Table Talk

Image: Table Talk – Arrington & Associates arringtonassoc.com

We’ve been listening to the voice of the prophet Jeremiah for the last three weeks in our OT readings. So who was he?

Jeremiah was born in the Levite village of Anathoth, located just outside Jerusalem, in the territory of the tribe of Benjamin. Being from a priestly family not connected to the Temple worship in Jerusalem, he was close enough to know the ways of the Temple, but far enough from its center to see its faults. As a young man, God called him. Jeremiah resisted—“I am only a boy, a dresser of sycamores,” he said—but God put words in his mouth and sent him out to speak hard truths: not only to uproot and tear down, but also to build and to plant.

Not unlike our own day, Jeremiah lived in a time of deep turmoil. Leaders were corrupt, religion was shallow, and the nation was on the brink of collapse. He warned: Babylon was coming, and Jerusalem would fall. No one listened. He was mocked and imprisoned for treason. As the city was about to fall, he was thrown into a dry cistern and left to die.

For the first Christians, Jeremiah evoked their memory of Jesus. Remembered as the weeping prophet, his tears flowing from a deep love, he wept because his people would not listen. And yet he never gave up hope. He even bought a plot of land as a sign that God’s people would one day return and rebuild. He embodied hope. He looked ahead to a new covenant, not written on stone tablets but written upon the human heart.

It is no wonder the early Christians saw Jeremiah as a prototype of Jesus—one who suffered for speaking God’s truth, whose heart broke for his people, and who pointed beyond judgment to God’s steadfast promise of new life.

Jeremiah’s vision still speaks to us today. Faithfulness is not always easy, but it is always rooted in love. Jeremiah shows us that even when old ways collapse, God is planting something new. The question is: will we make that essential leap from the external observance of religion as a series of rules and rituals to the power of internal tranformation. Or as Jeremiah phrases it: will we allow God’s covenant to be written upon our hearts?

In “The Cost of Resistance” and “Religion, Conduit or Smokescreen?“ – my last two sermons, I addressed the importance of resistance, either as non-violence, which allows for confrontation or non-resistance, which rejects confrontation in favor of identification with the oppressed. Both were crucial elements in Jesus’ challenge to religious and political authority. Jesus echoed Jeremiah’s call for a new covenant, not of empty ritual, but of inner transformation – a covenant no longer written in stone and enforced by law, but one written upon the human heart and empowered by love – not sentimental love, but love as the robust expression of mercy at the heart of God’s justice.

In chapter 14, Luke relates a story about Jesus attending a dinner. For Jesus, a dinner is never just a dinner. It’s a metaphor for the world.

In Luke 14, Jesus is at a Pharisee’s house on the Sabbath. He watches people scramble for the best seats, angling for honor. He sees the host inviting all the right people—friends, relatives, wealthy neighbors—the kind of guests who can return the favor.

And Jesus says: Not so in God’s kingdom.

First, he speaks to the guests: Don’t grab the best seat. Take the lowest place. Because in God’s world, all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

This isn’t just table manners. This is a whole new way of thinking about status. Honor is not seized. It’s given. It’s gift.

Then he turns to the host: When you give a banquet, don’t invite the people who can pay you back. Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Invite the ones who cannot repay.

That’s radical. Not only in the ancient world, but throughout human history, meals have been about reciprocity—keeping the social wheel spinning.

Jesus says: Stop calculating. Stop expecting a return. Throw open the doors.

As a young man, I remember one evening at a soup kitchen. I expected to serve from behind the counter. But the priest said, “Sit down and eat with our guests.” I did—and found myself laughing and sharing stories with people who had nothing to give back but themselves. One man even offered me the last piece of bread. That night, I realized the kingdom isn’t charity. It’s communion.

A few months ago, I read about a small church on the southern border. They opened their parish hall to migrant families who had nowhere to sleep. No repayment possible, no guarantee of safety or security. Just beds on the floor, warm food, and open doors. The world might see it as impractical, even dangerous. But I think Jesus would see it as a rehearsal dinner for the kingdom banquet.

And I think too of the early church, where at Christian gatherings, slaves and masters, men and women, rich and poor, Jews and Gentiles sat at the same table. In the empire of Caesar, that was unthinkable. But in the kingdom of God, it was the most natural thing in the world. The table re-ordered society.

The table is just the beginning. Jesus is describing a whole new way of life, and the implications for us can be rather disturbing. In a world obsessed with status, Jesus points us toward humility. In a world built on transactions, he points us toward generosity. In a world that excludes, he points us toward radical welcome.

Our economy thrives on profit and return. But Jesus says: invite those who cannot repay.

Our politics builds walls and charts borders. But Jesus says: the kingdom is not complete until the stranger is welcomed.

Our relationship with creation is marked by exploitation. But Jesus says: take the lower seat, live humbly as a guest at creation’s table. Reduce your carbon footprint by curbing your discretionary spending on things that are not necessary but only desirable. Maybe some of these decisions are now going to be forced on us, if not by virtue then of necessity, as our minds begin to boggle at increased prices, and our fingers are slower to click the Amazon complete purchase button.

Our nations compete for dominance, our corporations scramble for power. But Jesus says: true greatness is found in service, not control.

And here, at this table—the Lord’s table—we taste that world. No reserved seats. No VIP section. All come empty-handed. All are fed by grace.

Luke 14 is not about table etiquette; it’s about God’s dream for the world:

A world where generosity replaces calculation.
Where strangers and migrants are honored guests.
Where creation is cherished.
Where humility dethrones pride.
And where grace, not power, is the currency of life.

This is the banquet of God. This is the feast of the kingdom.

Jeremiah’s words ring out across the centuries. Even in times of turmoil, God is still at work—tearing down what cannot last, and planting seeds of hope for what will endure. May we have the courage and the love to live as people of this promise – a covenant written upon our hearts.

I know most of us will be thinking, though few I imagine will say it out loud, that this is all very well and good – a wonderful utopian picture impossible to achieve. How often are we told that the dream of God is not reality. But before we rush with something of a secret sigh of relief to dismiss utopian dreams, let me leave us with this thought. Coming down to the intimacies of our everyday lives, if we share this bread and drink from this cup, might it be possible for this table to begin to reshape all our other tables—our homes, our neighborhoods, even our politics. Is this such an impossible dream?

Amen.

August 30, 2025 0

Religion, Conduit or Smokescreen

Image: Tissot- The woman with an infirmity of 18 years

Asked in an interview on the podcast Unholy Things on August 5, 2025, the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari was asked: October the 7^th, 2023, till now, where does that fit – is it a footnote or a chapter in the sweep of Jewish history?

Listen here

Harari responded: I think it’s one of the – could be one of the biggest turning points in Jewish history- maybe the biggest since the fall of the temple in 70 CE – since the Roman conquest. Because Judaism has survived it became the world champion in surviving catastrophes, but it never faced a catastrophe like we are dealing with right now which is a spiritual catastrophe for Judaism itself because what is happening right now in Israel could basically – I think destroy, void, 2000 years of Jewish thinking and culture and existence. That the worst case scenario that we are facing right now – what we are facing is the potential of an ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza and the West Bank resulting in the expulsion of 2 million maybe more Palestinians; the establishment of greater Israel and the disintegration of Israeli democracy; the creation of a new Israel which is based on an ideology of Jewish supremacy and on the worship of what were completely anti-Jewish values for more than last two millennia; a country based on the worship of power and violence and which is militarily strong – it will survive – it will be militarily strong – it will have alliances with various bullies around the world. It will also be economically viable, and this will be the spiritual disaster because this will be the new Judaism that all Jews in the world will have to deal with. It will not disappear again. Jews are very good dealing with catastrophes from the Roman conquest to the Holocaust but this will not be a military catastrophe. The state will actually be successful in military and economic terms and it will make the challenge much, much bigger. No Jew, say, in London or New York or anywhere else, we’ll be able to say this is not the real Judaism.

There is one episode in the iconic TV drama, The West Wing, that is forever etched in my memory. The background to this particular episode concerns the President being asked to pardon a man awaiting execution on death row. Attending Shabbat Service, Toby Ziegler, the White House Chief of Communications, is puzzled by the rabbi’s sermon, in which he states that vengeance is un-Jewish. Puzzled, Toby questions the rabbi about the Torah teaching – an eye for an eye. He reminds the rabbi that throughout Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, the Torah prescribes the death penalty for a large number of offences, mostly religious in nature. The rabbi replies that maybe the Torah sanctioned death penalty represented the best teaching at that time, but that the later rabbis in the Talmud went to great lengths to confine the meaning of the Torah texts to forms of reparation that did not require death. Jewish thought moved on as it deepened, over time, the human understanding of God’s justice and mercy.

Jewish thought moved on as it deepened, over time, the human understanding of God’s justice and mercy.

In Luke 13, we eavesdrop on an encounter between Jesus and religious authority over the case of a woman Luke describes as seriously crippled. Actually, crippled is a rather smooth English rendering that does not do justice to the specificity of Luke’s use of the Greek synkypto, which means bent together– as in doubled over. The woman is more than crippled – she appears to be suffering from a form of spondylo-arthritis known as Marie-Strümpell Disease.

Imagine for a moment the experience of being doubled over. Imagine what happens to your breath as the doubling over of your spine constricts the movement of your lungs. Imagine having this condition for 18 years.

Noticing the woman, Jesus stops proceedings by placing his hand on her and saying, “You are released from your weakness.” She immediately straightens and gives glory to God. Cause for rejoicing all around, you may think? Not a bit of it. Jesus’s action has provoked fierce indignation as the leader of the synagogue accuses him of breaking the Sabbath.

Last week, I spoke about the role of non-violent resistance in Jesus’ ministry, and here Luke presents an instructive example of this in action. The encounter with the woman bent over is not a story of miraculous healing from infirmity – an action the synagogue leader suggests would be more appropriate for the other days of the week. However, Jesus does not say, “Woman, be healed from your infirmity“; he says, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” The question here is, what ails her? Or, more accurately, what is the source of her ailment? In other words, this is not a story of healing at all. Its a story about exorcism.

In the spirit of non-violent resistance, Jesus confronts the religious leadership with the central question: ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham who Satan bound for 18 years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath Day? Notice how Jesus reframes the context – reminding the synagogue leader of this woman’s status in the community as a daughter of Abraham. He also throws in the reference to satanic binding – implying a connection to the Sabbath Day. In other words, Jesus is signalling that his diagnosis of her condition is spiritual and not physiological.

This is a story of two encounters – with the woman and the religious authorities. In his reference to satanic binding, Jesus is exposing what’s really going on behind the smokescreen of religion. The symbolism here is of a woman doubled over under the weight of the religious-inspired collective moral judgment upon her.

The authority exercised by religion, in this story, has become a smokescreen to obscure the fear-driven hardening of the human heart? For the ancients, and even for us today, fear of illness motivates moral judgment as an attempt to explain away our fear of what we either do not understand or are unable to control.

Why has Jesus identified the woman’s condition as satanic binding? The French philosopher, René Girard, states it neatly -Satan exists, [only] because we exist. By this, he means that evil is an anthropological – a human, cultural construction, not a cosmic rival to the victory of God.

In religious tradition and its institutions, evil is to be found in the hardening of the human heart, which privileges the protection of human power – a universal tendency to resist the continual reshaping by the demands of divine justice and mercy. If there is a judgment to be borne, then it’s that we are all found wanting when faced with the judgment of God’s justice and mercy.

Here, we come back to heart of the matter in Luke 13: 10-17 where we find in Jesus’ confrontation with the synagogue leadership a foretaste of both later New Testament and rabbinic traditions that came to understand that it is compassion and mercy not vengeance that lies at the heart of divine justice.

By his reference to Satan’s binding, Jesus is drawing attention to the spiritual effects of the weight imposed upon an individual when religion as the defense of human hard heartedness. In other words, he’s saying to the religious authorities, what can be more appropriate than on the Sabbath Day – to liberate this woman from the satanic bondage you’ve imposed upon her by your perversion of religion as a smokescreen for the hardness of your hearts?

Toby Zeigler’s rabbi reminded him that Jewish thought is continually evolving, deepening over time, the human understanding of God’s justice and mercy. Harari’s words are a fearful warning about the spiritual and moral consequences for Israel in departing from this 2000-year line of development- and by extension – his words are a warning to us of the immanent spiritual and moral dangers in this current American political landscape as religion becomes contaminated by political ambition and the perversion of nationalist aspiration.

The question we always need to ask is: how is religious tradition being used? Is it being used to imprison or to liberate? Is our Christianity a conduit for a deepening of our understanding of mercy at the heart of God’s justice, or is it a smokescreen obscuring the hardening of the human heart? When hearts harden, all kinds of violence and cruelty become justifiable.

August 23, 2025 0

The Cost of Resistance

You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Thursday of this past week, August 14^th, was the commemoration of Jonathan Myrick Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian at Harvard’s Episcopal Theological School who in 1965 became the Episcopal Church’s most prominent civil rights martyr.

Robert Tobin (son of parishioners Bob and Maureen Tobin) in Privilege and Prophecy provides a narrative of the Episcopal Church’s evolving identity and social activism during the period 1945-1979. Drawing extensively on archival materials and periodicals from multiple sources, he provides an intimate picture of how Episcopal leaders understood their role and responsibilities during a time of upheaval in American religious and social life.

Tobin places Jonathan Daniels, a New Englander born in Keene, New Hampshire, against a background of Northern white Christian hypocrisy in the civil rights era. He calls out the white liberal romantic identification with Southern black suffering as an avoidance of the violence of racial discrimination on their own doorsteps.

So much Northern white Christian advocacy for racial equality was conducted from the safety and protection of positions of white privilege. John Butler, a prominent Episcopal churchman of the time, noted that demonstrating publicly in the South had required less personal courage than confronting the genteel racism of his Princeton parishioners.

Tobin comments on the iconic Rhode Island theologian, William Stringfellow, who perceptively noted that while Northern white liberals didn’t despise or hate Negroes, they also didn’t know that paternalism and condescension were forms of alienation as much as enmity.

Jonathan Daniels – struggling with the paradoxes and ironies of his horror of racial oppression from his position of white privilege, like many other idealists of his ilk, joined the Selma Freedom Riders. But unlike many, he took to heart Stringfellow’s rebuke. He not only marched but also felt compelled to remain afterward to register black voters, tutor children, and help integrate the local Episcopal church.

Driven by a powerful spiritual awakening experienced during the reading of the Magnificat at Evensong , he explained:

I could not stand by in benevolent dispassion any longer without compromising everything I know and love and value …. as the price that a Yankee Christian had better be prepared to pay if he goes to Alabama.

In mid-August 1965, Daniels was shot dead as he shielded a young black activist, Ruby Sales, from the deadly aim of Tom Coleman, an unpaid special deputy, subsequently acquitted on the grounds of self-defense by an all-white jury.

John Coburn then Dean of ETS later confessed:

It took a long time to realize that Jon was a martyr. He was just a typical, questioning, struggling student, trying to make sense out of the issues, conflicts, and injustices of our society.

Yet with time, Daniels has come to be revered as a martyr in the Episcopal Church. As a man who embraced nonviolent protest in the face of the evil of racism – and who accepted the ultimacy of nonresistance because he had come to the realization that his possible death was the price that a Yankee Christian had better be prepared to pay if he goes to Alabama.

Jesus’ powerful accusation

You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

comes at the end of a difficult passage – seemingly flying in the face of our preferred image of Jesus as the peacemaker.

Although within the overall context of his ministry, Jesus preaches a message of peace, he recognizes that peace never comes without cost. Peace is never peace at any price – it must always be peace as the harbinger of justice. It’s not peace but justice that lies at the heart of Jesus’ concern. Luke 12 dispels any doubt we might still harbor concerning the real impact of Jesus’ recognition that conflict, which may even spur some to violence, is an unavoidable birth pang of the kingdom’s coming.

Jesus lived in a context riven by political and religious-sectarian violence. The question he addresses is whether violence can achieve justice.

We, too, live in a world increasingly riven by politicized violence. Domestically, what is the appropriate Christian response when incendiary rhetoric incites politicized violence among those who wish to wave a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other? Internationally, what is our humanitarian response in defense of nations and peoples subjected to colonialist violence – esp. when the disregard of a peoples’ right to exist trips over into genocide? While different options for action are open to us, all must proceed from an unwavering commitment to remaining clear-sighted in the face of the temptation to look away.

Whatever Jesus thought about violence, he was never one to look away. In his life and teaching, we detect a complex interleaving of two related strands of clear-sighted resistance – nonresistance and nonviolence as related and yet different forms of protest in response to systemic evil.

Nonresistance not only rejects acts of violence but also rejects confrontation when it has the potential to lead to violence. It’s essential that we grasp the point that nonresistance does not equate to nonaction. Nonresistance is the action of seeking solidarity with the victims by joining with them, even and especially when we ourselves become subjected to violence at the hands of the powerful. Practitioners on the path of nonresistance seek to change the world around them through sacrificial example.

By contrast, nonviolence seeks change through direct confrontation with the systems that maintain injustice and oppression through violence. The confrontation can be fierce, yet it stops short of resorting to violence to win the argument. When faced with the inevitability of violence, the path of nonviolence merges into the path of nonresistance.

In the larger frame, nonresistance and nonviolence are the two essential elements in Christian resistance. Jesus’ journey from life through death to new life is a demonstration of God taking the ultimate path of nonresistance. In his ministry, Jesus more often follows the path of nonviolence – calling out the systemic evils of injustice and oppression. But the new thing God does through Jesus is to bring about profound change through self-sacrifice on the path of nonresistance.

Returning to John Butler’s comment that confronting segregation in the deep South required less courage than confronting the smugly hidden racism of his Princeton parishioners alerts us to the dangers of hypocrisy when our Christian pretense to peace and love is but a fig leaf excusing us from facing up to the hidden and subtle forms of the violence that we claim to reject.

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!

We are living through another period when the level of division and conflict Jesus speaks about in Luke 12 permeates every level of our society. Although many of us are uncertain of how to respond to attacks upon the ethical values and principles that lie at the heart of our conception of democratic social and political order, the most important thing is to resist the temptation to look away – to avert our gaze from the appearances of the present time.

You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Maybe it’s less costly to gaze upwards to interpret the patterns in the heavens than to look around and, with clear sight, confront the patterns of the present time?

August 16, 2025 0

“Money can’t buy me love”

On Thursday, The Public’s Radio – our local NPR station announced a one-day emergency pledge drive to make up for its loss of $1 million in funding because of President Trump’s actions to stifle public service journalism. This one-day appeal led me to double my monthly contribution, an instance of sheer defiance and an act of resistance against yet another act of petty tyranny.

Increasing my support for NPR is an acceptance of my responsibility to be a good steward of my resources in support of the common good. Today’s gospel alerts us to the centrality of good stewardship in the life of Christian discipleship! In our parish’s yearly cycle, it’s not quite time to talk about making an NPR-style pledge drive commitment– after all it’s only August and the dreaded month of the October stewardship campaign may seem some time away. But in my defense I quote one of Susan Allen’s oft-repeated phrases when she feels the compulsion to tell me something I don’t want to hear – I’m just saying.

The story of the wealthy farmer in Luke 12 is not a condemnation of wealth or those who possess it, although, like many of us feel today, Jesus keenly felt the injustice of the vast wealth disparities of his day. More than almost any other topic, Jesus speaks about the relationship of wealth and money to the priorities of the human heart.

While there’s no precise number that everyone agrees on, biblical scholars generally estimate that Jesus talks about money in approximately 11 of his 39 parables (some say up to 16 depending on interpretation). About one in every seven verses in the Gospel of Luke references money or possessions. Overall, Jesus makes over 25 direct statements regarding wealth, money, material possessions, or roughly 20% of all his recorded teachings.

Jesus’ teaching on wealth and excess abundance was not a targeted criticism of the wealthy as such, but a critique of the corruption of values that often goes hand in hand with the possession of excess wealth and power. In Luke 18, just a few chapters on from the story we hear today, Jesus says that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, we shouldn’t misread his critique – aimed not at those wealthy but at the corruption of values and the hardening of the heart that distort the connections between wealth and responsibility.

Likewise, Luke 12 is a snapshot of Jesus’ teaching on the core responsibility of Christian discipleship. The subtext of the story of the wealthy farmer is a warning to be on guard against attitudes that lead us to view our abundance as ours alone and not as a resource to be shared in the strengthening and advancement of the common good.

A now regrettably dwindling few Episcopalians may still remember one of the most evocative offertory sentences in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, which quotes from Matthew 6:19-20.

Lay not up for yourselves treasure upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break in and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

The sentence concludes with a direction to look at the things you treasure as the best guide to discovering the state of your heart. For where your treasure is there your heart will be also.

In contemporary America, our addiction to the accumulation of material possessions is a good indication of where to find our hearts. Our national addiction to excess abundance offers some staggering stats. SpareFoot’s 2024 industry almanac reports approximately 2.1 billion sq ft – equivalent to 75.3 sq miles of commercial self-storage facilities in operation nationwide. It’s expected that a further 56 million sq ft will be added in this year alone. One in three Americans use commercial self-storage at an average cost of $128 per 10×10 sq foot of space. RI has 3.38 million sq ft of commercial self-storage space, which is equivalent to 3.2 sq ft per person. This falls far beneath the US average of 5.4 sq ft of commercial storage space per person.

Why is this the case? A simple answer lies in the corruption of the human heart, whereby we have come to identify ourselves with what we own. There’s also the reasoning that goes, well, I don’t have an immediate use for all of this stuff, but you never know what the future holds. Possessions easily become symbols of security, providing an illusion of protection against adversity.

The farmer comforts himself with the prospect of building even bigger barns in which to store even greater wealth, further consoling himself with the prospect of even more ample abundance to last many years. He tells himself he can afford to kick off his sandals, put his feet up, eat, drink, and be merry. The farmer is presented as a fool, not because he’s rich and getting richer. His foolishness lies in his assigning finite things infinite value. He believes that his prosperity will insulate him from fate and fortune, and thus, his need to increase the volume of his possessions. The farmer represents a common human dilemma in the face of the answer to the question, when is enough, enough – is – just a little bit more.

The literary form of the parable is characterized by being a story drawn from everyday experience with an unexpected sting in its conclusion. If Jesus were to reconstruct this parable for today’s context, who do you imagine he would cast as the principal protagonist – the main character in the story? I’ll leave you to fill in the blank.

The parable of the wealthy farmer plays on the paradox between earthly wealth and spiritual bankruptcy. Despite this man’s confidence that he will be protected by his wealth, in the end, which, like all endings, will come suddenly and unexpectedly, his attitude exposes his spiritual bankruptcy. To paraphrase Jesus, the coinage for life in the kingdom of God cannot be paid for in cash, stocks, or property. Only the coinage of gratitude and generosity of heart, measured by the good we have done and the love we have shown is accepted here.

As his disciples, we are called to continue the prophetic work bequeathed to us by Jesus. We struggle to overcome the seduction of possessions, our addiction to accumulating stuff in the interest of amassing personal power and prestige, or to ward off our existential insecurity. We are easily tricked by the illusion that we become what we own.

In the face of corrupting messages of autonomous individuality, as Christians, we assert the solidarity of community and our responsibility to contribute to the strengthening of our everyday life – lived together.

This takes us to the central conundrum posed by Jesus in this parable – the sting in the story’s tail, so to speak. Is our trust in material abundance sufficient to carry the weight of our longing for meaning and joy in life?

Lay not up for yourselves treasure on earth —- I think you know the rest of the line. Or in the words of Lennon and McCartney money can’t buy me love.

August 2, 2025 0