Heed Only the Prophets of Love

Heed Only the Prophets of Love

a sermon based on Deuteronomy 18:15-20

given at Palm Bay, FL on January 29, 2012

by Rev. Scott Elliott

I read this joke about teaching on a prophet that I thought you’d like to hear before I get to the sermon.

A Sunday school teacher told the story of the Prophet Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal, how he built an altar with firewood and put meat on it and then had barrels of water repeatedly poured over the meat. Then the teacher said “Can anyone in the class tell me why Elijah poured water over the meat on the altar?” A little girl in the back of the room raised her hand with great enthusiasm and yelled out. “I know, I know! To make gravy.” I thought you’d like that.

Once upon a time a minister went up to the pulpit on a Sunday morning and preached an eloquent and brilliant sermon on love and loving neighbors. Many of the folks who were there that day claimed it was the best sermon they had ever heard.

The next Sunday the pastor preached the exact same sermon word for word and everyone was excited to hear it again.

But when the minister gave the same sermon word for word again for a third Sunday in a row people began to wonder. So after the service the church lay leaders gathered around the minister and one of them said “Pastor that was a great sermon, brilliant in fact, but some of us want to know why you keep preaching the same sermon over and over again?”

The pastor smiled and replied “Because people aren’t doing anything about what I preached.”1

Today’s reading is about God sending prophets to humankind. Over and over God sends them speaking to each generation. People need to hear again and again the Word so that they – we all – will do something about it. God’s not going to stop speaking to us about love and loving.

The lesson this morning is about the promise by God that Moses would not be the last prophet, that more were to come; and what God’s people are to do about it. God always sends prophets and speaks through them.

Our denomination, the United Church of Christ, has a whole campaign named after this fact. It’s called “God is Still Speaking.” And it’s true. God IS still speaking.

And the prophets we are talking about this morning are those who speak on behalf God, bringing God’s Word to God’s people. And typically such prophets and the Word of God are not popular in the mainstream culture, especially with the political crowd, and ironically they are also unpopular with religious elites.

You won’t find a prophet of God with a popular television or a radio talk show or running for office.

You’re also unlikely to find a prophet in the pulpit of a mega-church. 2

To be blunt prophets tell the people of God the Word of God and politicians and elites and the culture as a whole pretty much don’t want to hear, follow or heed those words. It’s a bummer really. God’s words. GOD’s. WORDS. GET. REJECTED. TIME. AND. TIME. AGAIN. People as a whole aren’t doing anything about what God is still speaking to them.

The reading from Deuteronomy this morning is short, but it gives us four critical bits of information about prophets.

The first I already mentioned. God is still speaking to us through prophets. God says in the reading “I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet who shall speak to them everything that I command.” 3

The second bit of information is that humankind as a whole seems incapable en masse of hearing God speak and so individuals are called to mediate the Word of God and get it to others. There is this fear about facing God, not all can face up to God. We can hear this in verse 16’s reference to the assembly saying they did not want to directly hear the voice God.

The third bit of information about prophets in the text is that prophets come from within the community to whom they speak, their connection and experiences allow them to put God’s Word into the context in which it can best be heard. Prophets are called out from the people. As God says in the text: “I will raise them up a prophet … from among their own people …”

The final critical bit of information from the Lectionary reading is that God holds us accountable to heed the Word of God from the prophet, and also that prophets are held accountable to deliver God’s Words, not someone else’s (including their own).

Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable.

But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak – that prophet shall die.”

This of course all begs the question: How do we know when someone is speaking the Word of God? It’s interesting that the Lectionary ended with verse 20, because verse 21 asks that very question and verse 22 answers it.

You may say to yourself, “How can we recognize a word that the LORD has not spoken?”

If a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it. (Deu 18:19-22 NRS).

The popular image we tend to have is of prophets as prognosticators, as seers of the future, but that is not the focus of prophets at issue today, rather we are talking about prophets as mediators of God’s Word, those who bring it to the people (whether they want to hear it or not). This can, and often does, include the prophet giving a prediction of what may occur if God’s Word is not heeded.

But such prophets are not in the psychic business. It’s not about having the superpower of knowledge of future, it’s about having the superpower of God’s Word on the tip of their tongue and God’s action at the tip of their fingers.

Biblical prophets warn of unjust or unrighteous behavior and predict the results of the continuation of such ungoldy conduct for sure, but their goal is to convey God’s message and to get the community to act on it.

I stumbled on this wonderful internet webpage called “Judaism 101” that sums it up like this:

A prophet is basically a spokes[person] for G d, a person chosen by G d to speak to people on G d’s behalf and convey a message or teaching. Prophets were role models of holiness, scholarship and closeness to G d. They set the standards for the entire community. 4

The word “prophet” means “one who calls” but it has its roots in words that mean “fruit of the lips” giving honor and recognition to “the prophet’s role as a speaker.” 5

And you know what? God’s Word may come from many different types of people and it may be in different languages and come in different ways for each audience, but the basic premise is always the same. The Talmud is a centuries old book of rabbinic commentary on the Hebrew Testament and it teaches that there were hundreds of thousands of prophets: twice as many as the number of people who left Egypt, which was 600,000. But most of the prophets conveyed messages that were intended solely for their own generation and were not reported in scripture. Scripture identifies only 55 prophets of Israel.

A prophet is not necessarily a man. Scripture records the stories of … female prophets as well. 6.

All of what I have told you so far indicates that there were prophets in the past, there are still prophets today and there will be prophets tomorrow.

To go back to the four points of the scriptural lesson this morning (1) God is still speaking, (2) since humans as a whole tend not to want to face and hear God, individuals are called to listen and convey God’s Word to the community, (3) those individuals come from within the community so that they can speak God’s Word in the listeners’ context, and (4) we are held accountable by God if we don’t heed God’s Word, and the prophets are held accountable if they don’t deliver God’s Word.

There are all kinds of theological ideas and notions and images and visions and pictures of God. Many in our culture understand God as an otherworldly being out there, more or less beyond our world, intervening on earth by responding to our good and bad acts and our prayers.

This image of God tends to understand accountability as punishment meted out by this supernatural being.

We hear an extreme version of this out-there-punishing-deity way of understanding God when modern televangelists claim after a calamity like an earthquake that it is God’s punishment for some moral conduct that has nothing to do with earthquakes, but something to do with what the televangelist disapproves of. This isn’t Biblical prophecy, in fact it’s a violation of today’s scripture when the televangelist makes these and other such false claims, claims that ironically if the text is read literally requires such false prophets to be put to death.

We can choose to hear God in this super natural theistic, out there tossing punishment and stuff at us in a lightening bolt kinda way. But we can also imagine God in a whole other way if we take to heart a text like Psalm 139 indicating God is everywhere:

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. (Psa 139:7-10 NRS)

Those beautiful words blend in so well with Paul’s sermon in Acts 17 that notes that it is “In [God] we live and move and have our being.” (Act 17:28 NRS).

God is everywhere and we are in that everywhere God!

We can imagine God is like an ocean and we are living sponges submerged in an ocean that soaks us to our very soul.

We cannot escape from God because God is everywhere and in us, and we are in God.

This way of understanding God imagines God not as supernatural but natural, all natural. ALL OF NATURE. Making punishment for misdeeds, a punishment of not just us, but, injury to the Divine ocean that we are in as well.

And it means the punishment is not the result of God hurling bolts of fire at us for moral misdeeds, but basically it’s us hurting others and God, or otherwise sullying the creation we live and move about in. To put it briefly, there are natural consequences to wrongdoing.

Prophets are the folks who tell us to stop hurting or sullying other parts of creation: TO STOP THE WRONG DOING. And the way creation works is that when we don’t heed those warnings we get hurt (and so it injures the God who soaks us as well).

We need look no further than recent news for an example. Modern prophets have told us as a people we must not recklessly mistreat God’s creation. More specifically we have been warned that forcing water deep into the rock strata to get gas, the so-called practice of fracking has dangerous consequences.

It’s even been predicted that if we don’t stop we will disturb the earth and there will be earthquakes, people and property will be damaged.

We, of course, didn’t listen. We pumped water to get gas and parts of the country have experienced unprecedented earthquakes which have been proven by science to be the result of this practice called “fracking.” One such earthquake has damaged the Washington monument and all of us will be paying to repair not just that icon, but other harm done to those hurt by the quake’s shakes.

It may not seem fair that we as a nation pay for this harm done by private businesses that did not heed the warnings, but we all are in a very real way being punished, being held accountable for it. And it hurts creation. It’s not God’s doing something to us but consequence of not taking care of the earth.

The Bible in Genesis charges us to be stewards of creation, partners with God in taking care of the earth.

So prophets warning that disturbing the earth to get gas as not good way, may not be popular, but it’s God is still speaking, and we need to listen and if we don’t we suffer the punishment of the natural consequences of not heeding God’s Word, just as the lesson today claims. And this is just one example. Civil rights, taking care of those in need, tending to the sick, seeking peace are some other areas \that today’s prophets speak God’s word in.

Folks sow seeds of doubts about what is or isn’t God’s Word. But Jesus made it clear that all of God’s law and the prophets are about loving God and loving neighbor.

I have preached on this litmus test of Jesus’ before, and if I remember correctly BJ preached on this idea not too long ago as well.

Jesus was asked “which commandment in the law is the greatest?” and his answer was the greatest commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

And he added that the second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s like it because we are all of us in God, a part of God as is all of creation. And we are to Love all of God, each other and creation, not just the parts we like. That’s God’s Word handed down by every prophet in one form or another.

God commands that we Love God and Love others. Jesus notes that, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Mat 22:36-40 NRS).

See that’s the litmus test,. If we hear a prophet telling us anything that’s not about love then that prophet is not a prophet from God and their words are not God’s words.

So what do we do with the folks who tell us God desires acts that denigrate, destroy creation or oppress others? We turn to Jesus’s test and ask ourselves is that love oriented? If it’s not, then we go to Deuteronomy18 and follow the advice we heard there:

If a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it. (Deu 18:19-22 NRS).

In other words we heed the prophets of love, and we oppose the prophets of non-love.

The prophets of love teach us to live as best we can, to love, to seek and teach peace. That’s God’s Word in a nutshell … to live as best we can, to love, to seek and teach peace.

Year after year, prophet after prophet brings us this Word.

It’s what Jesus taught and how he lived. It is the peace he breathed on his followers, leaving that peace with them before he ascended to heaven, and it is the peace he breathes on his followers still … that’s all of us.

May we let Jesus teach us that peace through prophets amongst us today. May Jesus breathe his peace on us always.

AMEN.

ENDNOTES

1. This story was taken and modified from a version in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 1, p 295

2. Feasting on the Word p 290 (from a quote attributed to Jeremiah Wright)

3. The idea of this list of four (in this paragraph and the ones that follow) is taken from Feasting on the Word at 292.

4

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Click HERE to listen to Scott’s podcast.

 

The Reluctant Dove Who Acted Like a Chicken … and a Hawk

The Reluctant Dove Who Acted Like a Chicken … and a Hawk

a sermon based on Jonah 3:1-10

given at Palm Bay, FL on January 22, 2012

by Rev. Scott Elliott

Today we are going to talk a bit about Jonah. That’s the good news.

But I could not find any good Jonah jokes on the internet, so the bad news is that, since this is the sports-fishing capital of the world I went ahead and made up some, really bad fish puns.

Although the Bible clearly says it was a fish that swallowed Jonah there’s long been a debate about whether it was really a whale or a fish that ingested him.

Although I believe that the story’s claim it was a fish ought to end the debate, I decided to go ahead and list – in David Letterman top ten fashion – reasons why we know it was a fish that swallowed Jonah:

The Number 10 reason (and really bad pun) that we know it was a fish that swallowed him is that Jonah appears in the story to have been HERRING COD speak.

Number 9 reason: Jonah FLOUNDERS in response to what he was HERRING from COD.

Number 8 reason: Earlier, when he was avoiding COD, Jonah acted KOI.

Number 7: Not only was he acting KOI, but he CARPS about what he’s HERRING COD say.

Number 6: Jonah was a GILLty human, and such MINNOW (men owe) COD repentance.

Number 5: Jonah runs away from COD just for the HALIBUT.

Number 4: When Jonah was spit out of the fish he SMELT bad.

Number 3: At the end of the story Jonah takes what he is HERRING from COD and goes to MULLET over.

Number 2: But even then Jonah seems to have been TROUTful about it.

And the Number 1 reason we know it was a fish that swallowed Jonah: We are told he was outta TUNA with God.

There you have it. I had to deBAIT whether to REELy feel GILLty about WORMing you up with fish puns this morning, but since you are my CHUMs I knew you’d be HOOKED once I CAST them about

Okay you can unplug your ears, it’s over (for now) …

We just heard a small part of the story of Jonah. Actually the Lectionary reading was half as long as the portion we heard read so well.

A summary of the whole story of Jonah is that it’s literally about a religious leader who is commanded by God to “Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.” (Jon 1:2 NRS).

Nineveh is the huge capital city of Assyria, an enemy of Jonah and Israel. Everything about it is detested by the Israelites. It is full of hated outsiders, others.

The people there are loathed and hated, they are Gentiles of the worse kind in the eyes of Jonah. But not in God’s eyes.

Jonah knows that God is “gracious … and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing” and knowing this, Jonah doesn’t want to help the people in Ninevah experience that grace, mercy, love or forgiveness. (Jon 4:2 NRS). He wants them to get what he thinks is their due, punishment and destruction and he wants them to have no chance to change or get into God’s favor.

See Jonah has a holier-than-thou attitude towards those God commands he go to and save, and so Jonah runs away from God boarding a ship going the opposite direction.

The ship gets caught up in God’s struggle with Jonah and is about to sink when the Gentile sailors (those Jonah and Israel would have also considered outsiders and others) they are the ones who pray. Soon they discover Jonah is he cause of the turbulence. They ask Jonah what to do and he tells them to throw him overboard. At first they refuse, but the storm gets worse and with a prayer of forgiveness to their gods the sailors toss him overboard.

Once he’s tossed in the sea Jonah’s swallowed by a fish. Finally in the fish Jonah prays, and three days later the fish vomits Jonah ashore.

Then, as we heard, God asks Jonah again to go to Nineveh. At long last Jonah reluctantly goes. He gets to the middle of the town and gives a very curt message with no hope or offer of help. Jonah simply “cried out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’” and then he leaves. It was quite literally the least that he could do.

But miraculously the people of Nineveh take that short curt message to heart and repent, that is, they turn from their evil ways and turn to do as God calls them.

So God ends up not destroying Nineveh. We find out later in the story that this upsets Jonah. He wanted them all destroyed and so he sits and mopes. As he sits he grows fond of a shade plant God created for him. When the plant dies Jonah is angry. And God chides Jonah for being emotional about a plant dying but not the 120,000 people of Nineveh, who would have died had God not caused him to save them.

God’s words to Jonah end the story are:

“You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night.

And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” (Jon 4:10-11 NRS)

That’s how the story ends.

So there you have a pretty good summary of what literally happens in the story of Jonah and much of it many of us already knew or heard before. It’s a literal understanding of the story.

But this is one of those wonderful stories in the Bible that a literal understanding misses so much. The story about Jonah was not meant to be heard as a strictly literal story about some poor guy who gets swallowed by a fish. The story was written to be heard as a very funny, poignant story with a message.

We are supposed to laugh and find meaning in the humor, not in debates over whether a whale or fish swallowed Jonah, or how he survived for three days in a fish belly. Quibbling over such details misses the point of the book of Jonah.

This is an Old Testament, or Hebrew Testament, story. I have mentioned before how Hebrew Testament stories are often full of humor, and this is not just my take on the stories. Scholars and others see it too. And Jonah may be word-for-word one of the funniest of the funny stuff in the Bible.

Jonah is a name that ironically means “dove.” It’s ironic because as the story unfolds, Jonah does not want to bring God’s peace to his enemies, and yet for all his resistance Jonah ends up being the most successful prophet in the whole Bible. His curt warning works. He may have been a hawk in his desires but God uses him as a dove to bring God’s peace, not Jonah’s, to the 120,000 citizens of Nineveh.

At the start of the story Jonah hears God’s call to rise up and go to Nineveh. There is no doubt about this, Jonah the Holy man of God is called to Nineveh. So he rises up and gets on a ship going in the very opposite direction.

Jonah’s name may mean dove and he may have felt like a hawk but he acted like a chicken. It’d be like God telling a conservative televangelist to go to communist Havana, but instead he hops on a boat to Nova Scotia, hoping to avoid helping the pinkos he hates and hoping that God won’t find him.

Jonah’s silly oversight – which pretty much everyone knows – is that he seems to forgot God knows where we are and what we are up to all the time. You can run but you cannot hide from God.

And sure enough, God knows where Jonah is and lets Jonah know God knows what’s up, that Jonah is on a boat with some sincere to their gods, but scared to death sailors.

And the poor, somewhat baffled, simple Gentile sailors are the ones with faith, not Jonah. They pray and pray (there never are atheists in fox holes, or anywhere else where real danger looms), but there’s one person not praying, it is the holier-than-thou elite prophet, Jonah. What does he do? He sleeps in the hull of the ship.

The others are so tolerant of other religions they wake Jonah up and they, the Gentiles, are the ones who seek him to pray to talk to his God to use Yahweh’s mojo to bring about salvation.

Then they discover Jonah’s there hiding, that he has run away from Yahweh and they are the ones who get that that is not a good thing to do!

And they are compassionate too, not uncaring heathens. When Jonah seeks the easy way out to certain death in the sea they try to row the boat ashore and save him and themselves. Only when all has failed and they are about to sink do they do as Jonah insists, and they pray for forgiveness as they throw him overboard.

The great prophet Jonah’s refusal to obey God gets him in the sea, into chaos.

And God rescues Jonah from the sea of chaos that he got himself into.

But does God send a host of angels to this holier than thou religious elite?

Does God drop a lily white life jacket from heaven for him?

Is there a golden boat to pick him up, he who is holier than thou?

No. For the great holy man God sends a lowly but big fish to the rescue.

And the rescue involves laying in stinky fish guts for three days, while he, the great religious leader, prays a prayer that both pleads and complains, but gives in to God. Then on the third day Jonah has the diSTINK pleasure of being vomited ashore. Not the rescue we expect for an elite of the likes of Jonah, but, the rescue humans expect is rarely the rescue God delivers.

After being in the sea, after being in a fish’s gut, Jonah finds himself in fish vomit ashore. It’s then that we pick up the story. God comes along and asks Jonah again to do what God previously asked him to do.

Jonah has no real choice, of course, and we can imagine him stomping off to Nineveh angry as all get out, so disgusted at the call to help what he sees as the awful people of Nineveh, Jonah “the reluctant dove” tells his enemies as little as he can “cry[ing] out, ‘Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!’” and then Jonah scurries away.

That message does not seem very helpful. But remarkably, because God caused it to be sent to those in Nineveh, the people of Nineveh hear in it God’s call!

And they hear it so well that they feel compelled to respond so completely they go way overboard themselves. In perhaps the funniest scene of the story, maybe even the Bible, the sworn enemies of Israel – those whom Israel would have imagined full of may sins and slights – do more repentance than anyone could ever ask for.

They cover all the angles, it’s made clear that they have done what is needed to be done, and then some.

I mean think about it, the people of Nineveh didn’t just believe God; they fasted and every single person showed remorse by putting sackcloth.

Sackcloth is a rough cloth, camel’s hair or burlap or the like, clothing worn to show repentance.

What is funny is that the leader of their enemy, the king of Nineveh, not only covered himself with sackcloth, he sat aside the symbols of his power, but then sat in ashes and proclaimed that every living thing in Nineveh was to fast and wear sackcloth, EVEN THE ANIMALS, and all were commanded EVEN THE ANIMALS to cry mightily to God!

Now there’s a silly sight, chicken and geese, sheep and cattle, parrots and falcons, dogs and cats, donkeys and dromedaries all decked out in big and little sackcloth garments crying all at once to God. It sounds like a Hee-Haw barnyard shindig gone bad.

And it is not just silly, the truth is God could not ask more of them and no one in Israel, let alone Jonah, could ask more of them either. From head to toe the place has repented and got its act together. Which is all God asks for.

And we are told the reason Nineveh did this was the king dared to imagine that their human transformation to what God wanted might also transform God. The king says “Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

And guess what? When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed God’s mind about the calamity that was going to be brought upon them.

This upsets Jonah. He wants all of Nineveh wiped out and he pouts about it not happening. While he pouts he becomes enamored with a lovely plant that grows over him for shade and when it dies he cries. And God points out how ridiculous it is that Jonah could lament the death of a material thing but not care fig about 120,000 humans.

The moral of this story is that God wants the world to be transformed, God wants all saved even those we loath, even those who don’t believe as we do, even those whom religious leaders give up on, even in spite of the holier-than-thou religious elite attempt to tube God’s efforts at spreading and giving love to others. We can actually hear how the story of Jonah is a precursor to Jesus’ commandment to love your enemies, perhaps even a story that inspired that commandment.

See, God loves everyone whether we like it or not. We can run from that fact, but God’s just gonna hunt us down and keep calling us to love those we don’t want to love.

Even the slightest bit of begrudging help to our enemies can lead to others opening their eyes and transforming their lives.

It’s our call, our duty, as a caring people of God to inform others of God’s desire for turn about and love, so that they too can have the opportunity for transformation.

We are to bring God’s light to dark places, even to places we don’t want to go.

In fish pun-ease the moral – the Good News – goes something like this (Rick claimed I was opening a can of worms ending like this) :

God is PERCHED on our shoulders calling us to NET work on a large SCALE to LOVE all SOLES, to be FISHERS of HUMANS HOOKING them on God’s LINE to make love and transformation in their lives REEL. That’s our GIG.

That’s what the TAIL today is about.

Okay.

I’m FIN ished.

AMEN.

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

Click HERE to listen to Scott’s podcast.

 

 

JC and MLK used Love to Change the World

JC and MLK used Love to Change the World

a sermon based on Samuel 3:1-20

given at Palm Bay, FL on January 15, 2012

by Rev. Scott Elliott

One summer this apparently really happened: On Lake Isabella an hour east of Bakersfield, California, some folks new to boating were having a problem. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get their brand new 22 ft. power boat going very well in the water.

No matter how much power was applied it was sluggish in almost every maneuver. After about an hour of trying to make it go, the two fellows putted on over to a nearby marina, thinking someone there could tell them what was wrong.

A thorough topside check revealed everything in perfect working condition. The engine ran fine, the out drive went up and down, and the prop was the correct size and pitch. So, one of the marina guys put on some snorkel gear and jumped in the water to check underneath. He came up choking on water, he was laughing so hard. Under the boat, still strapped securely in place, was the boat’s trailer. 1

Even if we’re landlubbers we know it’s hard to get even the best boat going if it’s got a trailer strapped to the bottom of it. That’s true in maritime matters, and metaphorically it’s true when we do most anything.

Unnecessary stuff weighing us down, makes it hard to get going to the promise of our full potential. That’s true of people. And Nations also seem to be like that, lots of promise, but lots of drag from the failure to remove heavy weight.

I love the United States, I really, really do. I consider myself to be a patriot through and through. As a patriot I get pretty sad and frustrated when I think of things that keep have kept our country from getting up to full speed, from living up to its potential and promise because it is unnecessarily weighted down.

In my mind’s eye, one of the biggest weights that has kept this nation from fully working has been sanctioned injustices and ignoring injustices.

We are a nation founded on the noble principles of equality and the sanctity of every person’s God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Those principles are the very heart, the engine of our nation. But from the start we have had strapped onto the hull of our glorious ship (powered by equality, righteousness and justice) the very heavy weight of things like slavery, patriarchy, racism and other forms of oppression over the years that have denied and continue to deny to some the rights that others have.

It cannot be rationally denied that our great nation’s laudable and lofty goals have a long history of being slowed down, stifled and even stopped by the legally sanctioned practices of oppression.

Unjust laws have been a part of the problem. What is an unjust law? Martin Luther King Jr. put it like this:

“An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. That is sameness made legal.”

Not allowing African Americans the same rights as Caucasians is an example of unjustness that resonates with most of us as a wrong strapped to this country’s ship of state. It especially resonates this weekend as we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

But the same can be said for other laws that make differences legal. Legalized discrimination, or the ignoring of discrimination against other races, religions, women, disabled and non-heterosexuals continues and it is unjust. Period.

These laws and look-a-way approaches not only negate the promises of equality, but often interfere with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In theological terms they disturb the peace, the Shalom, that God intends and desires for all of humankind.

In theological terms the history of our nation evidences both humankind’s wondrous answering of God’s lofty call toward peace and humankind’s answering man’s baser call to the violence of injustice.

Today’s lesson can be heard as a metaphor for Israel facing the same type of thing. Samuel hears a call and three times mistakes it as a call toward the power elite, Eli. Eli is a temple priest who allowed his sons as priests to abuse and oppress others – earlier verses tell us that Eli’s sons were scoundrels, forcing the people who came to the temple to give them their goods and making vulnerable women under their care sleep with them (1 Sam 2:12-17, 22).

Samuel is being trained in the Temple by Eli when he hears a voice which he first thinks is a man, Eli, calling. But as we heard, it turns out he was being called by God and God’s call was to stop the injustices of Eli’s sons (the power elites), and to put an end to Eli’s ignoring the injustices..

When Samuel finally figures out that God, not man, is calling him, Samuel’s ready to listen, indeed he prays to God, “Speak for your servant is listening.” And Samuel listens … and then he answers God’s call to stop the oppression by bravely speaking truth to power … And it matters. And Eli, to his credit, lets God’s transformative change occur. As a leader of his people Eli encourages it because Eli knows the call comes from God. Eli proclaims “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.”

Samuel acts by listening and speaking. There is no violence called for by God or utilized by God’s prophet, Samuel. The Feasting on the Word commentary notes that, “[T]he prophet’s tools remain twofold, the ears and the lips.” 2. The commentary goes on to point out that:

The new beginning requires an exercise of divine justice, not because of evil acts committed by Eli, but because of Eli’s aversion to act; Eli failed to discipline his scoundrel sons for their corruption which he recognized and ignored. 3

Unfortunately, if we are honest, it’s fair to say that over the years as a nation we have often failed to stop oppression and injustice, and we have as a nation often ignored it…

Well, at least until divine justice overwhelmed us through the prophets of our day. Martin Luther King Jr. was one such prophet, far and away (to our generation) the best known of our nation’s prophets. He felt called to deal with harm in the world early in life, but initially he felt he would address it as a lawyer or as a doctor. Then, thankfully, in college he heard a call from God to the ministry and answered it. 4

Rev. King heard another call from God a few years later.

Shortly after he started to lead the civil rights movement he was exhausted from dealing with the hate and the threats and he felt at wits end. He writes that he was ready to walk away and get out of the limelight and harm’s way.

He was, as he put it, ready to give up. Then he prayed this prayer to God:

I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right, But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership. And if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.

Can you hear how Rev. King basically prayed as Samuel did, asking God in his own words to “Speak, for your servant is listening?”

And Rev. King reports that as soon as he finished the prayer God immediately responded. He writes:

At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never before experienced him. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying “Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth. God will be at your side forever.” Almost at once my fears began to pass from me. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything… 5. (MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.)

Samuel in today’s scripture reading confronted the power elite Eli, and spoke truth to him about the oppression that Eli was doing little about, the oppression his sons, the priests in power, sanctioned and inflicted on the less powerful.

Rev. King confronted the power elites in government and spoke truth to them about the oppression they were doing little about, the oppression others in power were inflicting on the politically less powerful, African Americans.

White supremacy, was the rule not the exception, in Rev. King’s day – White supremacy being the notion that white people are superior to others and so are entitled to things other races are not, including special rights, like marriage, property ownership, education, and the freedom to do what many non-whites could not do.

Less than half a century ago, in America, Whites were by law entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the detriment of African American’s rights to the same thing. It’s painful to remember it is so awful.

Whites were at liberty to shop and eat and drink and swim and study where they wanted, Blacks were not.

Whites were at liberty to pursue happiness in any trade or profession or school or relationship or marriage they wanted, Blacks were not. White’s even took away Black lives to maintain and uphold the sense of White supremacy.

Less than half a century ago, in America, Blacks were by law consider unequal and treated as such thereby violating and ignoring the self evident truth declared in 1776 that all humans are created equal.

So, despite our founders’ claim that our nation answered God’s call to consider all created equal, our nation let the elitist call to White supremacy through and left God on call waiting.

Despite our founders’ claim that our nation answered God’s call to recognize that all are endowed with the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, our nation let the elitist call to White supremacy through and left God on call waiting.

So God got on another line and dialed and dialed and dialed. For decades God called. Many people heard the call, but at first only a few answered. Today the most well known of those who answered is Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because he did something remarkable about it. Like Samuel he used the twofold tools of a prophet, ears and lips. He took action against oppression.

Lots of people have taken action against oppression. Jesus was not the only person to rebel against Rome. Crucifixion was in fact specifically reserved by Rome as the exclusive means of execution for rebels.

But most rebels resorted to violence, using basically forms of what we’d call terrorism today. But Jesus did something else entirely. He used love as a force. He took seriously the Old Testament commandment to “Love your neighbor as yourself,” applying it to everyone, everyone, including enemies including Rome.

Jesus advocated for non-violence (“turn the other cheek”), by that he did not mean doing nothing like Eli had been doing, or for that matter like the United States government sadly did with respect to the racially oppressive Jim Crow laws.

Ignoring injustice is not how Jesus’ “love everyone” works. In his first effort at preaching in Luke chapter 4 (18), Jesus declares that he had been sent to do things” “bring good news to the poor … proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”

This is what Jesus works toward, this is what he stands for. Jesus’ form of non-violence is loved- filled, but resistence laced and oppression ending oriented.

In other words, the end goal is peace and the means to get there is love. Always love.

In John’s Gospel peace is what Jesus gives to us and leaves with us.

“Blessed are the peacemakers” is the personal reward that Jesus notes in his “Sermon on the Mount” is ours when take his gift of peace and use it. Jesus is telling us to answer God when God calls.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King did just that. He applied Jesus’ non-violent, loved- filled, but resistence laced and oppression ending oriented theology, what Rev. King called “the doctrine of love.” He coupled Jesus’ doctrine of love with Mahatma Gandhi’s own use of that doctrine in wide scale protests, what Rev. King called “love-force.” With this coupling Martin Luther King notes that earlier on:

I came to see … that the Christian doctrine of love, operating through the Gandhian method of non-violence, is one of the most potent weapons available to an oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. 6

Later, “This principle became the guiding light of our movement. Christ furnished the spirit and motivation and Gandhi furnished the method.” 7

Even later, on his last Christmas, just months before he was tragically slain, Martin Luther King Jr. preached what is known as “The Christmas Sermon on Peace.” 8.

In that wonderful sermon he notes that the non-violent movement he led in “our struggle for racial justice in the United States” must also be used on an international scale, that in order to have peace on earth we must “learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.” 9

He eloquently points out that we are all interconnected and admonishes that the leaders of war throughout history have claimed their violent means were aimed at peace in the end, even Caesar, even Hitler. Those using war oriented means have always claimed peace as a distant goal.

Then Rev. King preached this amazing line which we can hear as summing up Jesus’ Way – and the way to remove the weight of hate attached to the hull of any ship of state. Referring to those who claim to lead wars for peace he said the problem is:

They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends. 10.

The reason Rev. King said this is because violence is a weight around our vessels. We can move a little in the lake of life with that weight on, but we gotta get it off if we want to reach our full potential.

Two thousand years ago Jesus commanded that we turn the other cheek, that we love everyone. He showed us how to do that. And the New Testament instructs us that we are to do as Jesus did.

Like Jesus we have things to do: to “bring good news to the poor … proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”

This is what Jesus worked and works toward. This is what he stands for. Jesus’ form of non-violence is love-filled, but resistence laced and oppression ending oriented. The end goal is peace and the means to get there is love. Jesus’ life still resonates with us because he pursued, practiced and taught this so well.

And it is not impossible for us to do in modern times. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s life and teachings, his doings, prove this to be true.

How can WE do this? We can start by turning to God and praying as Samuel did: “ “Speak, for your servant is listening” and then act on what we hear.

And we will know it is the voice of God if what we hear is about Love, pure non-violent life transforming, world transforming, Love.

Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr. both used love to change the world.

May we do so as well, because you know what?

The good news is: WE CAN.

AMEN

ENDNOTES

1. I have seen this story a number of times on the internet, the claim is always that it really happened. I took this version with some modification from the website at:

2. Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 1, 245

3. Ibid. at 246.

4. King, Martin, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King,

5. King, Martin Luther, Strength to Love, Fortress Press, Minn. (2010) p. 117

6. Ibid. at 159.

7. Ibid. at 160.

8 Washington, James, A Testament of Hope, the Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. HarperOne, (1986), 253.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid at 255

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Touched by a Disturbing Dove

Touched by a Disturbing Dove

a sermon based on Mark 1:4-11

given at Palm Bay, FL on January 8, 2011

by Rev. Scott Elliott

An older man who had celebrated way too much on New Year’s Eve found himself waking up on the beach to a New Year’s Morn beach side baptismal service with a line of people heading into the water for their turn with the preacher.

Trying to shake off the night before the fellow somehow managed to wade out in the water and got next in line. The firm, fire and brimstone preacher got a hold of the fellow and in a booming voice queried “Mister, Are you ready to find Jesus?”

The woozy guy shrugged his shoulders “Sure, sure I am.” The minister immersed him under the water, pulled him right back up and asked “My son, have you found Jesus?” “No, I haven’t!” the fellow blurted out.

So the preacher dunked him back down for a bit longer and brought him up gasping for air, “Now, brother, now, have you found Jesus?” “No sir, I have not.”

This time the pastor pushed him back underwater for a good half minute and when he brought him out of the water the pastor yelled out “Sinner, have you found Jesus yet?”

The old fellow wiped his eyes and stuttered out fearfully “Are you, are you, sure THIS is where he fell in?”

Let me stop the rumor here and now this is not a story about our present moderator – or anyone else for that matter – it’s fictional.

Some traditions do baptize by holding folks underwater, however, in our tradition we usually baptize by immersion, which is the fancy name for sprinkling with holy water. We can baptize by immersion down at the water, but tend not to.

Jesus was baptized down at the water by John the Baptist. Baptism is one of two sacraments we recognize in this church. Sacraments are outward signs instituted by God to convey or give sign of inward grace.

Basically we have communion (the other Sacrament) and baptism because Jesus started them. In other words we get baptized because Jesus got baptized. It is an initiation rite into Christianity, the Way of Jesus, remembering that Jesus began his Way with baptism, as have most Jesus followers ever since.

If we listen carefully to the scripture reading from Mark we can hear that John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

What John was doing was standing in the River Jordan calling people to come in from the wilderness to reenact Joshua’s crossing and taking of the Promised Land.

It was in a sense an Occupy Wall Street kinda protest. He was having Israelites symbolically take back their country – their heritage – the land that God had given them.

Interestingly there was an elite and very wealthy and powerful 1% in John and Jesus’ day who ran Rome and its colonies to the detriment of the other 99%. Only back then the 99% were virtually all on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder and the 1% basically had no-holds-barred as to the brutality and conniving they used to oppress the rest.

John was challenging the 99% to protest Rome’s control of the country calling on the people to take it back even if only symbolically.

John was also challenging the Roman-dominated Temple’s control over religion. He did this by providing the opportunity for the people to circumvent Rome’s hand-picked Temple-elite’s monopoly on connecting people with God.

John did this by offering a free and uncorrupt direct connection to God out there in the cool cleansing waters of the Jordan. Out there in the water during their baptism John provided people with a way to confess their sins and repent without going to Jerusalem or paying Rome through the Temple.

John’s leadership in the protest and end-run around the elite did not end in pepper spray or arrest and a court date like some Occupy protesters have experienced in America. Rome had no mercy for protesters. “Nuisances” were arrested and they were executed. And that is what happened with John, and of course, later with Jesus. “Nuisances and nobodies” – as Rev. Kent Siladi referred to them last month – those nuisances and nobodies who crossed Rome died.

But before John was arrested and killed, and a few years before they did the same to Jesus, Jesus came out to the river Jordan, reenacted with others God’s children crossing into the Promised Land and was baptized by John.

Think about that. Jesus came to John who was “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” and if the text is to be believed ALL the people who went out to John “were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” Jesus was among them.

This sort of runs head on into the pure never-a-sin-to-confess image we have been brought up thinking about Jesus.

The Jesus most of us grew up with, and imagine still, tends to be more sinless and angelic, that is otherworldly, than the fully human person he is portrayed to be at the start of Mark.

Some of the authors in the New Testament claim Jesus was sinless. Some of us here today, maybe most of us, think that means, regardless of today’s text’s suggestions, Jesus was not out there being baptized for repentance of sin, nor confessing any either. Some of us believe that Jesus was sinless, and that is okay.

This is one of those times when I make sure to point out that you don’t have to agree with the pastor in this church. I say this because while I like and respect the idea of Jesus being sinless, I understand him as fully human and a part of me cannot shake off the fact that in my experience to be fully human is to make mistakes.

I remain unsure of why we want the fully human Jesus to be not fully human, but we do. Rev. Siladi eluded to this a little in his sermon during Advent. He mentioned the lyrics to Away in the Manger that go “The little Lord Jesus no crying he makes” and Kent asked if any of us has ever known a baby like that? Of course we haven’t. Fully human babies cry.

I want to take that a step further and point out that I cannot avoid the reality that being fully human means making mistakes, some of them sins (that is a failure to hit a mark God aims us at). It seems to me – and you do not have to agree with me – it seems to me that if Jesus was fully human, that means he was like us and not one of us is without mistakes in our lives. Humans learn by mistakes. As fully human Jesus can (but doesn’t have to) be understood as like us in that regard, at least when he first meets John..

And I point to Exhibit A, the story today from Mark that tells us Jesus went to John who was proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and that those who were baptized by John confessed their sins. This can be heard to suggest that Jesus may have done both.

And I can see nothing wrong with this. He can be, but Jesus does not have to be, imagined as a superhuman who has the power to not make mistakes. We can, if we choose, imagine Jesus as a fully human human and hear the story of his baptism in Mark as suggesting that the human Jesus may have felt that he missed some such mark before he was baptized because he went to John who was doing one kind of baptism; as Mark puts it: “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

I did not write that, my seminary professors did not write it, it was not written as a part of a liberal progressive Christian plot. The author of the of the earliest Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, wrote those words.

And Mark tells us too that ALL who were baptized by John confessed their sins.

In Mark’s gospel, like it or not, this is where Jesus’ story begins. Jesus participating in a civil protest against the government and being dunked in the water in a ritual that required confession sins. That is not squeaky clean, but that is fully human.

It also fits with the manner in which the Christmas stories portray Jesus. Matthew and Luke start the story of Jesus differently but hardly less of a pretty picture Disney-like beginning. Jesus in the two Gospel Christmas narratives is a peasant baby conceived out of wedlock. That’s not very Disney-esque.

Luke even tells us Jesus started out in an animal trough surrounded by cultural lowlifes, the rough and tumble outlaw shepherds. Hardly the makings of feel-good movie if you think about it. Not a place we’d want to see any wee ones starting out, let alone our children or the Son of God.

Mark’s got this same sort of earthy grit to his story. In Mark the person who baptized Jesus, the one who gets him started is even odder than the shepherds. He’s a guy who runs around dressing and acting a bit odd, even for back then. “John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.”

Coupled with his protesting John sounds more like a cross between Tarzan, Abbey Hoffman and Ewell Gibbons than the kind of person we’d expect to launch the career of Jesus the Christ. Being baptized by John while confessing sins as he is starting out, Jesus the adult begins in Mark, not unlike Jesus the baby found in a manger. There is this real world, earthy grit to it.

The Feasting on the Word commentary on this Markian text observes:

Here is a reminder that the gospel is down to earth, grounded in the real, tactile, sensual, fleshy world. In these few verses are references to river water, clothing from camels, diet from bugs, and tying shoes, a bird analogy and an interesting weather phenomenon, Mark’s earthiness gives us a hedge against faith and worship that are too ethereal, otherworldly, abstract. 1

Jesus gets baptized and we are told that “just as he was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.”

Heaven is torn open and a connection to earth is made once Jesus is washed in the Jordan. Jesus’ ministry begins with this fracture between the two worlds that lets heaven seep into the earth.

And what seeps, comes, out is a dove – the universal sign of peace – peace descending on Jesus. We tend to picture this as a gentle descent and landing. But maybe the dove swoops or dives.

Feasting on the Word had this very interesting take on the dove’s arrival:

We may ask … how the dove descended. Gently if the classic pictures of this scene are to be believed. But birds sometimes dive-bomb (for example to protect their young)! A dive-bombing Holy Spirit would fit with the accompanying ‘”torn a part” sky. Many congregations love to sing “Sweet, Sweet, Spirit” perhaps preferring the “sweet heavenly Dove” to the wild-wind/fierce flame Spirit. 2

The commentator then goes on to ask “are our baptism rituals so nice we neglect to mention the uncomfortable implications of inviting God’s Spirit to invade our lives?”

I’d ask that question in a more general way: Is our sense of who Jesus was and is, what it means to follow him, so sweet and clean we neglect to mention the reality that it is not an easy road? Jesus’ way is not about an easier life, but a better one for one and all.

Whether we see Jesus as sinless and perfect or fully human like us, once that dove alights there is no doubt that Jesus’ life becomes full of love and light and God, and difficulties. Love calls him to be compassionate and caring for everyone, it beckons him to seek peace through non-violence and love.

All of that is beautiful stuff, but part and parcel to it is that Jesus has to challenge cultural preconceptions, verbally fend off opponents, protest the status quo and in the end face rejection, betrayal, arrest, torture and execution.

It is supremely ironic that a dove lighting on Jesus, and a ministry of love and non-violence, leads to hate and violence and death being inflicted upon him.

It is supremely sad that following Jesus’ Way of love still can lead to hate and violence. Ideas of doves and peace and love still upset people. Just go on line and read the notes on threads below posts about loving others, or check out the awful letters to the editor in the local papers when notions of peace or love are raised.

Or listen to the political rhetoric when anyone suggests we take a step towards doing the things Jesus suggests, like feeding the poor or tending to the sick or welcoming the stranger or God forbid, loving our enemies.

This month we celebrate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. precisely because he followed Jesus’ Way of love and non-violence and opposed oppression. His acts of love led to hate and violence and his own death too.

And that was not that long ago …

It’s not just big acts of love either, we can look at our own little act of love proclaiming on our bumper stickers the very Biblical concept that “God’s Love Has No Strings Attached,” a notion that can be found in multiple Biblical claims that “God’s love is steadfast and endures forever.”

That bumper sticker has created a lot of very positive response, most people admire and love it, but it has also evoked acts of vandalism and hateful words. Oddly Love brings out the worse in some. That dove from above did a great thing for spreading love, but it also led to opposition we’d never dreamed of, hateful responses to love.

That’s the gritty non-Disney, non-squeaky clean part. Baptism is a powerful Christian rite and it is a good and great and holy thing, but it’s a sacrament that portends sacrifice as well. Life is not easy and a life lived moving toward love can make it even more difficult.

But you know what? It may not be easy but it sure is awesome. There may be grit and ugliness and even hate tossed at those on Jesus Way, but there is a lot of good stuff too. Lot’s of great stuff. A dove lighting on Jesus is the start of a Way that has changed the world, and changing it still, for the better.

Heaven not only connects with Jesus, but, the Holy Spirit joins him, and God claims Jesus as son, beloved and one with whom “I am well pleased.” The Way of Jesus stirs things up in heaven and pleases God. It brings God to earth incarnation in humanity, real humanity, in fully human beings like you and me.

And Jesus matters, what he does may cause some to do hate and violence, but overall it leads to much more love and compassion in the world. In the end that’s so powerful that Jesus’ death is overcome by a resurrection, in one way or another Jesus lives on; and the whole world was and is transformed by that fact.

And we are transformed too.

Not only that, but we can take transformative action. Rev. King made changes on a world-wide scale with love. The rest of us may not end up leading a civil rights movement, but we can affect change and bring love into the lives of those within our own sphere of influence.

We can help the less fortunate, tend to the sick and welcome the stranger.

We can stand up and oppose oppression.

We can love our neighbor by welcoming all and treating all with the respect all of us fully human beings deserve.

This community of the baptized provides numerous opportunities to provide acts of love: a garden to feed the poor, a volunteer time at a food pantry, being green (caring for the earth), a fund to help those in need, a theatre troupe that honors teens, a worship safe haven for those persecuted by the culture and even other churches, a place where love is taken seriously and lauded as a goal to strive for in words and deeds every day of our lives.

This church is not literally a perfect place, it is not sinless, but it is acting as a part of the body of Christ on earth now. And whether we think Jesus was perfect when he lived in human form or not, we experience him here, now, in the grit and grime and muck of life for sure, but most especially in the Love where God’s work continues on in us when we are filled by the Holy Spirit, touched by a disturbing dove.

Each baptism is remembering all of this, that life is hard, that we make mistakes, but also that the God of love is always with us and if we let it do so, love can transform us as human beings into better people, and transform the world into a better place.

Today on the liturgical calendar of the church it is “Baptism of Christ Sunday.” It’s good day to remember this.

AMEN.

ENDNOTES

1. Feasting on the Word, Year A, p 236

2. Ibid.

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED