Reflections on Baptism, Judgment, and Hope

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Grace, Hartford, CT

Baptism of our Lord, January 9, 2022

Psalm 29; Isaiah 43:1-7; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard, and may that point us to the Living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” These lines from our first reading from Isaiah are heartening and comforting in the midst of all the challenges we are facing - in our own lives, in our community, and in the world. Rising case numbers - practically everyone we know is ill, quarantining because of an exposure or recovering from COVID. There are real worries about whether essential services will continue to be available in the days ahead with so many people out sick. And then there are all the systemic issues that we were already facing as a world before this current surge - climate change, poverty, injustice, systemic racism . . . the list goes on. 

I would really like to just stop right there in that passage and hold on to those affirmations. The rivers will not overwhelm us. The flames will not consume us. I need those truths because there are moments, and there are days when it feels overwhelming. How can we possibly deal with one more thing, one more challenge, when we are already exhausted from the last two years?

I was doing okay, until I got to the Gospel. At first I am thinking, Feast Baptism of our Lord, that’s good. Always good to be reminded of our baptism. Always good to be reminded that just like Jesus, we are beloved of God. Goes well with our passage from Isaiah, an affirmation of God’s love and care for us. And then we get this line: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” And I want to start arguing with God with the author of Luke, with our Lectionary Committee, with whoever might listen.

Wait a minute! What is this bit about unquenchable fire and judgment in the midst of a happy story about Jesus baptism? Lines about fire and judgment make me nervous. As many of you know, I consider myself a recovering perfectionist. I take my mistakes, my errors, my sins very seriously - a bit too seriously most of the time. I don’t find passages like this helpful because they feed my perfectionist tendencies . . . after reading a passage like this my perfectionist self can say “See! It does matter how you behave! Watch out, you better be the wheat or else!” NOT HELPFUL! I am quite capable of giving myself a good guilt trip without adding on the fear of judgment and fire and punishment. 

I have often struggled with the theme of judgment and punishment in our Scriptures. Especially since the passages seem to show up right alongside times of joy and hope. Advent is quite a mix of joyful expectation and stories of judgment. It is tempting to just focus on the comforting parts, like those lines from Isiah, but the questions of judgment and punishment are right there in the Gospel, and I believe in facing my fears, so I can’t just let them slide by. 

Shortly after 9/11 I read a book of essays by Eugene Kennedy that helped me think about these passages of judgment differently. As you likely remember there was lots of talk of judgment in the days and weeks following 9/11 - who was to blame? who was now burning in hell for their sins? But Kennedy says that we have got it all wrong if we think that the wheat or the fruitful trees are one set of people and the chaff or the unfruitful trees are another. 

Kennedy writes of those who died on 9-11: “Their voices, taken from phone calls and emails and the recollections of friends, blend now into one message, one voice like a canyon echo coming back to us out of the ruins: ‘I love you,’ said in a thousand ways the true harvest of these good people’s lives. The good grain so overflowed that it covered over the patches of human stubble in their lives . . . They defined themselves and what life and faith are all about in the commitment to the relationships in their lives.”  When we look at all those people from all sorts of walks of life - a real cross section of humanity - who perished on that day, we should see the good - the overwhelming good in them, for as Kennedy goes on to say, that is what ultimately matters to God.  Kennedy writes, “What is good and bad in us grows together. On judgment day, God harvests only what is good in us, for that is what is eternal, and ignores the weeds that belong to time.” 

Reading these words lifts a weight from my shoulders. They comfort me because they remind me that God can see the big picture - and God pays much more attention to who we are and how we live a life of love - than to the times we messed up. They also give me a much more hopeful picture of Judgment Day. I have always struggled with the idea that God sends people to hell as a punishment. The image Kennedy offers fits more with the understanding of judgment that I have developed over the years, with thanks to theologians like Julian of Norwich, C.S. Lewis, and Rowan Williams. While there may be a moment of reckoning, a moment of cleansing when we come face to face with God at the end of our lives, we need not fear it. God is not some arbitrary judge. God is the God we know and love. God is loving and merciful - ALWAYS. Hell is not eternal damnation for our sins; hell is a choice we make. God is always reaching out to us, always offering mercy. Always willing to remind us that we are beloved - just as we are. We are beloved because we belong to God. And God has given us free will, so we have the option to accept that mercy or to reject it. If we choose to turn our back on God, then we will know hell, for hell is the only place where God is not. 

In the end, there actually is solace and hope for us in all our readings today. We can trust that the fire will not consume us, nor will the river overwhelm us. Rather they will merely take away that which does not serve us. That which does not serve God. That which is not eternal. We can indeed trust in the truths of our faith. The beautiful truth we celebrate this day is that we are beloved of God. God is with us. Always. May moments of struggle or challenge or tragedy never blind us to all the good there is in the world, and in each of us. May we always remember that the good, the light, the beauty will last, for our faith affirms again and again that nothing in this world is stronger than the love of God. 

AMEN.

Good and Bad Fruit

 

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

June 23, 2021

Genesis 15:1-12,17-18; Psalm 47; Matthew 7:15-20

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

“Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Really? We have to go here? All this judgment and condemnation. Where is the reassurance, the comfort, the inspiration we are all seeking in the midst of these uncertain and challenging times. Things seem “back to normal” in so many ways, and yet if we pause and reflect, even for a moment, we know that there is not really any “going back.”  The world, and we, will never be the same again. This past year has been a crucible, an experience of challenges and struggle, an experience that has reshaped our understanding of the world and of ourselves. We may feel comfortable eating in restaurants and getting on airplanes, but we are fooling ourselves if we think we have just picked up where we left off in March of 202o.

So, as we try to navigate our way into this new, maybe we can say “post,” Pandemic way of being, I find it hard to hear this text. Hard to think of God judging us so harshly. Wasn’t one of the central lessons of the past year how much it matters to be compassionate? We are all in this together. Everything will be better if we can show each other more grace and care. How do we square those important lessons with texts that seem to divide the world into good fruit and bad fruit?

As I think I have shared with you all before, when I encounter one of the judgment texts, I return to insights gained from psychologist Eugene Kennedy who wrote a book of reflections after 9/11 entitled, Meditations at the Center of the World. In it he talks about some of the various judgement passages in Scripture - how we often get this theme of bad fruit or chaff being thrown into the fire. Instead of seeing it as dividing the world into good and bad people, Kennedy invites us to see and have compassion for the complexity of ourselves and other people.

We are fruit, mostly good and with a few bad spots. Or perhaps better yet we are the barrel of apples. So much good, and also the occasional bad apple.  We are the whole stalk - the wheat and the chaff. None of us is all good or all bad. Life is just not that simple. 

What Kennedy also reminds us of is that what is good in us is real, it is what is eternal. It is what lasts. God’s “judgment” of us is not wholesale. It is about helping us come to see ourselves fully and to let go, to throw into the fire that which does not give life. That which impedes our ability to grow in relationship with God and with each other. That is what should be cast into outer darkness. That is the fruit, the chaff that should be burned. 

Hopefully one of the gifts that has come our way in the midst of this pandemic has been a sense of clarity about ourselves and the world. A sense of clarity about what really matters to us. Where are our priorities? What are the things that we put down that we don’t actually need to pick back up again? What are the things that we can let go of? We picked up plenty of new anxieties and challenges in the last year, and hopefully we also discovered more clarity about what brings us joy and where we want to invest our precious time and energy. 

So, my friends, I hope that you will see in today’s Gospel an invitation rather than a condemnation. An opportunity to pause and reflect as the world reopens and we do more and more things. There is new life possible out of all the pain and loss of this past year. We are an Easter people. That truth stands at the heart of our faith. May you find this time of transition to be fruitful and life-giving. May it offer you an opportunity to grow, in all the various roles you inhabit. Most importantly may it offer you the opportunity to say yes to a path that affirms your identity as a beautiful and beloved child of God. Amen.

Remembering 9/11

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

17 Pentecost, Proper 19C: 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10

September 11, 2016

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It was a bright, sunny Tuesday with clear, blue sky when our cousin Ben went to work in his office at The Fiduciary Trust company on the 97th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.  At first it seemed like any other day. There were tasks to be accomplished and appointments to be kept. A few minutes before 9 am, it became clear that it was a day like no other. Someone whose office window faced the other tower, came to tell him that a plane had hit the North Tower. The office began to evacuate. Our cousin Ben was a tall and imposing man, a natural leader with a generous heart. Beyond his regular job, he had been designated to be an emergency manager for his office. He helped his colleagues down to the 44th floor where they were able to get people onto elevators. Ben ensured the elevators were full and then stepped back. He walked down the remaining floors to street level. On the concourse where there were lots of emergency personnel, and he stopped to talk to them. He wanted to know what was going on. Minutes later the towers collapsed. His body was found right next to a fireman. We know the story of how Ben died because of all those he helped that day and because our family was one of the fortunate ones that had a body to bury. 

I think about Ben often. He was my mother’s first cousin. He had kids close to my brother and me in age, and we spent a lot of time together when we were kids - big Thanksgiving dinners and ski trips to New Hampshire. Ben had a wonderful sense of humor and a flair for the eccentric. He drove a purple Volvo with a pink pinstripe. Ben knew how to find joy in the present moment.

And of course, I think about Ben on this day. It is hard to believe it has been 15 years since September 11, 2001. Today will be a day of stories and remembering. Thousands of us have loved ones who connect us deeply to the tragedy of this day. Everyone over the age of 20 likely has a story of where we were when we learned the news. The images of the smoking and crumbling towers, of the damaged Pentagon and that field in Shanksville, PA are etched into our minds and hearts. While it is a day of sadness and grief, I also believe it can be a day of hope and transformation. It is a day that invites us to take stock of our lives and to live in a new way. 

There are thousands of stories like Ben’s. Stories of regular people who embodied compassion, generosity, and a sense of our shared humanity on that day. Small actions, like helping them on to the elevator or down the stairs. Actions that meant someone else got to go home and hug their kids that night. Think of all those phone calls and text messages sent by those who knew they would not survive. They said, “I am sorry.” They said, “Thank you.” They said, “I love you.” Innumerable witnesses to the fundamental goodness of humanity. The terrible evil that inspired the horrific acts of violence on that day did not have the last word. If we are paying attention, the messages of love and generosity speak far louder. 

And the world needs those stories and those messages. We need to be reminded that Love is stronger than death. We need to be reminded that Hope is stronger than fear. We need to be reminded that violence is not the solution to our problems. Divisions are not healed by attacking those who differ from us. 

I don’t know about you all, but I spent the afternoon and the evening of September 11, 2001 reaching out and connecting with those who mattered most to me. It was a day that reminded me of two very important truths that ought to always be at the forefront of my mind. First, we never know how long we have; life is short and risky. Second, relationships matter more than anything else. 

Interestingly, I think these truths are also at the heart of our Gospel today. Today we have the familiar story of Jesus searching for the lost sheep, and the woman searching for the lost coin. There is a sense of urgency in the Gospel. What has been lost is precious, and it must be found. There is no time to waste. We must focus on that which is most important. 

It is a parable that is meant to show us how much we matter to God. We are the sheep and Jesus is the shepherd. And yet it can be a human story too. It can just as easily be applied to our relationships with each other.  We all have people in our lives with whom our connection is essential. People who matter so much that we would drop everything and give of ourselves to ensure that we do not lose that connection. 

The juxtaposition of our Gospel and the anniversary of the tragic events of 9/11 give us much food for thought today. Life is short. We never know how long we have, and so we must ask ourselves the question of how we want to be remembered? What are the stories we want people to tell about us after we are gone? How have we cultivated relationships and sought to build connections? 

The thing that brings me up short in reflecting on our Gospel today and on the final hours of my cousin Ben’s life, is that he went seeking after anyone who needed help. He wasn’t just helping his best friend or a family member. He worked in a huge office. No doubt there were many people he guided to safety with whom he might not have ever even had a conversation. There were no favorites. 

Ben’s actions, and the actions of countless others that day, call me to a higher standard. They call me to seek out those who differ from me. Those who are currently strangers. As people of faith we are not just called to strengthen our ties with those whom we know and love, we are called to go seeking after those who are not in our inner circle. We are called to reach out and to contribute to the flourishing of ALL people. 

It is my prayer that we will have the courage and the grace to reach out and to seek after new relationships. May we follow the example of our Lord and Savior and live into the higher standard to which we are called. May we make the best use of whatever time we have left on this earth, so that the stories that are told about us long after we are gone are stories that inspire. 

AMEN.