THE GREATEST

Sunday's Gospel Reading reminds me of Muhammad Ali. Today, people will not hesitate to describe him as "The Greatest"--with the same energy he called himself "The Greatest," to boot! 

But those same peoole who praise Ali now often forget--deliberately, even--the times in Ali's life when many treated him with hostility, disdain, and called him a "loud-mouthed nobody". Especially in the 1960s. 

His close friendship with Malcolm X, his decision to become a Moslem, and his being a conscientious objector against the Vietnam War made him one of the most hated men in America. Like John the Baptist, he was one voice crying in the wilderness. 

Sunday's reading also reminds me of young Emmet Till. His abduction, torture, and lynching at age 14 in 1955 for allegedly offending Carolyn Bryant and the acquittal of his murderers illustrate the depth and breadth of racism, injustice, and evil that victimize the most vulnerable in society: children. 

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the world continues to treat prophets and children as dispensable and replaceable nobodies.  Prophets are silenced while children are traded. Prophets are vilified while children are comodified. The criminalization of anti-genocide protests worldwide and the murder of thousands of children in Gaza illustrate this tragic reality. 

Sunday's reading reminds us how Jesus feels about prophets and children. For him, they are the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. But that's for Jesus. He always took the side of those in the margins. 

How about us who take pride in calling ourselves followers of Jesus? Where do we stand? 

*images of Emmet Till (from the Emmet Till Research Collection, Florida State University Library) and Muhammad Ali (shadow boxing underwater, 1961).

**The song "Greatest Love of All" was composed for the Muhammad Ali biopic in 1977. George Benson did the original recording. Whitney Houston's 1985 version made it a worldwide hit. 

PREPARE YE!

"Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord" and "Day by Day" from Godspell are two of my favorite childhood songs. Every time I think of John the Baptist, the former starts playing in my mind. 

Sunday's Gospel Reading is about John. Ancient Israelite tradition expected the prophet Elijah to return and prepare the way for the Messiah. Christianity believes that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah and, thus, his forerunner, his "Elijah" is John the Baptist. 

The word of God came to John in the wilderness. Not in Jerusalem, not inside Herod's temple, not even in a synagogue, nor through the Saducees, Pharisees, and Scribes. 

The wilderness conjures up a lot of ambivalent images for us who study scripture. God appeared to a hardheaded Moses through the burning bush in the wilderness. The Israelites wandered almost aimlessly in the wilderness for forty long years. Many of them died there, including Moses. Like John, the wilderness played a key role in Jesus' early ministry. The wilderness does not seem like a very hospitable place.

Yet, many times, God reveals Godself in the wilderness--in spaces and places we don't expect God to be. In spaces and places we don't want to be! 

God anointed John to prepare people for a new way: not the way of Emperor Tiberius, Herod, his brother Philip, Pontius Pilate, Annas, Caiaphas, or their ilk. Not the way of many Pharisee and Sadducees whom John called a brood of vipers. He told them, "Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham." 

God's way requires repentance: a complete turnaround; a 180; a change in the opposite direction; deciding to stop pretending but actually living our lives loving God by serving people, especially those whose only hope is God. 

If we don't follow God's way, if our creeds don't translate to deeds, if we don't repent, then God is able, from stones, to raise up God's children. 

*art, "John the Baptist preaching in the desert," (JESUS MAFA 1973), available at the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

JESUS HAS AIDS

If I said Jesus has cancer. Or diabetes. Or asthma. No one will give a fuss. 

But most of us have problems when we hear that Jesus has AIDS. Because we have been socialized to identify AIDS with promiscuity, with illicit drug use, with divine punishment, with sin. And the Jesus of our Creeds cannot be promiscuous, will not touch or even be in the same room with weed, and, of course, is a perpetual virgin, and sinless. 

What is the international symbol for HIV AIDS prevention? When you turn the symbol on its side, what does the symbol represent? 

My dear friends, the world has AIDS. Close to 40 million of our sisters and brothers are living with HIV. Since the beginning of the epidemic, 44 million of our sisters and brothers have died.  

For God so loved the world with AIDS that God sent God's son... Do we have problems with that interpretation? Or we only think that the world that God loves in our favorite Bible verse is that part without AIDS? 

And what did God's Son say, the One God sent to a world with AIDS? 

For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me. I had AIDS and you, like the priest and the Levite, did not even stop to help me and passed on the other side of the road. I have AIDS and you left me to die, on the street, abandoned, alone, full of sores, like Lazarus.

Jesus has AIDS. He is the two-year old orphan whose parents died from the disease. He is the young prostituted woman victimized by human trafficking. He is in San Lazaro, in RITM, at the Lung Center waiting for a blood transfusion. He is your spouse. He is your child. He is your parent. He is the one wrapped in your embrace this very moment. He is the one whose face you see in the mirror. 

Jesus is a person living with HIV and AIDS and he is one of us. He is God-with-Us. 

#WorldAIDSDay2025

#PreventionNotCondemnation

#UNAIDS

#ChooseJustice

#LoveGodServePeople

JUDGMENT DAY

The Season of Advent has begun and many expect a Christmas reading for Sunday. Matthew's passage is not. It's part of the Synoptic Gospels's mini Apocalypse (so, we find parallels in Mark and Luke). Scholars agree that the passage reflects traumatic memories from the Fall of Jerusalem around 70 CE. 

A lot of people look forward to the End of Days or the Second Coming because it promises eternal rewards and punishment. Of course, there are millions of card-carrying Christians who expect that they will be rewarded, while so-called infidels--namely, anyone who has not accepted Jesus as their Personal Savior and Lord--will be punished. The "saved" will be taken away while the "damned" will be left behind. Trump and his ilk believe themselves part of these "saved" people. 

Many others look forward to the day that God will make things right, especially for those who have been dispossessed, displaced, disenfranchised, discriminated, and dehumanized by prejudice, greed, injustice, and evil. 

There are also those who dread the End of Days or the Second Coming because they know they have failed to do what Jesus, in his First Coming, commanded them to do: preach Good News to the Poor, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, take care of the sick, visit the prisoners, clothe the naked, and welcome the stranger. 

Judgment Day will come. Nobody knows which day or which hour, but it will happen. Like in the days of Noah. God's Day of Justice is coming. Jesus said so. 

Judgment Day is coming. For. All. Of. Us.

And it might come today. 

*art, "Two Women at the Mill," (James Tissot, 1836-1902) from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

REMEMBER ME...

Sunday's Gospel Reading is part of the church's tradition about Jesus's last words on the cross. You find one statement in Matthew; one in Mark; three in John; and three in Luke. Sunday's Lukan passage is also the basis of Jacques Berthier's famous 1978 Taize hymn, "Jesus, Remember Me."

Many social scientists tell us the worst punishment for Filipinos is solitary confinement. Many Filipinos turn on radios and televisions when they are alone--not to listen or watch, but simply to create a semblance of community.  God did not create us to be alone. No one deserves to be alone. Worse, no one deserves to be forgotten.

This was the plea of the man who was crucified with Jesus: Remember me. We often forget that many people do not fear death. What they really fear is oblivion; that they will be forgotten; that no one will remember them.

God's gift of grace creates communities. And these communities of grace are founded on a shared commitment to memory and remembrance. God does not want anyone to be alone. God does not want anyone to be forgotten. 

God remembers. Always. 

You and I, as followers of Jesus are challenged to race against erasure and to dedicate our lives to celebration, to commemoration, to ritualization. 

And to remember. Always. 

*art, "Dismas," (Thomas Puryear Mims, 1906-1975), at the Benton Chapel (Vanderbilt University). Tradition names the repentant man crucified with Jesus as Dismas.

THE CHURCH IS NOT A BUILDING

Sunday's Gospel Reading reminds us of Herod the Great's major renovations on the Jerusalem Temple that, according to Jesus, was built from the offerings of widows and other very poor people. 

Jesus said, "Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down!" And he was right. 

We are uncomfortable with a Jesus who speaks of doom, destruction, and death. We do not wish to see Jesus brandishing a whip while driving out those who were selling and buying in the Temple, including the moneychangers. We do not want to acknowledge that Jesus can be angry--and violently angry, at that.

We are so used to the Jesus we have created in our image. We are so used to the huge cathedrals and grand buildings we have created to make us comfortable when we come together in his name. We have even come up with the phrase "Sunday best", air conditioning, and exclusive seating inside these walls we have built as imposing monuments of our faith in God. Remember Jesus’s words, "Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." 

Friends, our comforts have made us forget that the church is not a building. It never was. It never will be. It has always been people: people who love; people who serve; people who offer their lives so that others may live, like Jesus did.

And when the cathedrals and buildings we've put up cease to serve their purpose, we should not be surprised when Jesus himself tears them down. 

*I took this photo of the Western or "Wailing Wall" in the Old City of Jerusalem last 9 August 2016. The wall is a remnant of the retaining walls Herod built for the Temple Mount. 

MOURNING HAS BROKEN

(In honor of those who survived and in memory of those who perished when Super Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda hit the Philippines on 8 November 2013.)

Mourning has broken, like ev’ry mourning

Lives have been broken, thousands left dead

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning, 

Poor folk rebuilding, hon'ring their dead

Sweet the world’s caring, manna from heaven

Each other’s keepers, one body, one mass

Working together, welcome each morning

God recreating every new day.

Welcome the sunlight, rise from our mourning

Labor ‘til twilight, so children can play

Crucified peoples, God’s resurrection

Our liberation, three days away!

Mourning has broken, like ev’ry mourning

Lives have been broken, thousands are dead

Grace for our mourning, grace for each morning, 

Praise for the springing, life for the world. 

*NEXSAT satellite image of Typhoon Haiyan from the US Naval Research Lab (November 7, 2013, 2:30am)