Sabbath for the bent and the bound

Many of us have watched the athletes. We saw Simone Biles jumping, flipping, landing, stretching and bending to accomplish great feats on the floor and up in the air. We saw Usain Bolt charging down the track like lightning, turning to the crowd with a beautiful smile, and then pointing up and bending back for his signature pose. We saw Ryan Lochte in the pool, gliding through the water like one who was born to swim, and then we witnessed him bending the truth into an embarrassing fabrication of lies. It wasn’t difficult these past few days to hear echoes of “bending” on the news, stories of bodies bending to accomplish greatness, stories of the truth being bent to escape accountability, stories of the rules not being bent for the sake of fairness. On Thursday the Department of Justice announced that the use of private prisons in the federal prison system would be phased out. I was surprised and very glad and I said to a friend, “If only the states would follow suit …,” and he responded, “the arc of the moral universe is long…,” inviting me to complete the sentence, “… but it bends towards justice.”[1]

I had the woman from Luke’s story on my mind, a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years; a woman who was bent over by powers that rendered her quite unable to stand up straight. “Bound by Satan,” Jesus called it, careful not to name her that way, but rather all the things and forces that kept her from being who she was, namely a daughter of Abraham, a member of the covenant community, a child of the promise, an heir of the kingdom. “Bound by Satan” may still bring up images of a horned fellow with a tail, but they are easy to dismiss as mythical, pre-rational attempts to explain evil in the world. To me the image is not meant to explain, but to give a name to those things and experiences that render us less alive in body, mind and soul than we are meant to be and want to be. When I think about these crippling forces, I continue to return to a room at a nice conference center, where many years ago we had gathered for a weekend workshop. We were colleagues – pastors, chaplains, counselors and therapists – sitting in a circle, all of us facing to the middle, where a young woman was sitting alone on a chair. The workshop leader had asked us to name the spirits that cripple human beings, to name the powers that bend human beings, to name the forces under whose oppressive weight we struggle to maintain a sense of agency and freedom and hope. And she challenged us not to list the big abstracts we’re all too familiar with, names like “poverty,” “racism,” or “sexism.” Instead, we were to recall words and phrases we had heard over the years, images we had seen, scenes we had observed or lived through; we were to recall the seemingly small, daily things that cast shadows on our identity as creatures made in the image of God. There were a couple of baskets with scarfs and shawls, and every time one of us recalled a scene and named a power that bends human beings, he or she placed a shawl over the young woman’s head. The shawls were light as gossamer, almost weightless, but there were many. Layer upon layer covered her head, her arms and shoulders, and soon she began to bend under the weight, unable to see, struggling to breathe. She disappeared. We could barely hear her voice from behind the thick veil. She was no longer present as a person, but merely as a barely visible body, bent by crippling spirits, bound by Satan.

The woman who appeared in the synagogue where Jesus taught on that Sabbath had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. We don’t know how old she was, if she was in her 20’s or 40’s. We don’t know if she was married or not, if she had children or not, if she came from a wealthy home or if she had to beg for food. All we know about her is that for eighteen years she was bent over and quite unable to stand up straight. She could not walk upright. She could only see so far; her horizon had narrowed. She could direct her gaze only to the ground below. I wonder if her neighbors had gotten used to her being bent; if they took notice of her or if she always stayed below their line of sight. I wonder what nicknames the children may have made up for her; did they tease her from across the street or whisper behind her back? I wonder if she was in constant pain. Eighteen years of this must have redefined normal for her, perhaps she could not even imagine anymore any other way of seeing or being in the world. But Jesus could and did.

When she appeared in the synagogue he saw her and called her over. I believe he called her to make sure everybody in the room took notice. It was customary for the teacher giving the sabbath talk to sit in a chair at the front. I believe he called her over instead of getting up and walking over to her because her appearance was not an interruption of his teaching; she was part of his sabbath proclamation and possibly the most important part of it. “Woman, you are set free from your ailment,” he said to her and laid his hands on her. That’s all he did, proclaim her freedom and touch her. And she rose, slowly, I imagine, like a leaf uncurling in the morning sun, until she stood upright with her head held high, words of wonder and praise pouring from her lips. What a joyous moment it was! Only joy had to wait.

The synagogue leader was indignant; he too was bent, contorted by questions and the complexities of wanting to live faithfully in a complicated world:

There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.

Couldn’t she wait till tomorrow? Isn’t healing on God’s holy sabbath blasphemy? The seventh day was set aside by God for rest, and keeping it holy meant refraining from work. For one day each week, God’s people were to live not by the work of their hands, but solely by the gifts of God. For one day each week, God’s people were to experience the freedom of complete dependence on God. This synagogue leader wasn’t just a joyless rule enforcer; he had the holiness of God’s word and the holiness of God’s people on his mind and in his heart. Healing on the sabbath was a difficult topic. The common understanding of the sabbath commandment was that medical emergencies could be and even had to be attended, but that chronic illnesses were a different matter. Non-emergencies could wait. In the leader’s mind, Jesus could have said, “Woman, come and see me tomorrow.” After eighteen years, what’s one more day?

But Jesus didn’t wait. Who wouldn’t untie their ox or donkey from the manger on the sabbath in order to lead them away to give them water? Untying farm animals and leading them to the water on the sabbath was common practice, and not only was it considered permissible but necessary for the animals’ well-being. If we can see the need to untie a thirsty animal, Jesus argued, how can we not see the need for a human being to be unbound and released to her full humanity?

Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?

At the beginning of his ministry, on a sabbath in his hometown synagogue, Jesus read from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And then he sat down to teach, and he said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:18-21). Today, he said. It was time for every child of Abraham to taste the sweetness of sabbath. It was time for every son and daughter of Abraham to be set free from bondage: releasing the captives didn’t compromise the holiness of the sabbath day – on the contrary, it finally brought the peace and joy of sabbath to the bent and the bound. Yes, the sabbath is a day of rest for the weary and a day of remembrance for the forgetful, but the sabbath is also a promise, a foretaste of that seventh day when humanity and all of creation are at peace with God and with each other.

And Jesus said, today, not someday. Today it begins, he said in his first sabbath sermon. Healing the bent woman was not a sabbath violation but its fulfillment for her, and for the rest of us, it is the announcement of what has begun: the redemption of creation, the liberation of humanity from all that cripples, binds, and diminishes us.

The way we see her stand erect today, the praise of God pouring from her lips like water from spring, all will stand and raise up their heads and sing. Yes, we still struggle, but we sing of hope. Yes, there’s much that weighs us down in this world bent by unbending ways, but we sing of courage and mercy. We sing of the One who bends towards us with great tenderness and the power to make whole. We sing of the One who is making all things new.

[1] Famously and appropriately attributed to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; the metaphor goes back to New England pastor and abolitionist, Theodore Parker (1810-1860), “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

Learning Christ

Today we lift up the ministry of Christian education, we will bless teachers and learners, and we celebrate all the ways we learn to live as God’s people. What comes to mind when you hear the words Christian education?

Some of you may think of Sunday school, others may remember a person whose faith shaped yours more than any curriculum, class or sermon. Perhaps you remember Bible drills and flanell boards, or a grandmother who taught you good questions were more important than good answers. Perhaps you remember late night conversations with friends or a book that helped you understand your faith in new ways.

I remember night time prayers with my mom. I remember old Mr. Schneider whose glasses were the thickest I had ever seen; he rode his bicycle everywhere he went, including children’s worship on Sunday mornings at 11, and he told us Bible stories like he had been there and everything had happened only yesterday. I remember religion teachers in school who were kind and full of knowledge and wisdom. I remember youth group leaders who lived and taught the faith like there was nothing more important in the world. I remember my grandfather whose formal schooling ended in 7th grade and one of my theology professors with a dual Ph.D., and I can’t tell you which of the two was more influential in shaping my faith. I remember older kids in youth group who let me sell fair trade coffee, tea, and chocolate with them at the Christmas market and talked with me about God and colonialism and global trade. I remember singing a particular hymn every year on Easter, early in the morning, and the tune as much as the words has come to capture for me the deep meaning of resurrection hope.

I believe the whole life of the church is educating people in their faith. People use words like instruction, teaching, nurturing and development when they reflect on what Christian education is about. They speak of transmitting the faith and encouraging critical thinking, of spiritual formation and developing godly habits, of catechesis and socialization, and the list goes on. I would say, Christian education is a curious blend of the intentional teaching in settings designed for that pupose and the wild and wonderful learning that happens in all kinds of life moments. I learned a lot about God and prayer lying on my back in a boat in the middle of a lake in Sweden in my late teens, but that doesn’t mean that everybody else would have a similarly transformative experience simply by getting into a boat and rowing out to the middle of a lake. Some parts of Christian education can be included in how a family structures their day together or how a church plans its curriculum, other parts simply happen when we’re open to God’s presence and work in us.

I love the reading from Deuteronomy we heard earlier.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

This is what it’s all about, life and faith and education, everything: to love God with every capacity we have been given to think, feel, desire, will, speak, act, and suffer. The passage continues with instructions on how to learn and maintain that love:

Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.

Keep these words at the center of who you are as a person. Let these words occupy the center of your being, let them determine who you are becoming day by day and year by year. Keep them, but don’t keep them to yourself.

Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.

Recite them to your children so the next generation of God’s people may learn to keep them in their heart. Let them be the last words on your lips when you go to bed and the first ones when you rise. Let them give rhythm to your days, let them shape how you listen, think, speak, and act; keep them and they will keep you. Bind them as a sign on your hand, so you remember to keep your actions in tune with God’s will. Fix them as an emblem on your forehead, so both your thoughts and your vision are shaped by God’s purposes. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so both your private and your public life are spaces defined by God’s love and justice.

In order to love God with every capacity of their being, God’s people are to open their inmost self to God’s words, talk about them amongst each other, and let them structure their experience of time and space. Their lives are to be centered and rooted in these words and dedicated to hearing and keeping them, reciting, debating, and living them. Ultimately, everything in this brief passage flows from faithfully hearing in the community of God’s people what God has spoken.

The focus in the apostolic witness of the New Testament is very similar, which isn’t surprising, since it is the same God who speaks. We Christians affirm that God has spoken in Christ, and that the life of Jesus, his death and resurrection, are the event through which we are to hear, keep, interpret, debate and live all that God has spoken. We affirm that the ultimate word of God is not a text, but a life. The ultimate word of God is a human being who embodied God’s compassion and mercy among us.

In Colossians, the apostle teaches and admonishes those who have received Christ Jesus as Lord that we live our lives rooted and centered in him. Christ doesn’t take the place of the words of Torah so beautifully affirmed in the passage from Deuteronomy, no, he lives them completely, he embodies them. And for us to faithfully hear what God has spoken is to live in Christ and to have Christ live in us. The apostle writes, “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,” and this is not just a new dress code. Because we live in Christ, his character becomes visible as our true nature. Our interactions become expressions of his compassion, his kindness, his humility, meekness, and patience. We bear with one another, because Christ bears with us. We forgive each other, because Christ has forgiven us. Because we live in Christ, his perfect love of God and neighbor, a love that doesn’t exclude the enemy, becomes the garment that fits us all perfectly: in him we are one humanity, redeemed from our idolatries and restored to our true status as creatures made in the image of God.

Perhaps you wonder if clothing ourselves with compassion is just a game of dressing up and pretending that we are God’s people, you know, chosen, holy and beloved. But it’s rather the other way round: Because we are God’s chosen people, holy and beloved, we are finally free to stop pretending that we are who others need us to be or have made us believe that we are. Clothed with the perfect love of Christ, we live the life we were always meant to live. It is the life of the renewed humanity where Christ is all and in all. In this redeemed life, our hearts are no longer ruled by enmity and strife, but by the peace of Christ. And in this redeemed life, everything we do, we do in the name of Christ.

And so I want to suggest that all Christian education is about one thing: learning Christ. It encompasses learning who God is, learning who we are, and learning to live the life God desires for us. And it encompasses learning with our minds, our hearts, our hands and feet, and all our senses.

The apostle writes in Colossians, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” “You” is plural here, as just about everywhere in the epistles; it’s a subtle reminder that learning Christ cannot be a solo adventure, but is inherently communal. The verse can be translated, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you and among you,” and we are reminded that Christ is at work both within us and among us, and that in order for the word of Christ to dwell in us we must learn to dwell in the word, individually and collectively.

I already mentioned that learning Christ is inherently communal, it is also inherently mutual. The apostle tells us to “teach and admonish one another in all wisdom.” Learning Christ happens through one-anothering, which isn’t a verb yet, but I want to suggest that we begin using it anyway. Learning Christ happens through one-anothering. Learning Christ doesn’t divide the body into some who teach and all the others who learn. Learning Christ brings us together in a community where all learners are teachers and all teachers are learners, all God’s people together, young and old.

Come now

It’s hard to listen to Isaiah. It’s hard to listen to the words he has given to his vision, to what the Lord has spoken. Calling on heaven and earth as witnesses, he pours out God’s indictment of God’s people, in a whirling blend of anger and disbelief, tenderness and disgust, accusations and commands. And we didn’t even hear the chapter’s opening verses as part of our reading where God calls God’s people a sinful nation, rebels, people laden with iniquity, offspring who do evil, estranged children who deal corruptly, a people who have forsaken the Lord and despised the Holy One of Israel. There is so much pain in those few lines, so much grief. We can almost see the prophet standing on the temple mount, looking across the land, as he paints with just a few strokes a scene of devastation:

Your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence aliens devour your land… And daughter Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard, like a shelter in a cucumber field (Isaiah 1:7-8).

Some in the city are listening and they say,

If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we would have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah (Isaiah 1:9).

The names of those cities are shorthand for violent sin and violent retribution. Some in the city are listening to the prophet and they are relieved, because the devastation isn’t complete. “It could have been worse,” they say to themselves. “If the Lord had not left us a few survivors,” they say, “we would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah.”

But now the prophet roars, “Would have been? Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!” and he’s not addressing cities that were destroyed in the ancient days of the patriarchs and matriarchs; he’s addressing them – their cities, their rulers, their people. And part of us wishes we could keep it that way – their cities, not ours; them, not us.

But we are part of the prophet’s audience. His words have been passed on, written down, and read, from generation to generation, because in them the character and will of the Holy One of Israel are revealed. We assume that our worship is pleasing to God, mostly because it is pleasing to us. “Of course the Lord does not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats,” we can almost hear ourselves say, mostly because the mere thought of it makes us squeamish. “Perhaps that was proper worship in less enlightened days,” we are tempted to say, forgetting that every detail of temple worship, every sacrifice, every instruction for the proper slaughtering of the animals and what goes in the fire and what doesn’t - everything is rooted in God’s commandments. Our brothers and sisters with an anti-Catholic or an anti-high-church bias will gladly hear and affirm that “incense is an abomination to [the Lord]” – because we’ll do anything to let these hard words be meant for any other community, just not us.

It’s hard to listen to Isaiah. It’s hard to listen to the prophets; their words can make us dismissive and defensive. But perhaps we listen with just enough interest and attention to understand two things that are indeed one:

God doesn’t obsess about proper worship nearly as much as we do; and we aren’t concerned about justice and righteousness nearly as much as God is.

“I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity,” says the Lord while we, well, we make do. We like solemn assemblies and we like happy assemblies, we like our assemblies with praise choruses or chanted prayers, with fog machines and big screens, or with hefty hymnals and fancy robes, but we like our assemblies, we need them.

“Our tragedy begins with the segregation of God,” said Abraham Heschel, “our tragedy begins with the bifurcation of the secular and sacred. We worry more about the purity of dogma than about the integrity of love.” Our tragedy begins with the segregation of God, the separation of worship and what we like to call real life. We like our assemblies and we worry about them while our God, with great passion and patience continues to call us to make worship the heart of our life, and not just a part of it.

Isaiah, in this opening chapter, looks around the temple area and he sees how much attention is given to the proper handling of the sacrificial blood of bulls and lambs and goats, and he cries out, giving voice to the passion and pathos of God, “But your hands are full of blood. Your hands are stained with the blood shed daily on your streets. Your hands are defiled by violence and abuse. When you stretch out your hands in prayer, I turn away; I don’t listen. I don’t know whom or what you think you are worshiping, but it’s not me.”

We may think of worship as the things we do in the sanctuary at the appointed times, but our God desires to be worshiped in all that we do. The prophet cries out for the desegregation of the everyday.

In a speech in 1963, Abraham Heschel said,

The major activity of the prophets was interference, remonstrating about wrongs inflicted on other people, meddling in affairs which were seemingly neither their concern nor their responsibility. A prudent man is he who minds his own business, staying away from questions which do not involve his own interests, particularly when not authorized to step in – and prophets were given no mandate by the widows and orphans to plead their cause.

No, the mandate doesn’t come from the widows and orphans, or the strangers and the imprisoned, the mandate comes from the God who made them and loves them. The prophet is a person who cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity, because God cannot. And so Isaiah directs his urgent plea to every member of the community:

Seek justice. Rescue the oppressed. Establish justice for the orphan. Plead for the widow.

Heschel said, “There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. … The prophets’ great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference [and] all prophecy is one great exclamation: God is not indifferent to evil! [God] is always concerned, [God] is personally affected by what [one human being] does to [another].”[1]

I read about a conversation Will Willimon had with a man about his father. It sheds some more light on the necessity of overcoming the common segregation of God from the everyday and vice versa. His father, the man told Willimon, was a remarkable man. He did not have a huge amount of education, but by staying up late nearly every night, he self-educated himself in certain aspects of the law. During the Great Depression, a bank in his native Anson County (North Carolina) hired him to receive and to dispose of the many farms that the bank was foreclosing on, as a result of the bad times. His father had always been deeply concerned about the plight of African American farmers in his community, most of whom were sharecroppers. Their situation was little better than slavery. They lived and worked on land that wasn’t theirs. During the winter, they had to borrow from the landowner to buy food and fuel; loaned at high interest. In the summer, when the crops came in, the first money, taken off the top, went to pay back those debts with interest. And there was never enough money. Each year these sharecroppers sank deeper and deeper into debt. His father would meet with these sharecroppers, and together they learned to advance their farming methods and keep careful records of their crops and negotiate a good price for their work. By the time he died, in that community, 200 black farmers and their families, who had never owned land or home, were landowners, eating the good of the land, their land and enjoying the fruit of their labor.

But the story doesn’t end there. They had his father’s funeral at home, the man said, rather than at their church. They knew that most of the folk at the funeral would be black and would know that they were not welcome at the white church. “My dad almost never attended church,” the son said. “Couldn’t stand to sit there and watch ushers pass the offering plates on Sunday, knowing how those scoundrels conducted their businesses during the week, knowing the way they treated people when they weren’t all dressed up and playing church.”

Solemn assemblies with iniquity. Now we could of course sit here, shaking our heads and wagging our fingers, feeling good about ourselves, but we’re not playing church. We remember that the prophet’s severe indictment is not the last word. The tone changes dramatically as the vision moves from accusation to invitation:

“Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”

It sounds almost like certainty, this possibility of forgiveness, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow.” The “maybe” sounds almost like “this is how it’s going to be.” Perhaps the promise, the possibility of forgiveness, has the firmness of certainty, because the One making the promise is essentially gracious and merciful, not wrathful and vindictive. The final word is the invitation to enter God’s salvation through repentance. Yes, our injustice and our indifference have and will have destructive consequences, but God’s will is not simply to get even or to punish. God wills to set things right: Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. All these imperatives invite transformation and culminate in the last word, “Come now, let’s settle this.”

God’s arms are wide open. “Come now, let’s set things right.”

[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, Religion and Race, January 14, 1963

Whose life are you living?

When you’re little, you don’t get to choose what you wear. There’s no debate. As long as somebody else is dressing you, you don’t have a say, typically. They wrap you in blanket like a light blue spring roll or gently fold your little limbs into a yellow onesie – it’s their call. You wear whatever they decide. You cooperate, until one day you figure out how to say “no” and that’s when a transition period of daily struggle begins. Eventually you agree to their terms: you choose from one of three outfits one of your adult clothing partners has laid out for you on top of your dresser, or you get to pick items yourself straight from the drawer, and said adults reserve the right to veto your choices when you walk into the kitchen. You want to wear what you want to wear, clothes are very personal, and it’s hard for you to see why wearing your superhero outfit for three weeks straight, day and night, could possibly be a problem or why you can’t wear your undies on top of your jeans so everybody can see the cool print on the front.

The clothes we wear are the result of complex negotiations between self-expression and the need to fit it, between taste and functionality, between following rules and pushing against them. For ages, clothes have provided warmth and protection, but they also reflected gender, age, cultural identity, and class differences, visually distinguishing the ruling, powerful, and wealthy from everyone else. We call people white-collar or blue-collar, we call them suits or smarty pants or stuffed shirts. We used to say, perhaps some of us still do, “She’s all fur coat and no knickers” or, “He’s all hat and no cattle.” Our clothes reflect who we are or aspire to be as well as where we belong, whether we like it or not. We use clothing to express ourselves, but we also wear layer upon layer of other people’s expectations and dreams or lack thereof. I have met men and women of all ages who feel like they’re living somebody else’s life. I’ll come back to that.

Our friend Jerry Seinfeld tells us,

I hate clothes, okay? I hate buying them. I hate picking them out of my closet. I can’t stand every day trying to come up with little outfits for myself. I think eventually fashion won’t even exist. It won’t. I think eventually we’ll all be wearing the same thing. ‘Cause anytime I see a movie or a TV show where there’s people from the future of another planet, they’re all wearing the same thing. Somehow they decided “This is going to be our outfit. One-piece silver jumpsuit, V-stripe, and boots. That’s it.” We should come up with an outfit for earth. An earth outfit. We should vote on it. Candidates propose different outfits, no speeches. They walk out, twirl, walk off. We just sit in the audience and go, “That was nice. I could wear that.”

We see Jerry at the clothing store, and he’s tired of looking; the salesman tells him, “Well, I might have something in the back.” He returns with a jacket. Elaine says, “Try it on.” She touches it. “Wow, this is soft suede.” He tries it on.

“This may be the most perfect jacket I have ever put on.” And he buys it.

Next we see him sitting on his couch wearing his pajamas and his new jacket. He gets up to look at himself in the mirror. Kramer enters.

“Hey. New jacket?”

“What do you think?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Is it me?”

And Kramer says, “That’s definitely you.”

“Really?” Jerry asks.

“That’s more you than you’ve ever been.”

Later Jerry proudly models his new jacket in front of George and says, “This jacket has completely changed my life. When I leave the house in this, it’s with a whole different confidence. Like tonight, I might’ve been a little nervous. But, inside this jacket, I am composed, grounded, secure that I can meet any social challenge.”[1]

Jerry has found his superhero outfit. It’s completely changed his life. In Kramer’s words, “That’s more you than you’ve ever been.”

Every line of dialogue in those scenes, of course, oozes irony. But they still speak to a deep longing inside you and me and to a deep fear: we long to be seen by others for who we are and be loved for who we are. And at the same time we are afraid to be truly seen by others, because we can’t believe they could accept us if they truly saw us instead of the person we work so hard to project. I said earlier, I have met men and women of all ages who feel like they’re living somebody else’s life. They feel like they’ve been given a role in somebody else’s drama, and they’ve never tasted the freedom of adding their own words to the script. They’ve never known the freedom of wearing feathers of joy, ponchos of comfort, or long, light shirts of no worries, because they’ve been dressed from a very young age in layers of pain and shame and guilt. And those layers fit so tightly, we wear them like skin or have almost forgotten there’s actual skin underneath. And we add more layers, layers of armor and invisibility cloaks. We choose with great care what we wear, but often with little hope.

The question is, can we hear what Paul has to say? He tells us to set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. He’s not telling us to stick our heads in the clouds and block from view mountains and oceans, rivers, forests, fields and meadows, all things bright and beautiful, God’s creatures great and small – no, he’s telling us to set our minds on the reality of Christ’s resurrection, and he says “above” because our words fail us when we seek to speak about God’s reign that is in the world, but not part of the world. Christ is risen from the dead – he is beyond the reach of sin and death and any power that diminishes and distorts God’s gift of life. He is alive, fully alive, completely alive. But that is not the whole story. The resurrection is not just something fantastic that happened to Jesus, but the beginning of a whole new order of things, the beginning of a new creation. The resurrection is the beginning of life’s liberation from the house of bondage. The resurrection is the beginning of the end of sin’s oppressive rule and it is already the end of sin’s oppressive rule.

And because Christ has made us his own in love’s radical solidarity with us, we are not what the world has made of us or prevented us from becoming – no, we are who we were meant to be from the beginning, God’s beloved. Christ died in radical solidarity with us, but he is alive, completely alive in God, and this fullness of life is his gift to us. Because we belong to Christ, death is already a past reality for us, and our life is hidden with Christ in God. Hidden, but already present, waiting to be revealed. Hidden, but already transforming us. In Christ, we are becoming who we already are. The more fully we know ourselves and one another as God’s beloved, the less we will seek to serve the idols of money, sex, and control. We set our minds on Christ, we set our minds on things that are above, and when others go low in malice, slander, and abusive language, we go high.

The context of difficult transformation in our personal and communal life is being addressed in today’s reading with the language of stripping and clothing. The apostle writes,

You have stripped off the old humanity with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new humanity, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.

This refers to our embracing of Christ as our life, and so active verbs prevail: you have stripped off, you have clothed yourselves. But the other side of our embrace of Christ, and the initial movement, is Christ’s embrace of us. And in his embrace we are being gently undressed. He sees who we are underneath all those layers. He takes off our armor. He peels away the guilt and shame, every layer, and he touches the pain. He knows. He takes off the old humanity with its practices, and he clothes us with the new humanity, that is, humanity in the image of its Creator rather than its many idols.

In Christ’s embrace, all that keeps us from being one humanity is being erased, and not so we can all be dressed in one-piece silver jumpsuits that hide the rich diversity of our humanity. God has designed an earth outfit for humankind; it has the color, texture, and radiance of glory: All of us alive, fully alive, completely alive with Christ. Living with Christ, embracing Christ as our life, we’re not living somebody else’s life. We’re finally living the one life there is, and nothing else.

[1] http://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheJacket.htm

Trying times

“Praying for peace and healing love,” has been, for the past couple of weeks, the message on the sign by the road. We want to tell the people who drive by what we are about, and praying seems to be the first thing that comes to mind these days. It doesn’t mean we’re not working or protesting or seeking better answers than the quick and loud ones we are hearing day in and day out; it means that we turn to God with our questions, our fears, our rage, our broken hearts, our despair and our hope.

My own prayers over the past weeks have largely been shaped by news alerts: story after story of violence, terror, and ugliness washed over me, with just enough air between them, it seems, to whisper, “Lord have mercy.” It’s been one long litany of lament.

The gospel reading given to us for this day begins with Jesus finishing his prayers, when one of the disciples asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Jesus prayed often, and perhaps the disciples sensed a connection between the kind of person he was and his habit of prayer. They may have had questions very similar to the ones we bring: When and how often should we pray? Where should we pray and why? Are we to keep our eyes open or close them? Are we to stand up, sit down, or kneel? Do we stretch out our hands like the branches of a tree or fold them? Jesus’ response is remarkably short.

When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.

The words sound familiar; the prayer we know as the Lord’s Prayer comes from the gospel of Matthew and from the long tradition of use in the worship and instruction of the church. At Vine Street we say the prayer in the King’s English with “thy” and “thine,” thoroughly in love with the premodern pronouns that elevate these words from ordinary speech and infuse them with the aura of things that have been handled and used by many generations before us. The words in Luke are bare in comparison: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. There is no ornament, no flourish, there are no filler words – just simple imperatives: give us and forgive us, and don’t bring us to the time of trial. Jesus teaches us to pray with few words and clear focus. He teaches us to speak of God’s holy name and kingdom right next to our need for bread and forgiveness. This is how closely they belong together. Jesus teaches us to speak of God’s eternal purposes and our daily need almost in the same breath. He teaches us to ask for the consummation of God’s creation in God’s glorious reign of peace and to follow that cosmic-scale request with the most everyday petition for something to eat. Nothing’s too big. Nothing’s too small. We are invited to turn to God in all things and to trust in God’s mercy. Do we pray for bread and forgiveness because we are worried that we might receive neither unless we ask for them daily? No, we pray daily because we need to remember daily that we are recipients of precious, life-giving gifts, given to us for sharing. We pray with these words because we hope that remembering God’s mercy to us will help us become merciful toward each other.

In the fifth and final petition of the prayer, Jesus teaches us to ask God, “Do not bring us to the time of trial.” We pray that the things and events that test our faith will never be stronger than our faith. And these are trying times for disciples of Jesus in this country. Some of us are tempted to trade in our trust in God’s promises and our hope in God’s future for some angry nostalgia for an America that never was. Some of us are angry that it’s taking white folk so long to grasp how deeply the sin of slavery has wounded our life together and that still the pain is being felt overwhelmingly by black bodies. Some of us are tempted to dismiss the hard work of truth-telling and reconciliation-seeking as whining and blaming. Some of us are to utterly disoriented and discouraged, we just can’t believe there’s much we could do to make a difference.

Do not bring us to the time of trial, Jesus teaches us to pray in trying times. Praying we hold on to the relationship God has established with us. Praying we hold on to the vision of life God has revealed in Christ. Praying we hold on to the promise of being clothed with power from on high.

Jesus prayed often, and his praying grounded and shaped his living and his teaching. “Do not set your minds on what you are to eat or drink; do not be anxious,” he taught generations of disciples. “These are all things that occupy the minds of the Gentiles, but your Father knows that you need them. No, set your minds on his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.” Many things occupy the minds of those who do not know themselves to be God’s beloved, but we are to set our minds on God’s kingdom. We are to let the promise of God’s coming reign give direction to our lives, how we think, speak, work, hope, vote and spend our money – everything; and all the things we tend to be anxious about when we forget that we are God’s beloved will be given to us as well. “Have no fear, little flock,” says Jesus, “for your Father has chosen to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:30-32).

In his teaching Jesus refers to God as “your Father,” reminding us that we belong to God’s household and that God wants what is good and life giving for all members of God’s household. When Jesus teaches us to pray, he invites us into the intimate relationship he has with the one he calls Father, and so we join him in prayer, we let his prayer become ours. Four times in Luke’s telling of the gospel, Jesus addresses the Holy One of Israel as Father. First here, teaching us to pray with him,

“Father, hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come.”

Then again in Gethsemane, praying through the night of trial,

“Father, if your are willing, remove this cup from me” (Luke 22:42).

And two more times on the cross, saying,

“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34)

and finally,

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

On the cross, God revealed the power of forgiveness to renew and restore what sin has destroyed. The path of divine justice revealed on the cross is love that embraces the enemy for the sake of reconciliation. Jesus proclaimed repentance and forgiveness as the door to the kingdom and God affirmed his servant life and his royal teaching by raising him from the dead.

These are trying times and while we cannot fully name the powers that threaten us, we can certainly sense their presence: they seek to convince us that we do not belong to God’s household, that we are neither God’s beloved nor each other’s brothers and sisters, and that loving our enemies is a ridiculous idea.

“Praying for peace and healing love,” the sign outside our sanctuary says, telling those who drive by that the people who gather here are holding on to God’s vision of life. We have so many questions about how and when and where and why to pray, and Jesus’ teaching gives focus to that flurry: remember whom you address in your prayers and with whom you are praying. Prayer is not about this and that and the other, and properly done this way or that way, prayer is about living attentively in the relationship God has established with us. In this relationship we are invited to bring and give voice to all our needs and wants, our hopes and fears, our frustrations and our pain, and to let God love us and reorient our lives toward the peace of God’s kingdom. We pray to be shaped by nothing but love.

One love

I wonder if you recently had that moment when you looked at the flag flying at half-staff and you didn’t know why it had been lowered: was it to honor the police officers who were shot and killed in Dallas or was it to honor the victims of the attack in Nice? Or had there been yet another terrible event that you hadn’t heard about? It seems the president could simply order the flag to be flown half-staff until further notice, since every day brings more stories of violent deaths abroad and here at home that weigh heavy on our hearts and minds. We hear the stories, we mourn and pray and ask, “What can we do? What must we do? What can anybody do?” Charleston, Ferguson, Paris, Orlando, Istanbul, South Sudan, Baton Rouge, Baghdad, Falcon Heights, Dallas, Nice – a torrent of stories of violent death touching countless lives deeply, and we boil it all down to the name of a city or a hashtag. This has become our way of bringing order to the chaos of our days. We hear a story and it breaks our hearts, and we feel the need to sit with it for a while to let it sink in and talk things through with friends and strangers, and we want to move from only reacting to terrifying events to proactively engaging with the issues in order to break bad patterns and prevent more of the same, but the world is relentless and the torrent won’t stop and tomorrow we will be flooded from every screen with by-the-minute updates of yet another incident, or at least so we have come to expect by now. For some of us, today’s news simply replaces yesterday’s and our attention quickly jumps from one thing to the next; for others, the stories pile up and we struggle to find a way to hold it all together and find an angle to respond in a meaningful way; and then there are those among us who tune out entirely and go shopping or watch the game, any game, anything to distract us from the claims the people in these stories make on us. What are we to do?

Luke tells us that a lawyer, an expert in Jewish law and scripture, asked Jesus, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And he already knew the answer. You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. You are to love God and neighbor. The lawyer knew the answer. But knowing the answer is not the point; living it is. Loving God and neighbor is the point.

Jesus told the story of the man who was beaten, stripped and robbed on the Jericho road to help us see that “neighbor” doesn’t define a particular group of people who are recipients of our love at the exclusion of others. We become neighbors when we show mercy to another. We become neighbors when we let another make a claim on our capacity to empathize and care. “Go and do likewise,” Jesus told the lawyer and us who have listened to the story.

After this, Luke opens for us the door to Martha’s house, where Jesus is a welcome guest. Martha is a woman who goes and gets things done, and she goes and does a lot, in fact, she keeps going and doing. Luke tells us she is distracted by much serving, and it’s not just housework, it’s everything she does in loving response to the needs of others. She’s being a neighbor to all who’ve come to her house. She lets them each make a claim on her capacity to care and she responds with kindness and grace. But between one thing and the next, she stops briefly and with resentment in her voice she tells Jesus to tell her sister to help her.

Mary, of course, has been sitting at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he says. In your imagination this may trigger images of a star-struck teenage girl sitting on the ground, gazing with dreamy eyes at Jesus who looks the part of the boy celebrity – if that is what you see, move on quickly and try to forget it.[1] Sitting at the feet of someone is an expression for being the disciple of a master.[2] Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus means she and Jesus are both acting against widespread gender expectations where women are the ones who always go and do while men sit at the feet of wise teachers drinking of their words.[3] Perhaps Martha is a little resentful because she too wants to sit and drink of that wisdom. Or does she think there’s nothing wrong with the traditional gender roles and that Mary should be doing women’s work? And aren’t both of them welcoming Jesus?

The little story is big enough to contain our wondering and it gives us room to explore various answers and implications. I am drawn to the word “distracted” that is used twice in this passage.[4] Luke portrays Martha as distracted by many things and Mary in contrast as centered in the Lord’s presence and word. Martha is drawn away by many things that demand her attention much like we are in the daily torrent of stories that demand that we dismantle racism, that we bind up the wounds of those who are hurting, that we hear those who cry out in pain and in anger, that we show our solidarity with victims of terror, that we go and do the things that neighbor love demands. Jesus tells Martha, “You are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” We know about being worried and distracted by many things, and Jesus tells us that there is need of only one thing.

The lawyer knows the right answer, but he has trouble living it. Martha knows how to go and do and her day is never long enough for the many things that need doing. What does Mary know? Mary knows the Lord; she has found the defining center of her life.

It’s tempting to read this story in the good sister/bad sister mold, but I don’t want to read it that way. To me it’s a story of belonging. The two belong together like loving God and loving neighbor belong together. The one thing necessary is not one or the other, but one love unfolding in countless ways. And so the one thing necessary doesn’t make the many things obsolete, but rather unifies them like many rivers that flow from a single source: one love flowing from the heart of God, awakening every act of compassion, inspiring every step toward justice, and driving out every fear. We still differentiate between love as the divine reality that faithfully holds us and love as human action, between seeking to find the face of God in the face of the other who is in need and seeking to see the face of God by studying God’s word, but there is only one love desiring to fill all things completely.

We live in the constant tension between focus and distraction, between being drawn in and being drawn away. The story of Mary and Martha captures a moment when the two sisters find themselves on the opposite poles of this tension; that doesn’t mean that this is who they are or where they always are. But it reminds us that the unity of love we seek to know and live is found in Christ and what he has done so we would inherit eternal life.

So what do we do when the world floods in on us and every day brings yet another story of violence and terror and fear and confusion without end? Mr. Rogers taught us to tell our children to always look for the helpers when something terrible has happened. Look for the helpers. Look for the men and women who follow love’s lead by acting with compassion. Look for the people whose actions tell a different story than the one fear wants to write. Look for the people whose lives are grounded in God’s love. Let your life be grounded in God’s love.

I invite you to sit in silence for a moment. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Relax your shoulders and let your hands rest. Be silent. Be still. Alone. Empty before your God. Say nothing. Ask nothing. Be silent. Be still. Let your God look upon you. That is all. God knows. God understands. God loves you with an enormous love, and only wants to look upon you with that love. Quiet. Still. Be. Let your God—love you.[5]

[1] There is a particularly fine example of a particularly bad illustration at https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/1c/8e/8a/1c8e8ab3000d36d9184868d8349df959.jpg

[2] See, e.g., Acts 22:3 (Paul at the feet of Gamaliel)

[3] See, e.g., the tractate Abot 1.4-5 of the Mishnah: “… Yossei the son of Yoezer of Tzreidah would say: Let your home be a meeting place for the wise; dust yourself in the soil of their feet, and drink thirstily of their words. Yossei the son of Yochanan of Jerusalem would say: Let your home be wide open, and let the poor be members of your household. And do not engage in excessive conversation with a woman. …”

[4] In the NRSV translation of v. 40 and v. 41; in the Greek text two different words are used.

[5] Edwina Gateley, In God’s Womb: A Spiritual Memoir (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2009), 59-60.

Will we let ourselves be loved?

It was a stormy night in Memphis, forty-eight years ago, much like some of the nights we had this past week with heavy rains and powerful thunderstorms. It was the night of April 3, 1968, the night before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers, and many wondered what a Nobel Peace Prize winner had to do with garbagemen – didn’t he have more important things to do? His closest aides reminded him that Memphis was not a strategic city, and sanitation workers would not attract the kind of broad sympathy on the national evening news the children of Birmingham or the victims of police brutality in Selma had created. What was King doing in Memphis?

There’s a back story. Local residents had objected to the sanitation workers’ practice of eating lunch outside the trucks—“picnicking” they called it. “Not in our neighborhood,” they said. And so the workers were instructed to eat in the truck, even though the cab of a truck did not accommodate a crew of four. One rainy afternoon, two of the workers crawled into the compactor on the back end of the truck to eat their sandwiches. Something was wrong with the wiring, the system engaged, and the two workers were crushed—compacted, like garbage. It’s no wonder that later, when their colleagues went on strike to demand better pay and better working conditions, many of them wore signs that read, “I am a man.”

That stormy night Dr. King asked the question, “Why Memphis?” and he answered it by telling the story of a man who was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell among thieves and was beaten, stripped, thrown in a ditch and left for dead. The man in the ditch, said King, is the sanitation worker. He tried to imagine why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop to help. Perhaps they had more important things to do. Perhaps they were already late for a meeting of the Jericho Improvement Association. Perhaps they were afraid; you stop on a road like that and you may well be the next victim. The whole thing could be a trap, who knows. Who knows what went through their minds when they saw the man in the ditch and passed him by on the other side. Even honorable people, King said in his speech, ask, “What will happen to me if I stop?” But the real question, according to King, is not, “What will happen to me if I do stop?” but, “What will happen to them if I don’t?”[1] Memphis was not a detour for Dr. King; it was a demand of neighborly love that he be there. The next morning, King was shot and killed just outside his motel room. The Jericho road is a dangerous place.

Jesus told the story in response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” asked by an expert in the law. The lawyer wanted to know who qualified as neighbor, how he could differentiate between neighbor and non-neighbor. Jesus told the story and he changed the question: Which of the three who came by the scene was a neighbor to the man in the ditch?

The one who showed him mercy, the lawyer responded. The one who was moved with compassion, who went to the man and bandaged his wounds, who then brought him to an inn and took care of him, and the next day paid the innkeeper to take care of the man and promised to repay him whatever more he spent upon his return. The one who showed him mercy, the lawyer responded. Some commentators say, he couldn’t bring himself to say the word Samaritan, so deep was the enmity between Jews and Samaritans. I’m not so sure; perhaps the lawyer had listened to Jesus’ story more carefully than we can imagine; perhaps he had learned to avoid labeling people with a quick reference to their ethnic background, their religious or political affiliation, or their socio-economic status.

Who was a neighbor to the man in the ditch? The one who showed him mercy. When love and mercy determine our actions, the labels begin to come off. In the story, the only character without a label is the man who was beaten, stripped, and robbed. No clothes to tell the passerby if he is rich or poor. Left for dead, he couldn’t speak and so there is no accent to betray if he’s a local or a foreigner. All there is to see for the passerby is a human being’s naked need. The man who stopped to help was still a man from Samaria, but in the lawyer’s mind, perhaps it was no longer the quick label that described the man, but his merciful actions.

Henri Nouwen wrote in the late 90’s,

We become neighbors when we are willing to cross the road for one another. There is so much separation and segregation: between black people and white people, between gay people and straight people, between young people and old people, between sick people and healthy people, between prisoners and free people, between Jews and Gentiles, Muslims and Christians, Protestants and Catholics, (…). As long as there is distance between us and we cannot look into one another’s eyes, all sorts of false ideas and images arise. We give them names, make jokes about them, cover them with our prejudices, and avoid direct contact. We think of them as enemies. We forget that they love as we love, care for their children as we care for ours, become sick and die as we do. (…) Only when we have the courage to cross the road and look in one another’s eyes can we see there that we are children of the same God and members of the same human family.[2]

When I heard the news that Alton Sterling and Philando Castile had been shot and killed by police, I was angry, I was sad. “Not again,” I said to myself, “not again.” I felt my soul draining through the bottom of my feet into the ground and I felt a deep helplessness.

There are powers at work among us that won’t surrender to our good intentions. We have collectively created systems of inequality and exclusion over generations, systems that we all participate in daily, whether we want to or not, systems whose power over us seems so much greater than our power over them. Michelle Alexander wrote on Facebook, “This nation was founded on the idea that some lives don't matter. Freedom and justice for some, not all. That’s the foundation. Yes, progress has been made in some respects, but it hasn’t come easy. There’s an unfinished revolution waiting to be won.”[3] The injustice, the violent exploitation and abuse of slavery and Jim Crow are not past, they are painfully present. Crossing the road, as Nouwen suggested, sounds simple enough, too simple perhaps; learning to see each other’s reality through each other’s experiences and stories rather than solely through our respective lenses takes a long walk, a long walk.

A national survey in 2015 by the Public Religion Research Institute showed a wide chasm separating black and white Americans’ attitudes toward the police. 64 percent of blacks vs. only 17 percent of whites identified police mistreatment as a major problem in their community. Similarly, 48 percent of blacks had a great deal or some confidence in the police, compared to 83 percent of whites who reported being confident in the law enforcement. 65 percent of whites said recent killings of African American men by police were isolated incidents, while only 15 percent of black Americans shared the same view. 81 percent of black Americans said recent police killings of African American men were part of a broader pattern of how police treat African Americans. Again, those are last year’s numbers, and I don’t expect much has changed for the better; it’s gonna be a long walk.

I was very comfortable looking at the scene in Jesus’ story from the perspective of the road, a very privileged perspective, as it turns out. It’s a privilege to see things through the eyes of the three men who travel the Jericho road with the freedom to choose if and when they cross it, whether they cross it to put greater distance between themselves and the man in the ditch or to come closer for mercy’s sake, close enough to look into his eyes and touch his bruised body with caring hands. Like I said, I was very comfortable looking at the scene in Jesus’ story from the perspective of one walking down the Jericho road, and then I heard the news Friday morning that eleven police officers had been shot in Dallas and five of them killed by sniper fire the night before.

I just sat there, I was terrified.

What is happening?

Is this what we’ve become?

Are we gonna take up arms and kill each other in helpless rage or calculated terror?

Fear crept in and numbness; it got cold.

What a mess we have made of the world.

We’re not on the road, we’re in the ditch.

Beaten, stripped, and robbed.

Helpless in our naked need.

Lord have mercy.

What a mess we have made of the world.

Will somebody come and bandage our wounds?

Will somebody come and pick us up and take us to a place of healing where our life is restored?

When we find ourselves in the ditch, the question changes. It’s no longer, “Will I cross the road and be a neighbor to the person in need?” Now the question is, “Will somebody see me and not pass by?” Now the question is, “Will I let one of them touch me?” Will I let one of them be Christ to me?

Jesus got himself crucified by the violent mess we have made of the world, but mercy prevailed. Will we let him bandage our wounds?

Will we let ourselves be touched, carried, and healed by the man who revealed on the cross the extent to which God is a neighbor to all human beings?

Will we let ourselves be loved by the divine Neighbor and become fearless in our work for justice with him?

Will we let ourselves be loved and create together with him the beloved community?

[1] See Richard Lischer https://www.faithandleadership.com/view-ditch

[2] Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith (New York: Harper-Collins, 1997), July 21-22.

[3] Facebook, Friday, July 8, 2016

Eat what is set before you

Miles packed his bags yesterday for a week of counseling 8er’s camp with Hope at Bethany Hills. He didn’t pack any socks, only shorts and t-shirts and bug spray. Add a Bible and your toothbrush and you’re pretty much good to go. It’s simple. Swimming trunks? Maybe. Shorts are fine for a quick dip in the pool, he said. It’s really simple.

When Jesus sends the seventy on ahead of him it isn’t for a trip to the lake or a week at camp. It is a different kind of trip. It’s not just a break from their daily routines, but rather the beginning of a whole new way of being in the world.

It started in the towns of Galilee where at some point Jesus called together the twelve and sent them out to do what he had been doing – proclaim the kingdom of God. Now he is on his way to Jerusalem and he appoints seventy others and sends them on ahead of him in pairs. Their job is, like John the Baptist’s, to pave the way for Jesus, to go, as Luke says, “to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” And where is that? Where is it that Jesus intends to go? Everywhere: Jesus intends to go everywhere, to every nation and every tribe. At the end of Luke the risen Christ announces, “Repentance and forgiveness is to be proclaimed ... to all nations” (24:47). There are seventy of these missionaries, and that’s not just a random number. In Genesis 10 seventy nations are listed to represent the entire world population. The seventy messengers represent Jesus’ intention to be present to all humanity, regardless of national borders, ethnicity or culture. In the kingdom of God, there is room for the full diversity of humanity, and the full diversity of humanity participates in the proclamation. What do you pack for a trip like that?

Tim O’Brien wrote a book drawing on his memories from his days as an infantry soldier in Vietnam. The story is titled “The Things They Carried,” and it is filled with descriptions of the things the soldiers packed in their gear as they marched and fought.

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending.

The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water.

They carried diaries, photographs, binoculars, socks, and foot powder. They carried fatigue jackets, radios, compasses, batteries, maps, and codebooks. They carried guns and ammo belts. They carried plastic explosives, grenades, and mines.

Taking turns, they carried the big PRC-77 scrambler radio, which weighed 30 pounds with its battery. They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak.

What they carried was partly what they thought they needed to survive, partly a function of rank and duty, and partly an expression of their combat mission. “They carried all they could bear,” writes O’Brien, “and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.”[1]

But what about disciples? What are the messengers of Jesus supposed to carry on our mission? “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals,” says Jesus. In fact, carry nothing, not even what prudent people would pack for a trip—no money, no extra pairs of shoes—nothing. He strips us down to little more than nothing. All we carry is his word of peace and his announcement that the kingdom of God has come near. For everything else his disciples depend on each other and the hospitality of strangers. The only equipment we need for his peace mission is ourselves and each other.

A couple of weeks ago, on our way back from the lake, Nancy, Miles and I stopped at Cracker Barrel for lunch. It’s become a family tradition. When we’re on the road, we stop at Cracker Barrel; Miles and I eat Momma’s Pancake Breakfast and Nancy gets the hashbrown casserole, no matter what time of day it is. And we gladly drive the extra miles to the next exit with the familiar sign to eat what is good and continue the tradition. I read about a preacher’s kid who said that the most challenging part of Jesus’ travel instructions to his messengers was this line, “Eat what is set before you.” His dad had been a pastor in rural South Dakota, in a poor area with lots of small farms. The family was often invited for lunch after church on Sunday, and the young man recalled how he and his siblings were admonished just about each time to eat whatever was served. And the problem wasn’t broccoli or stringy beans. Many of the farm families relied on whatever they could kill or catch nearby for food – occasionally it was chicken, sometimes it tasted like chicken, but on many a Sunday the preacher’s kid had no idea what he was eating.

Jesus sends his disciples to every nation on earth to proclaim the nearness of God’s reign; he tells us to depend on the hospitality of strangers and to receive their gifts with humility, respect, and gratitude. Nowhere in his little send-off speech does he tell us to pack enough food to feed the hungry, or extra outfits to clothe the naked, or a spare blanket for the homeless. When we think about mission, locally or globally, we think about sharing our resources to alleviate suffering as a witness to the compassion of God. We think about works of mercy and justice, we think about giving. But in this episode from the road to Jerusalem, Jesus sends us to proclaim the kingdom of God not with the things we bring, but with his peace on our lips and our need for the gifts of others. His peace is made manifest in how we receive and eat the food of strangers. For the first Jewish missionaries that may have meant eating not only with Gentiles, in their homes, but eating their food.

The story of Jesus is built around shared meals—again and again he is either on his way to eat or eating with others or just leaving the table. He eats and drinks with all kinds of people in all kinds of settings, but there’s not a single story of him giving a dinner party. He is always a guest. When he says, “This is my body, which is broken for you,” he’s breaking somebody else’s bread. He takes whatever we bring, our best and our worst, and makes peace from it. That is the peace he sends us to carry to every house we enter. He empowers us to let go of the control that comes with having and giving. He encourages us to let go of the power that comes with determining who gets what, when, and why. He sends us to discover how the word of peace we carry in our hearts and on our lips becomes manifest when we enter the world of others—their home, their town, their country, their culture—and eat what is set before us, literally and metaphorically. He invites us to share in his mission by sharing in his vulnerability. “See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves,” says the Lamb of God. He is under no illusion that his mission is a safe one. He knows he’s on his way to Jerusalem. He knows what awaits him there. Yet he continues on the way because he trusts with every fiber of his being in the faithfulness of God whose kingdom is near. And so he says to the seventy and to every generation of disciples, “Go!” Begin where you are, not where you think you ought to be or wish you could be. Begin where you are, go. Whomever you encounter, whatever house you enter, first speak a word of peace. Eat whatever is set before you. When you enter the world of another, do so without imposing your assumptions. Meet them with the readiness to receive what they offer. In receiving their gifts you receive them.

I believe that’s what the preacher’s kid began to grasp at the Sunday tables in South Dakota. Every meal is a communion, or rather every meal is open to becoming recognizable as communion, as the sacrament of God’s hospitality and Christ’s gracious embrace of all. Eating what is set before us, we can stop pretending that our mission as followers of Jesus is solely a matter of giving others something we have and they need. Instead, we can discover the nearness of God’s reign in every encounter and know it together in that moment when Christ takes what we each bring, our best and our worst, and makes peace from it.

“Carry no wallet, no bag, no sandals,” says Jesus. Carry nothing but my peace and the good news of the kingdom. Sandals will wear out and wallets become empty and moths will eat your bags, but my peace will not wear out.

[1] Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried, 1-9.

Yearning to breathe free

What does it mean to be free? A majority of Britains just declared that leaving the European Union is an essential element of their freedom. In this country, we are apparently stuck in the assumption that unhindered access to any kind of fire arm is an essential element of our freedom.

What does it mean to be free? Epictetus, a first-century Stoic philosopher, taught, “He is free who lives as he wills, who is subject neither to compulsion, nor hindrance, nor force, whose choices are unhampered, whose desires attain their end, whose aversions do not fall into what they would avoid.”[1]

In 1883, Emma Lazarus penned the words that were soon inscribed on a bronze plaque in the base of the statue of liberty in the port of New York.

(…) Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand / A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame / Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name / Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand / Glows world-wide welcome; (…) / “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she / With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

What does it mean to be free? African slaves and their descendants sang and taught us to sing freedom songs of hope and determination. Starting in 1965, the Rolling Stones sang a different song of freedom, “I’m free to do what I want any old time…, I’m free to choose what I please any old time, … I’m free to please what I choose any old time, … I’m free to do what I want any old time…”

What does it mean to be free? The descendants of Jacob were slaves in Egypt when God sent Moses to Pharao to demand their freedom. When Jesus began his ministry in Galilee, he declared in his first public teaching that God had anointed him to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to let the oppressed go free. Freedom is God’s business. Freedom is God’s will for God’s people. Human beings yearn to breathe free because we are made in the image of God.

There are more than fifty references to freedom in the New Testament, each of them adding complexity and dimension to what Paul calls in his letter to the Romans, “the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). Things are not so glorious in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Galatia was a region in Asia Minor where Paul had founded several largely gentile congregations. When he left to continue his proclamation in other parts of the Roman empire, other missionaries arrived in those congregations, arguing that the gospel Paul had preached was incomplete and deficient. They taught that in order to truly belong to God’s people, gentile believers must adopt the Jewish practice of circumcision and obey Jewish law. Some gentile believers may have been receptive to that kind of teaching because in the daily struggles of living God-pleasing lives they longed for the structure that comes with having lists of do’s and don’ts.

But when Paul heard about these developments, we wrote the angriest of all his letters on record. His gospel was a proclamation of the boundless grace of God, who in the death and resurrection of Jesus had saved humanity, Jews and gentiles alike, from the power of sin and death. In Paul’s eyes, any effort to supplement God’s saving action in Christ with old or new sets of rules was a denial of the gospel. Christian life, Paul insisted, is life in Christ, life grounded solely in the death and resurrection of Jesus and shaped by the power of the Holy Spirit. “For freedom Christ has set us free,” he declared, adding, “Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

What does it mean to be free? Paul is not addressing freedom of speech or a people’s freedom to choose their government, nor is he referring to the absence of economic or political oppression. To him, something more fundamental is at stake.

Human beings are creatures, contingent beings who, in the words of Bob Dylan, “are gonna have to serve somebody.” As creatures we are either subject to the lordship of God the creator or to that of some other, unworthy lord. And again and again, we have chosen for ourselves other lords, idols not worthy of our submission and we find ourselves in bondage to them. To give you an example, the right to purchase and carry guns has become an idol when in response to mass shootings in schools and dance clubs all we allow ourselves to imagine is arming Kindergarten teachers and DJs.

Paul is not making a constitutional argument; he knows that something more fundamental is at stake. God in Christ has freed us from bondage to unworthy, oppressive lordships. We are made in the image of God. We were never meant to live as slaves, in bondage to any powers without or within, but as free children of God, in the realm of God’s lordship. And now that Christ is risen from the dead, we are free because Christ has made us his own. We are free, because we belong to him.

In verse 13, Paul urges his readers not to use our freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence. The sovereign self I may imagine myself to be outside of my relationship with God and my fellow-creatures is not sovereign at all, but only self-centered. It’s all about me, myself, and I – my freedom, my pleasure, my desires, my rights, my flourishing – I am completely turned in upon myself, not free at all, but a prisoner of my fears, my doubts, my wants and my worries.

What does it mean to be free? It means to trust that I am loved. It means to trust that what God has done matters more than what I have or have not done. It means to trust that I don’t have to earn my place among God’s people. I belong because I am loved. You belong because you are loved. And having been freed from fear and self-concern by the love and faithfulness of Jesus Christ, we live within that liberating love by participating in it. We learn to love as we are loved. Paul writes, in rather paradoxical language for an argument about freedom, “do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” We are free in our belonging to Christ. We are free to become slaves to each other—not masters and slaves!—but slaves to each other in complete mutuality. What a curious freedom that is. In chapter 6, Paul further illumines this mutuality writing, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” The law is not abolished, but fulfilled by Christ, fulfilled in love that seeks to serve the well-being of others.

Some of you may know who Learned Hand was. He served as a federal judge for more than 50 years before retiring in 1961. Three times presidents considered nominating him for the Supreme Court. But each time they picked someone else. Many have considered Hand the greatest American judge to never sit on the Supreme Court. He was an early opponent of Hitler and a critic of antisemitism and as a judge, he defended freedom of expression and civil liberties. But Hand was also committed to judicial restraint and believed that the courts should avoid second-guessing the decisions of legislatures. In 1944, he gave a brief speech in New York’s Central Park, where 1.5 million people gathered for an event billed as “I Am an American Day.” I had never heard of Judge Hand until I read his speech last week, and I was moved by his words, moved, no doubt, because words like his are so seldom heard these days and so sorely needed. Hand aimed his remarks at 150,000 newly naturalized citizens:

(…) Some of us have chosen America as the land of our adoption; the rest have come from those who did the same. For this reason we have some right to consider ourselves a picked group, a group of those who had the courage to break from the past and brave the dangers and the loneliness of a strange land. What was the object that nerved us, or those who went before us, to this choice? We sought liberty; freedom from oppression, freedom from want, freedom to be ourselves. This we then sought; this we now believe that we are by way of winning. What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men [and women] recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow. What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest. (…).[2]

I pray that in these tumultuous times we may have to courage to live and grow in God’s liberating love.

[1] Epictetus, Discourse, 4.1.1.

[2] http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1199

The weight of sin by Rev. Thomas Kleinert

Sin is an old-fashioned word for a powerful reality. I did a word search online with a news filter to see how the word is used these days in our public discourse outside of church and synagogue. The results were slim, very slim; I wasn’t surprised. Sin is a powerful reality, but we’re losing the language that allows us to name it.

In Jesus’ day, people spoke confidently of sin. The story of the woman who crashed Simon’s party is a good example. She’s introduced to us as a woman in the city, who was a sinner – apparently that was all that needed to be said. She was a sinner – what had she done, we wonder. And what about the rest, the dinner guests who had been invited and the host? What were they, who were they? Sin is a powerful reality, but when we begin to identify and label sinners, we wander into dangerous territory. When we talk about sinners without including ourselves, we deceive ourselves. When we think of sin as other people’s problem, we see specks in everybody’s eye, blinded by the log in our own.

The prophet Isaiah knew about sin and spoke words of accusation, confession, and lament, saying,

We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes. We wait for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us. For our transgressions before you are many, and our sins testify against us. Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public square, and uprightness cannot enter.

Isaiah spoke of our sins as a thing-like reality that hides God’s face from us, a barrier between us and God.[1] In the Old Testament, sin is known as a weight the community and individuals must bear; it is a burden that cannot be thrown off or placed on another’s shoulder – unless the shoulder belongs to the scapegoat and the one who places the burden of the community’s sin on it is the highpriest who has been instructed in the demands of holiness and the proper cultic responses whenever those demands have been violated.[2]

In the Old Testament, sin is also known as a stain that must be wiped away or something emerging from the ground like a weed that must be trampled down, but by far the most common way to speak of sin is in words recognizing it’s oppressive weight.

Another metaphor for sin that emerged after the Babylonian exile was debt. When the community or an individual violates the demands of God’s holiness and God’s righteousness, we are withholding what we owe as creatures and covenant partners of God; and unless we repent and pay what we owe, our debt only grows. The debt metaphor came from the world of moneylending. After a dry year, a farmer may have had to use his seed corn to provide food for his family. Then he borrowed money to buy seed, hoping that the next harvest would be bountiful so he could feed his family and repay the debt. If he was unable to repay the loan, he and often his wife and children, were forced to work as debt-slaves for the creditor until the loan was paid off. Debt was suddenly not a simple matter of borrowing and following a payment plan, but once again an oppressive experience of being crushed.

Sin is a powerful reality; it is the name we give to that which disrupts the shalom of God’s creation. Sin weighs us down and keeps us from growing to the full stature of creatures made in the image of God. Sin keeps us from knowing ourselves and each other as God’s beloved.

The word “sin” didn’t make the news this week, but much of this week’s news reflected sin’s destructive reality. One night in January of last year, two Stanford students biking across campus saw a man thrusting his body on top of an unconscious, half-naked woman behind a dumpster. In March of this year, a jury found 20-year-old Brock Turner guilty of three counts of sexual assault. He faced a maximum of 14 years in prison. On Thursday, he was sentenced to six months in county jails and probation. The judge said he feared a longer sentence would have a “severe impact” on the former student and athlete. Do you feel the weight? Can you imagine the massive weight the young woman is bearing and the verdict’s “severe impact” on her? Can you imagine the weight young women on college campuses are bearing, the weight women everywhere are bearing?

Cory Batey is a former Vanderbilt student and athlete on a football scholarship; in April a jury here in Nashville found him guilty of aggravated rape in the assault of an unconscious woman in a Vanderbilt dorm room. His sentencing has been postponed until July; he’s facing 15-25 years in prison. Batey is black. Turner is white. Do you feel the weight?

The young California woman whom Turner assaulted, addressed him directly in court on Thursday. And she gave voice to the weight, but also to her rage and her hope that her words might wake us up. “You took away my worth,” she told Turner.

[You took away] my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today. (…) You made me a victim. In newspapers my name was “unconscious intoxicated woman”, ten syllables, and nothing more than that. For a while, I believed that that was all I was. I had to force myself to relearn my real name, my identity. To relearn that this is not all that I am. That I am not just a drunk victim at a frat party found behind a dumpster, while you are the All­ American swimmer at a top university, innocent until proven guilty, with so much at stake. I am a human being who has been irreversibly hurt, my life was put on hold for over a year, waiting to figure out if I was worth something.[3]

Sin weighs us down and keeps us from growing to the full stature of creatures made in the image of God. Sin keeps us from knowing ourselves and each other as God’s beloved. Sin disrupts the peace of God’s creation, in a single violent act as well as in patterns of violence hidden in school policies, court procedures, and everyday cultural assumptions. Sin is a powerful reality, but we’re losing the language that allows us to name it. We may be tempted to place the burden on the shoulders of the young man or worse, of the young woman or of the judge, but we can’t pretend that the weight isn’t ours to bear.

Vice President Biden responded to the young woman’s statement in an open letter.

I am in awe of your courage for speaking out—for so clearly naming the wrongs that were done to you and so passionately asserting your equal claim to human dignity. And I am filled with furious anger—both that this happened to you and that our culture is still so broken that you were ever put in the position of defending your own worth.

(…) I do not know your name—but I know that a lot of people failed you that terrible January night and in the months that followed. Anyone at that party who saw that you were incapacitated yet looked the other way and did not offer assistance. Anyone who dismissed what happened to you as “just another crazy night.” Anyone who asked “what did you expect would happen when you drank that much?” or thought you must have brought it on yourself. You were failed by a culture on our college campuses where one in five women is sexually assaulted—year after year after year. A culture that promotes passivity. That encourages young men and women on campuses to simply turn a blind eye.

(…) [You were failed by] a culture that continues to ask the wrong questions: What were you wearing? Why were you there? What did you say? How much did you drink? Instead of asking: Why did he think he had license to rape?[4]

We don’t know the young woman’s name. She remains anonymous to protect her identity, but she is not a nameless victim, she is not “unconscious intoxicated woman.” She is a human being made in the image of God. She is a person with a dignity far beyond any of the labels we slap on each other.

In Luke’s story we meet a Pharisee and we’re quick to think of him as a self-righteous man, obsessed with his own holiness and the impurity of others and who touches whom or what. We meet a woman, introduced as a woman in the city, who was a sinner – as though that was all that needed to be said and everybody already knew who she was. Jesus calls the man by name, Simon, but in our minds he’s still the nameless Pharisee, not really a person, but a stick figure just big enough to make our labels stick.

But then Jesus tells his story about a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed what a worker earns in about two years, the other the equivalent of two months’ wages. And when they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. What a crazy story. Who’s ever heard of a creditor forgiving a debt simply because the debtor wasn’t able to repay? Simon hasn’t, but the woman clearly has. She has heard of Jesus, the friend of sinners, and she has come to offer her love and gratitude in an outpouring of tears, kisses, and fragrant ointment. Confident that God has welcomed her in love, she trespasses boldly to enter the males-only gathering and claim her true name as a person made in the image of God and redeemed by God.

The final word of the story is peace. That is the promise here, that in the end she and Simon and the rest of us can go in peace. The gospel promise is that God looks at us not as keepers or breakers of the law, but as beloved creatures, carrying a heavy burden, stumbling under the weight of sin, unable to free ourselves. God in Christ brings peace to creation, because God’s compassion is the heartbeat of God’s justice.

What do you think became of Simon? How did his life change after that memorable night? What became of the woman who reclaimed her true name as a beloved child of God? And what will become of you now that you’ve seen the face of God in Jesus, the friend of sinners?

[1] See Isaiah 59:1-14

[2] See Leviticus 16:21-22

[3] https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.iwogKN0Rr#.utdw9zj0g

[4] Ibid.