Beware

Thomas Kleinert

Those who saw the temple in Jerusalem say it was a magnificent structure. Newly rebuilt under Herod the Great, and still under construction during Jesus’ lifetime, it occupied a platform twice as large as the Roman Forum with its many temples and four times the size of the Acropolis in Athens with the famous Parthenon. The massive retaining walls that supported the complex, including the famous Western wall that remains today, were built with enormous blocks of stone, some of them 40 feet long. The front of the temple itself was a square of sculpted rock, 150 feet by 150 feet, much of it decorated with silver and gold. First-century historian Josephus wrote that the gold “effected so fierce a blaze of fire that those who tried to look at it were forced to turn away. Jerusalem and the temple seemed in the distance like a mountain covered in snow, for any part not covered in gold was dazzling white.” The combination of the temple mount, the platform of huge retaining stones, and the large building of the temple itself raised the temple complex to a height that could be seen from miles away, and in bright sunlight, it shone like a luminous city come down from heaven. This was the House of God – this was, in the minds of many, the center of the world. This was the very presence of God with God’s people, the ancient promise rendered in stone. It was holy ground, a sanctuary where rituals of atonement and purification along with festivals of liberation and thanksgiving sustained a people seeking to live faithfully with their God. The temple was an essential institution of Jewish life.

Jesus had come to the temple every day since he came to Jerusalem, and tensions between him and the temple leadership had been growing. Now he and the disciples are leaving, and one of them says, perhaps with his fingers tracing the seam between two of the colossal blocks, “Look, teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” He is dazzled, but he doesn’t see what Jesus sees. I wonder if he actually saw what Jesus wanted us to see just moments ago when he drew our attention to the poor widow putting her last little coin in the temple treasury – if this disciple saw her, she didn’t leave a lasting impression; not like the massive walls. “Not one stone will be left here upon another,” Jesus tells the stunned disciple. “All will be thrown down.” Nothing suggests he meant it as a threat; just a simple announcement. The words sound very matter-of-fact, spoken in passing. The beauty would fade, the majesty fall, the power crumble and collapse.

In the next scene, Jesus and four of the disciples are sitting on the Mount of Olives with its spectacular view of the Temple Mount, and they ask him some follow-up questions about all will be thrown down. They’re not curious as to why or how, only when this would be — as though the why were a given and the how irrelevant, and everything now was just a matter of time. In the apocalyptic imagination, the announcement that “not one stone will be left here upon another” is a given — the burning question is, when will the present age crumble under the weight of evil and give way to the kingdom of God? When will this be and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?

The Gospel of Mark was composed and first heard in a time of great uncertainty. In the 60’s of the first century, the weight of Roman occupation of Judea became too much to bear. Mob violence was disrupting life in Jerusalem. Assassins attacked and murdered people, including one high priest, in broad daylight, and kidnapped officials who collaborated with Rome. Gangs of roaming robbers burned and looted villages.[1] Prophets delivered oracles of doom, and daily the news seemed to confirm their words. Jerusalem was a tinderbox in those tumultuous years, with revolutionary sentiments mounting and finally catapulting Judea into open rebellion against Rome. “Deceivers and impostors, under the pretense of divine inspiration, fostering revolutionary changes,” wrote the historian Josephus, “they persuaded the masses to act like madmen and led them out into the desert in the belief that God would give them signs of deliverance.”[2] Insurgents took control of the city, but not for long. Roman troops under the command of Titus laid siege to Jerusalem, and in the summer of the year 70, the city fell and the temple was destroyed — only seven years after construction had finally been completed.

The Gospel of Mark was composed and first heard in a time of wars and rumors of wars. There were Christian prophets whose words were honored by the assemblies of believers as the words of the risen Lord, and some of those prophets were certain that the catastrophic events unfolding in Jerusalem could only mean that the return of Jesus in power and glory was imminent.

In Mark’s community, however, the words of the living Lord were words of caution and encouragement. “Beware that no one leads you astray.” To the prophets, teachers, and preachers of Mark’s community, the bewilderment, the desolation, and the chaos so many of us are experiencing — Simon Dein calls it the “paralyzing anxiety that the world is dissolving”[3] — was familiar territory. It’s from those depths that they proclaim to us a message of resilient hope. Beware that no one leads you astray, says the Lord. Beware that no one leads you astray, when truth is shaken, when nations make war and people flee in terror, when the silent tsunami of famine inundates the devastated land, when impostors preach alluring sermons of fear, resentment, and weaponized grievance. Don’t despair. Beware. Resist the pull of cynicism. Cultivate hope. Cultivate wonder. Cultivate gratitude. Practice faithful commitment. Be alert. Stay awake. Laugh. Live the love that is the way of Jesus.

Adrienne Maree Brown wrote in 2016, under the Black Lives Matter hashtag, “Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.”[4] A few years later, in the summer of 2022, she wrote,

I have to revise that. Things are getting worse for most of us, between mass shootings, climate catastrophe, regressive sociopolitical battles and an ongoing global pandemic. It’s an overwhelming, terrifying and grief-stricken time.

After naming several of the losses we haven’t had the time or the emotional capacity to fully process, she adds,

This palpable, active, ongoing grief is a non-negotiable part of this period of immense change. Grief is one of the most beautiful and difficult ways we love. As we grieve we feel our humanity and connection to each other.[5]

We are people called to live the love that is the way of Jesus, and this grief settling into our bones is part of it. We are called to lean forward into the promise of a world redeemed by the love of God.

“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars,” Jesus says, “do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.” And then he speaks of birth pangs. For many of us it does feel like the end of the world when every day just seems to add layer upon layer of loss. Some of it is disillusionment, which is painful, but it frees us to see with greater clarity and live more honestly and truthfully — and certainly disillusionment is the kind of loss most of us would welcome as we hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.

But Jesus speaks to the whole messy experience of losses piling up and weighing us down — the tears, the worries, the bad dreams and the sleepless nights, the knot in the stomach, the shoulders that feel like they’ll never relax again. He sees our reality and he knows it; knows it and bears it. And he speaks of labor pains. He tells us that the world is in labor, and the suffering of creation will be healed and fulfilled in the joy of birth.

How long is this labor, we ask, of course we ask, how long must we wait? When will we laugh with tears in our eyes and cry no more?

He doesn’t know when. What he does know is that something is struggling to be born, and he calls us to lean into the promise, and breathe through the pain, and follow him on the way.

The English historian Eric Hobsbawm, born in 1917, grew up in Vienna and, after the death of his parents, with an aunt in Berlin. Berlin was not a good place to live for a Jewish teenager in those years. He was fifteen years old when one day in January 1933, as he was walking his little sister home from school, he saw the headline at a newsstand, “Adolph Hitler Appointed Chancellor of Germany.” Reflecting on those years Hobsbawm later wrote,

We were on the Titanic, and everyone knew it was hitting the iceberg. … It is difficult for those who have not experienced the ‘Age of Catastrophe’ of the twentieth century in central Europe to see what it meant to live in a world that was simply not expected to last, in something that could not really even be described as a world, but merely as a provisional waystation between a dead past and a future not yet born.[6]

Now it’s our turn to live in something that cannot really even be described as a world; it’s our turn to live in this in-between time, so hard to describe, so difficult to understand, so exhausting to navigate. Yet amid all the endings pointing to a non-world ruled by autocrats, something is struggling to be born, Jesus assures us: a world where God and creation are at home.

We believe that the Spirit of God is at work among us, unresting, unhasting, breathing with us through the pain, building a new temple, one that isn’t modeled on imperial architecture, but a living temple where God is at home in the world. A temple that isn’t overwhelming in its heavy, gold-plated magnitude, but one that shines with the glory of God. A temple made entirely of human beings who are fully alive and are finally one with the love that made us.[7]

[1] See Josephus, Jewish War, 2.254-56; Antiquities 20.185-88; 208-10

[2] Josephus, Jewish War, 2.258

[3] Cited by Amanda Brobst-Renaud https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-33-2/commentary-on-mark-131-8-5

[4] https://www.instagram.com/adriennemareebrown/p/BHqlZ57jbBT/

[5] https://adriennemareebrown.net/2022/06/07/an-emergent-strategy-response-to-mass-shootings/

[6] Tony Judt, Reappraisals: Reflections on the forgotten twentieth century (New York: Penguin, 2008), 117.

[7] My thanks to Debie Thomas whose writing and voice continue to help me say what I believe needs to be said, especially https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2010-not-one-stone

Two widows

Thomas Kleinert

Two widows. One of them we know as the widow of Zarephath. Jesus talked about her when, early in his ministry, he preached a sermon at the synagogue at home in Nazareth.

“There were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a severe famine over all the land, yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.” And when they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage, and they were ready to kill him.[1]

It’s a kind of jealousy we’re familiar with. We gotta take care of our own first, we say, sometimes quite emphatically. And when we’re filled with rage, we have a hard time remaining receptive to others, or at least curious about them. Most of us today aren’t filled with rage, though. Talking with folks over the past few days, I heard of disappointment and bewilderment, and there’s been considerable numbness and worry, but not much rage. So perhaps we can be receptive to the nameless widow from the other side and her gifts.

Elijah the Tishbite, the man of God, is introduced in the first book of Kings, chapter 17. He steps on the scene during the reign of King Ahab of Samaria, a king infamous for exploring other options than the Lord God as divine guarantors of the land’s fertility and hence the king’s power. Ahab had married a Sidonian princess, Jezebel, and in the book of Kings she is blamed for the fact that Ahab abandoned the worship of the Lord God of Israel and instead erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal which he built in Samaria. We’re presented with a mighty clash of theopolitical systems: Who gives life to people, Baal or the Lord?

Elijah stepped on the scene and told Ahab, “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” And that was the beginning of the long drought. After a while, the Lord told Elijah, “Go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon (you know, Jezebel’s home town) and live there; for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” When Elijah came to the gate of the town, he saw her. She and her son were one meal away from starvation, and she was gathering some wood so she could prepare their last supper. She also saw him, the stranger who asked her for a drink and something to eat. She gave him a drink of water and she told him times were hard, recalling for him how little meal was left in the jar, and how little oil in the jug. And the stranger said to her, “Do not be afraid. Make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son.”

Why say, Do not be afraid? Why would she be afraid? Ashamed perhaps for not being able to show proper hospitality to the stranger. Or heart-broken, knowing that there would be no more food the next day for her child, or the stranger, or herself. “Do not be afraid,” said the stranger. “I have a word from the Lord God of Israel: The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.”

“Do not be afraid to trust the promise of the Lord God,” is what he was saying, inviting her — the Sidonian widow who had so little food left, and yet she had more than he did — inviting her to trust and share. And she did. She went and prepared three little cakes — and for as long as the drought continued in Israel, the story goes, the jar of meal in this widow’s household was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail.

We can hear this story as a colorful affirmation of the Lord God of Israel as the true life-giver, a story told with great delight in the villages of Israel while Ahab and Jezebel in the capital were pushing hard to remake the realm with Baal as the source of their power. We can hear this story as the first round in the clash between the prophet and the king, and the prophet didn’t just win, he scored a major victory on the opposing team’s home field in Sidon. What easily gets lost, though, in this triumphant take on the story, is the unnamed foreign widow who showed hospitality to the stranger from Israel, and whose trust in the promise of the Lord God unlocked blessings beyond anything our drought stricken minds can imagine.

I’m not starving for lack of food, there’s plenty for most of us in this country, thank God. I hunger for understanding, I thirst for truth and a renewed sense of community, and what I’m craving more than anything is the spark of courage the widow of Zarephath showed — whether she struck that spark herself or whether it simply came to her in the encounter. She’s the one who unlocked blessing for the stranger and her child and every guest who would come knocking on her door during the drought years. She’s the one who inspires me to trust the promise of God.

Now Jesus draws our attention to the other widow. We don’t know her name either. Had they had an annual temple report listing the names of major donors, hers wouldn’t have been in it.

“Beware of the scribes,” Jesus taught the crowd. He didn’t mean the scribes in general, but the ones who liked to walk around in long robes. The ones who liked to be seen, strutting around like peacocks spreading their tails, craving attention and seats of honor. The ones who never tired of reciting long, elaborate prayers so all would see and hear and recognize them — the ones who, famous for their piety, were nevertheless capable of devouring widows’ homes and livelihoods.

Ostentatious piety was one thing, but exploiting widows was a serious charge. Scribes enjoyed great respect as teachers of the Torah, and caring for widows, orphans, and strangers was known to be a central concern of God’s commandments. The law was clear:

You shall not abuse any widow or orphan. You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge.[2]

The prophets were equally clear, and the Psalms also reflected that sacred commitment to caring for the most vulnerable people by declaring,

The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.[3]

Jesus was teaching in the temple, at the heart of an institution established to the glory of God and for the flourishing of God’s people, but one that was used and abused for the worst of very human ends: vanity, self-promotion, and exploitation.

Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. Nobody was paying attention to the poor widow who put in two small copper coins. Compared to the gifts of the rich, is was like nothing, like a penny in the parking lot nobody bothers to even pick up. To her, it was everything.

Nobody was paying attention to her, but Jesus points her out to us. He notices her because his eyes, as Debie Thomas put it, “are ever on the small, the insignificant, the hidden.”[4] Jesus wants us to see what he sees, be attentive to what he notices.

“Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

So much attention for those who gave much, so little for her who gave everything. Everything. Are we supposed to cheer or weep? Jesus doesn’t applaud or commend her, nor does he tell us to go and do likewise. All he does is describe the scene. And there’s no hint in the text to let us know if he speaks with joy in his voice about this woman’s act of complete devotion to God, or if he speaks with anger because he is witnessing how a corrupt institution that is supposed to glorify the God who upholds the orphan and the widow, takes a poor widow’s last coin like some shameless TV preacher.

The day after Jesus and the disciples had come to Jerusalem, he entered the temple and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the stalls of those who sold doves. For a moment, he practically shut down the entire temple operation. “Is it not written,” he shouted, quoting Isaiah and Jeremiah“‘my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”[5]

When the poor widow left the temple, Jesus left it as well. One of the disciples, awed by the magnificent architecture, pointed out some of the details, inviting Jesus to admire them with him. Jesus’ response was quick and short: “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”[6] He had just watched a poor woman give her all to an indefensible institution, one whose leaders refused to honor God by protecting the poor. No edifice steeped in such injustice will stand.[7]

Tossing her last coin into the temple treasury that day may not have been an act of devotion at all, but of judgment. An act of prophetic judgment against leaders who would take her last coin, but not see her, not recognize her dignity as a member of God’s household.

So much is uncertain as we try to imagine the months and years ahead. But trusting the promise of God, and letting ourselves be made into God’s dwelling place on earth together, we can assure each other that numbness will again give way to loving attention and sparks of courage, and no structure steeped in injustice will stand.

[1] Luke 4:25-28

[2] See Exodus 22:22 and Deuteronomy 24:17

[3] Psalm 146:9

[4] Debie Thomas https://www.journeywithjesus.net/theeighthday/446-the-widowed-prophet

[5] Mark 11:15-17

[6] Mark 13:1-2

[7] Debie Thomas, see note 4.

The world at home

Thomas Kleinert

I have seen beauty to make my heart sing. I have seen it along the river, in the woods, by the side of the road and even in the parking lot at Target. I have seen hornbeams and maples with their crowns on fire, blazing red, yellow and gold against the bluest blue of the October sky. I have walked, driven and paddled in this beauty, and I have wished I could fly in its glory like a dancing sparrow, singing my thank yous.

But unfailingly, a heavy reluctance takes hold of me. More sudden, heavy, deadly flooding, this time in Spain. War in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, and Sudan, no end in sight. And the grave uncertainty what kind of country this will be after this week. I often think about the German writer and verse smith Bert Brecht who fled in 1933 when the Nazis set fire to the Reichstag, the German parliament, and accused the communists of arson. Brecht wrote in 1939, in exile in Denmark,

Truly, I live in dark times!
An artless word is foolish. A smooth forehead
Points to insensitivity. He who laughs
Has not yet received
The terrible news.

What times are these, in which
A conversation about trees is almost a crime
For in doing so we maintain our silence about so much wrongdoing![1]

How can you talk about trees on November 3, 2024, I ask myself — and a couple of breaths later I ask, “How can I not speak of the glory of trees, when ugliness, violence, grief and foreboding are creeping in from all sides? How can I not sing of the beauty and wisdom of God’s creation when chaos is seeping up from the ground?” I’m grateful I’m not alone in resisting the pull of despair. I’m grateful for voices affirming the faithfulness of God in dark times.

“In broad sweep, the story told in the book of Isaiah is the long account of Israel’s life in the midst of a demanding sequence of imperial powers,” Walter Brueggemann writes, a sequence stretching from the 8th to the 4th century B.C.E. First the Assyrian Empire, then the Babylonian Empire, and eventually the Persian Empire. But Isaiah has no interest in telling the story of the rise and fall of empires. Isaiah draws our attention to what we might not see at first glance: how, amid the whirl of history, perceived and redescribed in the prophet’s heart and mind, the purposes of God unfold. In the prophet’s vision, any human decision – whether by Judean kings or by imperial overlords or by any other powerful figures – is always penultimate. What is ultimate is the holy resolve and the capacity of God to do something utterly new. God is the creator of heaven and earth, and God is faithful.

At the center of God’s faithful attentiveness, according to Isaiah, is a city. Jerusalem is the seat of the world’s best hope for well-being, and the site of the most profound disobedience and recalcitrance. And so Jerusalem is the recipient of God’s judgment and of God’s renewing comfort and mercy.[2] In the prophet’s vision all of heaven and earth can be and will be undone, except Jerusalem. The moon will be abashed and the sun ashamed, but the Lord of hosts will reign on Mount Zion.[3] And on this mountain the Lord of hosts will make a great feast for all peoples.

And the Lord will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the covering that is spread over all nations; the Lord will swallow up death forever.

I am powerfully drawn to this image of God consuming and thus eliminating for good the deathly shroud cast over all peoples. More than anytime before I am drawn to it in this season when ugliness, violence, grief and foreboding are creeping in from all sides. It does feel like a pall to me, like a dark, chilling blanket, smothering life and joy and hope. It is Death with a capital D. Death that doesn’t make room for new life, but only moves to counter and cancel and prevent fullness of life, leaving nothing but absence in its wake. And Isaiah declares, and the way I hear these words, he sings and shouts them, “The Lord will swallow up death forever.” Anything that wants to bring creation to a standstill, anything that wants to unleash chaos and formless void, anything that wants to swallow life, will be swallowed up by God the creator of heaven and earth. It’s not just the actions of those who hold imperial power that are penultimate; anything that keeps life from flourishing is penultimate. What is ultimate are the purposes of God. What is ultimate is the mountain feast for all peoples. What is ultimate is their joy, our joy, in God’s salvation.

John, of course, knew that tune very well. He was a Christian leader, banned by order of Rome, yet another empire, to the island of Patmos. Jerusalem was gone. The Romans, tired of the protests and revolts in the volatile province of Judaea, had destroyed the city and demolished the temple — a pile of rubble was all that was left. They had finally succeeded in bringing peace to the troubled region, their variety of peace, that is, PAX ROMANA. To those peacemakers, followers of Jesus were suspect, because of their reluctance or outright refusal to honor the gods of the empire. Violent persecution of the church wasn’t the norm, but many Christian leaders were being executed or imprisoned, or, as in John’s case, banned.

He found himself far from home, a prisoner on the small island of Patmos, off the coast of Turkey, in the Aegean Sea. The world around him was falling to pieces, and he knew that in the cities of Asia Minor, arrests and executions were continuing. His friends were losing hope. Roman imperial culture made demands on them that turned their acts of faithfulness to the risen Lord into acts of rebellion. How could they possibly acclaim the emperor as “Lord and Son of God” when they had come to know Jesus as Lord? How could they praise the emperor as “Savior of the World” when that honor belonged to God alone?

John wrote them a pastoral letter to tell them what he saw amid the whirl of violent tensions, oppression, and immobilizing fear. Much like the prophets whose imagery and language shaped his own, John looked beyond the horizon defined by Rome’s imperial reach, and he saw a city coming down out of heaven from God. He saw a city for all peoples, a city of peace.

Biblical scholar John Barton has noted, that “apocalyptic poetry and historical prose are usually not commensurate. When Scripture says, ‘The stars will fall from heaven and the sun will cease its shining; the moon will be turned to blood and fire mingled with hail will fall from the heavens,’ we don’t expect the next phrase to be ‘the rest of the country will be partly cloudy with scattered showers.’”[4] When John speaks of the holy city descending from heaven, we don’t expect the next paragraph to give us GPS coordinates or driving directions. We are given a vision of life when all that is penultimate is past. The deathly powers that have kept life from flourishing are no more: injustice and oppression are gone, terror and fear have passed away, death has been swallowed up.

John reminds his first hearers, that even Rome’s considerable power will not be able to stand against the purposes of God. And he reminds us that no project of ultimate domination will ever prevent the coming of God’s reign.

Our hope is not for the solitary bliss of some home-delivery paradise, or for acceptance to a small, exclusive club of the faithful few, or however insular we might imagine fullness of life in this culture steeped in individualism. The church of the saints hopes for an inclusive city for all peoples where God is at home.

During exile in Babylon, the prophet Ezekiel had spoken of the new Jerusalem. He declared that the name of the city would be, The Lord is There.[5] “My dwelling place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”[6] John picks up the ancient theme, but the vision is no longer for a single people, but for a community of peoples: “He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.” The ultimate future is not one tribe’s final triumph over all the others. Nor is it the fulfillment of any nation’s or any individual’s imperial aspirations — the ultimate horizon of the world’s hope, according to John, is a city for all peoples, where God is at home; a city where death is no more, where mourning, crying, and pain are no more — because the old order has passed away. And the one seated on the throne says, “See, I am making all things new.”

What are we to do with such a vision? Neither Isaiah nor John offer us a program for realizing these ancient hopes. But they offer us their inspired attempts to imagine all things made new, hoping that we too might yield in our present, as they did in theirs, “to the assurances given for God’s future,”[7] and that we might seek this peace and pursue it with our every breath, thought, word, and deed. What we do with such a vision, is lean into it. We let it shape our own inspired attempts at faithful living in response to God’s life-giving and hope-sustaining work.

The late William Stringfellow described saints as “those men and women who relish the event of life as a gift and who realize that the only way to honor such a gift is to give it away” — much like the trees that, just when we think they have given all they can give over a long, hot summer, give themselves to shorter days and longer nights — and to us — with such glorious beauty.[8]

Keep alert; stand firm in the faith; be courageous.[9] Our God is faithful.

[1] An die Nachgeborenen, translated by Scott Horton https://harpers.org/2008/01/brecht-to-those-who-follow-in-our-wake/

[2] See Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 1-39, WBC, 1998, 1-2.

[3] Isaiah 24:21-23

[4] Cited in Thomas G. Long, “Imagine There’s No Heaven: The Loss of Eschatology in American Preaching,” Journal for Preachers, Vol. XXX, No. 1, Advent 2006, 23.

[5] Ezekiel 48:35

[6] Ezekiel 37:27

[7] Brueggemann, 200.

[8] For the Stringfellow quote see F. Dean Lueking, “Saints in the Making,” The Christian Century, October 21, 1998, 965. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2012-03/saints-making

[9] 1 Corinthians 16:13

Seeing all

Thomas Kleinert

I Watched It All On My Radio is a song co-written by Don Schlitz and Lionel Cartwright. I didn’t hear it when it was released in 1990; I heard Don sing it one night, downstairs in Fellowship Hall, about the boy who hid a six transistor under his pillow.

When the lights went out and no one could see

Over the airwaves, the world came to me.

It’s a lovely song about the magic of radio, about a boy who went through the stations at night ‘til he found a game, about the sluggers hitting homers and the pitchers throwing smoke:

At the crack of the bat, I knew how far it’d go

And I watched it all on my radio

I loved that song the moment I first heard it: I could see the boy sitting up under the covers of his bed, with the world coming to him so vividly, he watched ballgames and Opry shows from his seat on the very front row.[1]

All the Light We Cannot See isn’t a song; it’ a story about a French girl, Marie-Laure, and a German boy, Werner, whose paths converge during the Second World War in Saint Malo on the coast of Normandie. It’s a story about a cursed diamond, about children growing up during the years of Nazi rule, about fear, and bombs, and kindness, and it’s about the radio and its use as both an instrument of oppression and liberation. When the author, Anthony Doerr was asked what the title, All the Light We Cannot See meant, he said

It’s a reference first and foremost to all the light we literally cannot see: that is, the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that are beyond the ability of human eyes to detect (radio waves, of course, being the most relevant). It’s also a metaphorical suggestion that there are countless invisible stories still buried within the Second World War — that stories of ordinary children, for example, are a kind of light we do not typically see. Ultimately, the title is intended as a suggestion that we spend too much time focused on only a small slice of the spectrum of possibility.[2]

I watched tv as a kid, but I wouldn’t say I grew up with it. I grew up with radio, and I loved it, still do. And I know I’m biased, but some things are better seen on the radio than on any kind of screen. Hearing the story, say of Moses on Mount Sinai, stirs the imagination and allows you to build a world around the words. But once you’ve seen Charlton Heston with the tablets, it’s hard to see anything else when the story is told; it’s like your imagination has been colonized. I’m glad I haven’t seen Bartimaeus, the movie.

Seeing and not seeing, visibility and invisibility are important themes in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus steps on the scene, declaring, “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”[3] He calls disciples, he heals, he teaches, and he feeds people with his words and with bread. The disciples see it all unfold, they watch, they participate, but they are slow to grasp what they are observing. “Do you have eyes, and fail to see?” Jesus says to them at one point; you can hear the frustration in his voice.[4]

The journey continues. Jesus turns south, following the old road that leads to Jerusalem. In Bethsaida, people bring a blind man to him and beg him to touch him. Mark writes, “Jesus laid his hands on his eyes … and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.”[5] The disciples are slow to understand who Jesus is, and what discipleship is about, and I wonder why Jesus can’t just lay his hands on them, or on us, for that matter, until we see “everything clearly.”

Instead, he continues to Jerusalem and we follow on the way. And he continues to teach about the power of faith and the demands of discipleship; he talks to us about serving one another and being attentive to little ones – but much of the time we find ourselves slipping and stumbling, hardly what we’d call “following.” Remember last week? “What is it you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked James and John, and they responded, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”[6] Jesus speaks of servanthood and loving self-denial, but we dream of greatness, power and privilege.

Now the journey takes us to Jericho, down in the Jordan valley. This is the last stop for travelers and pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem. From here on, it’s uphill all the way. And there, sitting by the roadside, is Bartimaeus, calling out to passersby to have mercy and toss him a coin or two. It’s a pretty good spot, especially before Passover when many pilgrims come to Jerusalem for the holidays. One day around Passover can make up for weeks when most people simply ignore him, when travelers, farmers, and merchants come and go, too busy to pay attention to a beggar.

Every day, he sits by the roadside just outside the city gate, clutching his cloak. By day, he spreads it out in his lap to catch the coins that people toss his way and by night that same cloak is his bed and blanket.

When Bartimaeus hears that Jesus of Nazareth is in the crowd coming up the road, he starts shouting, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many in the crowd, including some of us who should know better, tell him to hush and be quiet: Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, he’s an important man on such an important mission, and he mustn’t be distracted. Children and beggars need to stay quiet and invisible. But Bartimaeus cries out even more loudly, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

You know, nobody has called him that yet, Son of David. It’s a royal title charged with expectation. It appears the blind man can see and name what no one else so far could, except for Peter who called Jesus Messiah, and he didn’t know what he was saying.[7]

Jesus stops and says, “Call him here.” You know he could have just walked over to the side of the road, but he wants us to be involved in this moment, he wants us to be participants, not merely onlookers. Some of us turn to Bartimaeus and call him, saying, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” You notice, don’t you, when they say ‘take heart; get up’ they sound almost like Jesus himself. There’s kindness in their voices, compassion and encouragement, and not a trace of condescension.

And now watch this scene very closely: This blind man who has already shown that he sees more clearly than many of us who have 20/20 vision, this blind man, throwing off his cloak, jumps up and comes to Jesus. You see that cloak? It’s about the same color as the dirt by the side of the road, isn’t it? You notice the patches, and the holes? You wonder why Mark would tell us that detail, don’t you? Why draw our attention to Bartimaeus throwing off his cloak?

When Jesus called Peter, James and John, they left their nets. They were fishermen. When Jesus called Levi, he left his toll station. He was a tax collector. When Jesus called the rich man who had kept every commandment since his youth, the man walked away grieving. The fisherman has nets. The farmer has a plow. The carpenter has an ax and chisel. The rich man has a good-size house, closets full of clothes for all seasons and occasions, a bed with a soft mattress and silky covers. The beggar has his cloak. This old cloak is all he has – it’s his coat, his coin catcher, his shelter, his bed. Bartimaeus does what the rich man found himself unable to do. He throws off what has defined him up to this moment of calling. He sheds his comfort and security, he drops what he owns, he leaves everything and comes to Jesus. And Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” — which is exactly the same question he asked James and John. And Bartimaeus asks for his vision to be restored. Bartimaeus wants to see not just a small slice, but the full spectrum of possibility of life. He wants to see the full spectrum of spiritual, social, and material realities made possible when God reigns. That’s why he insisted loudly, against all who wished to silence him, and persistently, against all who wished he’d just stop: he insisted that this fullness of vision, this full depth of life is what Jesus came to open for us. All the light we cannot see.

Sometimes I hear the story of Bartimaeus and it calls me not to close my eyes to the ones sitting by the side of the road, the ones outside the city gates, marginalized, overlooked, rendered invisible. The story calls me to see them, and to turn to them and say, “Take heart; get up; he’s calling you; he’s calling us.”

And sometimes I hear the story of Bartimaeus and it invites me to see myself sitting by the side of the road, clutching my cloak, a blind beggar holding on to his familiar life with all the strength left in him, whispering, “Lord, have mercy.” And Bartimaeus says to me, “Take heart; get up; he hears our cries for mercy; he’s calling you; he’s calling us.”

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asks.

“I want to see all that you want to show me, all of it. I want to see this wounded world through your eyes, and I want to be part of healing it. I want to be with you on the way. I want to see you.”

[1] https://open.spotify.com/track/0grUMpXBnOHYnXem4NlcX8?si=b5c744100ace4e28

[2] https://www.anthonydoerr.com/all-the-light-we-cannot-see

[3] Mark 1:14f

[4] Mark 8:18

[5] Mark 8:25

[6] Mark 10:36

[7] Mark 8:29

Kingdom Activity

Margie Quinn

This morning, we get another round of what I’d like to call the “Hard Words from Jesus.” We’ve heard about divorce and about tearing out our eyes or cutting off our limbs if we are tempted to sin, but now… we get what might be one of the hardest things Jesus says. Because there’s really no way around it. 

So, let’s get into it. There is a young man, a certain ruler, who kneels before Jesus. That’s a good start, right? He shows humility toward Jesus, the Son of God. He then addresses Jesus as “Good Teacher.” “Good Teacher,” he says with reverence, “what do I have to do to be saved, to inherit eternal life?” He goes on, “I have followed the law, obeyed the commandments, and have been a good student. I haven’t stolen anything or cheated on my spouse, I have honored my parents, I haven’t murdered or committed fraud.” And Jesus, looking at him, seeing him, and loving him, answers: “You lack one thing. Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. THEN, come follow me.” 

In this moment, Jesus requires an action that is even more extreme than the commandments our ruler had so obediently followed. 

A lot of preachers and scholars have tried to explain this passage away, wanting to leave their listeners feeling heartened, but I don’t think Jesus minces words in the gospel of Mark. He says what he says. 

And when the young ruler hears what Jesus has to say, he is shocked and goes away grieving, “for he had many possessions.” 

After the young guy leaves, Jesus starts talking to the disciples, who are probably scratching their heads as they often are, and says, “It’s gonna be really hard for those with wealth to enter the kingdom of God.” Notice here: he doesn’t say, “It’s gonna be hard for someone with wealth to inherit eternal life.” He is not thinking about the then and there. He’s thinking about the here and now. He says it two more times: “It’s gonna be hard to enter the kingdom of God, y’all. It’s gonna be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Jesus makes his point three times because sometimes we don’t want to hear it the first time, or even the second time. He makes his point clear: I’m not talking about the future, I’m talking about the present, real, kingdom of God, which is near, as scripture tells us, and it is happening all around us. 

This is a tough one for the disciples to grasp, so they ask Jesus the same kind of question that the rich man did, “Okay then who can be saved?” 

“It’s impossible for you to be saved on your own,” Jesus responds, “You’ve got to rely on God to help you with that.” Peter gives him a little back-talk. “Look, we have left everything behind and followed you.” “Nice work,” Jesus reassures him, “because if you follow me, you know better than anyone that the first are gonna be last, and the last first.” 

According to this story, I am delivering the bad news this morning: It’s gonna be pretty hard for those of us with wealth to participate in and stay near to the kingdom of God at work around us. 

But let me be clear: I don’t think this story is intended to guilt-trip those of us who are economically or materially privileged. I don’t think Jesus is calling the young ruler evil. We aren’t evil for having economic privilege. This isn’t a story about hating the rich. In fact, this is the only time in the gospel of Mark where someone is being singled out as being loved by Jesus. And as someone deeply seen and loved by Jesus, Jesus trusts him enough to tell him some hard news; some news that, if taken seriously, will transform this man’s character, his relationships, and his life. 

I want to tell you a story. When I lived in Seattle after college, working in policy advocacy for affordable housing, I met a man named Rex Hohlebin. Rex was an architect in Seattle who designed million-dollar homes. His office looked out onto a popular walking and biking path in the city. There were several benches along the path for people to sit and rest. Rex biked down this path every day on his way to work, zooming past countless women and men sleeping outside and on benches lining the path. One day, Rex saw a man sleeping on a bench and, for whatever reason that day, got off of his bike and just said hello. The man’s name was Chiaka. He was a prolific painter who had severe mental health issues and had been living outside for a long time. Rex talked with him for a while and, to Rex’s surprise, asked if Chiaka wanted to come into his office for a cup of tea. An hour later, Chiaka did just that. They sat for a while, swapping stories. It was one of the most meaningful conversations that Rex had ever had, he told me. Then, Rex asked something else that surprised him, “Would you like to sleep in the shed next to my office?” This began a friendship between Rex and Chiaka, who started sharing more and more cups of tea together. 

Rex quickly realized that he wanted to share and sell Chiaka’s paintings. He began taking pictures of these paintings and sharing them on Facebook. Very quickly, people started buying Chiaka’s art. And very quickly, some people living on the street heard about this architect who let people use his bathroom and sit in a warm office for a while. Rex’s architecture projects started falling by the wayside as he sat with people, listening to their stories. He began taking photographs of people and sharing their needs, whether for a pair of boots or a sleeping bag, on a new Facebook page he named, “Homeless in Seattle.”

I met and started working for Rex around the time that the Facebook page took off. He decided to ditch his architecture practice and start a non-profit out of a Methodist church called “Facing Homelessness.” Rex would meet people living outside, take their picture and post their needs. Then, people all over the city–girl scouts and businessmen and church ladies and families–would bring in those items, sometimes interfacing with the very person or people in the picture. In my time working with Rex, every single need he posted was met. 

Rex walked away from designing million-dollar homes to pursue a life in relationship with people who didn’t have homes. Rex didn’t give away everything he owned, but his life and the relationships in it were immediately transformed when he just said hello. Rex was a stand-up guy before he met Chiaka. He was a law-abiding citizen, just like the young ruler. Something in Rex moved him to look beyond the money he made and see the person sitting right outside of his office. 

We have been lied to, church. We have been told that our success in this life is not measured by what we give away, but by what we own, what we accumulate. The goal as I see it, is the older we get, the more we should acquire, gain and even hoard. And that lie is not just coming from one political party that a lot of us see as the enemy, though it’s easy to point fingers. No, all of us fall prey to this myth of meritocracy. 

In 2024, I have been encouraged by the more frequent conversations we are having about race, gender and sexuality. But, I am convinced that we still don’t know how to talk about money. We don’t know how to talk about it, because we don’t want to address it. It is, perhaps, the greatest systemic sin in our country and world: the belief that we have a right to our wealth. And yet, in one of the hardest passages in scripture, in which a very earnest young man kneels at the feet of Jesus, exclaiming that he has followed the law, Jesus requires him to perform an action that we later learn leaves him shocked and grieving. 

Church, if the gospel isn’t making us feel shocked and grieving, if it isn’t challenging us to take a good hard look at our wealth, then we are not listening to the words of Jesus. We are not hearing the good news, which is always a little bit of bad news for those of us who find ourselves on the more comfy side of things. Because, and I think all of us know this deep down, the more we have, the harder it is to give. 

This passage actually gives me hope at the same time that it challenges me. It gives me hope that Jesus, in talking about the here and now, is anticipating and dreaming about the kingdom of God, where people share resources, have each other’s backs, want to upend class systems, and take care of each other. It’s a kingdom that wants to call out the lie that we worship Empire, not God. It’s a kingdom that wants us to worry less about being “saved” and more about joining Jesus in what one scholar calls “kingdom activity.” 

Kingdom activity, like an architect in Seattle whose life has been transformed from a simple “hello.” Kingdom activity, like the community grants that we give out to organizations serving the direct needs of the poor. Kingdom activity, like going to Target right after the service to purchase the supplies we need to serve our brothers and sisters who are living unhoused, because of the lack of affordable housing in this city, because of the lack of resources, because of the abuse happening in the homes they had to flee. Kingdom activity, which isn’t just about one-off charity donations, although that’s a great place to start, but a kingdom activity that is about looking our city in the eye, our country in the eye, with love, and seeing it and saying, “we can do better than this.” Kingdom activity, which is desperately trying to free us from captivity, (and yes it is a captivity), of wealth. Kingdom activity, which wants us to believe, really believe, that we are a part of co-creating a new life, in Jesus. 

In Jesus’ kingdom, he promises new life. A life that, if we follow him, calls for a transformation of character. We may walk away from this interaction with Jesus shocked and grieving, but hopefully we also walk away from this interaction feeling seen and loved, too, by a God who loves us enough to say some hard things to us in the hopes that we give up our stuff and follow him. 

May it be so.

Loyal love

Thomas Kleinert

The full Gospel passage for this Sunday includes the scene where “people were bringing little children to Jesus in order that he might touch them.” I suspect it was added in the lectionary to the text we just heard to end on a note of blessing and with images of little children. Perhaps it was added to give the preacher an opening to stay away from divorce and adultery altogether as topics for proclaiming the good news. I’ve successfully avoided them several times over the years. I’ve preached on the passage from Genesis, the Psalm, and the passage from Hebrews, all assigned for this Sunday, and on Jesus loves the little children… You hear those words, and the old Sunday school song starts playing in your head, … all the children of the world… But as soon as you heard the word “divorce” read aloud this morning, chances are what many among you heard playing in your head wasn’t a song from the hundreds of divorce playlists, happy or sad, but scratchy old recordings of condemnation, guilt, and shame, and all over your body, you felt layers of pain flare up.

Chances are there’s not a single person here this morning whose life wasn’t touched by divorce. Perhaps your parents took that step, or a close friend, a sibling, or you yourself. But the fact that divorce is a familiar part of our lived reality doesn’t make it any less painful. And the fact that a divorce is painful doesn’t diminish the truth that often it’s right and necessary. Karoline Lewis writes,

my parents separated when I was a senior in college and divorced a few years later after 27 years of marriage. There is no “good” time for divorce, for the couple, for the children, or for the extended family and friends. But sometimes, more often than we care to admit, there is a “necessary” time. My parents needed to divorce. It’s that simple. They are better people, parents, and grandparents because they are not together.[1]

I wanted you to hear from Karoline, I wanted us to hear at least one female voice, because most of the discussion about adultery and divorce, from before the days of Jesus until not very long ago, was entirely driven by men having debates with men about what’s lawful for men to do.

Some Pharisees asked Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” It says, they asked to test him — it wasn’t much of a test, since divorce was a generally accepted practice, both in Jewish life and in the wider Greco-Roman world. Perhaps they were looking for Jesus to make a righteous but careless comment that would get him in hot water with the Roman authorities, because among the leading families marriage and divorce were common strategic moves. Perhaps they thought Jesus might talk about Herod and Herodias, whose marriage John the Baptizer had denounced as unlawful, and everybody knows how that story ended.[2] Jesus asked them back, “What did Moses command you?” They alluded to Deuteronomy 24:1,

Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house.

Divorce itself was not the issue, the real debate was over what were acceptable grounds for a man to dismiss his wife. The argument was over what to make of the rather vague phrases “she does not please him” or “something objectionable about her.” In the earliest rabbinic discussions, the school of Shammai taught that divorce was permissible only if the husband suspected his wife of adultery. Rabbi Akiva focused on “she does not please him” and he concluded that divorce was allowed if the husband found another woman more attractive. And the school of Hillel argued that the husband could dismiss his wife for burning his dinner.[3] Men having debates with other men about what’s lawful for men to do.

Jesus shows little interest in participating in this discussion. He thoroughly reframes it. Instead of debating the grounds for divorce, Jesus wants us to think about the grounds for marriage. “Because of your hardness of heart Moses wrote this commandment for you,” he says. He dismisses the divorce law as a mere concession to our weakness and he offers a perspective rooted in who we are created to be as human beings.

When God says, “It is not good that the human is alone,” it is the first time in Scripture that something is called not good. We are made for friendship. We are made for community. We are made for loyal love. We are made for communion. Marriage, according to that vision, is not merely a contract between families, clans, or individuals, a legal institution to secure family wealth and legitimate offspring, but an enduring embodiment of the divine intention in our creation as humans. Marriage is the faithful belonging to another person that mirrors God’s faithful belonging to God’s people.

Two persons becoming one flesh — no longer two, but one through a deep spiritual and physical bond, with a shared purpose and life. Two persons becoming one flesh — not by giving up who they are, but by mutually giving themselves, as fully as they can, to the other, seeking a wholeness beyond themselves.

“One flesh” has long been interpreted in sexual terms, since through the act of having children, the husband and wife become “one flesh” in a tangible sense, as their offspring carry their shared physical and genetic heritage. But “one flesh” implies a unity of mutual care and respect, the shared delight of becoming, the deep joy of a relationship where you don’t have to wear the masks you wear in public, where you aren’t constantly in performance mode,  where you can simply be with the other and become what love creates.

“One flesh” has long been interpreted exclusively in binary terms of man and woman, but in many parts of the world, and thankfully in our part of the world, we are finally beginning to see that humans live this call to loyal love husband with husband, wife with wife, spouse with spouse, life-partner with life-partner. Whichever form human “one-flesh-ness” may take, God whose love for God’s people is unbreakable, is the one joining together the two as one. And what God has joined together no human being should separate.

In ancient Jewish understanding, a woman belonged to her father until she belonged to her husband. A man did not belong to his wife. We shouldn’t assume that relationships then were devoid of mutual respect and responsibility, or that there weren’t examples of love and faithfulness, but the culture was deeply patriarchal, and male/female relationships were more than a little lopsided. Most women were completely dependent on belonging to a man’s household for economic security and for respectability in the community. If a married man had an affair with a married woman, the adultery violated the honor and the rights of the other husband — but not the honor or the rights of his own wife. And if his wife had an affair with another man, only his honor and his rights were violated, not the honor or the rights of the other man’s wife.

When the disciples later asked Jesus again about this matter, he said, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” Jesus does two remarkable things here, and I’ll talk about them in a minute.

I remember sitting in my study, many years ago, with a couple wanting to get married; both of them had been married before, and both marriages ended in divorce. She looked at me across the coffee table and asked, “If I get married to him now, am I committing adultery?”

I knew she had been in an abusive relationship, and that she had filed for divorce for her own safety and the safety of their children. “No,” I told her, “you are not committing adultery. Your marriage ceased to be a marriage long before you filed the papers. You didn’t break the sacred bond between you and your husband, he did. His violence and his utter lack of respect put an end to your marriage.” I didn’t do a Bible study with them, we just continued with pre-marital counseling. Had I done a Bible study with them, we would have taken a closer look at the passage from Mark we heard today, and particularly the lines naming divorce and adultery in a single breath. “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”Jesus says nothing about the rejected partner in a divorce and their getting married to another. He seems to be addressing specifically those who leave their partners for others.

Divorce is permissible, because not all marriages become the kind of partnerships we would recognize as “one flesh,” joined together by God. But divorce doesn’t offer a legal loophole to justify adulterous behavior. Jesus’ harsh words address the equally harsh reality of partners initiating divorce as a means to get something else. Jesus challenges anyone, man or woman, who would treat their partner as basically disposable and trade them in for a newer model or for some political or business ambition.

But under the seeming harshness of his words, Jesus also opened the door for women to claim equality as partners in marriage. He challenged his disciples and the whole church to imagine women divorcing their husbands, and to see them no different from men divorcing their wives. And perhaps you didn’t catch it, I certainly didn’t until Matt Skinner pointed it out, “by speaking of a man committing adultery against a woman (and not against her father or her past or present husband), Jesus implies that adultery involves more than violating the property rights of another man. It concerns accountability to a partner.”[4]

In Jesus’ teaching, marriage transcends economic utility and contractual obligations and lopsided dependence sanctioned by law. In his view marriage is a partnership rooted in who we are as humans who are made for loyal love; for community; for friendship; for life in communion. Jesus doesn’t push for stricter laws for divorce or remarriage, although many of his followers have read and heard him that way for generations. What he does is push back against any who would construe marriage as a contract of convenience, casually formed and casually broken. To him, marriage is the sacred promise and the sacred, daily and life-long practice of two people becoming one flesh. With this promise and practice marriage offers a training ground for life in communion and a foretaste of life’s wholeness: life created and restored in the loyal love of God.

[1] Karoline Lewis https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-27-2/commentary-on-mark-102-16

[2] See Mark 6:17-20

[3] See https://www.sefaria.org/English_Explanation_of_Mishnah_Gittin.9.10.1-2?lang=bi and https://steinsaltz.org/daf/gittin90/

[4] Matt Skinner https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-27-2/commentary-on-mark-102-16-2

When We Pray Together, We Stay Together

Margie Quinn

I have been thinking about prayer a lot this week. I’ve been thinking about it as I’ve learned of the five men living on death row who were executed this week. I have been thinking about the continued genocide in Palestine, the billions of dollars our country so sinfully doles out to perpetuate this violence. I have thought about the flooded cities in our region that will start the years-long work of rebuilding houses and restaurants and  the people living outside in those places…where did they go? I’ve thought about Judi Sachs, who is resting at home after experiencing a stroke last week. And of course, I’ve thought about Thomas’s news that he will retire in May. I’ve done a lot of thinking and very little praying. 

In my 33 years spinning around the sun, I have had a complicated relationship with prayer. At times, it has been fervent and ceaseless, a long string of “Help mes” threaded throughout my day, a big list of “Thank yous” as I close my eyes before bed. And at other times, it has been absent, dry. I have told people that I would pray for them and have forgotten. I have been asked to pray publicly and sort of bumbled my way through something possibly reverent. I have even denied the power of prayer.

In those moments, I often turn to those who I think of as saints in my life to offer their wisdom on how to pray. Womanist theologian Renita Weems once wrote that she “prays by the end of her pen.” Queer poet Padraig O’Tuama says that a good place to start with prayer is to say, “Here I am. I am here.” A friend Ruth Fletcher says that prayer is “being exactly who you are before God.” The author Wendell Berry writes that “Prayer is like lying away at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart…It is like standing for a long time on a cold day, knocking at a shut door.” The poet Mary Oliver says that prayer doesn’t have to be fancy; it’s a doorway into thanks and a silence into which another voice may speak.” Anne Lamott says that the only three words you need to pray are “Help,” “Thanks,” and “Wow.” 

But the first prayer I learned wasn’t a personal one, it was in community. It was a song, sung around the dinner table every night as a kid. “Oh the Lord is good to me…;” you know the one. The next prayer I learned was the Lord’s Prayer, which is now so deeply ingrained in me as I’m sure it is in you that I hardly need to think what word comes next when I recite it on Sundays. I once heard of a woman with dementia who still recited the Lord’s prayer, even when she lost her memory. Or the prayer I said every morning in seminary when I lived in intentional community: Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. And then, (and I love this part), we have not loved you with our whole heart, we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. Or the prayer many of us are familiar with at the end of 12 step meetings: “God, grant me the security to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” 

Part of the reason I believe in prayer is not necessarily that it changes what will happen but that it changes me. 

And so I, like James, believe in the power of prayer. And like James, I believe that prayer is important on a personal level, but that it is crucial on a communal level. 

And I believe that James’s words come at the perfect time.

“Are any among you suffering?” he asks. Pray. 

“Are any cheerful?” Sing songs of praise. 

Here we have it. The beginning of a recipe in the midst of so much unknown. The response to life’s grief and joy. Pray. James addresses not just one person but an entire community, offering them an anecdote to their spiritual anemia. Prayer, for James, is not a suggestion but an obligation. 

“His emphasis on prayer,” Mark Douglas notes, “ought to be a sign for us that at least parts of the church have long understood prayer to be both significant and powerful and that prayer uniquely binds human and divine activity together, such that it is difficult to see where one ends and the other begins.” 

Many of you may have a private prayer life. You may pray in your car, in your head before bed, on a walk around your block, while you journal, when you paint, or through song. And of course, Jesus tells us in Matthew that private prayer life is important: he says go into your room and shut the door and pray. But here, in this context, James offers us the other, crucial aspect of prayer. 

This morning, I implore you and me to consider the power of communal prayer. 

I want you to consider our own communal prayer life as a church. We do not pray by accident during worship. We offer an opening prayer, we pray for people in the middle of the service, pray for the offering after we collect it, pray the Lord’s Prayer, and pray before we share communion together. We lift our voices in praise with every hymn, and are sent out with a prayer of sorts as we proclaim once again that Caesar is not Lord, Fear is not Lord, but Jesus Christ is Lord. In the span of one hour, we begin to see that prayer is sprinkled throughout every spiritual practice, connecting one ritual to another. It is as if we are being reminded that before a thing, after a thing, and during a thing, we can always turn to God in prayer. 

Look at what James asks next: 

Are any among you sick? “Call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick and the Lord will raise them up.” 

Did you know that the Elders of our church, Larry, Roger, Linda, Erica, Kathy, Jim, Julia, Rachel, Ed, and Pat, are each assigned your names to pray over? Did you know that after worship, they take communion to those who can’t be here in person? They pray over us prayers of faith, perhaps not saving the sick from maladies and ailments, but saving the sick from loneliness, despair, or isolation. 

In this way, “Prayer for James,” Mark Douglas continues, “is not a private matter, it helps to shape a particular kind of community in which people are committed to each other. The sick call the elders to pray over them. Sinners confess to one another. The cheerful sing. The community that prayers together, stays together.” 

The community that prays together, stays together.

James continues, “Therefore confess your sins to one other, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.” Yeah, I believe in that, too. I believe in sharing the ways in which we have come up short, chosen greed over generosity, chosen selfishness over selflessness, and not loved God or others with our whole hearts. I believe that we don’t need to look up at the ceiling to do that but can look at another member of our community, whose confession will follow in due course. And I believe, like James, that deep healing can come from that, that praying together can indeed be powerful and effective. 

Jesus did not teach one Disciple the Lord’s prayer when they asked, he taught it to all of them. He didn’t say, “My Parent, who art in heaven…give me this daily bread.” No, he said, “Our Parent…give us our daily bread…forgive us our sins”. We chant this together, Sunday after Sunday, as a way of remembering that we do not do faith alone, that we do not do life alone. 

“It is a practice,” Kathy Dawson writes, “in which all ages can participate. Prayer changes relationships and lives. It should be our first practice as a congregation, if we are truly to walk in James’s concept of godly wisdom.” 

We are in a season of change and transition. The hot, thick air is cooling off, loosening its oppressive grip on us, as fall comes around. Our country will see change, in one way or another, in a little over a month. And our beloved minister, Thomas, has announced that the time has come for him to seek mountains, water and trees.

What do we do in such seasons? We pray for those suffering and those who are cheerful. We call for the elders, we confess our crap to one another and we bring the wanderers back home. 
James teaches us that it is not just for ourselves that we pray. We pray for others. We can do this on our own, but the power of prayer is seen most clearly in the praying community of the church, as these concerns are voiced aloud in worship and other gatherings of God’s people. Before church meetings, after church meetings, throughout worship, by a hospital bed, around a dinner table, with a friend, we can always offer prayer.

James has given us our homework for the year. Let’s try, however timidly, to ask, “Can I pray with you?” or even scarier, “Will you pray for me?” 

Happy

Thomas Kleinert

“Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked,” it says in Psalm 1, “or take the path that sinners tread, but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.” Happiness, according to the psalm, is for those who know who to listen to, what path to follow, and what to delight in. It’s not getting what you want that makes you happy, but knowing what to want. 

I don’t remember when I began to know what I wanted. Perhaps none of us do. We all start out little. We all start out needing to be welcomed, held and loved — all of us, no exceptions. In the earliest weeks and months of our life, we don’t know what to want, we just want what we need, and we want it with every cell of our little bodies. And from day one, we begin to learn and know; our world, growing daily in wider and wider circles, shapes our bodies and relationships, our tastes and wills and minds and spirits, our whole and broken selves. 

So here we are, disciples on the way with Jesus, wanting to be formed by his life and teachings, wanting to be part of the fullness of life he calls the kingdom of God. We’re back in Capernaum, the hub of his Galilean ministry. We’re headed to Jerusalem now, where, he’s been telling us, repeatedly, he is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.

You noticed I said “we’re back in Capernaum” and “we’re headed to Jerusalem now.” I say this because we’re not merely readers of the story, but participants in it. I say “we” because we could listen to the words from the Gospel and, shaking our heads in disbelief, declare,

Oh, do his disciples need teaching! The obtuseness of the disciples in Mark’s Gospel is downright comical at the same time that it is deadly serious. In spite of all that they have witnessed and heard from Jesus, they still do not seem to have a clue what his mission is about.

“Perhaps they do not want to understand this confusing message about a Messiah who suffers and dies,” writes Elizabeth Johnson. “Or perhaps they are afraid to reveal their ignorance.” I say “we” to help me and you not point the finger at “them,” but wonder, Why am I afraid to ask him? Is it because I don’t want to appear slow? Is it because I’m thoroughly confused, but I still want to project confidence and make everybody else believe that I have it all together?

Jesus, of course, is not afraid to ask us, “What were you arguing about on the way?” Well, we’ve been with him on the way for a good while, and we know exactly what we’ve been arguing about over the weeks, and years, and generations, and he knows it, too. He asks, not because he doesn’t know, but because he does, and because he wants to give us an opportunity to think about it. We’ve been arguing about who is the greatest.

Three times in the gospel of Mark, Jesus talks about being rejected and betrayed, being handed over and condemned to death, being killed and rising again after three days. Three times, and not just because this is disturbing news that is hard to take in, but because being a disciple of Jesus is so tied up with his particular path of compassionate, self-giving service. We do want to believe that his way is indeed the way of life, fullness of life, but long before we said yes to his call, the world has been shaping us, our bodies and relationships, our whole and broken selves. We’ve been shaped by a world of ambition, competition, and status anxiety, and that’s what we’ve been arguing about, and he knows it.

“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” he tells us. In the world that has shaped us since before we were born, those at the top of the ladder lord it over those at the bottom. But in the world Jesus was sent to inaugurate, heaven and earth touch at the bottom of the ladder where Jesus stoops to wash our feet. The way of Jesus doesn’t lead up the steps of our social rankings to some throne at the top, surrounded by the clouds of heaven. The way of Jesus remains at ground level, and it leads to us, always to us.

We all start out little. We all start out needing to be welcomed and fed, held and loved, all of us, no exceptions. We all need loving folks who see us and call us by name. How much of our drive for what we take to be greatness, do you think, has to do with that deep need to be seen and loved?

Jesus took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

We argue about who is the greatest and Jesus puts a little child among us. Who knew there was a child? Who noticed? We were engaged in important matters, we were making sure our voice would be heard, our opinion registered, and our contribution recognized in its significance. And Jesus puts a little child among us. 

Politicians love being seen interacting with little children; their PR people tell them it makes them more likable among voters. But Jesus doesn’t take a child in his arms to draw attention to himself. He does it to draw our attention to the child. Feel free to paint a picture in your mind, whether it’s a snot-nosed toddler or a wiggly four-year-old who still thinks clothes are optional.

The point is that it could be any child, and that in Mark’s day, children were socially invisible, unimportant. They were closer to servants than to persons endowed with certain rights, and on the status ladder, they were grouped around the bottom. Jesus, of course, does all his work at ground level, and he directs our attention away from our ambitious status pursuits. You want to be great and so you make yourself as big as possible just to be seen and recognized. But in the world of God’s reign you’re not welcomed because you’re great. You are welcomed because you belong; you are loved for who you are. So don’t be afraid to shift your attention. If you want to be great, recognize the ones that are habitually overlooked. Welcome those who are not great by any common measure, and bring them in.

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Welcome, welcome, welcome is woven into this teaching like the holy, holy, holy sung in heaven.

On Thursday I picked up a long-awaited copy of Charlie Strobel’s beautiful memoir, The Kingdom of the Poor, and reading it, I could hear his gentle voice, saying,

I grew up among poor people who were good to one another, good to my family, and good to me. We all helped each other through hard times and celebrated together the good times. I cherished the memory of my father, a man of modest means who nonetheless considered himself rich in all the ways that truly mattered. I watched my mother stretch her small salary to the limit to make sure we had food, clothes and shelter, yet she was so happy and grateful for the life we had and the neighborhood we called home. I was drawn from a very early age to poor people and to those, like Father Dan, who exalted poor people.

Working on his master’s degree in theology, Charlie “came to understand in the classroom that the poor of the world not only should be but must be at the top of the list of our concerns as a society.” And in the classroom he fell in love with “a beautiful word in Hebrew, little known and rarely used — a word that gave fullness and depth to everything I intuitively believed and understood about the so-called “least of these.” The word is anawim. Anawim is the Hebrew word for “[the] poor.”

To Charlie, the word doesn’t merely describe an economic condition, but “refers to all of us, as we are seen [and blessed] by God.” 

Our blessing is that we know we are incapable of being happy all by ourselves. This is our poverty, and all the riches in the world cannot rid us of it. … [M]ost of us resist thinking of ourselves as poor, much less blessed in our poverty. We lose sight of the fact that this is how we are created. At our birth, long before we achieve power, prestige, possessions, or even pigmentation, we are naked, vulnerable, and poor. When we forget this basic truth about ourselves — whether we are people of faith or not — we end up fighting for our own survival rather than helping each other survive. As we gather possessions, power, and prestige, we begin to separate, creating all kinds of differences of class and status. Although almost everyone believes in the necessity of possessions, the differences they create inspire extreme competition, rivalry, and war.

Charlie, with a lifetime of joyful service, invites us not only to see the little ones and serve them, but to understand ourselves as belonging with them to God’s community of the blessed poor, the anawim. 

Jesus turns our attention away from ourselves and our anxious obsession with status. Following him on the way, we learn to see the neighbors who are rendered invisible by our arrangements of power, until we all welcome in each other the presence of the invisible God.

Playing with fire

Thomas Kleinert

A couple of months ago, I talked with a mom whose daughter was attending a Catholic school in their county near the Alabama border. She wasn’t a happy mom, because many of the teachers were nuns who, bless their hearts, should have retired many years ago, but apparently there was a shortage of teachers. I asked why she didn’t sign up her daughter at the public middle school, and she looked at me like I had suggested she sell her child to the traveling circus.

“Public school? And have her use the bathroom with furries who do their business in litter boxes?”

I had heard of furries, but litter boxes?

“Are you telling me there are public schools where they have litter boxes in student bathrooms, for students to use?”

“Yes, it’s been all over the internet, it’s for those kids who identify as cats.”

I bridled my tongue. “That is insane.”

“I know,” she said.

I’m not the kind of guy who grabs his phone, opens Snopes, and holds it under other people’s noses; so we just talked about horses instead.

According to Education Week, “it’s unclear exactly where the litter box hoax came from. In December 2021, a community member shared the rumor during the public comment section of a Midland Public School Board meeting in Michigan that was later debunked by the school district.” But debunking it didn’t stop the story from being shared on social media, and being broadcast by Joe Rogan, and being used by candidates running for public office, including the U.S. Senate, in New Hampshire and Colorado.[1] Well, you’ve heard the saying, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” It’s often attributed to Mark Twain, but it’s not actually by him. Which is delightfully ironic. Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710, “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it,”[2] and even then it had probably been part of oral tradition for generations.

And it’s not just a matter of speed. Back in 2018, when Twitter was still called Twitter, a team at MIT published a study analyzing “every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter’s existence—some 126,000 stories, tweeted by 3 million users, over more than 10 years.” The study found that “by every common metric, falsehood consistently dominates the truth on Twitter. … Fake news and false rumors reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories.”[3] Wider. Deeper. Faster. Sounds like a slogan for the information Olympics, and the truth is not among the medal contenders. “A false story reaches 1,500 people six times quicker, on average, than a true story does,” writes Robinson Meyer in The Atlantic.

And while false stories outperform the truth on every subject—including business, terrorism and war, science and technology, and entertainment—fake news about politics regularly does best. Twitter users seem almost to prefer sharing falsehoods.[4]

The tongue is a fire, says James. What we still call social media, despite its profoundly anti-social effects, seems to systematically amplify falsehood at the expense of the truth, and no one knows how to reverse that trend. Alarmed by the study, a group of political scientists and legal scholars asked, sounding rather helplessly, “How can we create a news ecosystem … that values and promotes truth?”[5] That was a very good question six years ago, when the people talking about AI were limited to some venture capitalists and engineers on the west coast, and the pope in a puffer jacket was a happy deep fake still five years away.[6]

The tongue is a fire, and a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. We used to play three truths and a lie for fun, and most of us cared about differentiating fact from fiction, reality from illusion, but now our “news ecosystem” is threatened by collapse due to what’s called “the illusory truth effect.” It is the human tendency to believe a false or misleading statement is true after hearing it repeated multiple times. This can happen even when the statement contradicts prior knowledge or is implausible. Something sticks, simply because of repetition, and “evidence suggests that global politics have already been strongly influenced by online … campaigns, run by bad actors who understand that all they need to do to help a lie gain traction is to repeat it again and again.”[7] It is like the lies have the power not just to blatantly contradict and unravel the fabric of a shared reality, but to create a parallel universe where the liar spoke again and again, and it was so. The tongue is a fire, says James.

The first gift distinctive to humans, according to Genesis, is the power to name, the power to create language, and by naming and speaking to participate in God’s dominion for the flourishing of life. Moment by moment, all that is and is to be, comes forth from God’s creative speech, and moment by moment, all that is and is to be, is reshaped and given meaning by human language, in praise and science and poetry and campaign speeches.[8] To speak is to play with fire, either way, whether we speak in response to and in sync with God’s creative speech and spirit, or out of sync, out of tune. Holy fire or destructive fire. “Whether we mean to or not, we construct worlds with speech,” says Barbara Brown Taylor.

Describing the world we see, we mistake it for the whole world. Making meaning of what we see, we conflate this with God’s meaning. Then we behave according to the world we have constructed with our speech, even when that causes us to dismiss or harm those who construe the world differently.[9]

The tongue is a fire, says James, and much of today’s passage is about speech, about being careful what we say and how we say it. James remembers and reiterates Jesus’ teaching,

I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.[10]

Sometimes I bridle my tongue. Sometimes I bite it. And often I regret what I said or how I said it. There’s a lot of good advice available, from James and others.

Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates: “Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?”

This bit of wisdom has been attributed to Socrates, Buddha, and the Amish, but don’t tell your friend Jesus said it, just because you half-remember hearing it in church. It’s great advice, if you remember it, and when you don’t, well, perhaps you can delete that ugly text before the person you sent it to has read it. Or make good use of the “undo send” feature in your email — mine is set to 30 seconds. Thirty seconds to “undo send” and attach the file I meant to attach. Thirty seconds to “undo send” and take out that unnecessary paragraph and the snarky bit at the end.

James lived and taught in a world without “undo send” buttons and emojis; his was an oral culture where written text wasn’t in daily use, and so his teaching is not about technical solutions, or the wisdom of having editors, but about the wise use of God’s awesome gift to humans, speech — about speaking and listening faithfully.

Others describe the world they see, in their own language, from their own unique perspective, making meaning of what they see — just like we do. And rather than dismissing them for construing the world differently, what if we were, as James teaches, quick to listen, eager to discover how their rendering of the world might open a window in our bubble and add dimension to our shared reality? What if we were slow to speak for the sake of fully hearing their story of the world? I know it’s hard. Sometimes you just bite your tongue and change the subject from bathrooms to horses. Because the universe of lies won’t be brought down by fact checkers alone, but by good timing and by kindness.

James can sound rather pessimistic.

Every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.

To speak is to play with fire, either way, whether I speak faithfully in response to and in sync with God’s creative speech and spirit, or out of sync, out of tune. My tongue. My choice. My responsibility. I may not be able to tame my tongue, but I sure have a great deal more control over mine than over anyone else’s. So I practice being careful with what I’m about to say. Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? And I practice being careful with what I watch, read, and listen to: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?

A fig tree won’t yield olives, nor a grapevine figs. Only double-minded humans are capable of pouring fresh and brackish water from the same opening, blessing God from our heart with our lips, and cursing with our lips, from the depths of our heart, another human being made in the likeness of God. We may not be able to tame our tongues because we don’t know our own hearts. But James isn’t teaching us to give in to despair, but to welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save our souls.[11] We may yet discover that by becoming discerning listeners, our hearts and lips receive all the taming God wants for us.

Now that we have allowed James to have us consider that the tongue is a fire and a restless evil, I don’t think he would object to my closing with words from Psalm 19. Listen to this beautiful poetry, spoken and sung in our mother tongue, the native language of all creation, praise:

The heavens are telling the glory of God;

and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.

Day to day pours forth speech,

and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words;

their voice is not heard;

yet their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.

May our hearts hear what the heavens are telling, and what day and night declare, and in all our hearing, may we welcome the word that has the power to save our souls.

[1] https://www.edweek.org/leadership/litter-boxes-in-schools-how-a-disruptive-and-demeaning-hoax-frustrated-school-leaders/2022/11

[2] https://freakonomics.com/2011/04/quotes-uncovered-how-lies-travel/

[3] Robinson Meyer https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/largest-study-ever-fake-news-mit-twitter/555104/

[4] See full reference in note 3.

[5] Cited by Robinson Meyer; see full reference in note 3.

[6] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/not-real-photo-pope-in-puffy-coat/

[7] https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/illusory-truth-effect

[8] L. T. Johnson, James, NIB, 205.

[9] Feasting, Year B, Vol. 4, 67; my italics.

[10] Matthew 12:36-37

[11] James 1:21

A Little Back-Talk

Preached by Margie Quinn, Sunday, September 8, 2024

You may or may not have studied the suffragette movement in school. I hadn’t learned about it until I began taking women’s studies classes in college. I had certainly heard the names of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and had even revered them for fighting for my right to vote, but I had never dug deep into the movement itself. Deemed abolitionists, these women advocated for women’s right to vote, and even held a convention to discuss this in 1848, known as the Seneca Falls convention. They wanted all women to be able to vote, right? Yet, there were no Black women in attendance. 

Stanton went so far as to claim that she would not support the Black vote if women were not also granted the right to vote. She wanted white women to have that opportunity before Black men. She is quoted as saying, “We prefer Bridget and Dinah at the ballot box to Patrick and Sambo.” How often we leave out our brothers and sisters of color when we are so close to power and seeming equality we can almost taste it. 

When a woman named Sojourner Truth found out about this, that white women were advocating for only some women to be able to vote, she showed up to the Women’s Right Convention in 1851 and asked, “May I say a few words? I want to say a few words on this matter.” In front of a crowd made of up mainly white, financially secure women, who didn’t want to hear her mix the cause of suffrage with abolition, she spoke: 

“I am a woman's rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now. 

The poor men seems to be all in confusion, and don't know what to do. Why children, if you have woman's rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won't be so much trouble. 

And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and the woman who bore him. Man, where was your part? But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.” This was a woman willing to talk back to those who didn’t consider in their mission for equality for all. 

In our story this morning, Jesus is sprinting around in the gospel of Mark, walking on water and healing all kinds of kinds. He’s on the move, trying to find some place to kick his feet up so that he can take a beat from the overwhelming crowds that are desperate to receive his healing touch. He goes away to the region of Tyre, a Gentile territory, and enters a house. He doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s there, but as we learn time and time again this gospel, he can’t escape notice. But it’s not the people we think who notice him…he was rarely recognized by his family or friends for who he was. No, it is once again an unusual suspect who approaches him. 

A woman, whose daughter had an unclean spirit, hears about him and comes and bows down at his feet. Now, this isn’t any ole’ woman–this woman is a Gentile of Syrophoenician origin. Jesus doesn’t have time for Gentiles right now. His primary mission is to his people, his ethnic enclave. In Matthew’s account of this text, we hear him say, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24). 

Probably knowing this and probably too desperate to care about class or ethnic boundaries at this point, she begs Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter. And, in one of the most shocking and head-scratching verses in the New Testament, Jesus says this: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Did he really just call this woman a dog?

A lot of people have tried to find a way out of this one. 

There is  no way Jesus would say something this rude. It was probably more like a familiar proverb like “charity begins at home.” 

Another theory is that Jesus knew the economic hardships that a lot of the Jews faced in this region. He saw the political imbalance between the wealthy Gentiles and the Jewish peasants and was trying to tell her that those who were well-off shouldn’t expect a seat at the table. 

My theory? Jesus was exhausted. And in a moment of human weakness, he loses sight of the point of his mission, which is to heal all kinds of kinds, and he makes a mistake. He uses an ethnic slur. He offends this woman. He calls her a dog. 

This woman doesn’t hang her head or walk away in shame. Her response? “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  Like a grandma who holds him to higher standards, she scolds him for his harsh words, and in doing so, sets him straight, maybe even surprising him a little bit. She bests him in an argument! The Gentile woman teaches him, the Jewish man, the true meaning of what he has just reminded his own followers in the prior verse: social conventions should not stand in the way of helping those in need. The Kingdom of God isn’t the Roman Empire. It is a different kind of community–one that knows no economic or ethnic boundaries. God’s love expands beyond all barriers. 

We talk a lot about conversion moments in our tradition. I have to wonder if this is a conversion moment…for Jesus? What if the woman’s bold faith, a woman who dares to talk back to Jesus on behalf of her people, on behalf of her daughter, sees that Jesus’s scope of love is becoming a little less wide and attempts to reconnect him to his original course of action? Could Jesus be saved in this moment? 

His response? Jesus changes his mind. He snaps out of it, and says to her, “For saying that, you may go–the demon has left your daughter.” Not only is the girl healed of demon possession but we recognize that a further transformation has taken place in Jesus, who experiences a change of heart and a shift in direction as he ministers among Gentiles. 

Jesus changes his mind. Because this woman dared to talk back, because she called him back to his original mission of infinite compassion for everyone. 

Look what happens next: her faith, her tenacious declaration of her own worth, opens Jesus up. His next stop? Healing a deaf man, putting his fingers in his ears, and saying, “Be opened.” I wonder if he was also talking to himself when he says this, reminding himself to stay open, too? 

If we learn anything from this story, I hope it’s this:

1. Jesus is human. What a relief. Like all of us, he gets exhausted and forgets that we cannot forget anyone. Like all of us, he’s got some blindspots when it comes to who is inside and outside of the movement. 

2. Courage–confronting those who have fallen away from the ultimate goal–could actually change someone’s mind and open someone up to a more expansive way of loving. . It is important to advocate for ourselves, yes, and to advocate for our daughters or friends, for those who need our help fighting for their healing. 

3. When we are willing to hear the truth from someone unlikely, our efforts are not diminished, they are expanded. Our hearts and minds might just be transformed by some faithful back-talk. 

Any time my blindspots appear, I hope to be reminded of a woman who did talk back, who was a Gentile, who had the courage to challenge the greatest change-maker of all. I hope to be reminded of another woman, who said, “Ain’t I woman’s rights?” Ain’t I worth fighting for, worthy of the right to vote, worthy of the same liberation you desire? 

Jesus, between a Gentile woman and a disgraced deaf man, between a hawk and a buzzard, changes his mind, commends her boldness, opens himself up to the reminder that none of us are free until all of us are free, that the mission was, is and should be universal, and that it is in the most unlikely of voices that we are brought home. 

Who are the unlikely voices in your life? Who is attempting to transform your heart and mind, who wants to welcome you back into the fold of faithfulness, with just a little bit of back-talk? 

Amen.