To what end?

North Haven is a small town in Minnesota, just east, I heard, of Lake Wobegon. Michael Lindvall has written a couple of books about life in North Haven, tales about a minister and his flock.[1] Reading these stories you quickly get a sense that you know these people; they are your neighbors and co-workers, people you run into at the grocery store.

James Crory is one of them. He’s an overactive seven-year-old who talks a mile a minute and sleeps only sporadically. Calling him energetic would be an understatement. James loves to hang out with Angus and Minnie, both in their 80’s, and they, for the most part anyway, enjoy his company as well. They smile at his enthusiasm, and his stories and the seemingly endless stream of his questions and declarations about the world are way more entertaining than anything on tv.

It was in the afternoon of Halloween, the sun was already low, when James burst into Angus and Minnie’s living room complaining that his mom had gotten him the wrong costume.

“Spiderman? No one cares about Spiderman anymore. How can she not know that? I can’t possibly wear that costume! It will be the end! Everyone will make fun of me. Why did she do that to me? What am I going to do?”

Minnie waited a couple of seconds to make sure that he was finished.

“Perhaps you could be a ghost?”

Her boys had been ghosts every year growing up, even used the same costumes year after year—it never seemed to be a problem. Come to think of it, those ghost costumes were probably still up in the attic. And so Angus and James climbed up the creaky attic stairs to look for the costumes—and there they were! The classic design: a sheet with a couple of holes for the eyes, and a belt to keep the whole thing from blowing away.

Angus and Minnie insisted that James use a high-visibility reflector belt because it had already snowed, and you can’t see a ghost in the snow. The little boy could hardly stand still long enough to get the belt on. “Trick or treat! Trick or treat!” he shouted, jumping up and down.

Angus said he’d trail along behind to make sure the boy was OK, but before he could get his coat on, James dashed out the door and ran smack-dab into their maple tree.

Angus was rushing out to be sure he was okay, when little James picked himself up and rushed full speed ahead again. This time he ran into the neighbor’s pear tree. And this time, he stayed down a little longer.

“James! James, are you all right?” Angus quickly went over to the little boy. He looked down, and he realized that the holes in the sheet were not lined up with his eyes—not even close. James couldn’t see a thing. So Angus adjusted the sheet, and the boy’s eyes opened wide with surprise: “I didn’t know I was supposed to be able to see!”

I’m grateful for people like Minnie and Angus, old couples who become friends with young neighbors, and generously share with them their time, their food, and their love.

I thought about baptism, of all things, when I read this story from North Haven. In baptism we put on the white robe of new life. It’s not a costume that changes every year, nor is it a manufactured plastic dream that allows us to be the Hulk, Wonder Woman, or Chewbacca for a day. The white robe of new life is much more like a treasure from the attic, something generations before us have worn with joy and great reward. So you put on that robe, and you rush out the door to live your new life, only to run smack-dab into a tree.

“Something just hit me,” you say to yourself, but you rub your head, get up and start over, and—bang!—you run into the next tree. “Determination is everything,” you say to yourself, and you’re about to jump up and start over, when thankfully somebody helps you see a bit more clearly where you are and where you’re headed.

We are not alone in the adventure of faith, and this Sunday gives us an opportunity to gratefully acknowledge that reality. We are surrounded by saints, by a great cloud of witnesses who in generations past have walked the road we are on: they have faced challenges, they have kept the faith in the most difficult circumstances, and they are watching us, they are cheering us on, and they adjust our vision so we can see where we are going.

Frederick Buechner reminded us that “saints 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.”[2] Every Christian has them: precious people who have helped shape us, role models in the art of living well, people who continue to inspire and encourage us. Some of them may still be around, others have joined the church in heaven. Some of them you may have known in person, others you may have heard or read about. They are your saints, the people through whom God has made you who you are and continues to form you. Most of them are not  faith celebrities or super heroes of piety, but people like Angus and Minnie, ordinary people whose lives reflect God’s grace like walking mirrors.

Saint John the Divine was a Christian leader, banned by order of Rome to the island of Patmos. Jerusalem was gone; the Romans, tired of the protests and revolts in the volatile province of Judaea, had destroyed the city and demolished the Temple—a pile of rubble was all that was left. With an iron fist they had brought peace to the troubled region, the Roman variety of peace, that is, PAX ROMANA.

Christians were suspect because of their refusal to honor the gods of the empire. Violent persecution of the church wasn’t the norm, but many Christian leaders were executed or imprisoned, or, as in John’s case, banned. He found himself far from home, a prisoner on the small island of Patmos, off the coast of Turkey. The world around him was falling to pieces, and he knew that across the sea, in the cities of Asia Minor, where arrests and executions continued, his friends were suffering. They were losing hope. They weren’t running into trees out of joyful exuberance, but because Roman imperial culture surrounded them with demands that turned their acts of faithfulness to the risen Lord into acts of rebellion. How could they possibly acclaim the emperor as Lord and Son of God when they had come to know Jesus as Lord? How could they praise the emperor as Savior of the World when that title belonged to Jesus Christ alone? How could they continue to live faithfully when all they could see was Rome’s overwhelming might?

John saw all that, but it wasn’t all that he saw. He looked beyond the horizon defined by Rome’s imperial reach. And he saw a holy city coming down out of heaven from God. He saw a city for all peoples, a beautiful city of true peace.

To what end do we put on the white robe of baptism? To what end do we follow Jesus on the way, and not other lords that vie for our allegiance? To what end do we love and serve God and our neighbor, and not our own ambitions? We are walking toward that city. In faith we have embraced the gospel as the story of our life, and those who are walking with us, along with those who went before us, adjust our vision and help us align our lives with the promises of God.

The end, Saint John reminds us, is not a handful of souls escaping to heaven; the end is the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to earth. The end is not one tribe’s triumph over the others, or one nation’s imperial aspirations fulfilled—the end is a city for all peoples, and God is at home among them, dwelling with them, wiping every tear from their eyes. The end is a city where death is no more, where mourning, crying, and pain are no more—because the old order has passed away for good.

The end is a feast for all peoples, a feast of rich food and well-aged wines where the nations join Israel in singing, “This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation,” and the one seated on the throne says, “See, I am making all things new.”

We hunger and thirst for righteousness, and we can already see what is coming. We long for redemption and a world where people come together to celebrate and share the gift of life, and in the company of God’s saints we can already see what is coming. We follow Jesus on the way, and in the company of Isaiah and John, surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses, our eyes are lined up with the promises and purposes of God, and we can see what is coming: the blessed communion of humanity with God, the joy of heaven to earth come down, unhindered and unending and complete.

To what end do we put on the white robe of baptism? To what end to we follow Jesus on the way, and not other lords that vie for our allegiance? To what end do we love and serve God and our neighbor, and not our own ambitions?

To be part of the great transformation that heals life’s wounds and fulfills the promise of creation. To receive and give the fullness of God’s love and grace.

[1] Michael L. Lindvall, Leaving North Haven: The Further Adventures of a Small Town Pastor (New York: Crossroad, 2002)

[2] Wishful Thinking, 102.

An oasis of friendship

There’s an old story about a gentile who wanted to convert to Judaism. He went to Rabbi Shammai and said to him, “Take me as a proselyte, but on condition that you teach me the entire Torah, all of it, while I stand on one foot.” Shammai, insulted by this request, threw him out of the house. Then the man went to Rabbi Hillel, and Hillel accepted the challenge, saying, “What you don’t like, don’t do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary—now go and study!”[1]

The debate didn’t begin with Shammai and Hillel, and it didn’t end with them. According to Jewish tradition, 613 commandments were given to Moses. 365 negative commandments, answering to the number of days of the year, and 248 positive commandments, answering to the number of members of the human body.[2] Thus the commandments of God address the whole human person, every day of the year, and they cover all of life: what to eat and what to wear, when to work and when to rest, how to teach your children and how to treat strangers, how to lend and borrow, how to love your spouse and how to cook a meal, how to pray and how to farm—everything. Is there a way, students of the Torah wondered, to capture that totality in a single teaching? Is there one commandment that is something like the principle that is being unfolded in all the others, a central commandment, as it were, that anchors all the others?

The prophet Micah named three: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” The prophet Isaiah named two: “Maintain justice and do what is right.” The prophet Amos named one: “Seek me and live.” And the prophet Habakkuk named another: “The righteous shall live by their faith.”[3] Rabbi Hillel answered, “What you don’t like, don’t do to your neighbor.”

Last week when I stood in the candy aisle, wondering what to get for the neighborhood kids for Halloween, I said to myself, “What you don’t like, don’t do to your young neighbors.” So I didn’t get any candy corn, and saying that candy corn fits the category of what I don’t like, is putting it mildly. I also didn’t get what I do like, simply because I’m more than a few years past my prime as a connoisseur of kids’ candy. So I got some KitKats, some Hershey bars with almonds, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. But now my curiosity had been piqued: What is the most popular candy bar in the United States?

Lists, of course, abound on the internet, and I learned that M&Ms are the top selling candy in the United States. Yeah, I could have bought some M&Ms, I said to myself, but noticed with great relief that Peanut Butter Cups and Hershey bars came in second and third, and Kit Kat a very respectable fifth. I also learned that Candy Corn ranked sixth in Halloween candy sales last year, ahead of Snickers and Sour Patch Kids, which is just devastating.

But sales numbers don’t tell the whole story when it comes to popularity. Because what we buy and hand out may not be what the kids going door to door actually like. Somebody, of course, did a survey, with a cutoff at age 17, of U.S. kids’ favorite Halloween candies. The results? Let’s just say I won the candy aisle trifecta: Hershey Bar #1, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups #2, and Kit Kat #3. They also surveyed kids up to age 17 to find the most hated Halloween candy in the nation. Do I have to say it? It ranked #6 in sales and #1 in most hated: Candy Corn.[4]

When the scribe asked Jesus, “Which commandment is the first of all?” he didn’t have rankings in mind. He didn’t want to know which commandment Jesus thought was most important, followed by 612 less important ones. As a scholar of Torah he was interested in determining whether there was one commandment that was foundational for all the others, one stone, as it were, upon wich the entire edifice of devotion and obedience rested.

Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 

The greatness of the double love commandment, writes Amy Allen, “lies not in its surpassing value over and against all of the other commandments of Jewish law, but, rather, in its ability to hold up all the rest. It’s less about beating out all of the other candidates and more about helping them to do their jobs.” The rock upon which the whole structure rests is love.

And Jesus didn’t name just one commandment, but two, implying that the will and desire of God for God’s people cannot be reduced to a single principle; all the commandments are rooted in a set of relationships. Love of God and love of neighbor go together, inseparably, so that we cannot be in right relationship with God without being in right relationship with each other, and we cannot love each other well without giving over our whole and broken selves to God—heart, soul, mind, strength. These two love commandments come first in the law because it is on them that all of the rest of the commandments of the Torah rest—all that God asks of God’s people, God asks as a response to and expression of love.[5] Together they reveal the meaning and orientation of the Torah as a whole.[6]

Most of us think we know what love is and that we are all talking about the same thing when we say the word—but we’re not. Love is about affection, desire, commitment and belonging, and the constellation of these elements shifts from relationship to relationship and from season to season. In our twenty-first century world love has widely been reduced to having good feelings about someone or something, and it has lost much of its core as a call to faithful action. Douglas Hare reminds us that,

In an age when the word ‘love’ is greatly abused, it is important to remember that the primary component of … love [in the Bible] is not affection but commitment. Warm feelings of gratitude may fill our consciousness as we consider all that God has done for us, but it is not warm feelings that [the commandment] demands of us but rather stubborn, unwavering commitment. Similarly, to love our neighbor, including our enemies, does not mean that we must feel affection for them. To love the neighbor is to imitate God by taking their needs seriously.[7]

Love is a deep loyalty to another, the kind of loyalty Ruth shows her mother-in-law. And when Jesus highlights the intimate link between loving God and loving our neighbor, he’s not telling us to have warm feelings for friends and strangers alike, but to commit ourselves to their wellbeing. Your neighbor, according to Jesus, can literally be your next-door neighbor who might be tired of eating alone or who might need somebody to rake the leaves for her. Your neighbor may be your father and mother who, after so many years, need you in unfamiliar ways that almost reverse the relationship of parent and child. Your neighbor is every person you encounter, and to love them is to take their desire to flourish no less seriously than you take your own. Think about that. To love them is to take their desire to flourish no less seriously than you take your own.

We know that there are all kinds of love. There is a covetous love that simply takes what it wants, but that is far from neighbor love. There is the love between equals, a love that thrives in mutuality and reciprocity. And there is a kind of love that is self-giving without a thought of reciprocity, a love whose sole concern is the other person’s well-being. Neither love reflects a merely emotional state, but rather, points to the relation in which one person lives toward another. One can perhaps be described as true friendship, the other as a holy selflessness that borders on recklessness. There are different words for these loves in New Testament Greek, but the two cannot be neatly separated. We often experience them together, be it as friends, lovers, parents, or neighbors, and at times we live out one more fully than the other.

Jesus calls us to follow him and to move continually from a self-centered way of being in the world to one centered in complete devotion to God and in those whom God gives us as neighbors. Jesus leads us from apathy to love.

The scribe said to Jesus, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

Significant as the temple liturgy, offerings, and sacrifices are, giving ourselves completely to God and giving of ourselves to each other is much more important. The scribe agrees with Jesus. This remarkable scene is the only one in all of Mark’s gospel where a religious authority agrees with Jesus. Throughout his ministry, Jesus has encountered strong opposition from temple leadership—the chief priests, scribes and elders—and now that Jesus is in Jerusalem, the conflict between him and them continues to escalate. They are already conspiring to have him arrested and put on trial, and any questions they are asking him are designed to trip him up or trap him.

Except for this scribe who breaks the hostile pattern by asking a sincere question. He transcends the party strife and the us vs. them mentality. And Jesus answers him in an equally non-combative way. The scene itself illustrates what love of neighbor, in particular love of the challenging neighbor, might look like. In the middle of the brewing storm the two make room for each other and for each other’s honest questions and honest answers, for the pursuit of a deeper understanding of God’s will for God’s people—and the moment sparkles like an oasis of friendship in a wasteland of hostility and fear.

“You are not far from the kingdom of God,” Jesus says to the scribe, and that, in Mark’s telling of the gospel, is as close as it gets for any of us who await the kingdom’s consummation. Not far from the kingdom, closer to the truth and peace of God, closer to life in fullness.

[1] See Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 31a

[2] See Babylonian Talmud Makkot 23b-24a

[3] Micah 6:8; Isaiah 56:1; Amos 5:4; Habakkuk 2:4

[4] https://blog.galvanize.com/candy-crush-figuring-out-favorite-sweets-with-data/

[5] Amy Lindeman Allen https://politicaltheology.com/the-politics-of-the-greatest-commandment-mark-12-28-34/

[6] Eugene Boring, Mark, 345.

[7] Douglas Hare, “Matthew,” Interpretation Commentaries, 260.

Subversive love

They were on the way to Jerusalem. Jesus was walking ahead of them, with resolve in his stride, often a solitary figure against the horizon. The physical distance between him and the disciples illustrates how hard it is for us to follow him, to keep up with him, to walk the path he has blazed with his life.

The disciples in Mark’s story didn’t fully grasp yet who they were following and where he was going. On the way, Jesus had begun to teach them that he must undergo great suffering and be killed and after three days rise again, and they couldn’t bear to hear it. The first time Peter rebuked him for saying such things.[1] The second time, Jesus told them again that the Son of Man would be betrayed into human hands and be killed, and after three days rise again. And they didn’t understand what he was saying, and they were afraid to ask. Instead, they argued with each other about who was the greatest.[2] “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” he taught us then, but we’re slow learners. All we can do is try and keep up with him. A third time Jesus stopped to tell the twelve what awaited him in Jerusalem, and this time he added even more detail. He would be handed over. He would be rejected and condemned by the temple authorities. He would be mocked, abused, tortured, and killed. And after three days he would rise again. That’s when James and John came forward, the sons of Zebedee. They had been with him since the early days of his mission in Galilee.

“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Perhaps you wonder if they had heard at all what he had just said. What led them to make this about themselves, this moment when Jesus had just spoken about what would happen to him in Jerusalem? How could they be so obtuse and insensitive? There remains, though, the possibility that they had actually listened to every word and heard every detail about how he would run into the walls of rejection and political convenience, and how these walls would become his grave. And perhaps their confidence in Jesus’ final triumph was so complete that they cast their vision past the darkness that lay ahead, and into the glory beyond. In their minds, perhaps they were already standing in the royal palace, with their toes touching the threshold to the banquet hall, and seated on the throne of glory they saw the Risen One.

“What is it you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked them. “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory,” they replied. Were they dreaming about cabinet seats? Certainly the Messiah would need a Chief of Staff or a Chief Justice – and why not them, trusted friends who had been with him almost from day one? They knew how power works: the grand pyramid with its wide base among those in the dust, rising all the way up to the few whose feet never touch the ground because they rest on soft couches and ride in limousines or fly in personal jets. It’s a tall structure, with multiple layers, and the higher you climb, the greater the power and the more exclusive the company. James and John envisioned greatness quite conventionally, as most of us do, with the greatest occupying the pinnacle of the pyramid and God hovering over the top. They wanted to sit at the right hand and the left of the one in charge, imagining God’s reign like any kind of earthly rule, only shinier and purer, without corruption and cover-ups.

James and John knew how power and status work, we all do. Social Psychologists tell us that status anxiety accounts for much of what we do on a daily basis. We need to know where we are on the pyramid and where the people around us fit in: Are they above? Below? Somewhere on the same level? And when we’re not busy climbing, we’re busy keeping ourselves from falling. It’s hard, stressful work.

James and John were disarmingly honest about wanting to be near the top of the pyramid. “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory,” they said. And Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking.” They had been two of the three disciples who witnessed Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain, who saw him robed in clothes of dazzling white and conversing with Moses and Elijah. Perhaps the brothers were imagining a similar scene with them in it. John Calvin called the whole episode “a bright mirror of human vanity,” and the writer of Matthew was so embarrassed by the disciples’ lack of understanding that he had the mother of James and John make the request on their behalf.[3] Mark wants us to look into the mirror and see ourselves; and Mark is very careful to remind us that the only ones at Jesus’ left and right when he was hailed “King of the Jews” were the two bandits who were crucified with him.[4]

The way of the Christ is the way of the cross, not a new and improved way to lord it over others. Jesus puts his own life and death, along with the lives and sufferings of his followers, in complete opposition to conventional expressions of power. “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.  But it is not so among you.” His death would exemplify the violent resistance his teaching and practice elicit from those who hold power over society, and it would exemplify a radical renunciation of that kind of power.[5] And more than a radical renunciation. In his death and resurrection, Jesus has delivered us from the constellations of power we concoct to control each other and set us free to serve one another.

“Not what I want, but what you want,” was Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane as he prepared to drink the cup of suffering, and those who follow him learn to pray with him.[6] Not what I want—not my aspirations, my ambitions, my pursuits—but what you want—your will, your purposes, your kingdom. The reign of God conquers the world not by overpowering it, but by subverting our notions of power.

Everybody wants to be somebody, and there’s nothing wrong with that, nothing at all. But since the dawn of human history, we have been tempted to choose power over love. Jesus didn’t manipulate people to get what he wanted. He didn’t use others in the pursuit of his own personal ambitions. Jesus was in the world as one who served God and every human being he encountered. And in his company, we learn to look at others not as means to our ends or as threats to our status, but as beloved of God. On the way with him, we let ourselves be opened to the coming reign of God where love alone is sovereign.

Martin Copenhaver tells a story about a church where he had been the pastor years ago. Some of the older members could remember a time when the wealthy families would send their servants to help cook church suppers alongside those who did not have servants to send. The world changed, and by the time Pastor Martin came to the church these stories were repeated with some amusement, but similar confusions continued.

According to the bylaws of the church the deacons were charged with the spiritual leadership of the congregation, and at a deacons meeting, someone complained that instead of being true to this high and momentous charge, deacons spent too much of their time delivering food to the homeless shelter and washing dishes after communion. How could they tend to important spiritual matters when they were occupied with such mundane tasks? “I schlepp bread and wine from the kitchen to the table, and when all have eaten I take the dishes back to the kitchen and wash them,” one of the deacons complained. “I feel like a glorified butler.”

They did a little Bible study and discovered that the apostles in the Jerusalem church commissioned deacons to take food to the widows. They learned that the word deacon was the anglicized version of the Greek diakonos, and that a diakonos was a servant or a waiter. They were indeed butlers, charged with the mundane task of delivering food, and they were indeed glorified because that simple act of service was an expression of the love of Christ the servant.[7]

Here at Vine Street, just a few days after our big anniversary weekend, the new season of Room in the Inn will begin. Every first, third, and fifth Thursday, from November to March, we will come together to prepare and serve meals, to make beds and set tables, and to open the doors of this house and welcome our unhoused guests.

Call us glorified butlers, if you want. Call us waiters or servants, we’d be honored, for we’re serving in the company of Jesus; we’re learning from the master.

We’re aware that our desire to be affirmed as persons of importance is deeply rooted in us; we all want to be somebody. But in the company of Jesus we practice affirming one another in our shared dignity as members of God’s household. We’re participating in the revolution that undermines the love of power with the power of love. Because we all are somebody.

[1] Mark 8:31-33

[2] Mark 9:30-37

[3] Mt 20:20-22

[4] Mk 9:2-8; 15:27

[5] With thanks to Matt Skinner http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=435

[6] Mk 14:36

[7] Martin Copenhaver, Christian Century, October 5, 1994, 893.

Fully known

He is a good man, perhaps even a very good man. He comes to Jesus – he ran up to him, we’re told – and he kneels before him with a question. His approach and his posture tell us that he’s not merely asking out of curiosity; he’s not asking to test Jesus or to make him say something that would get him in trouble with the authorities; he’s asking with urgency, and he is sincere, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

We have heard the story before, many times. With him kneeling there, we can already hear those dreaded words from Jesus’ lips, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” We know the man will go away grieving, with his many possessions holding him back. Our hearts grieve with him as we watch him go away.

In the entire Gospel of Mark he’s the only person singled out as being loved by Jesus. He’s also the only one whom Jesus called who didn’t follow. Turned around and walked away. And we are once again left standing at the scene, wondering what we would have done, what we would do, what we should do in response to Jesus’ unsettling words.

The writer of Hebrews declares, “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, … it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare.” The word of God is not safely contained between the covers of an old book, but living and active, and it cuts with laser-like precision. It gets to us. It unsettles and disrupts. It finds its way to our innermost thoughts and intentions, things we may not even share with our best friends, rendering us naked and bare before God. We have learned to wrap ourselves in protective layers, but the word of God cuts through them like butter; it is aimed at the heart and it never misses. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Am I too rich to enter?

Do I really want what Jesus offers?

Am I letting my stuff get between me and the life God wants for me?

Is my stuff getting between me and the life I really want?

Do I have to sell what I own and give it to the poor? All of it?

Maybe that was only meant for that particular man, and not for me?

I’m not rich anyway, not really. Rich is relative, and I’m not Oprah or Jeff Bezos.

Our minds add protective layer upon protective layer at the speed of thought so we don’t stand quite so naked and bare before God. Surely this episode isn’t to be taken literally, we tell ourselves. Surely its true depth lies in its symbolism—so why don’t you unfold the metaphor for us, preacher? Give us something spiritually uplifting to cover our nakedness.

It’s been done, quite creatively. In one medieval commentary, a scholar surmised that “the eye of the needle” was the name of one of the city gates of Jerusalem. In order for a camel to get through, the burden had to be taken off its back, and the beast had to get on its knees. This was obviously an excellent interpretation for a time when every bishop dreamed of building a cathedral: tell folks who wish to enter eternal life to get on their knees and write checks to the church until the burden on their back is small enough to let them slip through the gate. Never mind that Jesus told the man to give the money to the poor, not the church. Never mind that there never was such a gate. It certainly was a lucrative interpretation, but the word of God is living and active and sharp, and no effort of ours can render it convenient and dull or dead. There’s no easy button.

Just before this scene with the rich man, Jesus said, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”[1] A little child is the personification of need and trusting dependence. The rich man in today’s lesson is everything a little child is not; he is the personification of achievement and confident self-reliance. He knows how to get things done. When presented with a challenge, he has various options at his disposal, and a solution is never more than a phone call away.

But he ran, Mark tells us, to get to Jesus and ask him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus names the commandments dealing with our responsibilities toward family and neighbors, and the man replies, “I have kept all these since my youth.” Nothing in the story suggests that he is lying or bragging. Jesus tells the man, “You lack one thing. Go, sell what you own, give the money to the poor; then come and follow me.”

The two scenes highlight a great irony: the little children who possess nothing, don’t lack anything – the kingdom of God is theirs. Yet this man who has achieved so much and knows so much, and possesses so much, lacks the one thing that would open to him the door to eternal life. “Go, sell what you own, give the money to the poor; then come, follow me.” He can’t do it. “Children,” Jesus says to the disciples, “how hard it s to enter God’s kingdom!”

Children he calls them, all of the grown-ups who are trying to keep up with him on the way—and like us, they are perplexed and stunned. The eye of a needle is so very small, too small to squeeze through—then who can enter?

The kingdom of God is not a matter of squeezing through. No amount of knowledge, goodness, or wealth will open the door to life’s fulfillment. The question is not, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” We want to believe that with enough effort and control we will be able to secure our own future.

The real question is, “What is God doing to make life whole?” And Jesus looks at us and says, “Come with me.” The fullness of life we seek is found in the company of Jesus. According to Jesus’ response to this man, even those among us who have done everything right and have been very successful in every way imaginable, even those very few, in the end, do not accomplish our way to God’s reign, but enter it in the company of Jesus.

The good news sounds like bad news at first: we cannot save ourselves. But it is indeed good news: we cannot save ourselves; only God can. And so Jesus invites us to trust God with our lives and our future, to trust God completely with the work of saving us. And he helps us turn our attention away from ourselves and our anxious worry about our salvation to the needs of those around us: to the poor, the hungry, the unhoused, the little ones.

For life to be truly fulfilled, the perils of wealth must be addressed as well as the perils of poverty. Jesus gets us to think and pray deeply about those perils with his challenging answer, and his word resists all our efforts to domesticate it or dull its sharp edge for easier handling.

It may well be that Jesus’ call to “go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, … then come, follow me”— it may well be that this isn’t meant for everyone; but the call could still be meant for me or for you. We have to let it do its work. “Today, if you hear God’s voice, do not harden your hearts.”[2]

The writer of Hebrews reminds us that

the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.

The language of a sword that pierces and cuts may be offputting, but the reality it describes is a hopeful one: no part of the human life is beyond the knowing gaze of God. We are fully known. In Psalm 139 we are invited to say with the psalmist,

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away.

You search out my path and my lying down,

and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,

O Lord, you know it completely.

Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

It was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my thoughts.

See if there is any wicked way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.[3]

No part of the human life is beyond the knowing gaze of God, but this gaze is not the round-the-clock surveillance of our every thought, word and deed by the big eye in the sky. It is the knowing gaze of a loving God who wants us to finally be who we were created to be—without fear, without pretense, without hiding.

[1] Mk 10:15

[2] A line from Ps 95:8 which is quoted repeatedly in Heb 3:8, 15; 4:7

[3] Ps 139:1-4, 7, 13, 23f.

Pioneer of our salvation

In 1849, in fear that she, along with the other slaves on the plantation, was to be sold, Harriet Tubman resolved to run away. One night she set out on foot. Following the North Star, she made her way from Maryland to Pennsylvania and on to Philadelphia. She found work there, saved her money, and the following year she returned to Maryland to escort her sister and her sister’s two children to freedom. And then she went back again to rescue her brother and two other men.

And she didn’t stop. The reward for her capture kept going up. By 1856, it was at $40,000. That’s a lot of money. We know that the Christian Church in Nashville, the congregation we know today as Vine Street, built a mighty fine church in 1852 for half of that. Nineteen times during a ten-year span, Harriet Tubman made the dangerous trip into the South, leading more than 300 slaves to freedom. And, as she once proudly pointed out to Frederick Douglass, in all of her journeys she “never lost a single passenger.”[1]

Calling her a “conductor” for the underground railroad seems very understated. John Brown addressed her as “General Tubman” in their correspondence, and many others simply called her “Moses.” She made a way in the wilderness, from the house of slavery to freedom. And she didn’t just tell others how to escape, she went with them, again and again, and she “never lost a single passenger.”

The author of Hebrews describes Jesus as one “bringing many children to glory” and calls him “the pioneer of their salvation.” A pioneer makes a way where there is no way, and the pioneer of our salvation doesn’t just blaze a trail and urge us to be careful and stay on it; he walks with us through the difficult landscape.

Somebody once asked Anne Lamott what she most wanted to convey to her son Sam about God. “I want to convey that we get to be human,” she answered.

We get to make awful mistakes and fall short of who we hope we’re going to turn out to be. That we don’t have to be what anybody else tries to get us to be, so they could feel better about who they were. We get to screw up right and left. We get to keep finding our way back home to goodness and kindness and compassion… I want him to know that no matter what happens, he’s never going to have to walk alone… That’s what I’m trying to convey to Sam.[2]

When you hear the opening verses of Hebrews, that kind of intimacy and closeness may not be the first thing that comes to mind. The first lines are like the Grand Tetons of poetic God-talk rising from the plains of everyday speech: enormous, majestic, awesome.

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, who is the God-appointed heir of all things, through whom God created the worlds, who is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, who sustains all things by his powerful word, who, having made purification for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

In the original Greek, the first four verses are just a single, carefully composed sentence, drawing listeners into the radiance of the divine presence and illustrating the bold claim that the entire history of creation, from the first day to its consummation, is contained in the life of Jesus. Commentators have long suggested that the writer may indeed be quoting, in entirety or in part, from the liturgy of the church to which the words were first addressed, reminding them of the powerful affirmations they shared.

I keep saying “the author” or “the writer” because no one knows who wrote Hebrews, and no amount of research has been able to overcome the anonymity. But we can piece together a picture of the community for whom the text was composed: They are believers who have experienced a great deal of shaming and hostility from their neighbors. Why? They have withdrawn from certain religious and social activities that bind a city and its people together, and their neighbors disapprove.[3] The believers experience serious pressures to conform to the ways things are done in the city, ways that go against their values as followers of Jesus, and not going along has consequences. The ongoing assaults on the believers’ honor, their economic standing, and even their persons are taking their toll on individual commitment. Some have stopped identifying with the Christian community entirely, others are in danger of “drifting away” or “turning away.”[4] The hymnic opening lines of Hebrews redirect their attention and ours toward the Son and the significance of the divine word spoken through his life and suffering, his death and exaltation. If this pioneer is not our constant, our central point of reference amid the swirling currents and pressures of our days, be it in first-century Rome or in twenty-first-century Nashville, who or what is?

The writer of Hebrews wants us to remember that the righteousness of God is not an idea or a concept; it is an embodied reality in Jesus. In him God embraces humanity, all of it, the best and the worst we’re capable of, our deepest joys as well as our anxieties, our desires, our hurts—us. And in him humanity opens itself up to God’s embrace, in complete trust and obedience. And so Jesus is the exact imprint of God’s very being and of ours as creatures made in the image of God.

The author of Hebrews recognizes God’s deep solidarity with us particularly in Jesus’ death:

We see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

For Jesus, any life short of suffering and death would have been less than a complete identification with humankind, less than a complete embrace of our condition. And tasting death for everyone, he made a way for everyone, to set free those who were held in slavery by their fear of death, and never to lose a single passenger.

Rowan Williams has referred to the church as the “pilot project for the new humanity.”

What is the new humanity? The humanity set free for intimacy with God. It’s the restoration of God’s image in us. That image, which is fulfilled perfectly in Jesus, is now communicated to us, and we are restored to where we ought to be. Our position in the world is now what it was meant to be because we were made for intimacy. We were made for communion. We were made for meaning. And for all those things to come alive again in the presence and the power of Jesus, that is what life in the body of Christ makes possible. That’s why the Church is the pilot project for the new humanity. The point of the Church, if you like, is that glory may dwell in our land. The glory of God in transfigured human faces, and we are there to hold that space and that hope, that place for the imagination to go, where human beings are allowed to grow into more than they’re allowed to grow into in [this] materialist environment. Our job is to try to make sure that the Church goes on being a landscape for that kind of humanity: a pilot project for the human race, a project worth joining because it leads into a bigger, not a smaller, world.[5]

Our passage from Hebrews ends with a joyful exclamation from Psalm 22, words spoken by Jesus who is not ashamed to call any of us his siblings. “I will proclaim your name to my siblings, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.” Psalm 22 continues for several more verses after this one, and they open windows to an even bigger world. The psalmist - and I don’t mind imagining Jesus as the one speaking those lines as the author of Hebrews did - Jesus proposes a banquet for all the beneficiaries of God’s deliverance: himself, the poor, the sick, foreigners, even the deceased and future generations—all of us are siblings by virtue of our deliverance, all of us come home to goodness and kindness and compassion, all of us have a seat at God’s table because Jesus is the pioneer of our salvation.

Every Sunday we gather at the table to give thanks to God for the gift of life and for Jesus who leads his siblings out of any house where their dignity as children of God is being denied. And today we give thanks that this table stretches across the ages and around the world, reminding us who and whose we are, and inspiring us to give ourselves to the pilot project for the new humanity, to entrust ourselves completely to the pioneer of our salvation.

[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1535.html

[2] Jennifer L. Holberg, ed., Shouts and Whispers: Twenty-One Writers Speak About Their Writing and Their Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 199-200.

[3] See Hebrews 10:32-34; with thanks to David A. deSilva for his notes about the pastoral situation https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-27-2/commentary-on-hebrews-11-4-25-12-5

[4] See 10:25; 2:1; 3:12

[5]Rowan Williams, Archbishop's address to the Chelmsford Clergy Synod, 4th May 2006,

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/060504%20Chelmsford%20clergy%20address.htm

Stumbling on the way

They had been arguing with one another who was the greatest, when Jesus took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” There hasn’t been a generation of disciples who didn’t have that argument about greatness, and across the ages, disciples have been confounded and confused by Jesus’ declaration that it’s the little ones, the ones without any power or status, in whom we welcome Christ himself and the Holy One who sent him.

I wonder if Jesus was still holding the child in his arms when John interjected, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” It’s profoundly ironic that John, a disciple belonging to the inner circle among the Twelve, wasn’t paying attention to what Jesus was saying, but rather to what someone else was doing in Jesus’ name. “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” Yes, you heard that right. “We tried to stop him,” he said, not “because he was not following you” or “because he was not following with us.” Someone was liberating people from demonic possession, and was doing so in Jesus’ name, and John said, “we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” The apostolic circle was worried about ministry in Jesus’ name that hadn’t been authorized by them. And their worries had taken up so much of their mental and emotional bandwidth that they casually equated following Jesus with following them.

The big question was, who holds the copyright on Jesus’ name? Who determines what is legitimate ministry and what is not? John clearly was thinking about some kind of restraining orders in order to maintain the boundaries of legitimate, apostolic ministry.

Mark has told us that, at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus went up the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted, and … he appointed twelve, whom he also named apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons.[1] Now Jesus hasn’t withdrawn his commission of the Twelve, but he also shows no interest in issuing restraining orders. “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.” John is worried, perhaps suffering from a little status anxiety, but Jesus opens the horizon of kingdom ministry as wide as can be imagined, and once again redirects our attention from what others may be doing in Jesus’ name to who we are called to be and what we are called to do. Our eyes need to be on the One who is going ahead of us and on the little ones he puts among us. Our feet need to be following in his footsteps, so we don’t stumble over our attitudes, our distractions, ourselves. Our hands need to be serving the neighbors he has given us, and just like John couldn’t see the child in Jesus’ arms because his attention was elsewhere, we will be blind to the presence of God in those of little or no status, unless we have our vision adjusted by the living Christ.

Our eyes must become eyes of compassionate attention. Our feet, the feet of peacemakers. Our lips, the lips of truthtellers. Our hands, hands of service and comfort. Our minds, minds of Christ-inspired thinking. Our whole selves conduits of God’s grace and mercy for the life of the world.

But then Jesus says, If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.

And he’s not done. If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.

And still he’s not done. If your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell.

I hear the words and they terrify me. I don’t know what to make of them. The images are so vivid, it’s difficult to remember that Jesus isn’t promoting self-mutilation. The brutality of the actions shocks me, the violence disturbs me. My immediate reaction is to look away and keep silent—and then I’m inclined to joke: Now if your other hand causes you to stumble, you’ll find it difficult to cut it off since you have only that one hand left. I’m desperate to find a reason to laugh to release at least some of the tight tension, yet at the same time I know that these words are no laughing matter. These words have a history; people have been scapegoated and cut off from their communities for allegedly causing others to stumble. Heretics were cut off and burnt at the stake lest they cause the body of Christ to stumble. Dissenters were cut off and disappeared lest they cause unrest in the body politic.

No, these words are no laughing matter. I wonder if they are meant to shock—because so much is at stake, and we don’t get it when Jesus tells us to stop obsessing about status and start paying attention to each other. Could it be that he speaks of decisive, violent action, because our lives are at stake and nothing else gets our attention?

I am reminded of a wolf who stepped into a trap and it snapped shut. For an entire day, she tried unsuccessfully to free herself, pulling and biting the chain, trying to pry open the steel jaws with her snout, her entire ordeal caught on a trail camera. The next day she bit off her own leg, leaving her foot in the trap. She was limping, but she was no longer caught in a deadly trap.

You know it’s not your foot that’s causing you to get off the path, literally or metaphorically. It’s not somebody’s hand that’s causing them to lash out and hurt their spouse or a child. It’s not my eye that’s causing me to overlook the needs of others and to see only what I want to see. It is my lack of attention to the will of God that’s causing me to stumble. It’s my fear, my apathy, my impatience. It is my being absorbed with myself, my status, and my needs that’s pulling me astray.

Jesus says that this path of self-centeredness can only end in hell, and I believe him. I don’t believe in hell, though, I believe in God. “Hell,” writes Daniel Migliore,

is best understood as wanting to be oneself apart from God’s grace and in isolation from others. Hell is that self-chosen condition in which, in opposition to God’s self-expending love and the call to a life of mutual friendship and service, individuals barricade themselves from God and others. It is the hellish weariness and boredom of life focused entirely on itself. Hell is not the vengeful divine punishment at the end of history depicted by religious imagination. It is not the final retaliation of a vindictive deity. Hell is self-destructive resistance to the eternal love of God. It symbolizes the truth that the meaning and intention of life can be missed. Repentance is urgent. Our choices and actions are important. God ever seeks to lead us out of our hell of self-glorification and lovelessness, but neither in time nor in eternity is God’s love coercive.[2]

The meaning and intention of life can be missed. We are made in the image of God to love as God loves. We are made for communion with God, with each other, and with all of creation. We bear the name of Christ in order that we might be conduits of God’s grace and mercy, and anything that blocks their flow must go.

The imagery of cutting limbs and gouging eyes is disturbing, but it reminds us that repentance and real change are needed, including the removal of any obstacles that hinder the flow of grace—the walls of fear and suspicion come to mind, the traps of pride, the dams of greed. Our formation as disciples of Jesus Christ involves our whole selves, from the soles of our feet to the crowns of our heads, and from our relationships across space and time to the depths of our soul. And the work of transformation occurs in prayer and in practice, in our gathering with the community believers, in silence and in praise, in our obedient attention to God’s work among us. In the end, it is not our willingness to go to violent extremes with ourselves or with others that allows us to enter life; it is God’s unwavering commitment to us and our redemption, and our willingness to allow God to do this work with us.

Just moments before he was betrayed, Jesus said to the disciples at the Mount of Olives, “You will all become deserters.” The word “deserters” is the same word translated “to stumble” in our passage and “to fall away” earlier in the gospel.[3] We will all stumble. We will all abandon Jesus, even Peter who was so very certain that he would never do that.

But it’s never our willingness to go to violent extremes with ourselves or with others that allows us to enter life. It is always God’s loyal, non-coercive love. It is always and forever God.

[1] Mark 3:14

[2] Daniel Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, Third Ed., (Eerdmans Publishing, 2014), 366.

[3] Mark 14:27; see also Mark 4:17

Attention shift

I spent some time in Germany this summer, in the town where I grew up. I walked down the hill from our house where my mom still lives to the tram stop at the center of town, the same way I used to walk just about every schoolday for twelve years to get to school. And I noticed that the streets looked so much narrower than they had been in my memory.

I passed the Elementary School - a lovely building with lots of carved sandstone details around the windows and the tall, arched entrance. I remembered how stepping through those doors felt like entering a sacred space, a temple of sorts; I couldn’t help but look up, and I straightened my back, and I swear I felt less like “just a little boy” and more like a scholar, an explorer, a person. Passing my Elementary School this summer I noticed that it was much smaller than in my memory, a rather humble two-story building, but it still communicated the importance of the people who gather inside and the significance of their endeavors. I found myself wondering if perhaps it had been built to scale for 6-10-year-olds, a thought I found quite moving.

Do you remember how big everything was when you were little? How you had to reach up to touch the door knob? How getting on a chair was like climbing a piece of playground equipment? And do you remember that room full of adults who were all standing tall as trees and chatting way up there while you were trying to find your way across through a forest of legs?

We all have memories like that, memories of a world just beyond our reach, a world we can’t wait to belong to. Getting to sit at the grown-up table at family gatherings is easy, it’s just a matter of time, all you have to do is grow a little every year. Getting to hang out with the people you really want to hang out with at school is a lot tougher. That may be when many of us begin to wonder if just being who we are is enough; and we begin to project being the kind of person we believe others want us to be.

The disciples had met Jesus. They had met the one who would set all things right, and they had begun to follow him. He had talked about going to Jerusalem, and they were ready to go with him. But then he kept talking about being betrayed into human hands and being killed. They did not understand what he was saying, and they were afraid to ask him.

Why were they afraid to ask? Well, we kinda know how it is. You want to fit in with those who get it, those who nod knowingly whenever he speaks. Even when you’re frightened, confused and clueless, you still want to project confidence and make everybody else believe that you have it all together. And so in Mark’s story, the disciples, instead of asking how the way of the Messiah could possibly have anything to do with getting killed, they share their aspirations for high office in the kingdom.

Two of them discuss sitting at Jesus’ right and left in his glory. One of them never misses an opportunity to mention that he has been with Jesus the longest. And while one touts his revolutionary zeal, another braggs about his connections in the business community from his days as a tax collector. They are afraid to ask what Jesus meant when he talked about betrayal, suffering, and death in the city, but they clearly have no trouble imagining their seats at the big table and their names and titles on kingdom letterhead.

Jesus, of course, is never afraid to ask. “What were you arguing about on the way?” And suddenly they were silent, the whole chatty, ambitious bunch; no one said a word. Why the sudden silence? Well, we kinda know how it is. Had he asked them in private, individually, several of them probably would have told him about Theophilus who “thinks he’s the greatest” or about Bartholomew who is “dreaming about a seat on the supreme court.” But with everybody gathered around, perhaps they were afraid or too embarrassed to be open about their dreams of greatness.

Three times in the gospel of Mark, Jesus talks about being rejected and betrayed, about being handed over and condemned to death and being killed and rising again after three days. Three times, and not merely because this is disturbing news that messes with our assumptions and won’t sink in easily, but because being a disciple of Jesus means being on the way with Jesus and letting his way of loving surrender of self for the sake of the kingdom shape us. Our ways of thinking, speaking, doing, living are inextricably tied to his way. We don’t understand and we’re afraid to ask not just because we want to keep up the appearance of our deep knowledge. We’re quiet because he messes with our assumptions and has this habit of flipping things upside down in our world. And he does it again. He says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

In our world, those at the top of the ladder lord it over those at the bottom. But in the world Jesus lives, proclaims and opens up, in the world of God’s reign, earth and heaven do not touch at the top, in the clouds of power, but at the bottom where Jesus kneels to wash the feet of all. He defines greatness in terms of service, and nothing else. His way remains at ground level and it leads to all of us, every last one of us.

We all start out little. We all start out needing to be welcomed. We all need somebody to see us and speak our name, somebody to pick us up and hold us, because we all start out small, needy and helpless. How much of our drive for greatness, do you think, has to do with that deep need to be seen, to be noticed and recognized, and finally welcomed?

Jesus took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” We argue about who is the greatest and Jesus puts a little child among us. Who even knew there was a child? Who noticed? We were engaged in important matters, making sure our voice would be heard, our opinion registered, and our contribution recognized in its true significance. And Jesus puts a little child among us.

Politicians pick up little children all the time, it looks good on any screen and it makes them more likeable. But Jesus doesn’t pick up a child to draw attention to himself. He does it to draw our attention to the child.

“In any culture, children are vulnerable,” writes Elisabeth Johnson.

They are dependent on others for their survival and well-being. In the ancient world, their vulnerability was magnified by the fact that they had no legal protection. A child had no status, no rights. A child certainly had nothing to offer anyone in terms of honor or status.[1]

Pheme Perkins observes how “our social conventions have exalted childhood as a privileged time of innocence,” but in stark contrast, “the child in antiquity was a non-person.” And Jesus identifies himself with the child, who was socially invisible.[2]

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” You want to be great and you make yourself as big as you possible can, just to be seen and recognized. But in the world of God’s reign you’re not being welcomed because you’re great. You are being welcomed because you belong. So don’t be afraid to shift your attention. Notice the ones that habitually go unnoticed, who are not great by any common measure, and welcome them.

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” The welcome, welcome, welcome of Jesus’ radical hospitality on earth resounds like the holy, holy, holy sung in heaven.

Much of our religious tradition has taught us to wonder, “What must I do, who do I have to be, who do I have to become in order to be worthy of welcome by the holy God? How can I work my way up?” But Jesus works at ground level. He looks us in the eye and says, “I see you. I know you. I love you.” He turns our attention away from ourselves and our anxious obsession with our status,  and frees us to turn our attention toward each other. He stops the lonely ascend to the top that is our quest for recognition and control, and he guides our feet into the path that leads us to see and serve each other. Jesus opens our eyes to see that the neighbors who are constantly rendered invisible by our arrangements of power, are indeed the embodiment of the invisible God.

Perhaps some of you have been wondering in recent weeks, what became of the men and women who used to live in tents under the Jefferson Bridge. And what became of the people who used to camp at Brookmeade Park? Where do they live now?

How long do we want to pretend that rendering them invisible is the best we can do? When will we finally see them?

[1] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-25-2/commentary-on-mark-930-37-5

[2] Pheme Perkins, Mark (NIB), 637.

Feathers and ambers

There’s a Jewish folktale that’s been told and retold for generations. A man went about the village telling tales and gossip about the rabbi. Later, he realized the wrong he had done, and began to feel remorse. He went to the rabbi and begged his forgiveness, saying he would do anything he could to make amends.

The rabbi told the man, “Go home, take a feather pillow, and cut it open. Then come back here, and on the way, drop handfuls of feathers as you go.”

The man thought this was a strange request, but it was a simple enough task, and he did it gladly. When he returned, he asked the rabbi, “What now?”

“Now, go and gather the feathers.”

“But that’s impossible! The wind has blown them all over town!”

“Just like the thoughtless words you spoke.”

According to the Talmud, a body of ancient teaching in Judaism, “the tongue is an instrument so dangerous that it must be kept hidden from view, behind two protective walls, the mouth and teeth, to prevent its misuse.”[1] In the book of Proverbs, those who desire wisdom are taught that “to watch over mouth and tongue is to keep out of trouble.”[2] And already in the first chapter, James has declared with urgency, “let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak.”[3] Steve and Cokie Roberts, in their book, From This Day Forward, write,

A friend recently told us about a twenty-fifth-anniversary party where the husband gave a toast and said, “The key to our success is very simple. Within minutes after every fight, one of us says, ‘I’m sorry, Sally.’”

Good line, but it’s also true that what you don’t say in a marriage can be as important as what you do say. We often joke that the success of a marriage can be measured by the number of teeth marks in your tongue. Keeping quiet in the first place means you don’t have to say “I’m sorry” quite so often.[4]

Speech is potent and dangerous. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words—words will hurt or heal, delight or destroy, offend or befriend. James compares the tongue to the rudder of a ship, small and incredibly powerful, and he speaks of “bridling the tongue,” but then he quickly moves to a different image, an image that denies notions of control which rudder and bridle suggest. And it’s not feathers he has in mind. The tongue is a fire, he writes. Thoughtless words aren’t just blowing all over town like feathers in the wind. Careless words, reckless words, loveless words are like hot embers that spark and spread uncontainable wildfires.

James may have been able to relate to a saying like, “Falsehood will fly from Maine to Georgia, while truth is pulling her boots on.”[5] But when he wrote his meditation on the power and dangers of speech, he couldn’t even begin to imagine today’s categories of Twitter storms or the spread of delta variants of toxic speech spreading via Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube. The tongue is a fire, and thanks to more and more capable technologies, a blaze will spread farther and faster than ever. James sounds rather pessimistic:

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

L. T. Johnson writes,

From the sages of ancient Egypt, through the biblical books of Proverbs and Sirach, to the essays of Plutarch and Seneca, there is a consensus that silence is better than speech, that hearing, not speaking, is the pathway to wisdom, that speech when necessary should be brief, that above all speech should be under control and never the expression of rage or envy.[6]

And then he adds that the philosophers and moralists were

aware how difficult control of the tongue is, but they [were] fundamentally sanguine about the possibility of bringing speech into line with reason and virtue. James is not. He flatly asserts that no one can control speech… In James’s treatment, the tongue is almost a cosmic force set on evil.[7]

But James hasn’t argued himself into a corner where all he can do is urge silence. A fig tree cannot yield olives any more than a grapevine figs. And a spring doesn’t pour out fresh water and brackish water. Only humans let blessing and cursing flow from the same mouth. Only humans are made in the image of God and yet dishonor the image in each other, again and again.

But God hasn’t left us to our lies and alternate facts, our slander and our slurs. God has spoken and God is speaking - light and life, truth and redemption and righteousness. And our first language has always been blessing and praise in response to God’s creative speech. Blessing and praise are as old as creation. Long before there were hymns and prayers and liturgies, there was praise.

Our babies remind us of this truth. I remember a little boy, still an infant, singing his morning psalms. Lying there in his crib, usually some time before the rest of the family was up, he awakened with the first morning light. He could not walk, couldn’t even stand up yet. But with the light of dawn in his eyes he chanted his morning prayer of giggles and gurgling, almost every morning, a song of thanksgiving for life, a hymn of praise to the maker of heaven and earth. That praise is the beginning and the end of every word and language and song. That praise is our mother tongue.

The heavens are telling the glory of God;

and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.

Day to day pours forth speech,

and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words;

their voice is not heard;

yet their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.

“Not many of you should become teachers,” says James, “for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” He begins his discussion of disciplined speech with those for whom speaking is a vocation. He doesn’t mention spouses who may or may not succeed at biting their tongues. He leaves aside leaders who who are so busy spinning, they themselves can’t tell what’s real anymore. And he doesn’t tell a story about words blowing every which way after they have left the gossip’s mouth. I wonder if he begins with teachers because he is one himself; because he trembles at the thought of having to find words to speak about the dangers of language and speech. He’s certainly good company on a day when we ordain one of us, Jackie, to serve as a minister of word and sacrament.

James doesn’t say why those who teach will be judged with greater strictness. But he’s already talked about what the judgment will be based on. “So speak and so act,” he writes in 2:12, “as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.” In other places he calls it the “perfect law” and the “royal law” or “law of the kingdom,” and he quotes it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”[8]

Liberty is not the freedom to say and do what I want. It is the freedom to be who we were made to be; the freedom to let ourselves be rooted in God’s love and to love each other well. May it be so, for all of us.

[1] http://storywork.com/when-stories-become-weapons-to-do-harm-and-kill/#_edn1

[2] Proverbs 21:23

[3] James 1:19

[4] Cokie and Steve Roberts, From This Day Forward (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), xi.

[5] Portland (Me.) Gazette, Sept. 5, 1820, quoted at https://freakonomics.com/2011/04/07/quotes-uncovered-how-lies-travel/

[6] L. T. Johnson, James, NIB, 203.

[7] Ibid., 204.

[8] See James 1:25 and 2:8

Proud division ends

Mark only tells us that Jesus went away to the region of Tyre, that’s a port city on the Mediterranean coast, in what’s Lebanon today. We’re not told why he went so far from rural Galilee, both geographically and culturally. Did he have to leave the country just to get a little peace and quiet? That would explain why he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. Whose house did he enter and how did the woman find out and get in? We don’t know; it’s as if Mark stripped away all potentially distracting details so we would give our full attention to the encounter between Jesus and the woman. He does tell us that her little daughter was tormented by an unclean spirit. But then he just lets us sit for a moment with this explosive tension: a gentile woman and a Jewish man in a house on Gentile land - at the time an almost unthinkable clash of gender, culture, language, and religion. She throws herself at his feet, begging him to cast out the demon that has bound her daughter.

We don’t know why Jesus crossed the border, but we do know why she stepped across every boundary of custom and propriety; we know what having a sick child can do to a parent. Having a sick child makes you desperate.[1] It makes you say horrible things to the receptionist who won’t give you an appointment until Wednesday next week. It makes you very rude to doctors who will spend hours running test after test and then tell you in less than two minutes that the nurse will call you tomorrow. It makes you scream at the insurance representative who tells you that your plan does not cover the treatments your child needs. It makes you stay up all night doing research on the web, finding out where the best clinics are, the best doctors, the best therapists, the most promising programs. And after you’ve exhausted all options, would you consider a trip to Mexico or India or anywhere else on God’s green earth? Of course you would. You will do anything it takes to make your child well. You will knock on any door and cross any border for your child’s wellbeing. That’s where this mother is – in the place at Jesus’ feet where love and determination have given all and now await an answer.

“Let the children be fed first,” he says. Yes, the little ones, of course, who wouldn’t agree that the young ones, the ones who have so much life ahead of them — who wouldn’t agree that they need to be fed first, that they need to be showered with love and good, nutritious food, with quality education and health care and freedom to play…anything to allow them to thrive and flourish.

“Let the children be fed first,” Jesus says, “for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” It may take you a moment to realize that he just told her No, and not just that, he insulted her by calling her and her child “dogs.”

We love our dogs. We love ‘em a lot. Cartoonist David Sipress allows us to overhear two little dogs chatting on a Brooklyn sidewalk.[2] Each is on a leash. Each has just dropped a you-know-what on the pavers. And each has a most attentive owner with a little baggy picking up what the puppy just dropped. Says one pooch to the other, “I don’t know about you, but it always makes me feel kinda special.”

We love our dogs, and for many of us they are simply canine family members. There are currently 69 million U.S. households including at least one dog. This number is not based on the latest census figures. Every other year, the American Pet Products Association conducts a National Pet Owners Survey. If you want a copy of the full report, it’ll cost you $3,600. The information is costly, because pets are big business. According to APPA report estimates, basic annual expenses for dog owners include

$700 Vet Visits

$368 Food and Treats

$228 Kennel Boarding

$81 Vitamins

$47 Grooming supplies

$56 Toys[3]

That’s about $4 a day. For perspective, in 2018, nearly half the human world population lived on less than $5.50 a day. So yes, we love the canine members of our households.

This was very different in the world in which Jesus grew up. In Jewish communities dogs weren’t pets, but semi-wild animals that roamed the streets scavenging for food, and they were not allowed in the house. They had to stay outside. So Jesus is telling the woman that her place is outside and that the door is closed. In saying “Let the children be fed first,” he implies that the time is not right.

Galilean peasants often were not fond of city folk like this woman. Small farms produced most of the food for the urban populations, but city folk controlled the markets. People in the cities bought up and stored so much of the harvest for themselves each season that frequently people in the country did not have enough, especially in times when supplies went down and prices went up. In the ears of poor Galilean farmers, Jesus told this rich lady to get in line and wait her turn.[4] In God’s reign, the last would be first, and those rich, urban Gentiles who always managed to be first, those dogs would be last. God’s salvation would come to the gentiles, in time. The day would come when those on the outside would be welcomed in, but not yet, not her and her child, not now. Jesus’ mission was to the house of Israel first.

“Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” If you were to write the script for a Jesus movie, that’s a scene you’d likely want to skip, unless you want Jesus to come across like a ranting talk radio host. This line about children and dogs — it just doesn’t sound like the kind of Jesus you’d want to portray, does it? It’s like he’s sitting in this little house of exclusive concern for his own people, telling the rest of the world that we’ll just have to live with our demons.

But this mother is already in the house. And if you want to call her a dog, call her a bulldog, for she won’t let go. She is courageous. She’s determined. And she’s quick-witted. “In my house, Sir,” she says, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

In my house, dogs don’t wait until the children are finished; dogs and children both eat at the same time. The doggies wag their tails in expectation of every bit of bread dropped either by accident or by a child’s secret cunning. In my house, the children eat their fill and the dogs still get to feast on the crumbs. What I’m asking of you isn’t taking away anything from the children. Must I remind you of your own miracle? Five loaves, and 5,000 ate until all were full and wanted no more, and the pieces filled twelve baskets. Your table can’t hold the abundance you bring, it overflows with blessing. Let the doggies have a feast. My little daughter is bound by a demon, and I know that what she needs is yours to give. Crumbs will do.

This is the only story in all the gospels where Jesus is bested in an argument, which is remarkable. The fact that he’s being bested by a woman is perhaps no longer remarkable in some quarters, but it surely was for centuries, and there are plenty of places where it still is astonishing. And the fact that she’s a gentile puts the cherry on it. Like Jacob who wrestled with God through the night, saying, “I will not let you go unless you bless me,” she didn’t let go.[5] She left the house with a blessing she had wrestled from him: “You may go,” he said, “the demon has left your daughter.”

The word “faith” is never mentioned in this story, but everything about this anonymous, gentile mother embodies it: her courage, her tenacity fuelled by love, and her insistence that mercy is not a limited resource. When she went home, she found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. The house of bondage and fear had become the house of laughter. And this unbinding, this joy is the promise of God for all of life.

Almost immediately following this story, there is another bread story.[6] At first glance it looks like an awkward repetition of the feeding of the 5000. Jesus breaks bread with thousands, seven loaves for 4000 people. All of them eat and are filled; and they take up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Plenty of crumbs, don’t you think?

What ties the two bread miracles together is this gentile mother’s fierce love. Because of her we can see that the two stories are really one: two courses of the one meal. Of this bread of mercy, there is more than enough for all of us, and the door is open. No need to keep anybody outside or under the table.

The miracle of Jesus’ power and this woman’s faith brought healing to a child, and not only that. The miracle also became manifest in the bridging of the divisive distance between two cultures, in the overcoming of realities that deeply separate us—and you don’t need me to remind you of the realities that so deeply divide our country and our world. The miracle continues wherever the power of God in Jesus Christ and the tenacity of our faith come together. The house of prejudice becomes the house of promise, and the house of bondage becomes the house of laughter.

As Christ breaks bread and bids us share,
Each proud division ends.
The love that made us, makes us one,
And strangers now are friends.

[1] With thanks to Anna Carter Florence, Lectionary Homiletics, Vol. 19, No. 5, August-September 2008, 30.

[2] New Yorker 2012, see http://tinyurl.com/d7guo7o

[3] All data from http://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp

[4] See Theissen, Gospels in Context, p. 75-80

[5] Genesis 32:22ff.

[6] Mark 6:30-44 is the feeding of the five thousand; Mark 8:1-10 is the feeding of the four thousand

Doers of the word

Last weekend, we saw the first images of devastation and heard the stories of terrible loss from Humphreys County and Waverly. This weekend, on the 16th anniversary of Katrina, we hope that hurricane Ida will not hit the Louisiana coast with similar levels of destructive force. In the days between, dozens of people were murdered in a bombing attack in Kabul, and we learned that Tennessee surpassed 1 million Covid-19 infections. Brett Kelman wrote in the Tennessean,

Not only [does Tennessee have] one of the highest [infection rates] in the nation, but it also grew 53% from the previous week, an increase that is more than 45 other states. … No other state in the U.S. reports the same combination of per-capita infection rates that are both very high and growing quickly… [And] over the past week, more than one quarter of all new infections have occurred among school-age children, ages 5 to 18.[1]

Heartbreaking as all of this is, it’s hardly surprising. “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,” counsels James with one of his 59 imperatives in just 108 verses, and I find myself pushing back, wanting to suggest that anger isn’t wrong in itself, that it can alert us when something’s wrong, and that it’s really a question of what we do with it; that anger can be quite destructive, but also constructive. I fondly remember a saying the late Bill Coffin attributed to Augustine of Hippo, “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.”[2]

The picture I am taking with me from this very difficult week is that of a little Afghan girl in yellow pants, skipping across the tarmac of an airport somewhere in Belgium, the picture of a beautiful daughter following her mom and dad and little sister into a future that I hope will remain wide open to her dreams.[3] Seeing that little girl made me very happy, and I continue to be grateful for her little leaps of exuberance. Seeing her gave me much-needed courage. Seeing her made me want to give myself anew to the work of changing the world so there would be fewer reasons for families to flee and more occasions for children to skip and jump for joy.

On Thursday afternoon, one of our members sent me a text, asking if we had ever talked about refugee resettlement. “I have no physical strength to be of help,” this dear friend wrote, “but my heart just wonders what we could do.”

“We have been involved in refugee resettlement, but we have always depended on higher level agencies like Catholic Charities to help coordinate,” I responded, “and during the last administration, due to sharp cuts in the number of refugees allowed into the country, all resettlement agencies across the country had to cut their staffs. But let me find out how things have changed.” And so I called the Catholic Charities office in Nashville, and they confirmed that, yes, they had to let go of their entire resettlement staff over the past four years, but that they were in rebuilding mode, and that the refugee numbers were going up, and that they needed help.

And the entire time I saw that little girl in yellow pants skipping across the tarmac. She and her family will need a place to stay, they’ll need furniture and all kinds of household items, they may appreciate getting help with transportation and with navigating an unfamiliar culture, and no matter what they need, they will do better, just like we all do, with neighbors who care.

I wrote back to the friend who had texted me, “Thanks for the nudge!” Later this week I’ll find out more details about the local process, and I’ll let you know how we can get involved.

In James we read, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: To care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” It may take us a while to sort out how to keep ourselves unstained by the world while also engaging with it, how to challenge and change it without conforming to it[4]—but caring for orphans and widows in their distress is about as plain and straightforward as it gets. “Orphans and widows” is biblical shorthand for the most vulnerable members of our communities - anyone in economically precarious circumstances; anyone without access to education or healthcare; refugees, undocumented immigrants, the unhoused - all those who find themselves pushed to the margins. Our care for them in their distress, according to James, is the measure by which our piety is being assessed - not the purity of our convictions or the fervor of our prayers. Not that ideas, doctrines or fervent prayers don’t matter - they do, they very much do! - but only if they help us become the people God wants us to be; only if they help us become doers of the word and not merely hearers; only if they help us embody our love for God in our loving actions toward our neighbor.

Much of the life of faith is aspirational; many of us would probably hesitate to claim that we are Christians, and be much more comfortable affirming that we try to live as Christians, that we want to follow Jesus. And yet, “when asked about the church, the first word college students think of often is ‘hypocrite’,” as Laura Holmes reports from the classroom.[5] There’s a distance between what we profess and do, and we often find it easier to see where others have fallen short of walking the talk - they may be folks sitting in the pew behind us, or entire congregations and traditions whose faith has a very different flavor, or the driver of the car who cut me off in the parking lot and took my parking spot, and then I saw the sticker from a local congregation on the rear window. “Is that what they teach you there?” I grumbled.

It’s much harder for most of us to see where we ourselves have failed to live out the faith to which God has called us. You remember what Jesus said about that:

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.[6]

So, yeah, when asked about the church, the first word college students think of often is one Jesus thought of as well.

James compares those of us who struggle with becoming doers of the word with people who take a quick glance in the mirror. You check your hair or make-up, you make sure there’s no spinach stuck in your teeth, and off you go. The moment you turn away, you forget what you were like. And now James contrasts that with the look into a different kind of mirror, the word of God, which he calls the perfect law, the law of liberty. This look isn’t a quick glance in passing, nor is it a narcissistic gaze. It’s an unhurried look, unrushed and honest, one that welcomes with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save our souls. Bill Coffin wrote, “I read the Bible because the Bible reads me. I see myself reflected in Adam’s excuses, in Saul’s envy of David, in promise-making, promise-breaking Peter.”[7] And because you can see yourself reflected, you may notice that log in your eye; you may see clearly what needs confession and repentance and practice. Søren Kierkegaard, a 19th-century theologian and philosopher from Denmark, taught that

The fundamental purpose of God’s Word is to give us true self-knowledge; it is a real mirror, and when we look at ourselves properly in it we see ourselves as God wants us to see ourselves. The assumption behind this is that the purpose of God’s revelation is for us to become transformed, to become the people God wants us to be, but this is impossible until we see ourselves as we really are.[8]

James says, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” And for James it almost goes without saying that our transformation includes our becoming welcoming, because the God we worship has welcomed us; and that it includes our becoming generous, because the God we worship is generous toward all. And because we praise, in the company of all God’s earthly creatures and the heavenly host, the “God from whom all blessings flow,” we become a little less prone to greedily grasp what is so generously given, and learn to share—and learn it not just in our minds, as a concept or a beautiful idea, but in our actions.

This past week has been a very difficult one, after months and months of difficult weeks, and I know that for many of you “difficult” doesn’t even begin to describe what you’re going through. Where does hope come from?

James reminds us that the world, whether we perceive it as vast or small, is not a system in which various forces are constantly pushing, pulling, shifting, rising, dropping, and emerging; a system in which all that ever happens, happens; a system that is essentially closed. James reminds us, or at least suggests for our careful consideration, that the world, all of reality, is an open system, one defined by the endless bestowal of gifts by a generous God - a reality where genuine newness is possible. A reality where, even when optimism has long taken a seat in the corner, hope comes skipping across the tarmac in yellow pants.

[1] Brett Kelman, “This Week in COVID-19: Tennessee has one of the worst outbreaks in the U.S.” https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/health/2021/08/27/covid-19-tennessee-has-one-worst-outbreaks-united-states/5601740001/

[2] As quoted, without reference, by William Sloane Coffin, The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1999), 6.

[3] https://twitter.com/reuterspictures/status/1430544933463760896

[4] I’m reminded of Paul’s warning to the church in Romans 12:2

[5] Laura Sweat Holmes, Connections, Year B, Vol. 3, 276.

[6] Matthew 7:3-5

[7] William Sloane Coffin, The Heart Is a Little to the Left, 41-42.

[8] Steve Evans summarizing Kierkegaard’s insight as quoted by Robert Kruschwitz https://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/174976.pdf