Gathering God

​In spite of yesterday’s climatological slap in the face, we are getting close.  I have begun to map my driving through Child’s Peach Orchard to go anywhere west of the church.  There is nothing like seeing life rise in the orchards: blooms, bees, and babies.  All of it. Every blossom tells us there will be strawberries, peaches, blackberries, apples, and grapes, all through the divine gathering of species and critters.  We will feast on such things, but not just yet.  This already but not yet time is an in-between time, and even in-between spaces are holy.
 
I have about a thousand pictures of the Grand Canyon, trying to capture a different kind in-between time and none of them do it justice.  What looks like still life is not still at all as pressure and time and rock and rain wash a new land.  Inevitably, we have to accept the fact that we cannot capture a moment in time.  Sometimes, we have to put making art aside in order to be the art of life in all of its multisensory glory.
 
Walt Whitman uses word art to shape this idea.  In his poem, Song of Myself, he says: “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.”  Perspective, he claims, is everything.  What we see depends on when, where, and how we look.  In all matters, large and small, we are part of the picture too.
 
Luke’s Gospel today is word art, giving us look into Jesus, who is an eternity and a moment.  Where he stands in this picture is crucial to placing ourselves in the picture.  Jesus is at a wayside, a viewpoint on the Mount of Olives, looking east across a narrow valley to the walled, mountain top city of Jerusalem.  We find all kinds of fortifications on mountaintops, but not many teeming cities.  What makes Jerusalem particular is its strategic position with 360-degree views, one can see whatever is coming from Jerusalem. Just as important, it has a unique water source welling up beneath it.
 
Those who study civilizations know that the presence of plentiful fresh water is the first and most important need for groups of people to survive.  The major cities of our country can be mapped as waypoints on waterways of sustenance, travel, and trade.  Water is life.
 
Where Jesus stands in today’s story an unobstructed viewpoint.  The place affords a panoramic eastern view of the ancient and modern city, then and now.  The picture of that place on the front of your service bulletin for today comes from a Franciscan church built on the site of a Byzantine church, built on the site of a pagan shrine, where travelers marked their arrival, making offerings to what they believed were the local gods, seeking their favor.
 
From where Jesus stands, he sees Roman soldiers at the gates and on the parapets guarding, commanding, and flexing the muscle the empire they preserve.  Jesus sees the grand towers of the Temple, the sacred center of Judaism, with its ornate ceremonies, animal sacrifice business, and lots of pious and elaborately bedecked religious leaders.  Within the walls as well are a host of others come to trade, negotiate, and curry favor with all kinds of power. 
 
Jesus has made clear that he goes there, and belongs there, at the symbolic and geographic center, the crossroads of religion, commerce, and empire.  He is the Word of God, water crashing over the rocks of time, drawing us together in an ocean of God’s love.
 
The elite religious folks come out to meet Jesus, trying to redirect his flow.  They tell Jesus that Herod wants to kill him.  Herod is a local boy, a nominal Jew, who made a backroom deal with Rome to get appointed governor, biding his time with the Jews, waiting for Rome to snuff them out and give him a real kingdom to rule on his own.  That will not go well for him, but the Romans want him to keep the peace and dispatch with any rabble rousing.  Convenient that, religion leveraging amoral politics to wall off the threat to their way of life.  Jesus dismisses Herod, likening him to a fox in the henhouse.  Jesus is there for all of them, to the whole of Jerusalem, religion, empire, pagans all of them.  He tells them God is not about domination, but about gathering.  He wants to bring them together as a hen gathers her chicks.  Where they see conflict, competition, and the physical structures of power, Jesus sees an orchard, fallow, but fertile.
 
In a preview of coming attractions, he tells them they will welcome him in God’s name, but it will not be all sweetness and kumbaya.  He knows that principalities and powers work to preserve themselves at all cost.  Their beliefs about power, authority, and control will be exposed for what they are: selfishness, greed, and bottomless ambition.  Such things do not surrender quietly.
 
Modern-day Jerusalem is much like it was then. The structures are of ancient and insistent powers.  On closer inspection, we may see glorious gold Muslim Dome of the Rock, the El Aqsa Mosque, The Western wall of the Temple - the so-called wailing wall - where Jews go to lament and hope for restoration.  There are spires of Christian churches and immense Church of the Holy Sepulcher, literally built around, the place of Jesus’ crucifixion.  That place is a teeming amalgam of Christianity: Eastern and Western traditions, reeking of incense and multi-lingual noise.   In the background, there are modern structures of commerce national pride, with power lines, satellite dishes and skyscrapers.  Police and soldiers are everywhere, not with spears, but with Uzi machine guns to keep the peace.  Someone will have to explain to me the concept of arming and invading as peace keeping.  Such things are ironic and sad misnomers.  There is little secular peace in this view of humanity.
 
And yet, can we see the Holy humor in all of this?  The political, cultural, and social intersection of East and West, the sacred spots of the three main monotheistic traditions all within five city blocks of one another?  Crumbling structures of power built one on top of another?  Jesus will show this to be a perfect place to begin setting things right.  Love prevails, but not through right religion as righteousness, not with guns and bombs for national victory, and not in dividing the haves and the have nots in some twisted form of moral calculus.  No.  Love is not a battle to be won.  It is a force that shapes all life and whatever goodness we see.  If we look carefully, love gets its way, as surely as water carves the earth. 
 
Of course, what we see depends on when, where, and how we look.  In all matters, large and small, we are part of the picture too.  Jesus stands at the crossroads and provides a complete overview.  God is the Gatherer.  Nothing stops God.  Not the worst we are.  Not the worst we do.  Not the powers we put in place of God.  We may not see this from our particular perch, but as sure as the water greens the grass, and shapes the rocks, Love shapes everything.  This is the view Jesus sees, and helps us to see.  And unlike all things, all moments, all of our worrying or wondering, God’s glorious gathering action is the best view we have of the Way home.