jesus never ordered any of us to “say nothing to anyone.” Quite the contrary.

“No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket,” Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:15-16), “but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

The trick, and it is a big one, is to live our lives in such a way that people may see our good works and give God the glory.

But all of us will fall short on that score. If we are human, many of our works may not be good enough to shine before others. That’s precisely the reason secrecy has crept into the church, the government, and into our lives.

But we know in our hearts that secrecy is no way to honor Jesus who came to redeem us, or to serve God who calls us to proclaim the good news. 

The church and its members will always have defects and sins they will not wish to expose to the world. But that is certainly no secret, and it is no reason to slam shut the door of secrecy. 

As flawed as we may be, Jesus is calling us to follow the example of the leper who perseverated the good news of what God did for him. And leave our cherished secret security clearances at the door.

Blow, whistle, blow.

The Lobster at the Manger

One of the traditions of our wide-spread family is to sit in front of various screens around the country to watch favorite holiday films ranging from the 1992 Muppet Christmas Carol to the 1983 classic, A Christmas Story.

One film hated by some members of the family, because it is about amoral people pursuing unequal relationships, and loved by others as a guilty pleasure, is the 2003 romantic comedy Love Actually. 

For the ecclesial nerds in the family, the best scenes in the movie relate to preparations for the local church Christmas pageant. In one scene, Emma Thompson's screen daughter announces she will play a lobster at the Nativity scene. When Emma asks incredulously if there were lobsters at the birth of Jesus, the daughter - expressing the condescension recognized by every parent - replies impatiently, "Yeah!"



The lack of specific scriptural detail about who was present at Jesus' birth and when leaves the scene wide open to our imaginations. If lobsters were not specifically excluded from the dramatis personae, than who can say they weren't there? I insist on imagining the lobster sitting to the right of the manger being sniffed by our two dogs, Usnavi and Iggy. The more the merrier.

One extra-biblical detail we can all agree on is that Jesus' birth place probably smelled like variegated excretion.
  
As a denizen of rural Central New York, I have to remind myself that many of our Westchester County neighbors have no idea what barns smell like.

The television barns they remember, portrayed in Green Acres, Mayberry RFD, Mr. Ed, or Hee Haw, were well swept rustic structures smelling of fresh hay and Ava Gabor’s French perfume.

Even factual documentaries on farm life – one of my favorites is Brother’s Keeper about three bathless bachelors whose rickety barn stood a few miles from where I grew up – do not have the benefit of smell-o-vision. In this particular film, it’s easier to imagine the stench in the unwashed brothers’ cramped sitting room.

As far as authentic barn smell goes, you have to experience it yourself. The combination of fresh and stale manure, fermenting hay, and smoldering covens of cats and rats, is unimaginable to city folk and suburbanites. Eau de Merde doesn’t even come close to describing it.

Even so, millions around the globe are not only familiar with the smell but find it unobjectionable. I remember visiting the Philadelphia Zoo after years of relatively odor-free living in barracks, dormitories, and apartments, and being taken aback by a whiff of elephant droppings. My eyes filled with tears, mostly because of the sting of the stench, but also because of the sweet nostalgia of the smell, so much like the tang of Leon Korzeniewski’s cow barn on the outskirts of Morrisville, N.Y. There’s something bonding about barn bouquet. It not only unites billions of noses in common cause, it also brings us closer to the thousands of generations that came before us. 

That’s one reason we can praise God that Jesus was born in a barn. It puts the incarnation in perspective. Contrary to depictions in Renaissance art, Jesus did not enter the world in a sterile lean-to adorned with lights, freshly bathed shepherds, and streaming gold ribbons. He was born in a stable replete with rotting hay and fetid sheep. 

As we strive to understand the Christ event, the stench of excrement should be as evocative as the Eucharist. Every time we walk into a barn, a still small voice should whisper in our ears: “Smell this in remembrance of me.”

Much of Christian art seeks to glorify some of the ruder elements of the gospels. Mangers are radiant. Lepers and beggars greet Jesus in well-pressed robes. Jesus walks the dusty paths of Palestine wearing a bleached robe and, often, carrying a snowy white lamb on his shoulder. Brass crosses on our communion tables shimmer with jewels so bright that one theologian suggested that to be affixed to one would be a beatific experience. 

I sometimes think that the Magi – the three mysterious kings from Orien-TARR – were added to the manger story to clean it up a bit.  Certainly this smelly little barn would seem more like the proper birthing room of a king if three other kings in silken robes dropped by to pay homage.

It may seem a bit sacrilegious to suggest that anything about these three kings was made up to improve the story. Then again, so much of what we think we know about them has been made up.

Matthew’s gospel says nothing, for example, about who they were, how many they were, what their names were, where they came from, what their racial background was, what they were king of, or what they were wise about. There is certainly no mention of their dromedary conveyances. And yet over the years we have managed to fill in all those blanks. Lobsters waiting in the wings.

How did scholars do that? 

Easy. They make it up. 

Thanks to long standing church tradition, we call them by name: Melchior a Babylonian scholar; Caspar (also Gaspar, Jaspar, Jaspas, Gathaspa, and other variations), a Persian scholar; and Balthazar (also Balthasar, Balthassar, and Bithisarea), an Arab scholar. One was black and two were not.

It is also long standing church tradition that the travelers were three in number. Some scholars say church tradition jumped to that conclusion because it corresponded with the number of gifts they brought the Christ child: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. There are those who believe there may have been more magi than that.

According to an article in biblicalarchaeology.org, an eighth century Syriac manuscript in the Vatican Library suggests the Magi may have numbered as many as 12 and perhaps there were scores of them. 

The dubious manuscript, entitled Revelation of the Magi and allegedly written by the Magi themselves, has been translated into English by Dr. Brent Landau, professor of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Landau writes:

The magi (defined in this text as those who “pray in silence”) are a group . . . of monk-like mystics from a far-off, mythical land called Shir, possibly China. They are descendants of Seth, the righteous third son of Adam, and the guardians of an age-old prophecy that a star of indescribable brightness would someday appear “heralding the birth of God in human form. When the long-prophesied star finally appears, the star is not simply sighted at its rising, as described in Matthew, but rather descends to earth, ultimately transforming into a luminous “star-child” that instructs the magi to travel to Bethlehem to witness its birth in human form. The star then guides the magi along their journey, miraculously clearing their path of all obstacles and providing them with unlimited stamina and provisions. Finally, inside a cave on the outskirts of Bethlehem, the star reappears to the magi as a luminous human child—the Christ child—and commissions them to become witnesses to Christ in the lands of the east. 

Landau gives little credence to this apocryphal document but it highlights how far church tradition has gone to fill in the blanks left by Matthew’s gospel. And chances are good that the notion of 12 or 60 Magi descending on the manger will not soon catch on in churches. It would overwhelm the Christmas bathrobe pageants in most congregations.

But regardless of all the mystery surrounding the Magi, one thing seems clear: the gospel writer saw them as a dramatic way of illustrating the profound significance of the incarnation in Bethlehem.

There could be no greater miracle than this:

That on a dark night in an isolated hamlet on the edge of an already declining empire, surrounded by poverty and mud and the stench of animals, the Creator of the Universe took the form of a helpless baby boy who was lain in the accumulated debris of a feeding trough. 

Any story teller would feel challenged to tell the story in such a way as to attract a maximum of attention.  And who could doubt that such a miracle would be – must be – accompanied by a descending star, a chorus of angels, and gilded kings wandering in from eastern climes?

Whoever and whatever the Magi were, they understood their role in the miracle of incarnation.

Magi, they stooped to see your splendor, Led by a star to light supreme; Promised Messiah, Lord eternal, Glory and peace are in your name. Joy of each day, our song by night, Shine on our path your holy light. - Christopher Idle