Stand firm

After prepared remarks on Friday in the White House briefing room regarding the evacuations from Afghanistan, the President answered several questions by journalists. He said,

One question was whether or not the Afghan forces we trained up would stay and fight in their own civil war they had going on. No one — I shouldn’t say “no one” — the consensus was that it was highly unlikely that in 11 days they’d collapse and fall, and the leader of Afghanistan would flee the country. …But the…overwhelming consensus was that…they were not going to collapse. The Afghan forces, they were not going to leave. They were not going to just abandon and then put down their arms and take off. So, that’s what’s happened.[1]

I’m not going to join the ranks of armchair experts who quickly turned from opining on infectious disease to assessing foreign military strength through the rearview mirror. I heard and read the news like the rest of you, but in my mind it was filtered through the passage from Ephesians we just heard.

“Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil,” it says there. I have issues with the language of “spiritual warfare,” mainly because too often, in history as well as in our own day, the struggle against “spiritual forces of evil” turned into violent actions against fellow human beings; we children of Adam and Eve are just not very reliable when it comes to differentiating between ideas and the people who hold them. But the language and images of combat are part of our tradition, and so we have to deal with them, even if it’s just to keep them from fulfilling the worst of their potential.

“Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” I suspect that the words “armor” and “devil” draw the most attention in this sentence, and both invite all kinds of intriguing associations that can keep our minds occupied for a while. But the word I want to draw your attention to is much humbler, much less likely to tickle the imagination. It’s the word “to stand.” Perhaps some of you learned early in Sunday school about the belt, the breastplate, the shield, the helmet and all the rest; they are memorable, much more memorable than the simple fact that, according to Ephesians 6, all of this gear is meant to help you stand and not fall, or run, or hide. So you would stand tall because you are somebody. So you would stand up and be counted. So you would stand for something worthy. Three times the humble word “to stand” is repeated in this brief passage from Ephesians, so clearly it meant a great deal to the apostle. “Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Stand therefore. Stand firm.”

Some scholars compare this passage to a military leader’s speech before the big battle. Most of us may never have heard one in person, but we’ve certainly seen them in movies. The battle speech is geared to fortify and motivate the troops to face the clash with courage, to stand shoulder to shoulder, shield by shield, boot by boot. To hold the line. To move as one.

“To stand firm,” according to Walter Wink, has the sense of drawing up a military formation for combat. And the apostle uses this kind of language to talk about the mission of the church in the world. “Stand firm!” he shouts across the field.

The overwhelming consensus, according to the President, was that the Afghan forces were not going to collapse; that they were not going to leave; that they were not going to just abandon and then put down their arms and take off.

But the assumption may have been that they knew what they were supposed to fight for, and that they thought it was worth putting their lives on the line for it, and that they trusted their leaders. And perhaps all of those assumptions were simply wrong.

In Ephesians, the apostle reminds the church that because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the whole world, all of creation, is no longer what it used to be; that it has been irreversibly transformed at its core. Because of the cross, the world is no longer in the grip of the forces and powers opposed to God—economic, political, and social forces that can do much good, but somehow, always and everywhere, also contribute to developments that do not serve the flourishing of life. Some might call this the law of unintended consequences, but theologians look at it as sinful human impulses being translated from personal relationships into institutions, systems and structures that in turn shape human beings. And the bold claim made in Ephesians and elsewhere in the New Testament, is that God in Christ has broken the power of these rulers, authorities, cosmic powers, and spiritual forces. God raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand of God in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.[2] In other words, Jesus, and along with him the love and compassion and the challenging teachings we encounter in him, has been raised far above the human institutions, systems and structures that put him to death, and therefore it is no longer they, but Jesus who determines what becomes of God’s good creation.

“God has made known to us the mystery of his will,” the apostle declares, “according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”[3] All things brought together in Christ, all things brought from fragmentation to wholeness, including a new humanity: where only division, alienation, and hostility have reigned for so long, Christ is our peace.[4] Why then does the author urge us toward the end of the letter to put on the whole armor of God? What is the battle supposed to be about when the war apparently has already been won?

Much of the language in our passage goes back to the prophet Isaiah; it was taken up and further shaped in texts like this one from the book of Wisdom, written just a few decades before Ephesians was composed:

The Lord will take his zeal as his whole armor,

and will arm all creation to repel his enemies;

he will put on righteousness as a breastplate,

and wear impartial justice as a helmet;

he will take holiness as an invincible shield,

and sharpen stern wrath for a sword,

and creation will join with him to fight against his frenzied foes.

Shafts of lightning will fly with true aim,

and will leap from the clouds to the target, as from a well-drawn bow,

and hailstones full of wrath will be hurled as from a catapult;

the water of the sea will rage against them,

and rivers will relentlessly overwhelm them;

a mighty wind will rise against them,

and like a tempest it will winnow them away.[5]

This author envisions the Lord arming all creation to join the fight against his frenzied foes. And this is where an important difference comes to the fore: The author of Ephesians presents us with an image of believers standing as fully armed infantry soldiers, drawing flaming arrows from all sides, and standing firm, holding the line. Brian Peterson writes, “The imagery used here is armor for violent battle; however, the strength advocated is not the might of armies, but the world-reconciling power of God embodied in the cross of Christ.”[6] He makes an important point, but there’s more going on here. The entire armor is defensive: breastplate, helmet, shield. The only offensive piece of equipment is the sword, and it is described as the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. The only weapon believers carry is their proclamation. And what kind of combat boots are given out at the Lord’s arsenal?

“As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” That is the purpose of the entire campaign: to live and proclaim the world-reconciling power of God embodied in the cross of Christ. Christ has defeated the rulers, powers, and authorities in the heavenly places, but the good news of his victory must still be proclaimed. And “anyone who does so,” writes Pheme Perkins, “can expect to enter the arena against all the personal and social forces that resist transformation by the Word of God.”[7]

The proclamation of a world rooted and grounded in love is offensive to many powers, but stand firm. Hold the line. Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood firm on following Christ and no other. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood firm on nonviolence. Margaret Sanger, the twentieth-century suffragette, stood firm on women’s rights. Nelson Mandela stood firm against apartheid. John Lewis stood firm on voting rights. Oscar Romero stood firm on honoring the dignity of the poor and marginalized. All of them stood firm against injustice.[8] All of them stood firm on love becoming more tangible and real in our life together.

In Ephesians 6:11 we are told to “put on” the whole armor of God so that we may be able to stand firm. That same verb is used earlier in the letter in 4:24, where we are told to clothe ourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. That parallel reminds us that the church’s spiritual armor has little to do with adopting a more bellicose language or attitude. Our spiritual armor is nothing other than living the new life we have been given in Christ, rooted and grounded in the love he has revealed. And to do so even now, during these challenging and confusing times. To stand firm and live each day rooted and grounded in the love of God.

[1] ​​https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/20/remarks-by-president-biden-on-evacuations-in-afghanistan/

[2] See Ephesians 1:20-21

[3] Ephesians 1:9-10

[4] See Ephesians 2:14-16

[5] Wisdom 5:17-23; see also Isaiah 59:15-19

[6] Brian Peterson https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-21-2/commentary-on-ephesians-610-20-4

[7] Pheme Perkins, Ephesians, NIB, 464.

[8] See Archie Smith, Jr., Feasting, Year B, Vol. 3, 376.

Wisdom cries out

The first day of school endures as an occasion for picture taking. Thanks to social media, we get to see the little ones who are very excited about going to Kindergarten or 1st grade, and we get to see the older ones who can’t quite decide whether to look excited, bored, amused, or cool. And then there are the pics of college dorm rooms with beaming first-year undergraduates and the occasional glimpse of a parent who doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

It’s a big deal when a new school year begins. You get to see old friends again after the long summer break, and you’re excited about making new ones. There are new teachers to meet, new notebooks to decorate, and for some, whole new buildings to explore. We mark those first days because we look forward to looking back some day and recalling the wondrous reality of growing up: we all turn from babies into people, it’s the most common thing, but it’s a marvel to witness. And it’s equally marvelous for our children to see pictures of their parents and grandparents on their first day of school many years ago, and to realize that these mighty adults once were little ones, too.

What you can’t see in those pictures is the joy of the moms and dads who took them, the deeper-than-in-the-bones love they have for their kids, and the hope in their bellies — hope that they will be healthy, that they will be surrounded by people who help them become who God wants them to be, and that growing up they will love the person they’re becoming, and that they will find not just a job, but good work that allows them to apply their gifts and skills, and flourish.

These days, of course, many parents are worried sick about sending their kids to school. Moms and dads, whether they wanted to or not, had to become risk mitigation specialists with a minor in epidemiology, and largely because public health has become politicized at the worst imaginable moment.

“Be careful then how you live,” it says in today’s passage from Ephesians; “not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.” I’d probably want to push back a little against the declaration that “the days are evil,” because no day that God has created can be entirely devoid of good. But some days are closer to good than others, and recently we’ve had quite a few more of those a little farther from good, it seems. And the load they put on our shoulders is heavy.

When you watch the news reports about the school board meeting in Williamson County this week, those images stay with you. When you see on your screens the flames and plumes of smoke of the wildfires out West and in Siberia, those images stay with you. These days are far from good, and strong majorities of Americans share a sense of great urgency along with various levels of perplexity as to what is keeping us from moving forward together.

One set of the parents who attended Tuesday’s school board meeting were Dr. Maxwell and his wife, who is also a medical professional. When the energy in the room had gotten hot, and he knew things were going to get a lot worse, he suggested to his wife that it was probably best to leave. He took her arm and, walking to the door he said, “Just remember, no matter what they say, these are the lives we’re trying to save.”

There was a crowd chanting when they stepped outside, Maxwell told CNN. Someone approached him. “[They] put their hand in my face and called me a traitor,” Maxwell recalled. “I don't see how anyone can say that when I’ve been on the front lines of this pandemic since the beginning, treating patients in rooms, unvaccinated for the vast majority of it, hoping I wouldn’t take it home to my family. And for someone to say that, it’s mind-blowing.”[1]

Yes, it is, and to think that it’s over something as seemingly simple as a mandate to wear masks on busses and in classrooms — mind-blowing.

“Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time.”

In the days when the book of Proverbs was compiled, very few children went to school. They learned the life skills they needed at home, in the neighborhood, and in the synagogue. Only some very privileged boys attended schools that were attached to the court and the temple, or were run independently in larger cities. The teachers at those schools were venerated as sages, and they were probably the ones collecting sayings and lectures in compendia like the book of Proverbs for teaching purposes. But just like today, parents played a key role in educating their children.

In the opening verses of the book of Proverbs it says, “Hear, my child, your father’s instruction, and do not reject your mother’s teaching; for they are a fair garland for your head, and pendants for your neck.”[2] Those parents also carried hope in their bellies for their children, and sooner or later, at just the right age, they would introduce them to Woman Wisdom, the personification of the kind of knowledge they wanted them to attain.

Happy are those who find wisdom,

and those who get understanding,

for her income is better than silver,

and her revenue better than gold.

She is more precious than jewels,

and nothing you desire can compare with her.

Long life is in her right hand;

in her left hand are riches and honor.

Her ways are ways of pleasantness,

and all her paths are peace.

She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;

those who hold her fast are called happy.[3]

Parents wanted their kids to be smart and skilled, confident and kind, and the figure that integrated all these attributes and elevated them as godlike was Woman Wisdom. And in the book of Proverbs and other ancient Jewish texts Woman Wisdom is not only spoken about, but she herself speaks:

Wisdom cries out in the street;

in the squares she raises her voice.

At the busiest corner she cries out;

at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:

“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?

How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing

and fools hate knowledge?

Give heed to my reproof;

I will pour out my thoughts to you;

I will make my words known to you.

And then she adds, with a blend of sorrow and frustration in her voice,

Because I have called and you refused,

have stretched out my hand and no one heeded,

and because you have ignored all my counsel

and would have none of my reproof,

I also will laugh at your calamity;

I will mock when panic strikes you,

when panic strikes you like a storm,

and your calamity comes like a whirlwind…[4]

Wisdom wonders how long scoffers would delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge, and remembering how she stretched out her hand and no one heeded, she lets the passersby know she would laugh when their foolishness would cause calamity.

The Earth’s atmosphere is overheating, the land is dry and hard as concrete in some parts and flooding in others, forests and woodlands are on fire, infection rates are on the rise, and folks opposed to masking threaten neighbors who support it. Calamity certainly has come like a whirlwind, but I can’t bear the thought of Wisdom laughing at our foolish ways.

And I don’t believe she does. For she has built her house, she has prepared a feast, she has set the table, and from the highest places in the town she calls, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”

She’s not laughing, nor is she mocking. She’s inviting us to her feast, with words reminding us of Jesus, and with deep compassion. “Lay aside immaturity, and live,” she calls. There’s urgency in her words, because much is at stake. She knows that ultimately the path we’re on is a matter of life and death, and she wants us to live.

In the deep mess we find ourselves in, our hope is that we are not quite grown up yet. Our hope is that in many ways we’re like Kindergartners on the first day of school: eager to learn, open to God and to the world, excited about the possibilities that lie ahead. We’re very much like Kindergartners, although most of us have forgotten it, and not just because of old age. Our hope is that God isn’t finished with us yet.

“Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise.” That remarkable line from Ephesians doesn’t shake its finger at us with a strict and stern expression. It addresses us as human beings who have become new through Jesus’ deep solidarity with us in his death and resurrection. It reminds us of our true identity as members of the body of Christ, reconciled to God and to one another. “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise.” The line points us to the countless, daily opportunities to be attentive to how we act, what we say and how we say it, and how we think. It’s easy to see others as fools and just as easy to call them such; but the real work is to become a little wiser ourselves every day. The real challenge is to trust that God isn’t finished with us yet, and that none of us will cease becoming who we are as children of God.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/12/us/tennessee-covid-mask-mandate-school-board-protest/index.html

[2] Proverbs 1:8-9

[3] Proverbs 3:13-18

[4] Proverbs 1:20-27

Come away

“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves, and rest a while.” That’s a great word to ponder in the middle of summer. Come away and rest a while. Almost sounds like a commandment, this urgent invitation, doesn’t it? It’s the word of the Lord. A sweet commandment for the tired and the weary, the busy and the hurried.

Some of us don’t have to be told twice - we just go and rest a while in the mountains, on the beach, with our toes in the sand, or in the hammock, with a big glass of something chilled and fruity, hearing nothing but some chirping critters and the faint sound of an airplane flying high above. Come away and rest a while - what a pleasure it is to keep the Lord’s commandments!

Friday last week I paddled down the Cumberland River, and I praised the Lord for Great Blue Herons and juvenile Ospreys, the surprise of two big, long fish with spots like leopards whose names I don’t know, several Green Herons, a gorgeous Copperhead, and turtles, turtles, turtles - and I took pictures, of course. And when I got to the mouth of the Harpeth I thought I’d take another picture, just for documentation, I guess, that I had indeed paddled that far, and that’s when I dropped my phone in the river. Just a plop, no splash, and that unremarkable sound marked the end of the restful portion of the day. After that, it was all about getting back to the car and to the nearest phone store and dealing with all the crazy ripples a phone dropped in a river is bound to cause.

Reflecting on that unpleasant disruption, I thought about a summer several years ago, when Nancy, the kids and I had driven down to Fort Morgan, AL for a week on the beach. We had arrived on Sunday afternoon, and on Monday I got up early, made a pot of coffee, poured myself a mug, and sat on the deck. I could see Mobile Bay and the gulf from my chair; I could hear the waves, a few seagulls, and the soft voices of a couple of joggers running past the house. I watched brown pelicans fishing for breakfast as the sun slowly climbed above the pine trees. It was a perfect Come-away-and-rest-a-while moment — until suddenly an all-too-familiar whining sound pierced the morning air: a leaf blower! I will not repeat the words that came across my lips on that bright morning, repeating them would not be appropriate—not here, not now—but at the time they felt just right.

Then I saw him. The noise came from the house across the road; a house just like ours, sitting about 9 feet above ground on pylons, with two vehicles parked underneath on the concrete slab, and wooden steps leading up to the deck and the entrance. Our neighbor, with legs as pale as my own—clearly a very recent arrival—was blowing sand from the carport. The house was practically sitting on the beach, but he seemed determined to keep the sand off the slab.

“I just hope this isn’t part of your daily routine, buddy,” I said to myself, wondering if their house came with a leaf blower or if he had brought it all the way from home, just in case.

It takes a while to get used to the rhythms of life on the beach, I told myself. He probably woke up before everyone else in the house, and he was so used to doing stuff and staying busy, he just had to find something to do until the rest of the family got out of bed, I told myself. The rest of the week, thank God, the leaf blower remained silent.

“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while,” Jesus said to the disciples. They had just returned from their first mission trip. He had sent them out two by two, empowered to proclaim repentance, and bring wholeness by casting out demons and anointing the sick. They still were disciples, pupils, followers and students of the master teacher—but here Mark refers to them for the first and only time as apostles, that is, sent ones. These emissaries, these newly-named apostles of the Lord gathered around Jesus, two by two, to tell him what they had done and taught. On their mission they had discovered, to their surprise, that they could do much of what they had observed Jesus do; that his authority and power became manifest in their own words and actions. They had stories to tell; yes, they were tired, but they were also wound up like children who cannot possibly go to sleep until they have shared every wondrous moment of their day.

“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while,” Jesus said to his excited and exhausted missionaries who had no leisure even to eat. There were people everywhere, driven by curiosity and drawn by the promise of wholeness; people came to wherever they heard he was. So Jesus and the disciples went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves, to a place with the promise of soul-nourishing solitude.

Just to be out on the water was great. They pulled away from the shore, away from the daily demands, away from the needs and the noise. Soon they heard nothing but the sound of the bow cutting through the swells and water splashing from the oars.

It didn’t last, though. When they pulled up on shore, they discovered that a crowd had followed them on land. It was as if they simply couldn’t get away at all. They could feel how their care and concern was slowly turning into resentment, and they hated it. They didn’t tell each other because they felt ashamed for what they thought was a profound lack of love and presence.

We’re all in that boat, disciples of Jesus, sent to proclaim good news and bring wholeness. But how do we respond when we feel emotionally and physically drained by the brokenness we encounter constantly? Compassion fatigue is a modern expression, but we have known the reality it describes for generations. Our emotional capacity to let ourselves be touched by the suffering of others, let alone respond to the demand they make on us, is limited. There’s a reason we sing, Jesus, thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love thou art—we sing because none of us are all compassion; pure, unbounded love we are not. The wells from which we draw strength for the great work of living and proclaiming the good news, the wells are not our own. And that is why we sing of Jesus, why we sing to Jesus in whom divine compassion meets us in wondrous and complete human translation.

The scene in Mark is incredibly short: As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

We may be so eager to know what exactly it was he taught them, that we almost miss what he is teaching us. We want to know the many things he taught them, because we’re pupils learning to think of ourselves as sent ones, and we want to pick up the lesson and run with it. What we miss is that we are very much part of them; that without him, we all are like sheep without a shepherd. What we miss is that it was him who went ashore and began to teach; and that we get to stay in the boat and eat the bread of his teaching; and that we don’t have to go anywhere or do anything but be here in his presence and receive his gifts, let him speak to us. Some of us still remember Herod’s party that ended with the death of John, the herald of the kingdom, and we notice that wherever Jesus goes, people live and experience wholeness. Some of us let him speak to us and we receive words of forgiveness and renewal. And some of us hear the sound of little waves rolling up on the beach, until we doze off, rocked to sleep like babies in a cradle. And when we awake, we rub our eyes and rediscover that the world did in fact turn without us. Oh, he knows what he’s doing, and he knows what we need better than we know ourselves, and he gives it to us. Come away and rest a while.

We follow Jesus because the rest he offers is more than just a break in a relentless race. We’re invited to rest in the movement of God’s compassion in the world, to draw strength from it, and to let it shape our actions, words, and thoughts with divine purpose.

Mark shows us a scene with people everywhere; people constantly arriving; people not just following Jesus around, but anticipating where he’s headed and hurrying ahead of him, seeking to cut him off before he can move on. They need healing and deliverance, and all the commotion, the crying, begging, and pushing bespeaks real desperation, desperate need—our desperate need, for we are them.[1] But we are not sheep without a shepherd. We shall not want.

[1] With gratitude to Cheryl Bridges Jones, Feasting B, Vol. 3, 260ff.

Astounding

This is not an uncommon thing to happen: I say something, and the other person thinks I’m criticizing them, even though that wasn’t at all what I had in mind. You know what I mean, don’t you? I feel the need to ask, because I can’t be sure. I presume you’re familiar with the situation where you’re talking to a person who appears to be of good hearing and sound mind, as well as reasonably attentive, but he or she still doesn’t seem to hear you. You make eye contact, you speak slowly and clearly, and without a trace of condescension (as far as you can tell), using common English, but you’re not getting through to them. It’s incredibly frustrating. We just don’t understand each other as well as we think we could or should.

Our hearing develops while we’re still in the womb, and we learn to talk and pay attention to speech in the first years of our life, but we all know that speaking and listening is not just a matter of having the right vocabulary and good hearing. Marriage and family counselors are known to spend much of their time coaching their clients how to speak and listen.

The Bible includes a great number of sayings and writings of prophets who saw very clearly what was going on in their day, and they spoke, they declared, they urged and warned – but who was listening? Often their pronouncements were collected a generation later by people who wondered how they or their parents could have missed the urgent truth. God said to Ezekiel, “I’m sending you to the Israelites, a rebellious people. I’m sending you to their hardheaded and hardhearted descendants, and you will say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ You’ll speak my words to them whether they listen or whether they refuse. You aren’t being sent to a people whose language and speech are difficult and obscure but to the house of Israel – they will refuse to listen to you because they refuse to listen to me.”[1]

The prophets knew that listening is not only determined by language and speech, but by such curious human traits as hardheadedness or hardheartedness. “Whether they listen or whether they refuse,” the heavenly voice said to Ezekiel, “they will know that a prophet has been among them.”[2] Has been – the belated knowledge comes with a measure of regret, but it can yet soften our hardheaded and hardhearted inclinations. The belated knowledge can open our stubborn hearts at least for the desire to listen to each other more attentively.

When Jesus began his ministry, he left his home in Nazareth and went to Capernaum on the shore of the big lake. The people in Capernaum, Mark tells us, were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority.[3] He continued to teach and heal in the villages of Galilee, and word about him spread. His family wasn’t thrilled, though. They were embarrassed; there was talk in the village; some were heard saying, “He has gone out of his mind.”[4] The people who had known him all his life didn’t know what to make of his sudden urge to leave home and walk all over Galilee, talking about repentance and the reign of God.

His family tried to convince him to come home, but once, when people told him that his mother and his brothers were outside, asking for him, Jesus replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”[5] Now that is a beautiful thing to hear for all those who sit around Jesus, but imagine what a harsh word that was for his mother or his siblings.

So eventually Jesus came back to his hometown, Mark tells us, and when the sabbath came he went to the synagogue and began to teach. And again, people were astounded. But it wasn’t the kind of wonder that erupted in Capernaum and elsewhere; it was a mix of bewilderment and outrage. Where did he get all this? What is the source of his power? Who does he think he is? Nothing he said and did in his hometown was any different from what he had done elsewhere, but the outcome was the exact opposite: no miracles and wonders, no marvelous signs of the nearness of God’s reign, only upset and angry people.

Jesus himself was amazed at their unbelief, Mark tells us; and the disciples, I imagine, were pretty puzzled as well, wondering what was going on. They had watched him silence demons and drive them out. They had been there when he stilled the storm, commanding the wind and the waves, and they obeyed![6]  But in this little town, it was like his words hit the walls and fell to the ground. The contrast couldn’t be more striking.

“Prophets are not without honor,” he said, “except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” Mark tells us that folks in Nazareth didn’t grasp who he was. It would be easy for us to dismiss them as hardheaded or hardhearted – but only if we can’t see ourselves in their shoes. “Isn’t this Mary’s boy who used to work in construction?” they said.

There’s a Jewish text from the 2nd century BC called Sirach, and it sheds a little light on how people then could praise manual laborers and, at the same time, remind them not to think or act above their station. “Scholars must have time to study, if they are going to be wise,” it says there; “they must be relieved of other responsibilities.” And then it continues,

How can a farm hand gain knowledge, when his only ambition is to drive the oxen and make them work, when all he knows to talk about is livestock? He takes great pains to plow a straight furrow and will work far into the night to feed the animals. It is the same with the artist and the craftsman, … the blacksmith … [and] the potter … All of these people are skilled with their hands, each of them an expert at his own craft. Without such people there could be no cities … [But] these people are not sought out to serve on the public councils, and they never attain positions of great importance. They do not serve as judges, and they do not understand legal matters. They have no education and are not known for their wisdom. You never hear them quoting proverbs.[7]

“Isn’t this Mary’s boy who used to work in construction?” folks in Nazareth said. “We know you, Jesus. We know your family. We’ve known you since you were a little boy – who are you to come here quoting proverbs and teaching in parables and talking about the kingdom of God?” It was inconceivable to them that God could be at work in a man they knew so well, a man they had practically known all his life. And so they didn’t bring their sick for healing. They didn’t bring their children for his blessing. They didn’t come to hear his teaching. “Who does he think he is?” They didn’t expect anything, and they were not disappointed.

Jesus could do no deed of power there, Mark tells us. A miracle, the story suggests, is like the tango: it takes two. One who does the deed of power and another who is open to it. Ann Lamott wrote about her step into a life of faith, “I didn’t need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.”[8] But people can also look at a stand of redwoods, and all they see is lumber. Mark’s Nazareth scene suggests that for deeds of power and signs of the nearness of God’s reign to become manifest, it takes at least one who is open to receive what is being done and said. And without that kind of receptivity the wonders cease.

Communities where everyone knows everyone else feel comfortable and safe; but for those who look at life from angles that aren’t defined by what the neighbors might think, life in Mayberry can be suffocating. Small communities have lots of unwritten rules about how things are done properly, and that’s why they can be hardest on their most creative people. If anyone has an idea that breaks the mold, the first response is not, “Wow, keep talking!” but, “Who does she think she is?”

Churches, of course, often function just like small communities, and I wonder how many times we stifle the wisdom and power of God in our midst, and we don’t even notice. There’s a crucial difference between having known Jesus all your life and listening to Jesus now. And Mark’s story suggests that it might well be the difference between “no deed of power here” and “it was a time of miracles and wonders.”

Between the lines of his story, Mark says to us, “People who have never seen Jesus face to face know him better than his own family and kin because they believe that God is speaking and acting through him.” Perhaps we all secretly wait for a god who pops onto the scene like Fourth of July fireworks, and so we miss the God who is so incredibly everyday human.

But once we perceive the presence of God in Jesus, once we see him as the embodiment of God’s love, and hear God’s voice and word through him, deeds of power begin to happen. Acts of mercy. Works of compassion. Miracles of understanding. Ripples of forgiveness.

And when we begin to believe that God is not too big to meet us in each other, we’re ready to be sent. Jesus tells the Twelve to take nothing for the journey, but to travel light. On the kingdom trail, it’s not about the gear; never has been. It’s always been about trusting the power of the one who calls and sends. It’s all about the wondrous power we allow to become manifest when we receive the word of God in Jesus with open hearts. It’s incredibly everyday human, and it’s astounding.

[1] See Ezekiel 2:1-7

[2] Ezekiel 2:5

[3] Mark 1:21-22

[4] Mark 3:22

[5] Mark 3:32-35

[6] Mark 1:27; 4:41

[7] Sirach 38:24-34 (GNT)

[8] Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further thoughts on faith (New York: Riverhead, 2006), 296.

Get up

They wanted to touch him. People came to Jesus in great numbers, for he had healed so many, Mark says, that everyone who was sick pushed forward so that they could touch him.[1] They wanted to lay their hands on him to connect to the power that was in him. Mark paints a scene of people being drawn to Jesus from every direction, bodies everywhere.

Among them a man who somehow makes his way to Jesus and throws himself at his feet. He’s a synagogue official of some kind, an important man, which is possibly why the crowd gave way and let him through; his name is Jairus, Mark tells us. But Jairus doesn’t behave like an important man. He’s on his knees, with his forehead touching the ground; he can smell the dirt, he can feel the grit of sand and gravel against his palms and the tips of his fingers. He behaves like a desperate man, a man on the verge of losing it.

His daughter is at the point of death, only he doesn’t say “my daughter,” he says, “my little daughter,” the little girl he has known since he first held her on the day she was born when she was barely bigger than his hand. “She’s dying,” is what he’s there to tell the man from Nazareth, she’s dying. Nothing else matters for him anymore; he doesn’t waste a thought on propriety or social conventions: his little girl is at the point of death. Jairus is an important man, a man with a name, and love has made him a beggar.

She is dying—he says it repeatedly, “my little daughter, she’s at the point of death— and he says, “Come and lay your hands on her.” Come and touch her like you have touched others with healing power. Lay your hands on her, he says, perhaps he’s seen it done, perhaps he’s done it himself, kneeling by her bedside, willing to let his own life flow out through his hands so it would be hers, if that was what it took — only he couldn’t give her what he so desperately wanted to give her.

“Lay your hands on her, so she may be made well, and live,” he says to Jesus. He remembers when she was little, how, in the middle of the night when the house was too quiet, he used to get up to make sure she was breathing. He never told anybody; men, let alone men of importance, didn’t do such things, but he is no longer afraid to show his love and helplessness in front of the whole town. “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live,” Jairus begged, and Jesus went with him, Mark tells us.

Surrounded by people on every side, bodies everywhere, Jesus suddenly stopped and turned about and said, “Who touched my clothes?” The disciples were like, “You’re kidding, right? All this humanity pressing in on you — how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” They didn’t know what had just happened. They didn’t know who or what had created this sudden interruption of a life-saving mission.

The way our translations seek to render the text in proper English narrative style obscure the dramatic way the scene is described; in a single sentence, one long string of participles builds up like a stack of pages from a diary, before finally culminating in the interrupting action. A woman—having been bleeding for twelve years, and having suffered greatly from many physicians, and having spent all she had, and having benefited not one bit but rather having gone from bad to worse, having heard about Jesus, having come in the crowd from behind—touched his cloak.

Nobody in the crowd knew that a single phrase, a single intention had been on her mind, for who knows how long: “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” That was her faith, a mixture of desperation and magical thinking, fed by long years of disappointed hope.

She’s the second desperate character entering the scene, only she remains unnamed and unseen. She was determined to touch his clothes and she did. And immediately she felt that she was healed. Immediately she felt that life was no longer slowly draining from her, but filling her. And she alone knew it was so. No one else in the crowd had any idea. Not the disciples, not Jairus - try and imagine what this delay was like for him! - and not even Jesus himself.

When he turned around and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” she didn’t just say, “I did.” She fell at his feet and told him the whole truth. She told him of the twelve years of her suffering and poverty; she told him of her loneliness, her shame and isolation – how her life had slowly dripped away.

And Jesus heard her out and said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” This curious blend of desperation and magical thinking, this unbending determination to touch him, Jesus called her faith. We should also note that he called her “daughter” as if to remind her and all of us that she was not some woman in the crowd, anonymous and impoverished, but a member of God’s family. And calling her “daughter,” Jesus also reminds us that the divine parent’s love for her is reflected and shared in the love of Jairus for his little daughter.

And suddenly we remember the urgency with which he had begged and pleaded, “Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” And isn’t that the hope we all bring to Jesus, that he may come and lay his hands on all who long to be made well, all who long for life to be made complete? Isn’t that the hope we all bring to Jesus, because we believe that life is his to give, and restore, and fulfill?

And now the people from the synagogue leader’s house come and they tell him, “Your daughter is dead.” Nothing anybody can do about it now; too late. End of story. “Why trouble the teacher any further?” they say to Jairus.

But Jesus says to him, “Do not fear, only believe.” Believe what? What is a man to believe after a gut punch like that? What might give him the strength to get up and keep on living? We notice that Jairus doesn’t ask any questions like that, and so we refrain from cobbling together quick answers, and do what he does: see what Jesus is up to.

At the house, the funeral is already underway with people weeping and wailing, and when Jesus says, “The child is not dead but sleeping,” they laugh. It’s not happy laughter, though, rising like a lark from the house to the clouds. It’s the bitter, knowing laughter of experience.

Jesus sends them all away, and he takes the parents and three of the disciples into the room with him. It’s quiet there.

And Jesus doesn’t speak to comfort the grieving parents, nor does he speak to teach the disciples who have no clue what he meant by “not dead but sleeping,” — no, Jesus takes her by the hand and says to her with great tenderness, “Talitha cum.”

Mark translates the Aramaic for us so we don’t think Jesus is using some kind of magic spell or secret incantation, but the church remembered the words in Jesus’ native tongue, taking us a little closer to the sound of his voice, “Talitha cum — little girl, get up!”

And she did.

Wherever Jesus went, Mark tells us—villages, cities, or farming communities—they would place the sick in the marketplaces and beg him to allow them to touch even the hem of his clothing; and all who touched him were healed.[2] That is one side of this wondrous pair of stories we heard this morning. It is about our desire to touch Jesus, our deep, persistent desire to touch the giver of life and live, to touch the fount of every blessing and be blessed.

And the other side is about God’s deep and persistent desire to touch us with life and blessing. Perhaps you identify with the woman who persisted in pushing through the crowd to get close to Jesus. Perhaps you identify with the dad who threw himself at Jesus’ feet, abandoning all sense of propriety and decorum for his daughter’s sake. But when you’re in the place where hope has withered and you can’t find the courage to persist, or you don’t know how to get up, let alone imagine what it might mean to believe: remember Jesus who went into the room where the child was. And dare to wonder if the child might be you. You who believe, and you who sometimes believe and sometimes don’t believe much of anything, and you who would give almost anything to believe if only you could. “Get up,” he says, and you dare to imagine that it’s your hand he’s holding, and that the power that is in him is the power to give life to the dead, and also to those who are only partly alive.[3]

Dare to imagine that it’s your hand he’s holding, and that nothing will keep him from sharing life in fullness with you.

[1] Mark 3:10

[2] Mark 6:56

[3] With thanks to Frederick Buechner http://www.frederickbuechner.com/blog/2018/6/25/weekly-sermon-illustration-jairus-daughter

A mighty shrub

The kingdom of God is like this, Jesus declares: Someone scatters seed on the ground, and goes to bed and rises night and day, and meanwhile the seed sprouts and grows — how, this person does not know.

Jesus teaches us about the kingdom of God, but those of us who are looking for a timetable, a blueprint, or a constitution of the wondrous realm, won’t get our answers from him. Jesus tells us stories of shepherds and gardeners and bakers, stories with vineyards, trees and birds in them — parables that say so much and explain very little.

Who is this gardener who scatters seed on the ground, and then nothing is mentioned about watering or weeding or keeping the rabbits away? Are we to think of God as the sower? Or perhaps Jesus himself? Or may we be so bold as to identify ourselves with this “someone” who scatters seed on the ground? Maybe this isn’t so bold after all, since most of us wouldn’t think of God as sleeping and rising night and day, not knowing how it is that the seed sprouts and grows.

Perhaps we want to think of ourselves as the soil in which the seed of Jesus’ life and death takes root and flourishes into a harvest of life, and we don’t know how, but we sleep and rise night and day, confident that the harvest season will come in God’s own time. “Intimacy with Christ grows in us as certainly and as effortlessly as seeds grow,” wrote Wendy Farley. “We have so little to do with Christ’s nearness to us that we can just go to sleep. In fact, it might be better if we did sleep through the whole thing, snug and safe, resting like babies in our mothers’ arms.”[1]

Martin Luther clearly saw himself as a sower when he told his congregation in 1522, “I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses on it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.”[2]

We can enter the parable identifying with the gardener, or the seed, or the soil, and each entry takes us into a different room of meaning. Once the seed is in the ground, the miracle happens, we don’t know how. The miracle happens within us and among us and beyond us. We receive and trust; we bear fruit and don’t know how. Sometimes we sow generously, by the handful, in the rhythm of our walk with Jesus; sometimes we plant just a single, precious seed, mindfully and carefully, trusting that there will be a harvest in God’s own time. We sow and go to bed without a worry.

As an undergraduate, Kent Keith wrote what he called The Paradoxical Commandments.[3]

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.

Do good anyway. ...

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway. ...

Our faith, in a way, is a habit of joyful and hopeful anyway.

Some seeds get eaten by the birds.

Scatter them anyway.

Some seeds, you worry, may not get enough water or sunlight.

Scatter them anyway.

The world objects.

Be generous anyway. Be kind anyway. Be merciful anyway. Scatter the seed Jesus has sown: at harvest time the sowers will sing and dance.

Parables resist complete explanation; they aren’t locked treasure boxes that reveal their splendor only to those who find the proper key. No, they are living stories, at once familiar and unknown, conversation partners that surprise and confound us as often as they comfort and assure us on the way to the kingdom. They won’t sit still long enough so we can turn them into catchy memes or paradoxical commandments. And they subvert all the frameworks of thought that prohibit our hearing the message of the kingdom — hearing fully and truly what Jesus proclaims, and not just what we want to hear or have always heard. Parables don’t offer answers that settle things. They point us back, again and again, to the one who speaks the word to us with many such stories and who is himself for us the parable of God and of fullness of life with God.

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God,” Jesus asks us, “or what parable will we use for it?” He wants us to ponder with him what language, what images we might borrow to speak about the dominion of God. And he wanders the realms of nature and scripture, worlds teeming with mighty creatures like the lion, the stag and the eagle, the bull and the bear, creatures frequently adopted as symbols of human dominion, but they make no appearance in Jesus’ stories of God’s reign.

What language, what images might we borrow then? Nebuchadnezzar, king of mighty Babylon, had a dream, according to the book of Daniel:

Upon my bed this is what I saw; there was a tree at the center of the earth, and its height was great. The tree grew great and strong, its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the ends of the whole earth. Its foliage was beautiful, its fruit abundant, and it provided food for all. The animals of the field found shade under it, the birds of the air nested in its branches, and from it all living beings were fed.[4]

When Jesus asks, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?” perhaps we imagine such a mighty tree, a tree whose branches extend to the ends of the earth; the tallest, the most magnificent tree of all, forever defining the center of the world; with its top in the heavens and its roots in the depths of the earth; with beautiful foliage and abundant fruit; with shelter and food and peace for all living beings.

The prophet Ezekiel dreamed in exile in Babylon of God planting a tender shoot on Israel’s mountainous highlands, a twig growing into a mighty cedar, with birds of every kind nesting in it and finding shelter in the shade of its boughs.[5] Throughout Israel’s history, any story that mentioned trees with birds in them was a story of hope that in the end God’s kingdom would prevail over Assyria, Babylonia, Rome or any other empire.

And that ancient tradition continues to this day. During the years of military rule in Uruguay, a teacher was thrown in prison for subversive activity. He hadn’t planned an assassination or conspired to overthrow the dictatorship; his crime was much more serious: he taught history and literature. He was fortunate, though, since he wasn’t just “disappeared” like so many others, and his 7-year-old daughter was allowed to come and visit him once a week.

On one of her first visits, she wanted to bring him a picture she had drawn the night before at the desk where he used to prepare his lessons: a tree with it’s top touching the clouds, and birds flying in the sky and perching on the branches. She brought it to prison, but the guards took it away from her. Birds were considered subversive, free as they are to fly across a sky without borders—they might give the people the wrong ideas.

A week later the little girl returned with another drawing. It was a beautiful tree, lush and tall, with strong branches, and the sun was smiling in the wide blue sky. The smiling sun had not yet been put on the index of banned images, and so the girl was able to give her dad the picture. “Thank you so much,” he said. “This is the most beautiful tree I have ever seen.” And pointing at a number of tiny dark dots among the leaves, he asked her, “Is it a cherry tree?”

“Shhh, Papa,” she whispered, “those are the eyes of the birds. They live in the tree, and when the guards aren’t watching, they fly!”

Trees with birds in them are symbols of hope, hope that in the end God’s reign will prevail over empires of fear and oppression. Jesus wants us to ponder with him what language, what images we might borrow to speak about the dominion of God, and I’m quite certain he loves the little girl’s picture with its fun, subversive twist of birds posing as cherries. His own parable includes a twist like that.

“The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed,” he says. There’s nothing mighty about mustard. It can grow into a shrub, maybe 8 or 9 feet high, about as tall as the typical Galilean house, but that’s it. The mustard shrub just won’t scale to palatial dimensions.

But what it lacks in imperial majesty, it makes up for with ubiquity. Mustard grows fast and just about anywhere, it tends to take over where it’s not wanted, and the birds love it.

When it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in the shade.

The kingdom of God is like this annual plant that perpetuates itself with tiny seeds. It doesn’t just sit there and simply get bigger and bigger with the years. The mustard shrub depends on renewed sowing and its perennial promise lies in the fruitfulness of the seed and the faithfulness of those who spread it. What this suggests to me is that God’s dominion is no divine empire, putting an end to earthly empires with overwhelming force, but rather an invasive reality, transforming the everyday with the seeds of divine compassion, righteousness, and truth. We carry the seeds of the kingdom in us, and we scatter them by bearing fruit, in freedom and obedience, reminding one another that we are, and are meant to live as, citizens of God’s dominion. We do and say and notice lots of small things in lots of places, things as common as mustard, and we trust that they’re all connected with each other, often in hidden ways like seed in the soil, but bound to be fully revealed.

With what can we compare the kingdom of God? It is like us, ordinary people, young and old, folk who listen intently to Jesus and go and scatter the tiniest of seeds on the ground. Trusting that God will provide the growth, we sleep and rise night and day, always looking forward to the harvest of life.

[1] Feasting, Year B, Volume 3, 142.

[2] Luther’s Works, Vol. 51: Sermons I., J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, & H. T. Lehmann, Eds. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 77-78.

[3] Kent Keith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_M._Keith

[4] Daniel 4:10-12

[5] Ezekiel 17:22-24

Drawing circles

Mark shows us Jesus drawing circles. We don’t see him sitting on the ground and drawing in the dust. We watch him as he proclaims the message of the kingdom in the villages of Galilee, announcing its coming with mighty acts of healing.

Hearing all that he was doing, Mark tells us, people came in great numbers, a movement of multitudes. They came to him from long distances, drawn to him from all around Galilee, from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, the lands beyond the river Jordan, and the region around Tyre and Sidon. The names of the places Mark mentions let you draw a map in your mind, and the little red dot that tells you, “You are here”, that little red dot is glued to Galilee in the middle.

To Mark, this is the center of the world, because Jesus is there. But it is also the center of a world in the grip of evil - beautiful, yes, blessed with life’s diversity and the delights of living, but also ugly and oppressive. Many of us didn’t know about the Tulsa massacre of 1921 until Watchmen started streaming on HBO two years ago, or until news of the 100th anniversary made us wonder why we hadn’t heard about it before, why we didn’t learn about one of the worst acts of racial violence in American history in school.[1]

Our life together gives rise to inspiring accomplishments and moving ideas, but also to acts of violence and structures of corruption. In Mark’s world, such structures and the anonymous forces driving their creation and continuation are identified as demonic. They are evil powers that are incredibly resistant to being seen and named and driven out. Karl Barth wrote that demons “exist always and everywhere where the truth of God is not present and proclaimed and believed and grasped, and therefore does not speak and shine and rule.”[2] But now Mark shows us how in Jesus the truth of God is present, and how in him this truth speaks and shines and rules. Jesus begins his ministry, and the demons know their time is up. “Have you come to destroy us?” they ask him.[3] They know who he is, and they fall at his feet. In the presence of Jesus, Mark testifies, demons fall.

In the next scene, Jesus draws another circle. We see him on the mountain, surrounded by the twelve. “He called to him those whom he wanted,” Mark tells us. Twelve men, not a woman among them, they were the initial apostolic team, the ones he would send as co-workers in his kingdom ministry of letting the truth of God shine and rule. They were all men, but that wasn’t what qualified them. What qualified them was his call, and today we celebrate that the risen Christ continues to call to him those whom he wants. Just as we baptize those whom he has called, we ordain those whom he has called; and we do so with great confidence because it is Christ himself who has chosen them, and with great humility because we are just as flawed as those initial twelve were.

In the next scene, Jesus enters a house, and again a crowd has gathered. They are drawn to him just like we have been, drawn into the circle of his power, drawn to the life where God’s truth is spoken and believed, where true life shines and rules. And then his family shows up, and it’s like they don’t recognize him anymore. The things he does, the things he says, the way he spends his days - they’re convinced he’s gone out of his mind. They don’t recognize the power at work in him. They think it’s madness, and they’ve come for an intervention. They want the old Jesus back, and they’re here to pick him up and take him home, in chains if necessary.

In Mark’s own time, families were torn apart because some members embraced the kingdom message, while others didn’t. And this didn’t create merely tension. In Mark 13, we read about a period of persecution when brother betrayed brother to death, and a father his child, and children rose against parents and had them put to death.[4] The kingdom message is a message of liberation and healing, but its proclamation can create conflict and great suffering, even in the most intimate relationships. Mark wants us to know that. Live the truth of God to the degree that you know it, and let it shine, but don’t expect others to see the way you see or read the way you read or come to the same conclusions as you. But continue to live the truth of God as you know it, with confidence and humility.

In the next scene, the scribes appear, they are scholars and keepers of the sacred tradition, and they don’t recognize the power at work in Jesus. They can tell that he’s clearly in the grip of something, but neither his family nor these scribes know what to make of that powerful something that’s got a hold of him. We believe and confess that it is the Spirit of God, but this group of scribes accuse him of being in league with the master of demons.

But why would Satan cooperate with the eviction of Satan? And if Satan’s house is divided like that, it’s bound to fall, and this fall is the whole point of Jesus’ ministry: the liberation of God’s creation from the demonic forces of evil. So why watch him with suspicion? What could possibly be wrong with the fall of Satan’s house?

The conflict is drawn in stark, apocalyptic contrasts: In Jesus, the kingdom of God encounters not just a world that is sometimes easily distracted and often busy with other, seemingly more important things. In his ministry, the kingdom of God encounters a whole demonic system that is occupying the house of the world and is keeping its inhabitants - you and me and air and sea and all things - in captivity.

But for Mark and the church, this encounter is not a never-ending back and forth between two cosmic powers. Jesus’ ministry represents the beginning of the end of Satan’s domain. If God is to rule and life is to flourish, Satan must be bound. To illustrate the point, Jesus quotes from the burglary manual:

No one can enter a strong one’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong one; then indeed the house can be plundered.

Jesus compares himself to the thief who has come to rob the biggest thief of all. We belong to God; all living things and all of creation belong to God - and not to the strong one who sows lovelessness and division, and robs the world of life’s fullness. Of course Jesus isn’t on the same team as the master of demons. Jesus is the more powerful one whose coming John announced, and he has come to tie up the strong one and plunder his property - property that never was his to begin with.[5] We belong to God, always have and always will.

Jesus has come to set the captives free, and he continues to call to him those whom he wants in order to send them out to proclaim the message, with the authority to drive out demons. And because of who Jesus is and what he has done, his disciples are at work in the territory of a defeated enemy. The power of evil has not disappeared from the world, but its power has been broken. Christ is risen from the dead, and the truth of God shines. And because it shines with the light of love, the followers of Jesus can see demonic realities and name them and face them with courage. And yes, no longer teaching our children a whitewashed version of our history is a significant part of this ministry.

Mark shows us Jesus drawing circles, and in the final scene he’s in a house. It’s not the walls that define who is inside and who is outside, because a crowd has gathered around Jesus. His family, though, is said to be “standing outside.” They send for him and call him, which is sadly ironic, since he is the one calling and sending us.

The passage is saturated with the familial terms mother, siblings, brother and sister, and it illustrates a radical claim: the coming of Jesus as the representative of God’s kingdom makes family relationships the standard for how we relate to all in the one household of God; Jesus’ practice and presence challenge us to think about mutual belonging with the depth of obligation that we associate with being members of a family.

Jesus looks at all the humanity gathered around him, all of us with our hunger for wholeness and our thirst for life, and he draws the circle wide, saying, “Here are my mother and my siblings! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” He draws a circle with a radius long enough to include each of us - a radius stretching so far, it reaches way past any line of exclusion we might draw or imagine. He is the reason why in this family we live in the hope that in the end not a single one of us will be left standing outside. In this family we believe and testify that the love of Jesus has bound the strong one, and that it continues to set the captives free. In this family we look to the day when the whole world is at home in the house that love built.

[1] See the column by Tom Hanks https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/opinion/tom-hanks-tulsa-race-massacre-history.html

[2] Karl Barth, CD III/3, 529; quoted in Placher, Mark, 66.

[3] Mk 1:24

[4] See Mk 13:12

[5] Mk 1:7

We are debtors

Last Sunday, eight of us were baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. We did so in obedience to Christ’s command and with the growing recognition that with baptism we enter into newness of life. Baptism marks with symbolic action what we embrace in faith: in the death and resurrection of Jesus new life erupts, a new creation amid the familiar contours of the world. In baptism we celebrate the power of forgiveness and the freedom to live and serve as children of God in the world. In the deep solidarity of love, Christ has made us his own, and in baptism we say our small yes to God’s big yes: we acknowledge God’s gifts as given to us, and we step into the story of God’s love for us as we step into the water and let ourselves be immersed in it.

Eight times it was my privilege and joy to speak the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” It is but one name, because these three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are one. This puzzling declaration is not an invitation to speculation; it is an invitation to enter the mystery of the divine life as participants through Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit – as those eight young people did last Sunday.

C. S. Lewis spoke about prayer both as an illustration and as a way to enter the mystery of the triune God. Imagine, he suggested, “an ordinary simple Christian” who says her prayers. She does so with intention, because she wants to “get into touch with God” and because she trusts that God hears her prayers. But as a Christian she also knows that “what is prompting” her to pray “is also God,” God inside her, so to speak. And she knows that all she knows of God, she knows because of Christ, the Word of God in human flesh. And Christ is present with her, praying for her, praying with her. “You see what is happening,” says Lewis. God is the one she seeks to address with her prayer. God is also the one nudging her to pray. And “God is also the road or bridge,” the way along which she is drawn in her desire to address God. Thus “the whole threefold life” of the triune God “is actually going on” around and within her, Lewis contends — and as she prays, she is being caught up into a fuller kind of life,” which is to say, into the very life of God, three in one, one in three, while still remaining herself.[1]

Paul also writes about prayer in today’s passage from Romans, and he does it to assure his audience of their status as children of God and heirs to the promises of God. “How can we know we belong?” he imagines believers in Rome asking him, and he responds,

When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.

Jesus Christ is the one human being who lived faithfully in relationship with God, and he fulfilled the calling all of humanity had failed to live out, due to the power of sin. Christ is the heir to God’s promises, because Christ was faithful even unto death, and therefore God raised him up, the firstborn of a new creation, beyond the reach of sin and death.

Jesus’ relationship with God was personal and intimate. He addressed God on familial terms as Abba, and the community of believers remembered that intimate address and continued to use it in the original Aramaic after Easter. It was, according to one scholar, “so precious, venerable and distinctive as to resist the absorption into Greek that was the fate of virtually the entire remainder of the tradition.”[2]

Jesus’ relationship with God was personal and intimate, yet it wasn’t exclusive. It included all whom Jesus claimed as his siblings and embraced in boundless love, and all whom the Risen One continues to claim through the Spirit, whom Paul calls the spirit of adoption.

Paul was aware that the believers’ confidence that they were indeed children of God could be shaken in the trials besetting them. And so he told them, “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ we’re not just mouthing words – it’s the Spirit of Christ bearing witness with our own spirit that we belong to the household of God – and as members of God’s household we are co-heirs with Christ to the promises of God.” We are claimed and sealed, sanctified and destined to be glorified. In other words, what Christ has done and what God has done in Christ was for us and our salvation.

“So then, brothers and sisters,” our passage from Romans begins, “we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh — for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” This sentence is strangely incomplete – we are not told to whom or what we are indebted: “not to the flesh,” Paul says rather emphatically, leaving it to his readers to finish the sentence: We are debtors, not to the flesh, but to Jesus Christ, to the Spirit, to God.

Paul didn’t have a doctrine of the Trinity, but he loved God and he knew Christ, crucified and risen, and he was led by the power of the Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity came much later, emerging from worship and study and conflict, and it continues to unfold through the theological work of the church, in conversation the biblical witnesses, with philosophers and mystics, poets and musicians, and believers of other faiths. God is three in one, the church confesses: the Holy One of Israel whom Jesus called Father, the Son who became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, and the Holy Spirit who has been poured out on all flesh. God is not a principle or the ultimate unifying theory of everything, but a personal, relational reality.

God is persons and nothing else. There is no waxy residue of divinity that is not wrapped up in these three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That’s who God is.[3]

And by the grace of God, we are adopted into this interpersonal reality to be in communion with God forever, to know as we are known, and love as we are loved.

Paul writes, “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” Our status as children of God is not determined by the world’s usual markers. In Paul’s day, things quickly got complicated between Jews and Gentiles in the churches, and to this day they continue to be complicated between male and female and non-binary folk, between rich and poor, cis and trans, preppy and punk, and I won’t even attempt to paint a full picture of all the ways we have come up with to draw each other in or push each other out. Paul insists that our core identity as followers of Jesus is affirmed in our baptism: each of us a child of God, and all of us siblings of Christ. All our other identity layers still matter, but they no longer determine how we relate to each other. All those sharp lines we draw fade in the light of our new and true status as siblings of Christ, children of God who are led by the Spirit of God. We don’t need a Sunday to lift up the doctrine of the Trinity. What we do need are frequent reminders of our true identity as children of God, because we are often fearful and forgetful and ungrateful.

We are God’s children on the way, led by the Spirit into the fullness of our inheritance like Israel in the wilderness: no longer slaves, but not fully free yet either. In his letter to the Galatians Paul writes, “you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.”[4] Self-indulgence is another way of spelling “according to the flesh.” Led by the Spirit, we are no longer slaves to our self-seeking impulses and fear-driven desires; we are human beings made in the image of God who are being remade in the image of the Son of God, the truly and fully human one.

We are debtors, brothers and sisters and fellow-siblings of Christ, debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, but to God, to live according to the promise and purpose of God. We are debtors, that’s the central point made about us here. We owe all that we are to God: our life, our freedom, our hope. Paul uses the language of obligation again in Romans 13:8 where he writes, “Owe no one anything, but to love one another.” That is the whole point of the debt we owe to God: we can’t pay it back, but in paying it forward we become more fully who we are.

[1] Mere Christianity, 4.2; my thanks to the good people at https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/lectionary-commentary-for-trinity-Sunday for the lead.

[2] Brendan Byrne, Romans (Sacra Pagina), 250.

[3] Richard Lischer, Open Secrets. A Memoir of Faith and Discovery (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), 80.

[4] Galatians 5:13

Speak to the bones

A cheerful heart is a good medicine, a proverb says, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.[1] Today is a good-medicine kind of day. Our hearts are very cheerful after long, long months of worrying and waiting. We smile big smiles behind our masks, and our eyes sparkle with joy. Today is a good-medicine kind of day and we rejoice over the young people who say yes to a life as followers of Jesus, yes to a life of faith and hope and love. Today is a good-medicine kind of day and we praise God for the steady downpour of God’s Spirit on all flesh, inspiring and empowering people of all generations and in all places to dream God’s dreams and see God’s visions and live into God’s future with all their heart and mind and strength.

It is so good that we use a lot of water for baptism, that we don’t just fill a small basin for a little splash, but a pool deep enough to wade in; deep enough for the water to go up to our chest; deep enough for our bodies to go under and feel the water’s support. We use a lot of water because it gives us language to speak of being immersed in God’s love as in an ocean, of floating effortlessly on the currents of God’s grace, and of standing under the broad falls of God’s mercy, washing away our sin and guilt and fear.

A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.

A downcast spirit dries up the bones. The driest place on Earth is in Antarctica, I read. There’s an area called the Dry Valleys, where it hasn’t rained or snowed for nearly 2 million years.[2] That’s mighty dry. But nothing compared to the valley Ezekiel saw. The driest place on earth is where hope has evaporated. Ezekiel didn’t want to see it. He didn’t go there out of curiosity. He was taken there in a vision, by the hand of the Lord who set him down in the middle of the valley. First impression: bones everywhere. The Lord led him all around so he could get a good look. There were very many bones, and they were very dry. It was a battlefield, long after the eagles and vultures had finished their feast and picked them clean. It was a scene of defeat and death and abandonment. Nothing but very dry bones.

“Can these bones live?” God asked Ezekiel. How could they? After a battle, there might be wounded warriors who could perhaps survive, but bones spell nothing but life long gone, without a doubt. Ezekiel responded, “O Lord God, you know,” which may have been another way of saying, “Don’t ask me; that kind of question you alone can answer.” And the Lord said to him, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.”

The driest place on earth is not where it hasn’t rained for nearly 2 million years. The driest place is where hope has evaporated. God interpreted the scene for Ezekiel, saying, “These bones are whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone; we are doomed.’” Years of exile in Babylon and recent news of Jerusalem’s destruction had taken a heavy toll.

And the Lord said, “Speak to the bones.” And Ezekiel did speak, and in his vision he saw bodies being reconstituted, bone to bone, layer by layer, sinews, muscle tissue, and skin, in time-lapse mode. But that wasn’t it. There was no breath in them. And God didn’t just breathe into their nostrils the breath of life, no, God told Ezekiel to speak to the breath, the spirit, for it to come from the four winds and breathe into these slain bodies that they might live again. And Ezekiel spoke, and breath, the spirit of life entered them and they came to life and stood up, a vast multitude.

It was a vision of the complete reversal of a hopeless situation. It was a vision affirming for Ezekiel that God, creator of heaven and earth and giver of life, had not abandoned God’s people. But that wasn’t all of it. It was also a vision affirming for Ezekiel that his obedience, his courage, and his voice were needed for the big change. A downcast spirit dries up the bones, and Ezekiel had every reason to lament with his people or fall silent altogether. But he trusted the word, and he didn’t look away, and he obeyed, and he dared to speak.

The driest place on earth is where all hope is evaporated. The driest place on earth is the place where the road ends and folks know they can’t stay there, but they can’t see a way out either. The driest place is the desolate land between Jewish settlements and Palestinian cities, between Israeli cities and occupied territories. The driest place is where words aren’t trusted, where rockets scream and gunships howl, and dreams leave no room for others and their stories, their memories, their claims. Really, the driest place is anywhere where our dreams of the good life leave no room for others and their dreams.

Yehuda Amichai was an Israeli poet. He was born in Germany in 1924, and immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1936. As a young man, he fought in the Israeli War of Independence, but became an advocate of peace and reconciliation in the region. He wrote a poem called, The Place Where We Are Right, and with it, he speaks simple words of courage and hope in the driest place.

From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.

The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.

But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.[3]

The driest place is where the others are wrong, because we are right. The driest place is where I am right, without a doubt, and therefore you must be wrong. Nothing grows there in the spring, no matter how much it rains.

The poet invites us to trust our doubts and loves a little more, to let them dig up the trampled ground of our certainties. He says a whisper will be heard, a word perhaps we hadn’t heard before, or heard a thousand times but never trusted. It may be the word calling the spirit of life, the very breath of God, to breathe on us.

Today is a good-medicine kind of day. We praise God for the steady downpour of God’s Spirit on all flesh, inspiring and empowering people of all generations and in all places to dream God’s dream and see God’s vision and live into God’s future with faith and courage. In the Acts of the Apostles, the images of fire and wind describe the Spirit’s coming, together with experiences of speaking and listening that transcend our cultures and languages. In the Gospel according to John, that same Spirit is associated with the breath of Jesus and the promise of another advocate like Jesus.

In English translations of John the Holy Spirit is called the Advocate, the Counselor, the Helper, or the Comforter; the Greek word refers to someone called to the side of another to help. Someone to be with us forever. Someone to teach us everything and remind us of everything Jesus has said to us. Someone to testify on Jesus’ behalf.

Today we celebrate that the Holy Spirit did come and continues to come – to inspire and empower us, so that we too may see the driest places where hope has evaporated, and not turn away, not run away, but abide with loving attention. The Holy Spirit continues to come so we can each be for each other someone called to the side of another to help – with faith and courage.

[1] Proverbs 17:22

[2] https://www.universetoday.com/15031/driest-place-on-earth/

[3] “The Place Where We Are Right,” trans. Stephen Mitchell, in: The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, ed. Robert Alter (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 66.

Unsentimental love

The right to vote is sacred. It is sacred, because through elections, “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is established.[1] It is sacred, because it is a core definition of who is a citizen and who isn’t, who belongs and who doesn’t. And because the right to vote is sacred, because it is ultimately about belonging, it has been demanded, contested, affirmed, and denied. When elections don’t produce the desired results, political leaders are tempted to redistrict the electorate for more favorable outcomes or to make it easier for some voters to cast their ballots than for others. And, of course, there have also long been less formal, but highly effective ways to predetermine election results through violent intimidation.

Before dawn on January 10, 1966, Sam Bowers, who was the Imperial Wizard of the the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and two carloads of his fellow Klansmen drove to a house about five miles north of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The house belonged to Vernon Dahmer, and while he and his family slept, the Klansmen doused their home with gasoline and set it on fire, destroying both the house and an adjoining grocery store. One of Dahmer’s three children, a ten-year-old daughter, was injured in the fire. Dahmer himself lived for a few hours but died that afternoon. Witnesses testified that Bowers ordered the killing because Dahmer was allowing Black voters to pay their poll taxes in his store. More than three decades later, in August 1998, Sam Bowers was finally convicted, after four mistrials, for the murder of Vernon Dahmer. The right to vote is sacred, not least because Vernon Dahmer and countless others gave their lives for it; and they call on us to pay careful attention when state legislatures fiddle with voting laws and election procedures.

One who did pay close attention was the Reverend Will Campbell. He was a Baptist preacher and former campus chaplain at the University of Mississippi, and he wrote a terrific memoir, Brother to a Dragonfly, which was a National Book Awards finalist in 1978. Campbell had long been involved in the civil rights movement; when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was established, Campbell was the only white person there. In 1957, together with four other representatives of the National Council of Churches, he walked with the Black students who first integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, as they made their way through an angry mob in the street.

In his days at Ole Miss, Campbell had known Vernon Dahmer and had worked closely with him on voting rights issues, and he was present in the courthouse for Bower’s 1998 trial. Nobody was surprised when Ellie Dahmer, Vernon’s widow, embraced him as an old friend. But when the defendant, Klansman Sam Bowers, gave him a hug, courtroom reporters were shocked. During recesses in the trial, Campbell was observed talking with equal warmth to both Ellie Dahmer and Sam Bowers. One of the reporters covering the trial asked Campbell how he could possibly be so friendly with both the victim and the despicable man who had committed murder. “Because I’m a Christian,” Campbell growled, and he cussed a little, just for emphasis.

While reflecting on the integration struggles at the University of Mississippi as part of a book project, Campbell had realized that he needed to spend time not only with his friends and people who shared his views but also with enemies of the movement. And so he had reached out to Sam Bowers through an intermediary, met him and spent time with him. During one of their meetings, Campbell had been riding with Bowers in a car and Bowers had stopped by a local cemetery to pray at the graveside of a friend. And when he came back to the car, Campbell remembered, Bowers had tears in his eyes. And that was all it took for Campbell to see the human being behind the mask of the Imperial Wizard.[2]

I’m telling you this story because it shines with the gospel. Brother Will paid attention in ways familiar to anyone who cares about social justice, but then he took one step further, one huge step outside his comfort zone, and discovered ways to connect with difficult others, relationships he could barely have imagined before. He was very much in the world but he didn’t belong to it. He belonged to Christ. Campbell’s testimony in the courtroom wasn’t part of the legal proceedings. He acted as a witness, but not for the prosecution or the defense; he was a witness for a way of love and life associated with the name of Jesus.

When I think about continuing to grow in faith, Brother Will comes to mind, and his willingness to surrender to love’s uncomfortable call to connect with the difficult other. I’ve read some of his writings and sermons, and I’ve watched some clips of interviews, but only once was I in the same room with him. In 2005, during the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Portland, Oregon, he spoke at a local church, an old man with a cane, bent over and moving slowly and with great caution. He only spoke briefly. The deepest human hunger, he said, can only be stilled by love, unsentimental and dependable love.

The Gospel according to John tells a story, and to the casual listener its testimony can seem wordy, its narrative style, a little weird. It tells the story of Jesus, from the beginning of time to creation’s completion in glory: it tells the story of Jesus as the story of God and the world. And it tells it with the hope that through its testimony we will receive Jesus and with him the life God wants for us: life in fullness, eternal life.

The deepest human hunger, Will Campbell said, can only be stilled by love, unsentimental and dependable love. Jesus, says John, is the bread that stills that deepest hunger. Jesus entire mission – his being born in our flesh, his life and ministry, his death and resurrection and return to the Father – all of it, all of him, is but one gift of unsentimental and dependable love.

In John 17 we are invited to listen as Jesus prays. That evening, his eyes had been on the disciples. He had washed their feet. He had shared a meal with them. And he had taught them, given them the new commandment to love one another as he loved them. Now he looked up to heaven and prayed, and we are given the privilege of overhearing his prayer.

Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.[3]

This is eternal life, this is fullness of life, that we may know God. The end of the story of God and the world is life glorified in the truth and goodness and beauty of God.

“I have made your name known,” Jesus prays, “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.” In the life of Jesus the name of God is being made known to us, not as a combination of letters, but as the revelation of who God is. “This is eternal life, that they may know you,” he prays, and this knowing doesn’t take us out of the world and onto distant islands of bliss. On the contrary. “As you have sent me into the world,” Jesus prays, “so I have sent them into the world.”

In the gospel of John, “world” is not just another name for the planet or the universe or for the stage on which the drama of human history unfolds. In John’s usage, the “world” is that part of creation that doesn’t know God; it is that part of life that is so out of tune that it is actively opposed to God’s will and purposes.[4]

As disciples of Jesus we are not taken out of the world in a great escape, spiritual or otherwise; we are sent into it to continue Jesus’ work in the world — as those who no longer belong to the world.  We belong to Jesus, we belong to the story of grace and truth, and with the life of Jesus as the pattern of our lives, we participate in the divine mission in the world.

The deepest human hunger, Will Campell said, can only be stilled by love, unsentimental and dependable love. The only way to overcome a world hostile to the purposes of God is to love it – and there is nothing sentimental about that love, as even the most casual glance at the life of Jesus will show. God does not respond with hostility to a hostile world, and neither does Jesus. You remember the famous passage,

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.[5]

And Jesus sent his disciples, sends us into the world to live as witnesses to the dependable love of God. Unsentimental love is difficult work, and so Jesus prays, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.” He prays that we may not give in to the temptation to condemn and exclude the difficult other. He prays that we remain true to the name of God which Jesus has made known to us.

I began by stating that the right to vote is sacred. It is sacred because ultimately it is about belonging, about who is included and who is not. The God and Father of Jesus Christ won’t let the world get away with being loveless, whether it’s at the intimate, personal level or the systemic, societal level. Because justice is what love looks like in public: unsentimental, dependable, and difficult love.

[1] See Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address

[2] Bartholomew Sullivan, “Bowers Convicted of Killing Dahmer. Ex-Klan Leader Gets Life Term in ’66 Murder,” Commercial Appeal, August 22, 1998; http://www.asne.org/kiosk/writingawards/1999/sullivan.html#Aug22 . See also Thomas G. Long, Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian (San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass, 2004), 102-103.

[3] John 17:1-3

[4] See John 1:10

[5] John 3:16-17