Yet you

“I once caused consternation in a drugstore in Louisville,” Thomas Merton wrote a long time ago.

I was going to the hospital and I wanted to get some toothpaste, so I went in and said, “I’d like some toothpaste.” The clerk says, “What kind” and I said, “I don’t care.” He almost dropped dead. I was supposed to feel strongly about Colgate or Pepsodent or Crest or something with five colors. And they all have a secret ingredient. But I didn’t care about the secret ingredient. The worst thing you can do now is not care about these things.[1]

Kathleen Norris called him a prophet for saying “I don’t care” in one of the temples for the brand-conscious consumer.[2] These days, of course, it’s a lot harder not to care about these things since they tend to invade your every waking moment. TV ads, pop-up ads, radio ads, billboards, busses, and thumbstoppers. Haven’t heard about thumbstoppers yet? It’s what they call social media ads like tik-tok’s dogs in panda suits – you glance, you do a double take, and before you know it, your thumb has stopped scrolling.

And in that movie you streamed the other night? A whole team of people worked hard to make sure you notice without noticing that the young, handsome hero drives a Dodge, and the villain, an import.

Did you go bargain hunting on Friday? You know that as a brand conscious consumer you are expected to spend much of your Thanksgiving week tracking special offers and what they used to call door busters before 2020 happened — track those offers so you’re ready to pounce when price and delivery estimates meet in the sweet spot.

Or you could work on becoming a junior prophet, take a sip of coffee, and declare, “I don’t care.”

Retail marketing and faith are both about the cultivation of desire and the formation of habits. But where marketing is all about annual sales, brand loyalty, and the promise of purchased fulfillment, faith is about our relationship with God and aligning our lives with God’s purposes. Many voices invite us to enter the holiday season of santas, angels, elves and lights, all mixed with warm childhood memories and bathed in a nostalgic glow. In the church, today is the first day of a new year, and the voices we hear during Advent urge us to watch and wait for the God who comes to us in the child in the manger, in visiting strangers, and like a thief in the night. The latter, of course, doesn’t lend itself to sentimentality, which is why the Black Friday marketers won’t touch it.

The contrast may never be clearer than today: Advent begins with the prayers and tears of an old man.

Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and glorious habitation. Where are your zeal and your might? The yearning of your heart and your compassion? They are withheld from me.[3]

The voice of Isaiah has been with the people of Jerusalem and Judah for many years. His was a voice of warning, a voice of truth telling and judgment, a voice of challenge and comfort. Isaiah spoke when Jerusalem was proud and when the city fell to the Babylonian army. Isaiah spoke in exile, reflecting on the devastations of loss, and declaring that they were God’s righteous judgment on a people who had made a mockery of justice and faithfulness in their communities. Eventually Isaiah began to speak of an end to their exile. They would return to Jerusalem and the hills of Judah. The Lord would lead them on a highway through the wilderness, in an exodus even more glorious than their liberation from Egypt, and they would return to the land of their ancestors and the city of David.

And when king Cyrus of Persia toppled the Babylonian regime, they began to return. But amid the burnt ruins of the city and the temple, their shouts of joy and songs of freedom soon died down. Journeying home under banners of hope was inspiring and catching — doing the work of hope in rebuilding was hard, much harder than any of them had imagined. The old prophet, in moving poetry, gives voice to the people’s longing:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence … to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!

These are the first words of scripture we hear on the first day of Advent. “Advent begins not on a note of joy,” says Walter Brueggemann, “but of despair.” We are urged to recognize ourselves in that situation of utter need.

Humankind has reached the end of its rope. All our schemes for self-improvement, for extracting ourselves from the traps we have set for ourselves, have come to nothing. We have now realized at the deepest level of our being that we cannot save ourselves, and that, apart from the intervention of God, we are totally and irretrievably lost.[4]

Advent begins with a profound sense of stuckness and absence. It feels like you’re kneeling under a blanket of silence, pleading, and all you can sense is your own yearning for something better. It feels like letting go entirely of anything like respectful restraint before God and crying out, “Rip open the heavens and come! Come like wildfire! Do something nobody can ignore!”

We don’t pray for long when the fire we want isn’t coming, but the prophet keeps praying.

You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways, but there is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you.

Isaiah offers words of confession and reproach, suggesting that we think honestly about our part of the relationship, but he also sees responsibility on God’s part:

You have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

Not that we don’t deserve it, but don’t leave us like this. The prophet keeps praying, wrestling really, refusing to let go of the relationship that has shaped his entire life. He’s come to the point where God’s face is hidden and all we can see is our iniquity — true enough, but not the whole truth. At the point where the chasm between God and God’s people appears too wide and too deep to be crossed, the prophet on behalf of the people makes a bold and confident turn:

Yet you, Lord, the prophet says, and I imagine he whispers here when before he may well have thundered — yet you, Lord, are our father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. You made us. You own us. All of us. You are responsible for us. We belong to you. We are your responsibility, your burden, your problem, your treasured possession. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people. We have long been like those whom you do not rule, like those not called by your name.[5] We are stumbling in the darkness, not walking in your light. Yet you, Lord, are our father. Everything hangs on that briefest and boldest of prayers. When we’ve taken an honest look at ourselves and what we’ve made of the world, when all is said and done, when we’re at the end of our rope, when we’re exhausted by recognition and confession and despair — yet you. You made us. You own us. All of us. Will you hide your face forever or turn to us with mercy? Will you keep silent or speak the word of peace? Will you remember that you have made us your own?

Most of us have wished on occasion that God would tear the veil between heaven and earth and do something big, something to make the mountains quake and the nations tremble, something that would undeniably manifest the divine presence among us, so that all of us, from the first to the last, would confess that the Lord is God and no other. It may well be that, because we live in a world of constant noise, we expect a voice loud enough to drown out all the others. And because we live in a world of constant distractions, that we expect a vision bright enough to outshine all the others. And because we’re constantly bombarded by advertising, that we expect thumb-stopping kingdom marketing.

But God doesn’t shout or flashbang people into belief or manipulate them into trust. God calls us and waits for us. God comes to us, and God is continually at work among us until creation is complete. Isaiah’s psalm moves from the image of God as the divine warrior who comes bursting out of the heavens in the most powerful of military interventions, to God envisioned as an artisan: a potter who molds and fashions us from dust of the earth, continually forming us as a people, until all that we are and all that we do shows forth our Maker’s purpose. This is where our hope is rooted, in God’s loving and faithful attention. This is where we become who we are as God’s own: people of loving and faithful attention.

[1] Thomas Merton, The Springs of Contemplation: A Retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, ed. by Jane Marie Richardson (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010), 155.

[2] Kathleen Norris, “Apocalypse Now,” The Christian Century, November, 15, 2005, 19.

[3] Isaiah 63:15

[4] Walter Brueggemann in Texts for Preaching, Walter Brueggemann e.a., eds., Year B, 1993, 1.

[5] Isaiah 63:19

Mercy song

Mary Gauthier came to Nashville from Baton Rouge, by way of Boston. Her song, Mercy Now, was released in 2005. I loved it when it first came out, and I’ve loved it ever since.

My brother could use a little mercy now. He’s a stranger to freedom, he’s shackled to his fear and his doubt. The pain that he lives in, it’s almost more than living will allow — I love my bother, he could use some mercy now.

Her song just resonates, her words, her voice, as she sings about her father, her brother, her church and her country, and every living thing. People in power, they’ll do anything to keep their crown, she sings, a line that’s perhaps never rung more true than in these past couple of weeks. We love our little crowns.

I love life and life itself could use some mercy now, … and every single one of us could use some mercy now.

Let life simmer, let it boil down to its essence, and name what you taste — Mary sings, mercy, now. Your story and all the ways it’s connected to all the other stories on this little planet — let it sit like a jar of muddy water, let it sit for a few good, deep breaths, and let the mud settle, and name the clarity that emerges before your eyes — Mary sings, mercy, now.

The universe is an expanding vastness of 13.8 billion years. If the history of the universe, all 13.8 billion years of it, were compressed into one calendar year, just for the sake of comparison, our sun was formed at the end of August, and just about all of known human history happened in the last few seconds before midnight on December 31. My head starts spinning whenever I try to think about it — creation is so immense, unfathomable, awesome, and we are so small. What was the line in Psalm 90? The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong.

There’s a place in Washington, D.C. that’s built to human scale. Perched on a hill above the town, it is like something out of a dream, a place of grandeur and great beauty. The National Cathedral is only stone and light, yet entering the cathedral is like stepping into the mystery of life itself. Above the front entrance, carved in bright lime stone, is a dramatic depiction of the creation of humankind, human bodies emerging from whirling, swirling textures fluid as water. Stepping across the threshold you find yourself immersed in light filtering through magnificent stained glass windows, in a place filled only with hushed whispers. The tall pillars envelop sacred silence, interrupted only by the proclamation of God’s word and the prayers of God’s people. As you make your way to the altar on the opposite end of the sanctuary, you journey through human history, past the monuments of faith and of the saints, memorials to achievements in science and art, and testimonials to what we honor as good and true and beautiful.

At the end of your walk down the nave, your passage from humanity’s beginnings to the end of time, you arrive before the finely carved high altar: Here Jesus sits on the throne of his glory, surrounded by the whole company of heaven, balancing the earth like a ball in the palm of his left hand, his right hand raised in blessing. Christ crucified, risen from the dead, reigns the universe and he speaks the final word on all things come into being from the foundation of the world.

All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.

Our journey through the grand cathedral of time does come to an end, and we are invited to picture ourselves standing before the throne of glory, naked and empty-handed, and Jesus speaks.

Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.

In the end, the last word about our life is not spoken by ourselves, or by those who remember us, or by those who may wish to delete our memory — the final word is spoken by Jesus, the crucified Son of God, risen in glory.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established — what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?[1]

In the vastness of spacetime and among billions of human beings, a single lifetime seems small, but in the eyes of the one seated on the throne, the one who has been crowned Lord of life, in the eyes of the judge, every life is seen, every story is known, every name is spoken. And the judge is none other than Jesus of Nazareth whom human beings judged, sentenced, and executed. The judge is the Son of God who walks barefoot with the poor and declares them blessed, who sleeps among those who have no place to lay their head, and who knows betrayal and torture and death row without parole.

The judge himself is the Least of These: rejected and ridiculed, spat upon, sneered at and yelled at, beaten, abandoned, killed and forgotten. The judge is the Least of These, raised by the power of God. And this judge shows little interest in the sincerity of our confession, or the orthodoxy of our doctrine, or our knowledge, our wisdom, or our list of accomplishments. What he’s looking for is mercy. We would not know, had he not told us, that when we look into the eyes of another human being who needs us to be and act as their neighbor, we are looking into the eyes of the Lord of life.

Hungry and thirsty, ailing, lonely, unsheltered, unwelcome, weighed down, excluded, abandoned — every one of these words speaks of a situation of need, and each presents the need as a question awaiting an answer. And the answer is mercy. The need for mercy calls forth deeds of mercy, and the Lord of life is present in both the need and in the kindness that meets it. That is all that matters in the end, says Jesus: Ordinary, everyday people and all the ways in which we give shape to mercy in ordinary, everyday actions; it’s lovely in its simplicity.

There are, of course, those of us who will ask, “How much mercy is enough? And isn’t there a limit? How much mercy is too much? And what about those whose need for mercy outweighs our capacity to offer it?” Reinhold Niebuhr wrote,

On the one hand it is true that it makes a difference whether [humans] are good or evil, loving or selfish, honest or dishonest. It makes a real difference, that is, an ultimate difference in the sight of God. On the other hand it makes no difference. No life can justify itself ultimately in the sight of God. The evil and the good, and even the more and the less good are equally in need of the mercy of God. … Love is both the fulfilment and the negation of law. Forgiveness is the highest justice and the end of justice.[2]

We are all equally in need of the mercy of God. Every single one of us could use some mercy now. The more fully we know and remember this, the more fully we will live and give mercy. The one who comes to judge us is no stranger, but the one who has come to redeem us, to free us from sin and fear and every shackle that keeps us from living in freedom as the children of God that we are. The one who comes looking for mercy among us is the one who was and is and forever will be the very mercy of God. Worry and fear will not free us. Worry and fear will not set us free for a life of loving service to others, but faith will — trust in God whose love drew us into life and continues to draw us toward life’s fulfillment.

Every human life is a marvelous journey in time and a unique verse in the song of creation. But every human life participates in the one life of God, and therefore we are not solitary, disconnected travelers, here today and gone tomorrow. We are made for communion, in time and beyond the vast expanse of time. We are made for the one life given shape by God’s loving attention to us and our needs and our loving response to the needs of others. We are made in the image of God whose mercy is from everlasting to everlasting.

[1] Psalm 8:3-4

[2] Beyond Tragedy, 1937; quote from http://www.lectionarycentral.com/septuag/Neibuhr.html

To live gladly

In the northern hemisphere, as the days grow shorter, the lectionary readings also grow a little darker. We’re invited to reflect on endings – the end of the world, our own mortality, the final judgment. I don’t know how preachers in South Africa, Argentina, or New Zealand are dealing with this – talk about endings when your world is bathed in spring, in colors and light and beginnings. November is just right. Light is dimming. Colors are fading. Leaves are falling. Everybody’s feeling a little melancholy anyway.

The psalm for this Sunday, Psalm 90, opens with the grand vision of God who has been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. The words breathe eternity and awe. And then the psalmist quickly turns to the impermanence and brevity of human life, speaking of years passing like a dream, and lives briefly flourishing before withering like grass. There’s no room here for celebrating our being fearfully and wonderfully made, no room for marveling at the wondrous beauty of creation, no room for rejoicing in life’s gifts. The psalmist is looking at life in a crisis moment when apparently none of that matters, a moment when loss is threatening to overwhelm hope.

The book of Psalms is divided into five smaller books, and the individual compositions aren’t randomly thrown together, but carefully arranged. In Psalms 73-89, Book III of the collection, prayers lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem are given voice, and Psalm 89 concludes that section with a powerful plea in the face of profound loss, God’s rejection of the covenant with David and of Jerusalem as the center of that covenant: How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? Lord, where is your steadfast love of old? Remember, O Lord, how your servant is taunted![1]

Psalm 90 opens a new section, and it moves from lament to confession, inviting those who say it, to follow its movement: We are consumed by your anger. We are overwhelmed by your wrath. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance.

There’s a recognition, or at least an invitation to recognize, that the overwhelming experience of losing the city, the temple, and the throne of David was not caused by an arbitrary withdrawal of divine favor, but was an act of judgment, a justified act of judgment.

“Who considers the power of your anger?” the Psalmist asks. Who considers the power of your anger over our loveless, self-serving ways, our convenient idolatries, our endless justifications of injustice, our apathy, our numbness, our daily rebellion against the demands of your love? “Your wrath is as great as the fear due to you” we hear the Psalmist say, and like generations before us we struggle to make these words our own, to acknowledge, in the presence of God, “Your wrath is not some random explosion of divine fury triggered by who knows what. Your wrath fully corresponds to our lack of reverence for you and for each other! It is not you who, out of the blue, broke your covenant; we did it, with our countless, daily failures to love you with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our might.”

“The days of our life are seventy years,” the Psalmist muses in this moment of loss and recognition, “or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” “Only toil and trouble” may sound a little over the top for some of us, but we know that these words continue to ring true for many who never get a taste of life’s fullness and can only imagine it in their dreams. And so we hear these words with them and we say them prayerfully in solidarity with them, affirming that life is not full for any of us until all people and all living things share in its fullness.

But we also say these words remembering that the wrath of God is neither the only nor the final response to our failure to live faithfully in communion with God and with each other. As Paul assures us in today’s passage from 1 Thessalonians, “God has destined us not for wrath but for attaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”[2] God has destined us for fullness of life through Jesus Christ.

Verses 13 and 14 of Psalm 90 are not included in today’s reading, but they should be. “Have compassion on your servants!” we are encouraged to pray, trusting that God’s compassion is greater than God’s wrath. “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days!” We believe and affirm that in the life of Jesus — his whole life, including his death and resurrection — God has answered our prayers and revealed to us the depth of God’s compassion and the boundless range of God’s mercy. We believe and affirm that on the cross, in the radical vulnerability of love, our sin is judged and sentenced, and we are set free to live fully in this love, now and forever. “The greatest honor we can give Almighty God,” wrote the English mystic, Julian of Norwich (1343-1416), “is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.”

When we hear the words, “Teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart,” we may think of making the most of each day, of living each days to the fullest. When Warren Zevon, who was dying of cancer, was asked by David Letterman what his illness had taught him about living, he said, “How much you’re supposed to enjoy every sandwich.”[3] So true. Every sandwich. Every sip of coffee. Every glorious small thing we habitually take for granted. To taste and see the fullness of life in each moment.

But the wise heart is not merely mindful. The wise heart is joyful and hopeful. In Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, Kentucky poet-farmer Wendell Berry recommends,

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.[4]

It’s November. Light is dimming. Colors are fading. Leaves are falling. Everybody’s feeling a little melancholy. We’re open to thoughts about life’s brief span. We’re open to consider our mortality and the impermanence of all things, and the poet-farmer tells us to “expect the end of the world.” What do you expect the words after that to be? “Stay awake“? “Get ready”? “Accept the inevitable”?

He says, “Laugh … Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.” I don’t know what he means, and I have wondered if that’s the farmer’s madness talking. But perhaps it’s not mad laughter at all. Perhaps it’s the laughter of one who is living gladly because of the knowledge of God’s love. Perhaps it’s the laughter of one who has heard the apostle Paul say that “when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.”[5] Perhaps he says, “Laugh” because he knows that the One who “formed the earth and the world” will not let creation fall into oblivion but bring an end to its incompleteness. Perhaps he says, “Laugh” because “when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.”[6]

But who can laugh when they’re worried? Ann Lamott, back in 2003, wrote,

Some mornings I wake up and I instantly feel discouraged by the world and my government and by my own worried mind. It’s like my brain has already been up for awhile, sitting on the bed waiting for me to wake up. It’s already had coffee, and has some serious concerns about how far behind we are already. So I always pray, first thing upon awakening, very simple prayers like the one [my son] Sam prayed years ago when his head got caught in the slats of a chair: “I need help with me,” he whispered.[7]

We need help with us because we’re experts at getting ourselves caught in all kinds of situations that looked so promising before we got into them. We need the courage to let the One who has been our dwelling place in all generations be our dwelling place. The courage to be at home in the steadfast love of God.

[1] Psalm 89:46, 49, 50

[2] 1 Thessalonians 5:9

[3] Ann Lamott https://www.salon.com/2003/02/14/sandwich/

[4] https://cals.arizona.edu/~steidl/Liberation.html

[5] 1 Corinthians 13:10

[6] Psalm 126:1-2

[7] Ann Lamott https://www.salon.com/2003/02/14/sandwich/

Open doors

We know a thing or two about waiting.

This hasn’t been the longest wait for election results, but Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday made for a pretty long Tuesday. We know a thing or two about waiting.

Our lives have been on hold in so many ways for months; workers have been without pay or without jobs for months; numbers of people infected with COVID hit new records daily; vaccine development and testing have been accelerated in astonishing ways, but we’re not there yet. We know a thing or two about waiting.

Jesus teaches in his Sermon on the Mount, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”[1] He has taught us to pray and to persevere in prayer. For generations we have prayed, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

We know that it is God’s will and God’s gift that we live as one humanity on this earth, and for generations we have searched for ways to live into that unity, that wholeness as members of the one household God has made life to be. “For everyone who knocks, the door will be opened,” Jesus has taught us, and we have been asking, searching, and knocking. We know a thing or two about waiting.

When I was little, my brother and I shared a bedroom for many years—two beds, two desks, a dresser with two sets of drawers, and a wardrobe with two doors. We shared a room, but it often felt more like the Berlin Wall ran right through the middle of it. There was a seam in the carpet, just between our beds, and at times that line was as heavily monitored as the Korean border. And at times we both acted like little tyrants, jealously guarding our territory and threatening heavy sanctions for border violations.

One day, I don’t remember what exactly had led to the confrontation, my brother was in our room and I was not, and he had locked the door. I asked him to let me in, but he didn’t. I knocked, gently first, then harder, but his response didn’t change. I pleaded with him, and he laughed — he thought the situation was hilarious, or perhaps he simply enjoyed his moment of complete control, and found my pitiful pleas laughable.

I remember well how I went down the hall to the kitchen and came back carrying a sturdy stool, solid beech wood. “Let me in; this is my room, too.” He just laughed. I was furious.

I grabbed that stool by the seat with both hands, swung it over my right shoulder, and – wham! – hit that door as hard as I could. Made me feel pretty good for a moment, but then my brother and I looked at the hole I had put in that door, and suddenly we agreed, “Man, that was stupid.” His ugly pleasure in shutting me out was gone, and so was my angry frustration. We finally found common purpose in mending the damage we had caused, and we learned to live together in a shared room.

The story of the ten bridesmaids doesn’t end with a vision of togetherness. Five of them have been introduced as foolish, the other five as wise, and that separation sticks. At the end of the story, the foolish five stand outside the banquet hall. They knock and they plead, “Lord, lord, open to us.” And the voice from behind the closed door declares, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you.”

Is Jesus pretending? Is he playing some cruel game? Is he suggesting that parts of his sermon on the mount need to be rewritten?

“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you”—unless of course you ran out of oil and show up late for the banquet, in which case you might as well forget about the party.

Do we need to rewrite his earlier teachings?

“Do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’”[2] But do worry about your oil and how big a bottle you will have to fill to let your light shine when the bridegroom arrives. Do worry about your oil and let others worry about theirs, so you don’t end up standing outside in the darkness. We’re used to oil determining the economic and foreign policy of nations, and now we’re supposed to think about the kingdom in terms of oil and who has it and who doesn’t?

“Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” the story ends—well, nothing keeps you awake like worries do; so is sleeplessness suddenly a Christian virtue? Are we to stay awake, worried about our personal oil supply while anxiously scanning the horizon for the Son of Man coming with power and great glory?[3] I don’t think so.

When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.[4]

It is the Lord who neither slumbers nor sleeps so that God’s people can lie down and sleep in peace.[5] The reign of God is like a baby, sound asleep in her crib, safe and secure from all alarms, and not like a bunch of frantic bridesmaids running through the night in search of fuel for their lamps.

To live in anticipation of God’s reign to be fulfilled in all things is like waiting for the wedding celebration to begin. The bride and her attendants are at her parents’ home waiting for the arrival of the groom and his party. The bridesmaids are ready, their dresses are beautiful, their eyes and cheeks are aglow with expectation, their lamps are trimmed. As soon as the children outside announce with happy shouts the bridegroom’s arrival, the bridesmaids will meet him at the end of the street and escort him with song and dance to the house of his beloved. Then they will all parade to the groom’s home, and, once there, the wedding banquet will begin – with music and dance, and food and wine in abundance!

But in Jesus’ story, the groom is delayed. The ten become drowsy and go to sleep, taking a little nap before the big party, lamps in their laps, and no one can tell which ones are wise or foolish. Then they wake up, and suddenly there’s a line running right down the middle, wise ones on the right, foolish ones on the left, separated like sheep from goats. All of them waited with their lamps burning, but only the wise ones considered that the wait in the darkness might be longer than anticipated. The foolish ones didn’t plan for the long time of waiting.

What does it mean for us to live wisely? In the sermon on the mount, Jesus teaches us about the life of discipleship, and he says,

You are the light of the world. … No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.[6]

Let your light shine. Give light to all in the house. Let the world see your good works. The oil in our lamps is not some scarce commodity for which we must compete; it is the faith, the love, the hope that keeps us humming, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…” Waiting for the fullness of God’s reign to be revealed, on earth as it is in heaven, is about living with anticipation, and to feed that little flame with the word of God, with the witness of God’s people, and with the assurance of things hoped for. This lamp oil cannot be bottled or hoarded, bought or borrowed. It comes to us like breath comes to the living. I can look at Rosa Parks and the courage of her witness, but I can’t ask her, “Would you give me some of that?” I can look at John Lewis and his prophetic passion for justice, but I can’t ask him, “Will you let me borrow some of that?”

What you and I and anyone who hears the words of Jesus can do, though, is act on them — on faith, with a little courage and hope. What we can do is stop asking, “When will he come?” and more fully lean into the promise that he will come, and that his coming will bring the great banquet of joy without end, of justice and peace, of all things reflecting the glory of God. What we can do is serve the one who has taught us to recognize his face in the faces of the hungry and the thirsty, the stranger and the homeless and those locked behind prison doors.[7] What we can do is open doors we have the power to open, and step through doors that have been opened for us.

I don’t like the story of the story of the bridesmaids, and I’ve told the Lord, and I heard him say that I don’t have to like it; that it’s enough if it makes me think and question, and question my discomfort with it. I’m not free to rewrite it, but I neither want to nor do I have to live as though its outcome, the fifty-fifty split, is inevitable.

We know how it feels to stand in the dark outside the house of laughter and light. And we have all known moments, fractions of moments at least, I hope, when we were floating in its joy. So for as long as I have the power to open doors, I will, in the name of the bridegroom, and I encourage all of you to do the same. Our division must not be the last word.

[1] Matthew 7:7-8

[2] Matthew 6:31

[3] Matthew 24:30

[4] Proverbs 3:24 KJV, a translation that renders the words as both promise and command.

[5] Psalms 4:8; 121:4-5

[6] Matthew 5:14-16

[7] Matthew 25:31-46

Saintly lives

Some five hundred years ago, on October 31, 1517, an Augustinian monk by the name of Martin Luther posted ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Luther was on the university faculty, the church was the university chapel, and its door was commonly used as a bulletin board. Posting the theses was a public invitation to debate, but this wasn’t merely an academic exercise. Luther challenged the power of the papacy, and he may have chosen October 31 to post his theses because it was the day before All Saints Day, and the meaning and role of saints was at the heart of Luther’s argument with Rome. The church taught that certain believers were saints, and the saints were so good, so perfect in belief and obedience, that they accumulated more righteousness than they needed to enter the gates of heaven. So there was excess righteousness sitting around in heavenly storage, as it were, and somebody in Rome came up with the clever idea to make that surplus available to common sinners. The church issued documents called indulgences, the purchase of which allowed sinners to make deposits to their heavenly accounts, reducing the time they would have to spend in purgatory and expediting their journey to the great assembly of the saints in glory. As an added bonus, people could purchase indulgences not only for themselves but for family members and friends who had died.

Fear of damnation is a terrible fear, and any fear gives great power to those who know how to manipulate it. The leadership of the church certainly knew how to turn the gift of forgiveness into a lucrative business. In the early sixteenth century, the pope sent out a sales force all across the Holy Roman Empire to peddle indulgences—and the campaign was very successful: St. Peter’s basilica in Rome was completed with the lush revenue created by the sale of get-out-of-purgatory cards.

Luther wanted to debate that practice. He understood Scripture to teach that salvation is God’s gracious gift to humanity in Jesus Christ, a gift we do not deserve and cannot earn, let alone purchase, but only need to gratefully embrace in faith. To us it may sound obvious, but at the time it was a revolutionary idea: The Christian faith is not about accumulating points in one’s heavenly savings account, but about living in gratitude to God for the gift of God’s grace.

The corrupt practice of the church leadership meant that any talk of saints and the whole concept of sainthood became suspicious and eventually disappeared almost completely from Protestant life. But only almost, because many of the New Testament writings not only mentioned the saints, but were literally addressed to them. The apostle Paul addressed his letter to the Philippians, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi; and his letter to the Romans, to all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints. And Paul wasn’t writing to the few, the proud, the shining stars among God’s people, to the winners in the great playoff of life, awaiting their introduction into the Discipleship Hall of Fame, no, he was writing to all who had found new life through faith in Jesus Christ.[1]

The writer of Hebrews reminds us that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,[2] that we are not alone on the journey of faith. Those who have gone before us, surround us; and to me it’s a beautiful thing to imagine them watching us and cheering us on as we continue the journey to the fullness of God’s reign. Saints, Frederick Buechner wrote, are not “plaster statues, men and women of such paralyzing virtue that they never thought a nasty thought or did an evil thing their whole life long. Saints are essentially life givers. To be with them is to become more alive.”[3] They are the men and women who told us the good news of God’s love for the world; who reminded us of our freedom in Christ as sons and daughters of God; who modeled for us what faithful living can look like; who inspired and encouraged us. Most of them weren’t faith celebrities but ordinary people whose lives showed extraordinary courage and integrity in response to God’s grace, particularly in trying times. They moved forward in hope, trusting the promise and presence of God.

I know I wouldn’t be standing here talking about keeping the faith through these tumultuous days without the example of my grandfather or the women and men who told me the stories of Jesus when I was a kid, or the people who modeled discipleship for me as I got older; people of life-giving generosity, kindness, and faithfulness. None of them were people of ostentatious piety.

Jesus says, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” We know, of course, what he’s talking about, and we know that the challenges of walking the walk, and not merely talking the talk, are not limited to just one or two groups of people. Preachers preach forgiveness, and struggle with living it. Teachers teach being kind to others, and start yelling when they’re frustrated. Parents get to the end of their rope and tell their kids, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

But that’s not all. His opponents, Jesus says, “do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.” Phylacteries are small leather boxes with passages of scripture in them. To this day, many Jewish men strap them around the arm and on the forehead during morning prayer. The practice is inspired by a passage in the book of Deuteronomy:

Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 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. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.[4]

The boxes and straps remind those who wear them of the sacred obligation to keep God’s commandments: the one on the arm, a reminder to act justly; and the one on the forehead, a reminder to let God’s commandments guide the wearer’s thinking. Jesus accused his opponents of wearing their phylacteries to display their piety, that they had turned a small object — meant to remind them to keep God’s words in their heart — into yet another status symbol for garnering the admiration of others.

Faithfulness has nothing to do with ostentatious piety, and everything with keeping the words of God at the center of our knowing, thinking, and doing. We remember the saints not for the size of the crosses they wore around the neck, but for how they bore the cross of Christ on their shoulders, how their lives embodied the servant love of God.

Many of us get very uncomfortable listening to Jesus paint his opponents in such broad strokes as uniformly reprehensible hypocrites. I worry that his stereotyping language contributed to normalizing such rhetoric among his followers, with terrible consequences for the relationship between Christians and Jews. The scholars say Jesus only did what was to be expected of a leader in the Hellenistic world of that time, that it was common practice. Maybe it was, but I find little comfort in that statement; to me that sounds like saying, “Jesus was just giving a campaign speech,” when throughout his ministry he has refused to play the campaign game.

His primary concern, though, in this passage, is not the characterization of his opponents, but the description of the community he came to gather around himself. Call no one rabbi or teacher, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. Call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Call no one instructor, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. Title by title, Jesus removes layers of hierarchy and authority until all that is left are the Father in heaven, the Messiah, and the people of God. The greatest among you will be your servant, he says.

In such a community, the race to the top, the jealous competition for the best seats, is turned into the equally demanding work of creating relationships of mutual care where the needs of others are at least as important to us as our own. And that, my friends, goes against just about everything we have been taught in school and at work and in the marketplace — meaning that some of us will simply dismiss it as unrealistic.

But not all of us. A good number of us will hear it as a necessary challenge to the standard narrative of who we are and who we are meant to be. A good number of us will hear it as an urgent word of encouragement to push back against that standard narrative and to seek ways to embody the servant love of God. And not because it gets us points in heaven, but because a life in tune with the Giver of life is the true life of all.

[1] Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Philippians 1:1

[2] Hebrews 12:1

[3] Wishful Thinking, 102.

[4] Deuteronomy 6:6-9

Promised Land

Forty years they had spent in the wilderness. Forty years of wandering. Forty years of struggle and revelation. Forty years of longing for the promised land.

The story of the long Exodus from Egypt — a story of liberation and of being formed by God as a people of God — is unthinkable without Moses, the child of Hebrew slaves, raised in Pharaoh’s household; the runaway who hears the call of God at the burning bush. “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt,” the Lord said to him; “I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”[1]

The arc of Moses’ life bends from his birth and call in the opening chapters of Exodus, across Leviticus and Numbers, to Deuteronomy, the fifth and final volume of the Torah, consisting entirely of the teachings, poetry and blessings Moses utters on the plains of Moab, on the east bank of the Jordan river. Across the river, the promised land. But Moses wouldn’t be among those who enter it.

He used to plead with God, saying, “O Lord God, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your might; what god in heaven or on earth can perform deeds and mighty acts like yours! Let me cross over to see the good land beyond the Jordan ...” He was an old man, and yet he had only begun to see the mighty acts of God. He longed to see the good land and walk on it, rest on it, touch its soil with his fingers and taste its milk and honey. But God refused, and finally put an end to Moses’ entreaties, saying, “Enough from you! Never speak to me of this matter again!”[2]

And so Moses climbed the mountain one last time, and the Lord showed him the promised land, farther than the eye can see. One of the ancient rabbis suggested that Moses must have been in heaven, or at least pretty close, in order to see all of this. Other commentators thought Moses’ view was such that he was able to see through time as well as space, and that God showed him the entire history of the world, from the first day of creation to the day of resurrection.[3] “This is the land,” the Lord said to him, “of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.” As the author of Hebrews said of the patriarchs, many generations after Deuteronomy, Moses “died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance [he] saw and greeted them.”[4] From a distance he saw them, not with regret, but with joy and expectation for the next generation who with faith and courage would draw even closer to receiving the fullness of God’s promises. Moses knew that he wouldn’t taste the milk and honey, but the children born during the wilderness years and their children, they would eat and drink the fruit of the land in freedom.

The good book doesn’t say it, but I’m convinced Moses died with a smile on his face. Sweeter than honey is the word of the Lord, and the knowledge that it can be trusted — the knowledge that God will fulfill God’s promises.

On April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in support of the striking sanitation workers in Memphis. At the end of what would be his last speech, he said,

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.[5]

Earlier in that speech he had talked about turning to the Almighty and saying, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.” And he added, “Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around.”

And here we are, more than fifty years later, and the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. Dr. King said, “Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period … in a way that [people], in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world.” He had begun to see the mighty acts of God, and so he wasn’t just sitting on the top of the mountain gazing longingly across the Jordan, his heart filled with wishful thinking — he saw people responding, he saw people standing up and speaking up, he saw people marching, he saw people lining up at the bank of the river, ready to cross over into freedom — whether in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry was always the same — “We want to be free.” We want to live with the dignity of people made in the image of God.

The world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. But God is at work and people are responding with faith and hope and love and courage.

On July 30, the New York Times published an essay the Reverend John Lewis, Congressman from Georgia, had written shortly before his death on July 17 and had asked to be published on the day of his funeral.

While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion … set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity. That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. … Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

“Voting and participating in the democratic process are key,” he wrote, and his words carry the authority of one who put his body on the line for the right to vote. “The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.”

In his brief essay, Lewis passes the mantle to a new generation of believers in God’s beloved community:

Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.[6]

It says in today’s passage from Deuteronomy, that Joshua was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him. This expression, “the spirit of wisdom”, occurs only three times in the scriptures: here in Deuteronomy, then again in Isaiah 11:2 where the prophet announces the coming of a righteous and faithful ruler on whom the spirit of wisdom would rest, and again in Ephesians 1:17, where the apostle writes, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom … as you come to know him.”

We are blessed to come from a long line of ancestors in the faith who have passed the mantle of prophetic witness from generation to generation, inspiring us with their words and actions. May God give us a spirit of wisdom that we may walk faithfully and do our part in building the Beloved Community which God has established in the world and they have seen from a distance.

[1] Exodus 3:7-8

[2] Deuteronomy 3:24-26

[3] See James Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1997), 541; as well as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%27Zot_HaBerachah#Deuteronomy_chapter_34

[4] Hebrews 11:13

[5] https://www.afscme.org/about/history/mlk/mountaintop

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/opinion/john-lewis-civil-rights-america.html

Love lights a better path

“We know that you are sincere,” they said to Jesus. “We know that you teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.” How nice of them to say that. That’s quite an endorsement. Had Matthew not warned us at the beginning that we were about to witness a plot designed to entrap Jesus, we would have read those sweet words and innocently assumed that the speakers meant what they said.

Pharisees and Herodians make strange bedfellows, but stranger things have happened in politics. Judea was a province of the Roman Empire, and the population was heavily taxed to finance the army and administration of the occupying power. The name Herodians is shorthand for supporters of the political status quo, people who saw nothing wrong with Roman rule and very likely benefited handsomely from it.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, were not openly opposed to Roman rule, but certainly not in favor of it. They were pious men from Main Street Galilee and Judea who aspired to holiness — they sought to follow God’s law in all aspects of daily life. The Roman occupation of Jewish land may not have been their primary concern, but it definitely was not part of their vision for Israel.

What brings the two groups together in this scene is Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God which, for different reasons, makes both of them nervous. For a moment, they put aside their significant differences and set up a clever trap. They use a little flattery to butter him up and then drop a question that seemingly leaves no way out: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

If Jesus says yes, he exposes himself as a collaborator with the occupation, and his poll numbers take a dive. And that takes care of the Pharisees’ nervousness about his public support. If he says no, he will immediately be arrested by the authorities for inciting sedition. And that takes care of the Herodians’ nervousness about his teachings.

It’s a brilliant set-up, only Jesus doesn’t play their game. “Show me the coin used for the tax,” he says, and his opponents have no trouble finding a denarius. Clearly they are much better connected to the imperial economy than Jesus whose pockets are empty. Can you imagine the tweets?

“Guess who brought blasphemous coins into the holy temple?” #shamelessherodians #whathappenedtothepharisees #freeIsrael

“Caesar’s currency isn’t kingdom currency!” #jesusmessiah #blessedarethepoor

Jesus doesn’t tweet. He doesn’t laugh or gloat or self-promote. With a nod of the head toward the coin he asks, “Whose image is this, and whose title?”

“The emperor’s,” they say.

Most likely the coin bore the image of the emperor Tiberius who ruled Rome during those years.  And the title inscribed on it was more than a title. It was a declaration of Roman supremacy embodied in the person of the emperor. To most Jewish eyes and ears the inscription alone was blatant blasphemy: Emperor Tiberius, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest.[1] This brief debate between Jesus and his questioners isn’t about paying taxes, it’s about idolatry.

“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” says Jesus. It’s not much of an answer to their question, if a simple yes or no is what you’re looking for. It’s a response that only raises more questions: Is Jesus implying that the faithful thing to do is not pay the tax since all things belong to God? Or is he implying that God has a legitimate claim on some things and Caesar on others? One way to read his statement is, “Since the coin bears Caesar’s image, let him have it; give it back to him, it’s his anyway. But remember that to be human is to be made in the image of God. Remember that all of you bear the image of God. So give to God what is God’s — your life, your breath, yourself.” Marcus Borg wrote,

This text offers little or no guidance for tax season. It neither claims taxation is legitimate nor gives aid to anti-tax activists. It neither counsels universal acceptance of political authority nor its reverse. But it does raise the provocative … question: What belongs to God, and what belongs to Caesar? And what if Caesar is Hitler, or apartheid, or communism, or global capitalism?[2]

How do we live as God’s people when the economic and political systems we have created become invasive and oppressive? How do we live faithfully when the systems we inhabit make us complicit in the abuse of others who, like us and with us, bear the image of God?

We cannot serve two masters. We cannot neatly divide our loyalties between God’s realm and the realms of other lords. And we must not confuse our loyalties to other lords with our loyalty to God.

Much more than a coin is at stake here. We bear the image of God, but when we look at each other, or in the mirror, we also see the inscriptions that our interactions with the world have left on us. You are what you wear, is a common script. You are what you do, what you earn. Or: You are nobody. Your life doesn’t matter. You don’t count. We are made in the image of God, but other scripts and images continually overwrite our identity as God’s own with layers of falsehood.

James Kelly wrote,

We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us. Each of us tends to be, not a single self, but a whole committee of selves. There is the civic self, the parental self, the financial self, the religious self, the society self, the professional self ... And each of our selves is in turn a rank individualist, not co-operative but shouting out his vote loudly for himself when the voting time comes. … We are not integrated. We are distraught. We feel honestly the pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all. And we are unhappy, uneasy, strained, oppressed, and fearful we shall be shallow. … Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power.[3]

Give to God the things that are God’s is not an invitation to draw a line through the world and our lives where things on one side belong to God and things on the other to other lords and other claims. Give to God the things that are God’s is not a call to fragmentation. Jesus doesn’t suggest a split between a political self that answers to Caesar and a religious self that answers to God. Jesus didn’t come to carve out separate realms with separate loyalties: he proclaimed and inaugurated the kingdom of God.

Give to God the things that are God’s puts all other demands made on us in proper perspective. “We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us,” wrote James Kelly. The Life that integrates our conflicting selves and frees us to be who we are as creatures made in the image of God, is the life of Christ. “We have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence,” wrote James Kelly. That way of life is what Christ embodied, “a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power,” a life fully at home in the love of God.

As part of every baptism, just after the person has emerged from below the surface of the water, we make the sign of the cross on their forehead and say, calling them by name, “Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” In baptism, the life of Christ becomes ours, and through him we give to God the things that are God’s — our life, our breath, our days and nights, our whole and broken selves. With him we live, and learn to live, continually learn to live, as citizens of the kingdom, as people who know that we are not our own, nor anyone else’s, but God’s.

Markus Borg asked, “what if Caesar is Hitler, or apartheid, or communism, or global capitalism?” When Caesar was Hitler, the small Confessing Church in Germany declared,

As Jesus Christ is God’s assurance of the forgiveness of all our sins, so, in the same way and with the same seriousness he is also God’s mighty claim upon our whole life. Through him befalls us a joyful deliverance from the godless fetters of this world for a free, grateful service to his creatures. We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords — areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.[4]

The Confessing Church was persecuted and driven underground, its pastors were arrested and sent to concentration camps, but, though small in numbers, the church that counts Bonhoeffer among its martyrs refused to give the things that are God’s to anyone but God. They were ordinary men and women, no superheroes with special powers. Their gift to us, though, is extraordinary in its simplicity and power. They show us that a life fully at home in the love of God is a life of fearless clarity. Even amid the waves of terror and anxiety which the empires of the world so skillfully create and manipulate, love lights a better path.

[1] TIBERIUS CAESAR DIVI AUGUSTI FILIUS AUGUSTUS PONTIFEX MAXIMUS

[2] “What Belongs to God?” http://www.beliefnet.com/story/20/story_2000_1.html

[3] James Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, 1941, chapter 5.

[4] http://www.ekd.de/english/barmen_theological_declaration.html

Anxiously waiting

“Rejoice in the Lord always,” Paul writes. “Do not worry about anything,” he says, which is a lot easier to hear when you have nothing to worry about. But I do worry, and I know many of you do as well, and for very good reasons. And the only reason I don’t immediately dismiss Paul as Pollyanna is that he too has plenty to worry about and he doesn’t. “Don’t be anxious,” is his advice, written from prison, “but in everything make your requests known to God in prayer and petition with thanksgiving. Then the peace of God, which is beyond all understanding, will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.”[1]

The peace of God, and the joy it brings, the Apostle tells us, is solely determined by our relationship with God amid all kinds of circumstances, but not by those circumstances. He urges his readers to ground ourselves in prayer so we don’t drown under wave after wave of grief, anger, disbelief, and discouragement. Don’t be anxious. You’re not alone. The Lord is near. Pour out your heart before God. Practice gratitude. Trust the promise of Christ risen from the dead.

The story from Exodus is a powerful reminder what can happen when anxiety does take hold. Moses was gone. Moses who had told the Hebrew slaves that God would bring them out of the misery of Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey.[2] Moses who had been with them all this time, through sea and wilderness, through hunger and thirst, through fear and wonder. Moses who had told them all the words of the Lord, beginning with the first, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”[3] And when Moses had finished reading the book of the covenant in their hearing, they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will obey.”[4]

But then Moses went back up on the mountain and he was gone. They didn’t know when he would be back. They didn’t know Moses was receiving instructions about the tabernacle, and the ark, and the mercy seat, the lampstand, the curtain, the vestments, the altar, the ordination of priests, and the sabbath. They didn’t know Moses was having a worship committee meeting with the Lord on the mountain.

“We will do and we will obey” was the last we heard the people say before Moses left. Then there are pages of detailed worship notes, considering every fiber in the priestly vestments and every measure of spice to be added to the anointing oil; the next time we hear the people speak, after the narrative camera cuts from Moses and the Lord on the top of the mountain to the camp at its foot, we see them gathered around Aaron, saying, “Come, make a god for us who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”[5]

“This Moses,” they said, in tones of distance and disaffection, “we do not know what has become of him.” So make us something we can see. Make us something that will lead us forward, and we will follow it.

And Aaron, without a moment’s hesitation, obliged them. The story leaves it to our imagination whether he was glad, perhaps even eager, to satisfy the people’s religious needs, or if he was coerced. It all happened when Moses was gone, and that absence, in a way, was like a dress rehearsal for what was to come: they would have to learn to live as God’s people without Moses, without their living link to the living God; they would have to learn to live with the written word of God, the liturgies and instructions for worship, and the priests.

Well, the dress rehearsal, or perhaps we should say, the first opportunity to live as God’s people in Moses’ absence, was a complete failure. The very first thing they did after giving their full-throated commitment to doing and obeying the commandments of God was an assault on the first one that is at the heart of all of them, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”

Moses, up on the mountain, had no idea what was going on, but God told him, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside form the way that I commanded for them.”

Did you notice how often this line pops up in the story, and how confused things are about who’s the one who brought them out of Egypt? The people point to Moses, “the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt.” Aaron points to the calf, “This is your god.” And even the Lord who at first said, “I brought you out” now points to Moses, telling him, “Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt … have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and said, ‘This is your god who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’”

The Lord is furious. “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” This clearly isn’t working. Let’s start over, you and I together, Moses.

But Moses doesn’t step out of the way and into the possibilities of being the new Abraham or the new Israel; he talks back. “Why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power?” It wasn’t my mighty hand that led them out, nor Aaron’s, nor Miriam’s — this is your people, your doing, your promise, this is your reputation at stake. So turn; change your mind; remember.

Terence Fretheim says that in this story, we learn that “God is not the only one who has something important to say.”[6] This covenant between God and God’s people isn’t solely defined by divine declaration and human obedience, but by a relationship that invites human understanding and speech. It is Moses’ prayer, Moses’ voice against God’s wrath that moves this moment from firey peril to new possibilities of fulfilment. The closing line of today’s passage declares, And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

“Human prayer,” writes Fretheim, “is honored by God as a contribution to a conversation that has the capacity to change the future directions for God, people, and world.

God may well adjust modes and directions (though not ultimate goals) in view of such human responsiveness. This means that there is genuine openness to the future on God’s part, fundamentally in order that God’s salvific will for all might be realized as fully as possible. It is this openness to change that reveals what it is about God that is unchangeable: God’s steadfastness has to do with God’s love; God’s faithfulness has to do with God’s promises; God’s will is for the salvation of all. God will always act, even make changes, in order to be true to these unchangeable ways and to accomplish these unchangeable goals.[7]

Making the calf was an act of idolatry because the God who brought Israel out of Egypt cannot be produced by the whim of the people who get anxious in the absence of the prophet. God is sovereign and free, never an object of artful manipulation, whether carved in stone, cast in gold, or rendered in words. This story opens our eyes to the great sin of substituting the manufactured god, the available god, the domesticated god for the One who made heaven and earth, who brought Israel out of the house of slavery, and who raised Jesus from the dead.

Moses was Israel’s living link to the elusive presence of the living God, and Moses’ absence led to anxiety and the manufacture of a god of manageable proportion — visible, tangible, portable. “Calf-making” is more than an episode in Israel’s history, it is a perennial temptation for all who seek to live as people of God, in the wilderness of freedom, on the way to the promised land. “It is easy to mistake our own creations for our God,” writes Anathea Portier-Young.

It is tempting to shape … an image that pleases our senses, mollifies our anxiety, and invites admiration from our neighbors. But that thing we have made from Egypt’s gold is not our god. That thing may symbolize strength and power. It may personify virility, or femininity, or aspects of both or neither; it may embody rebellion or conformity, generosity or greed. But as close as we draw to it, as much as we celebrate it and place it at the center of our lives, it did not lead us to freedom and will not lead us to our promised inheritance. … It will moor us in the impatience of our ignorance and fear. We may dance with it for a day, but soon find that it has led us to our death.[8]

Idolatry has terrible consequences, and our days are filled with the news of them, but these consequences will not include the final rupture of the relationship between God and God’s people, between God and God’s creation, because God is true to God’s promises, even to the point of bearing the full, crushing weight of our sins.

And there is joy in heaven over every human being who, amid the waves of anxiety and fear, clings to the promises of God and draws courage from the Holy One who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.[9]

[1] Philippians 4:6-7 REB

[2] Exodus 3:16-17

[3] Exodus 20:1-3

[4] Exodus 24:7

[5] Exodus 32:1

[6] Terence Fretheim, Exodus (Interpretation; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991), 285.

[7] Fretheim, Exodus, 287.

[8] Anathea Portier-Young http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3442

[9] Exodus 34:6

Touching the table

We come together to worship on this Lord’s Day, and our hearts long to do so in person. We come together to glorify God who created heaven and earth and continues to sustain all things. We come together to praise God who raised Jesus from the dead, and we celebrate that congregations around the world, in cathedrals and store fronts, in living rooms and tents, gathered around the table of Christ, sing and pray in more languages and dialects than any of us can imagine. We celebrate that in the bread we break and the cup we share we encounter our crucified and risen savior who makes us one. Separated from each other in more ways than we have the heart to name, we touch the table where Christ is the host, and each of us, a welcome guest, and we cling to its promise and vision and manners like never before.

I can feel the edge of his table in my hands and I can see all of you, and I can see multitudes from East and West, South and North, singing, laughing, gathering together in the beautiful place God has freed us to enter. We celebrate our liberation: the burden of sin removed from our shoulders, the drain of fear driven from our hearts. We are free, for we are no longer slaves to the powers that oppress us, but covenant partners of God.

Today we celebrate the covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai. They had left behind Pharaoh’s clay pits and the bosses who enforced the daily brick quotas. They had crossed the sea on dry foot. They had eaten the bread of angels and drunk water from the rock. It had been a long, slow journey through the wilderness. They had marveled and argued and complained, and through it all, they had begun to discover the holy stick-to-it-iveness of God.

Now they were at the mountain, and all of them heard God speak. All of them heard these words, the big ten, the divine utterances that from that day forward would be for them a constitution of freedom as God’s people.

How long has it been since you heard the Ten Commandments read out loud? It’s probably been quite a long time.

In some old churches on the East coast, worshipers and tourists can still find the words written on the sanctuary walls. Early Anglican tradition in the colonies, long before the American Revolution began, required that the Ten Commandments were to be “set up on the East end of every Church and Chapel, where the people may best see and read the same.” In those days, the East end was the front of the sanctuary. Before and during the service, you could sit in the pew and meditate on the writing on the wall and reflect on your life.

Today, more Americans insist quite emphatically on the importance of the Ten Commandments than can name more than four when asked. A news poll in 2018 found that more than 90 percent of Americans agree that the commandments regarding murder, stealing and lying remain fundamental standards of societal behavior. Other commandments that enjoy strong majority support include those about not coveting, not committing adultery and honoring parents. The numbers are considerably weaker when it comes to making idols or making wrongful use of the name of the Lord. And only 49% of Americans say that remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy is still important — the lowest level of support for any commandment.[1]

Several years ago, Tom Long pointed out that

in the popular religious consciousness, the Ten Commandments have somehow become burdens, weights and heavy obligations. For many, the commandments are encumbrances placed on personal behavior. Most people cannot name all ten, but they are persuaded that at the center of each one is a finger-wagging ‘thou shalt not.’ For others, the commandments are heavy yokes to be publicly placed on the necks of a rebellious society.[2]

It’s easy to forget that the Ten Commandments are not prefaced by a directive: “Everybody listen. Here are the rules, ten of them. Obey them!” That may have been how the taskmasters in Egypt laid down the law. But these words are about an entirely different vision. They open with an announcement of freedom: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” The ten commandments are affirmations of life after liberation: “Because the Lord is your God, you are free from the tyranny of lifeless idols. You are free to rest on the seventh day. You are free from coveting, lying and stealing as ways to secure your life.”[3]

Martin Luther was convinced that knowing the Ten Commandments was tantamount to knowing the entire Bible. “This much is certain,” he wrote, “those who know the Ten Commandments perfectly know the entire Scriptures and in all affairs and circumstances are able to counsel, help, comfort, judge and make decisions in both spiritual and temporal matters.”[4] He knew, of course, that knowing the ten perfectly doesn’t end with being able to recite them — but it certainly begins there. There are ten of them, which is very good because we can use our fingers to help us learn and remember. They are, for the most part, brief and simple, so we can take them to heart and be guided by them in our living – and living them is the key to knowing them perfectly.

Perhaps all this talk of perfection makes you nervous. Isn’t perfection just another yoke? Doesn't talk of perfection only create hypocrisy and self-righteousness or despair? That question is raised in another text from the Reformation period. The Heidelberg Catechism also contains a long exposition of the Ten Commandments. Question 114 asks, “But can those who are converted to God keep these commandments perfectly?” The response is refreshing in its frankness, “No, for even the holiest of them make only a small beginning in obedience in this life.” Only a small beginning in obedience — but it’s a beginning in the direction of God’s will and promise; it’s a beginning in the direction of life’s flourishing.

I’m still thinking about that news poll and that remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy received the lowest level of support for any commandment. When we don’t remember the Sabbath day, chances are we won’t remember long that it is God who has set us free. And once we forget whose we are, we open the doors to lesser gods and friendly looking idols to teach us their ways.

Stanley Wiersma grew up in the 30’s in a Dutch Reformed community in Iowa. One of his poems begins with a question:

Were my parents right or wrong
Not to mow the ripe oats that Sunday morning
with the rainstorm threatening?

I reminded them that the Sabbath was made for man
and of the ox fallen into the pit.
Without an oats crop, I argued,
the cattle would need to survive on town-bought oats
and then it wouldn’t pay to keep them.
Isn’t selling cattle at a loss like an ox in a pit?

My parents did not argue.
We went to Church. 
We sang the usual psalms louder than usual -
we, and the others whose harvests were at stake:

“Jerusalem, where blessing waits,
Our feet are standing in thy gates.”

“God, be merciful to me;
On thy grace I rest my plea.”

[As the storm rolled in we sang,]

“He rides on the clouds, the wings of the storm;
The lightning and wind his missions perform.”

[We heard little of the sermon]

for more floods came and more winds blew and beat
upon that House than we had figured on, even,
more lightning and thunder
and hail the size of pullet eggs.
Falling branches snapped the electric wires.
We sang the closing psalm without the organ and in the dark:

“Ye seed from Abraham descended,
God’s covenant love is never ended.”

Afterward we rode by our oats field,
Flattened.
“We still will mow it,” Dad said.
“Ten bushels to the acre, maybe, what would have been fifty
if I had mowed right after milking
and if the whole family had shocked.
We could have had it weatherproof before the storm.”

Later at dinner Dad said,
“God was testing us. I’m glad we went.”

“Those psalms never gave me such a lift as this morning,”
Mother said, “I wouldn’t have missed it.”

“Were my parents right or wrong?” Wiersma doesn’t answer the question, but he acknowledges that his parents’ sabbath observance was at the root of his own attempts at faithfulness.[5] I’m drawn to this poem because it questions my own initial response to the harvest challenge. I probably would have mowed that field and later thanked the Lord that we got it all in safely before the storm. I would have missed the worship service and the singing in the storm. And I would have missed the closing psalm’s affirmation in the dark,

“Ye seed from Abraham descended,
God’s covenant love is never ended.”

It is difficult for us to grasp that obedience to God is at the heart of freedom. The world we live in tells us that to be free is to be able to do what we want. Then it goes on to tell us what to want. Our economy grows on the assumption that greed is good and coveting drives demand.

The world we live in tells us that we are what we do; and so we do more in order to be more. And the more we do, the less we remember who we are. Without sabbath, amnesia sets in.

And so on this Lord’s day, when love of neighbor demands that we do not gather in person, we find other ways to keep the Sabbath day holy and hold fast to the promise that God’s covenant love is never ended. Separated from each other in so many ways, we touch the table where Christ is the host, and we cling to its promise and vision and manners like never before. I can feel the edge of his table in my hands and my parched soul drinks the words Jan Richardson found for us,

And the table

will be wide.

And the welcome

will be wide.

And the arms

will open wide

to gather us in.

And our hearts

will open wide

to receive.

And we will come

as children who trust

there is enough.

And we will come

unhindered and free.

And our aching

will be met

with bread.

And our sorrow

will be met

with wine.

And we will open our hands

to the feast

without shame.

And we will turn

toward each other

without fear.

And we will give up

our appetite

for despair.

And we will taste

and know

of delight.

And we will become bread

for a hungering world.

And we will become drink

for those who thirst.

And the blessed

will become the blessing.

And everywhere

will be the feast.[6]

[1] https://www.deseret.com/2018/3/28/20642391/poll-are-the-ten-commandments-still-relevant-today-americans-and-brits-differ-and-millennials-stand

[2] See Thomas G. Long, “Dancing the Decalogue.” Christian Century 123, no. 5 (March 7, 2006) 17. 

[3] Ibid.

[4] The Book of Concord: the confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, by Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, Charles P. Arand (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2000) 382.

[5] “Obedience,” by Sietze Buning (Stanley Wiersma’s pen name)

[6] https://paintedprayerbook.com/2012/09/30/and-the-table-will-be-wide/

Working in the vineyard

Try to put a table cloth on the ground for a picnic — it’s not easy. On a calm, windless day it’s just a matter of shaking it out so it spreads and settles down slowly. But if there’s a little wind, even just a breeze, it becomes near impossible: the fabric billows, the corners fly — you want the cloth to behave in a domesticated, dinner-table-trained manner, but it wants to be a banner, a kite, or a sail.

A good parable is like that. You expect somebody would know how to lay it out on the ground, nicely and orderly, but it just won’t lie still. It’s full of surprises; every time you hear it, new possibilities of interpretation rise up to challenge what you heard before.

Imagine you take this little gem of a story about a vineyard owner to the business round table downtown. Entrepreneurs, executives, managers, economists — they hear how this peculiar workday unfolds from first light to pay time, and they wonder what kind of business man the landowner is and how much he’d have to charge for a bottle of wine, or how long it would be before he’d have to sell that vineyard.

Or take the story to the union hall, if you can find one, and watch folks there trying to remain calm while they explain to you why you can’t pay some workers for one hour what others make, for the same job, in an entire day.

Now imagine you take this story to the corner of the parking lot at Home Depot where day laborers gather, waiting for someone to hire them. They smile as they listen because they know how hard it is to make a full day’s wage with low-paying, part-time labor. They know how hard it is to watch truck after truck drive by — and very few trucks come around after eight, let alone after noon.

When Jesus first told this parable, many farmers in Galilee had lost their land, and they had to make a living as day laborers. Mid-size and large farms, many of them owned by absentee landlords, were usually operated with day labor rather than slaves; it was much cheaper, and there was an abundance of landless peasants. Farmworkers in Galilee were poor, underemployed, and heavily taxed by the Roman authorities.

One denarius, a small Roman coin, appears to have been the going rate for a day of field labor, but a denarius wasn’t much. You could buy a dozen small loaves of pita bread for a denarius. For a lamb you had to pay 3-4 denarii; for a simple set of clothes, 30 denarii.[1]

The landowner in the story is a peculiar fellow. For starters, he goes out himself early in the morning to hire laborers, which was the usual time, but was the manager’s job. Then he comes back at 9 to hire more, and you say to yourself, “Well, he probably realized that he needed more hands to get the work done.” When he comes back at noon, you wonder if he knows what he’s doing or if he is one of those rich city slickers who bought himself a vineyard and a winery. Then he comes back in the middle of the afternoon, when everybody is dreaming about quitting time, and he keeps hiring — and you are running out of explanations that would make sense of his behavior. Perhaps he’s been in the sun too long? But that’s not the end of it. The shadows are long and the light is bathing the marketplace scene in hues of gold, when he returns again and hires every last worker he can find.

In Jesus’ story, the day begins in the familiar world of the tough Galilean rural economy, but it ends in a world that looks and feels very different.

Imagine you got up before dawn to go to the corner where they pick up day laborers. You know that if you get hired, you can get some bread on the way home and your family will eat dinner. But you don’t get picked in the first round. So you go to the other side, hoping to have better luck over there, but you don’t. The younger ones are hired first. The stronger ones are hired first. You cross the road again, hoping for better luck on that side of the intersection, but it’s noon already. You decide to go to one of the big farms just outside of town to see if perhaps they could us an extra pair of hands to finish a field or a vineyard, but no luck there. So you go back to the marketplace, and just when you decide to call it a day and go home, this landowner shows up and asks you, “Why are you standing here idle all day?”

It’s a tough economy, and you already feel like a left-over person, no longer needed, unnoticed, forgotten—and did this man just call you idle? He doesn’t know how long you have been on your feet. He doesn’t know how hard you have tried to find work. He doesn’t know how hungry you are and how much you dread coming home tonight with empty hands.

“We’re here because no one has hired us,” you and the others tell him. “You also go into the vineyard,” the landowner replies.

And you go; you don’t even ask how much he’s paying. You go because … who knows. Just so you don’t feel completely useless? Or perhaps you hope that the boss, having noticed what a good worker you are, would ask you to come back tomorrow. You go and work in the vineyard.

Soon the manager calls everybody to line up, starting with those hired last, starting with you. You barely got your hands dirty. How much could it be for an hour’s work? It doesn’t really matter. You know it won’t be enough to put bread on the table. It would be another dinner of foraged field greens for you and the family tonight.

Now the manager puts some cash in your hand. It’s a full day’s pay. You can’t believe it. You turn to the people behind you, “Look, guys — a full day’s wage!”

The news travels fast to the end of the line, where the ones hired first are waiting to be paid. Imagine you’re one of them. You’ve worked twelve long hours. You are dirty, sweaty, your clothes are sticking to your skin and your back is aching. Talk about eating your bread by the sweat of your brow! But you’ve heard the word from the front of the line and you’re looking forward to a little bonus, and your back is already starting to feel better.

Now the manager puts some cash in your hand. It’s a day’s pay. You can’t believe it. You turn to the people around you, and they are just as upset as you are. “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” You have wiped out our expectations of justice and fairness; you have wiped out differences that really matter to us. You have made them equal to us.

This story comes with more than just a breeze; the air is charged in this one, a thunderstorm is brewing. You expect somebody would know how to smooth it out on the ground, nice and square, but it just won’t lie still. This story will continue to confuse and challenge us, depending on how and where we enter it. It holds the pain and the hope of those in every generation who are treated like left-over people— be it in the economy where landownership and labor are negotiated, or in the economy where status and belonging are determined, where some are considered worthy of the full reward and others are not. In Jesus’ story, which is a story about the world where God’s vision of life is known and lived, everyone receives full recognition of their dignity and need as fellow workers, and every last one receives the full reward. All those in the company of sinners and tax collectors who are not pious enough to be considered righteous and worthy — Jesus welcomes them as citizens of the kingdom.

But this little story also holds the anger and resentment of those who worry that too much mercy for others will only breed further lack of effort on their part — they are the ones in the company of the upright who cannot imagine themselves as recipients of gifts they didn’t earn, but whom Jesus welcomes with equal compassion as he welcomes notorious sinners.

Whether we respond to this unruly story with joy or grumbling depends entirely on where we see ourselves at the end of its work day: Have I been working since the break of dawn in the vineyard of the Lord, that is, have I been about the things that really matter to God for as long as I can remember, or am I only just beginning to get my hands in the dirt? I like to think that I’ve been working for a very long time, but what if my busyness with all kinds of projects was only idleness in the eyes of the owner of this vineyard? What if, at age 60, I have barely begun the kind of work that really matters to God? This story just won’t lie still and square on the ground; it wants to be a banner, a kite, a sail — something to catch the movement of God’s Spirit and get me ready to move with it.

The God who meets us in Jesus is one who comes and seeks us, as if this day were not complete until each of us has done at least a little work in the vineyard. God comes and finds us, sometimes early, sometimes late, and will not cease to pursue us until each of us has contributed to the making of the wine that is grown here. And at the end of the day, at the end of our labors, the last are first and the first are last, and all receive what God so generously gives: fullness of life.

[1] Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (EKK 1/3), 146.