Humility and contempt

Two men went up to the temple to pray. Luke has let us know that Jesus told this parable particularly to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt. Luke’s gospel mentions regarding others with contempt twice: here and again later when Herod and his soldiers mock and abuse Jesus.[1] So the parable serves as a subtle reminder that the people we regard with contempt are in the blessed company of Jesus. Contempt for others is widespread these days, and perhaps the memory that the people so regarded, or rather disregarded, are in the company of Jesus, can yet teach our hearts a better way.

We have heard this little story for centuries, and we know that it is quite dangerous. Pharisee and tax collector have become “religious stock figures” to us, stereotypes of the self-righteous, rule-bound religious hypocrite, lacking in compassion and insight, in contrast with the contrite, meek and humble tax-collector.[2] We have learned the lesson, we know it’s all about being humble, and, irony of ironies, writes Marjorie Proctor-Smith, “as soon as we have arrived at a suitable state of humility, we … take pride in our accomplishment.”[3] This little story is dangerous because it plays with stereotypes, and because it sneaks up on us and traps us in our very genuine desire to be good people who do the right thing and enjoy being recognized for it—and if it’s the halo of humility we are to reach for, we will, thankful that we’re not like other people, especially this Pharisee. Ouch. We want to be good, we want to do right, and we can’t escape our inclination toward regarding others with contempt, whether we dismiss them as fundamentalists, deplorables, or libtards.

Two men went up to the temple to pray. One of them was a good man, and he knew it. He took his religion seriously. He observed the prayer times diligently, he studied scripture daily, he gave generously to help the needy, and when it came to fasting and tithing he went beyond what law and tradition required. He was the kind of dedicated person of which every community needs a few. People like him know what is good and right, and they do it. People like him provide the leadership and example any community depends on.

The other man, in stark contrast, was not a respected member of the community by any stretch of the imagination. He collected taxes, which doesn’t mean that he had a degree in accounting and worked for the IRS. He worked for Rome. He had crossed the line, he had put himself outside the bounds of belonging by collaborating with the occupying power. He had let himself be turned into one small wheel in the empire’s vast machine, making a living by squeezing the local population for cash. The Roman way of tax collection was a simple and effective franchise system: regional brokers bid for the contracts and hired locals to raise set amounts from specific areas. The local collectors were given their quota, and those higher up in the extraction scheme didn’t really care how they went about meeting those goals—and whatever they collected in addition to their quota was theirs to keep. You can imagine they didn’t have many friends. When, walking down the street, you saw one of them coming toward you, you crossed to the other side. Nobody you knew, nobody who cared about justice and righteousness, wanted anything to do with him. The tax collector was outside of all that was honorable, honest, and holy. He was a sinner, and he knew it.

Two men went up to the temple to pray, and then they went home, one of them declared righteous by Jesus. The next morning, for all we know, they each returned to the life they knew. One got up to collect a little more than his quota, give to Caesar what was Caesar’s, and keep the surplus to pay the bills and save for retirement. The other man returned to his life of careful, religious observance and communal responsibility. Nothing had really changed, except, hopefully, our assumptions about what constitutes righteousness. Jesus doesn’t tell us this story so we embrace the language of humility and redirect our contempt to the new outsider, the Pharisee. Jesus stands with those whom we regard with contempt and he draws our attention to God’s mercy. Jesus steps outside the  bounds of what we consider honorable, honest, and holy, not to shame those who desire to live honorable, honest, and holy lives; he steps outside those bounds to help us see that God’s righteousness does not exclude, but welcome the sinner. God breaks the power of sin for the sake of communion with us, for none of us can flourish under sin’s reign.

The Pharisee’s prayer opened beautifully, “God, I thank you.” With his heart’s attention focused on the generous gifts of God, he would never run out of things to name with gratitude for the rest of his days. But his eyes were on his own hands, his eyes rested on all that he had to show, and the only gratitude he could offer was for not being like other people. Looking up from his own hands, he compared himself to those who have little or nothing to show, and he was pleased with the difference. That very moment, of course, he had lost sight of the open, generous, welcoming hands of God.

The tax collector didn’t even look up. His eyes lowered, gazing at his toes, he  stood off to the side. Standing outside all that is honorable, honest, and holy he had no one to look down upon—but his heart’s attention rested on God, and his thirst for God’s mercy was his prayer. Jesus challenges us to imagine community differently. Instead of envisioning a community of righteousness whose boundaries are maintained with the granting and withholding of mercy, he challenges us to imagine a community of mercy that reshapes how we practice righteousness.

The two men who went up to the temple to pray remind me of two brothers. We know them from another story Jesus told in response to people who were grumbling about his habit of welcoming sinners and eating with them. It’s the story about a father who had two sons; the younger went to a distant country and burned through his inheritance while the older stayed at home and did everything he was supposed to. You know the story and how it ends with the father standing outside, pleading with the older son to come in and join the banquet. To the older son, righteousness is something he possesses and his brother doesn’t, something he has worked hard to uphold and his brother has squandered. He can’t see that mercy has prepared a feast for all. He can’t see yet that all of us need more love than we deserve. He can’t see yet that mercy heals our wounded, broken lives in the joy of communion with God. Karl Barth said in one of his sermons at the prison in Basel,

We are saved by grace. That means that we did not deserve to be saved. What we deserve would be quite different. No one can be proud of being saved. Each one [of us] can only fold [our] hands in great lowliness of heart and be thankful … Consequently, we shall never possess salvation as our property. We may only receive it as a gift over and over again with hands outstretched.[4]

The Pharisee, assuming that the tax collector had situated himself outside the bounds of righteousness, regarded that sinner with contempt. Perhaps he did pray with hands outstretched, but not to receive with gratitude the gift of God—he presented himself, holding up all his impressive accomplishments. He had no use for his brother other than as a dark foil against which his own light would shine even brighter. The tax collector, with empty hands, fully aware that he had nothing to show, threw himself into the arms of God’s mercy. Did he know, I wonder, when he went down to his home, that in the eyes of God he was righteous? How could he know, unless there was somebody who, like Jesus, with hands outstretched in welcome, embraced him as a brother?

In the eyes of mercy, we are all like other people: made in the image of God, beloved, and worthy of saving, and much of our salvation is about learning not to write off anyone as beyond the reach of God’s mercy. “Contempt for others lurks in the human heart, bubbling up easily and frequently,” writes Dan Clendenin. “We imagine that in denigrating others we validate ourselves.”[5] But the truth is, we all stumble in many ways, and what we need when we flounder isn’t moral condescension, but solidarity and compassion.[6] I want to close with a story about one of the desert fathers. It illustrates beautifully the kind of solidarity, I believe, Jesus wants us cultivate.

A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, ‘Come, for everyone is waiting for you.’ So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, ‘What is this, Father?’ The old man said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’ When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him.

We are busy comparing and judging, when all we need is to see ourselves and one another in the light of God’s mercy.

[1] Luke 23:11

[2] Marjorie Procter-Smith, Feasting, 213.

[3] Ibid., 215.

[4] Karl Barth, Deliverance to the Captives (Harper, 1961), 39.

[5] Dan Clendenin https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1148-the-pharisee-and-the-tax-collector

[6] James 3:2 (NIV); see Clendenin, note 5.

Faithful persisterhood

In 1986, Coretta Scott King, Dr. Martin Luther King’s widow, wrote a letter to Senator Strom Thurmond, when Jeff Sessions was nominated to serve as federal judge for the Southern District of Alabama. She was writing the letter to “express [her] sincere opposition” to the confirmation of Sessions, who, she wrote, had “used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as federal judge.”

A generation later, in February 2017, Senator Elizabeth Warren read the widow’s letter in a confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions when he was nominated to serve as Attorney General. Interrupting her speech, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Warren of “impugn[ing] the motives and conduct” of Sessions, in violation of a Senate Rule prohibiting Senators from imputing to another Senator any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator. “Senator Warren was giving a lengthy speech,” McConnell said, defending the move. “She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”[1]

Widows and judges create fascinating resonances between a first century story and the struggle for justice in the 20th century and more recent attempts to silence persistent women. I don’t know who coined the phrase persisterhood, but I applaud them for their find. Both Paul in 2 Timothy and Jesus in Luke are urging persistence in proclamation and prayer, whether the time is favorable or unfavorable, so perhaps we could adopt for the fellowship of believers the descriptive term, the faithful persisterhood.

The book of Psalms is an ancient document of persistence. Voices of exuberant praise mingle with voices of confident teaching; lonely laments rise out of the depths of shattering human experience, along with insistent questions.

How long, O Lord?
Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
this sorrow in my heart day and night?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, Lord my God.[2]

How often have these questions been spoken with tears, shouted in anger, whispered on the verge of despair—and there was no answer? Will you forget me forever?

God’s people are a community of persistence in praising, teaching. lamenting, questioning and expectant waiting. “We have waited and prayed for justice so long, our knuckles are bloody from knocking on that door,” an old preacher sang from a Montgomery pulpit some sixty years ago. Bloody knuckles from praying. Blisters on your feet from praying with your legs. Praise, of course, soars like a bird on wings of joy and gratitude, but when prayer is little more than a heart’s cry for an answer, the night can be long.

Jesus told the disciples, “The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it.”[3] He prepared us for a long Advent season of longing, an Advent season spent not in passive waiting, though, but in actively leaning into the promised day. He taught us to love and serve God and our neighbor, and he taught us to pray. Among his teachings about prayer is the story about the widow and the judge.

Widows in Jesus’ time weren’t necessarily poor, but they were in a very vulnerable position. When a man died, all his belongings became the property of his sons or brothers, and the widow depended entirely on them for her survival. Of course there were families who loved and honored mom; but you know what families can be like. The male survivors had certain responsibilities, based on law and custom, but that didn’t always mean they took them seriously. Disputes involving widows and orphans were quite common, and it was the judges’ responsibility to help resolve those disputes in the community. Jewish law and tradition were quite clear about what was expected of a judge:

Give the members of your community a fair hearing, and judge rightly between one person and another, whether citizen or resident alien. You must not be partial in judging: hear out the small and the great alike; you shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s.

Consider what you are doing, for you judge not on behalf of human beings but on the Lord’s behalf; he is with you in giving judgment. Now, let the fear of the Lord be upon you; take care what you do, for there is no perversion of justice with the Lord our God.[4]

It wasn’t just the part about the fear of the Lord this judge in Jesus’ story habitually ignored. He was a man without shame. Didn’t want to hear the widow’s case. Ignored her plea for justice. Some have wondered if he was waiting for a small payment from the widow for his troubles, a little grease for the wheels of justice.

The widow had nowhere else to go. No friends in high places. No judicial complaint hotline. No Legal Aid Society. What she did have was her remarkable capacity to make a scene, and she made good use of it. She didn’t go away. She knocked on his door, “Give me justice.” She camped out on the steps of the court, shouting, “Give me justice.” She followed him on the street on his way to lunch, “Give me justice.” She called his office several times a day and left messages on his voice mail, “Give me justice.” She cut him off on the golf course, shouting, “Give me justice.” She was persistent and shameless. And she finally wore him down. No, the judge didn’t suddenly develop reverence for God and respect for people and the law, no, he just wanted to get her off his back.

Now, Jesus said, if the worst judge you can possibly imagine will respond to the persistent plea of a widow, how much more will God grant justice to you, God’s children, who pray night and day? Luke says, the story is about our need to pray always and not to lose heart. To pray boldly and tirelessly. To pray as though the coming of God’s reign depended solely on our prayers. To ask, to seek, to knock with unrelenting persistence. Do you know what they say about bulldogs? Their nose is slanted backward so they can breathe without letting go. Pray like a bulldog. Pray with the doggedness of this widow. According to Luke, that’s what the story is about. Be persistent in prayer, and don’t lose heart.

It’s quite a privilege to reflect on the state of our prayer life while many widows are struggling to pay for food and prescriptions and a roof over their head. The widow in the parable is more than a funny you-go-sister illustration for good prayer habits. She’s a human being crying out for justice, and in the story, she’s alone. Yes, she keeps coming, she keeps shouting to move a corrupt judge, but doesn’t her persistence also move us? She is making a scene, and isn’t her persistence reminding us that God’s reign is a reign of justice? Yes, she invites us to pray like her, but she also urges us to pray with her, to join her in wrangling justice from broken institutions that reflect no fear of God and little respect for the dignity of human beings.

We must be persistent in prayer because prayer keeps the flame of hope alive. The night of waiting can be long, and in prayer we engage with the living God in whom we trust and whose purposes we want to serve. In prayer we let the priorities of God reorder our own priorities.

We ask, “how long?”, we seek with honesty, we knock on heaven’s door, and we keep at it. And sometimes the questions we address to God get turned around and come back to us. Because God is not at all like this reluctantly responsive judge. God does not need to be badgered into listening. In fact, God’s presence is closer to us in the widow’s relentless commitment to justice than in the judge’s slow, unwilling response. God has responded and continues to respond, God comes to us — persistent, unrelenting, determined to get our attention. How long will you hide your face from me, she asks. How long must children in this city go to bed hungry? How long must old men wander homeless in the streets? How long must I bear this sorrow in my heart day and night and you, you do not know? Look on me and answer. In the widow’s cry, God’s demand is given voice and suddenly we find ourselves in the position — of the judge? God forbid. God help us that we may always find ourselves in the position of the follower of Jesus who joins the persisterhood.

Sometimes we pray just to keep our head above water and breathe. Sometimes all we want from our prayers is the assurance of God’s mercy in a world that’s going nuts. But Jesus reminds us of our need to pray always so that the purposes of God can reorder the priorities of our lives. We pray for God’s kingdom to come, we pray for daily bread and forgiveness, and as we knock on heaven’s door we hear knocking from the other side: God’s persistent presence, calling us to walk with Jesus.

[1] https://time.com/4663497/coretta-scott-king-letter-warren-senate-sessions

https://time.com/5175901/elizabeth-warren-nevertheless-she-persisted-meaning/

[2] Psalm 13:1-3

[3] Luke 17:22

[4] Deuteronomy 1:16-17 and 2 Chronicles 19:6-7

If mercy didn't have eyes

Praise is the duty and delight, the ultimate vocation of the human community; indeed of all creation…  All life is aimed toward God and finally exists for the sake of God. Praise articulates and embodies our capacity to yield, submit, and abandon ourselves in trust and gratitude to the One whose we are. Praise is not only a human requirement and a human need, it is also a human delight. We have a resilient hunger to move beyond self, to return our energy and worth to the One from whom it has been granted. In our return to that One, we find our deepest joy.[1]

These strong affirmations were written many years ago by Geoffrey Wainwright and Walter Brueggemann. There are moments in life when our hearts are opened wide to the miracle that life is, to the gift that it truly is, to the wondrous reality of our being part of the unfolding mystery of creation, that we get to hear and see it, touch it, taste and smell it, explore its depths and learn it, love it, share it: life. Praise is our response to the gift and to the loving giver. Praise is joy and gratitude poured out in shouts and words and songs and dance and generosity.

Does God need our praise to be God? Does God need our worship, our offerings, our attention? Many ask questions like that, but the crucial question is, can humans survive as humans without praise? To withhold acknowledgement, to avoid celebration, to stifle gratitude, may prove as foolish as refusing to breathe.[2]

I wonder if a growing number of us are slowly running out of breath. I wonder if a growing number of us are too busy and distracted to recognize life as anything other than the stage, backdrop and material for our own projects. Russell Johnson writes, and we all know the reality he’s describing,

The majority of Americans read headlines but rarely read news stories, we move our attention from subject to subject more rapidly than ever before, and the pandemic accelerated our tendency to focus on tweets and TikToks at the expense of lengthier media. We look at each webpage for an average of fifty-four seconds.[3]

We are switching our attention from one thing to another at an unprecedented rate. Russell says,

I can still read a book uninterrupted for several hours… if I’m on an airplane and have no other options. I can still watch a long movie… if I’m in a movie theater and devices are off. More frequently, I’m looking at my phone to distract myself from the TV show I put on to distract myself from my lunch.

Blaise Pascal lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, and he already suspected then that diversion and distraction were the principal threats to a life of faith. “All of humanity’s problems stem from [our] inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” he wrote. Today, flitting from preoccupation to preoccupation, our capacity to be attentive is shrinking rapidly, and with it our capacity to notice and marvel and breathe out praise. Early in the twentieth century, Simone Weil wrote, “Not only does the love of God have attention for its substance; the love of our neighbor, which we know to be the same love, is made of this same substance.”[4] Attention is the substance of love. Attention is at the heart of Luke’s story.

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem when he was approached by ten men with leprosy. Luke writes Jesus was traveling between Samaria and Galilee, only there wasn’t any land between the two—there was, however, a line. There was no border, no wall, no checkpoints, but there was a line, a sharp line drawn between two groups of people who hadn’t been friendly with each other for generations, Jews and Samaritans. The enmity between them was entrenched and old. They disagreed about things that mattered most to them: how to honor God, where to worship, what set of scriptures to receive as sacred. The line between them wasn’t so much on the land as it was in their hearts and minds, in their imaginations. They did what they could to avoid contact with each other, to not see, not touch, not interact with each other.

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, traveling through the region between Samaria and Galilee, when he was approached by ten men with leprosy. Leprosy was dreadful. It was the name given to any skin blemishes that looked suspicious and triggered fear of contagion. Leprosy was a sentence to exile. These men who approached Jesus had been banished from their homes and villages. How long had it been since they had felt the loving touch of another human being? It no longer mattered which side of the line they once claimed as home or which community they claimed as their own or who they used to be or dreamed of being—now they were lepers. Whoever saw them didn’t see them as persons, but as no-longer-persons, as untouchables pushed out and left to beg and wander in the borderlands. “They shall live alone,” the law of Moses declared; “their dwelling shall be outside the camp.”[5]

The ten approached Jesus, crying out for mercy, and Jesus saw them. He was attentive to them and to their cry. He didn’t cross to the other side of the road and walk past them. “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” he said. The priests were the ones responsible for determining if a rash was leprous or not. The priests were the ones who would examine the skin and decide, after the blemish had faded, if a person could return from their exile. “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” Jesus said to the ten, as though the time had come for them to return to life. And they went, and as they went, they were made clean. Made clean meant they would belong again. Made clean meant they could touch and be touched, hold the baby, kiss the children, hug their wives, do their work, hang out with their friends. The ten had encountered Jesus in the land of not-belonging and now they were restored to life, restored to wholeness.

One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice, and he thanked Jesus. One of them, when he saw that he was healed, noticed something the others didn’t; he was attentive and responsive. Nine of the ten got their old lives back. One found new life. And he was a Samaritan.

Again it was a Samaritan, the proverbial outsider in Jewish circles, who saw what others didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t see. Jesus told a story about a man who fell into the hands of robbers on the Jericho Road. You know it well. A priest happened to come down that road, and when he saw the victim, he passed by on the other side. He saw him, but he wasn’t attentive. He didn’t see what he needed to see. Next a Levite came to the place and saw the man, and he also passed by on the other side. His attention elsewhere, he also didn’t see what was there for him to see. And then a third man came near, and when he saw the man, he was moved with compassion. And he was a Samaritan. It was an outsider whose actions on the Jericho road revealed the substance of being a neighbor, and it was again an outsider who was attentive to the presence of God in Jesus. The gospel draws our attention to the outsiders who saw what many others didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t see.

Ten cried out for mercy. Ten did what Jesus told them to do. Ten were made clean. Nine went home and lived happily ever after; and nothing suggests that their healing was revoked for their lack of gratitude. God’s mercy is unconditional. One of the ten, though, one of them turned back and gave praise to God at Jesus’ feet.

In Jesus, the kingdom of God has come into the region between where exiles wander, longing for redemption and crying out for mercy. Leprosy meant exclusion and isolation, and that makes it the perfect symbol for all the ways in which human beings experience not being at home, not belonging, not being seen, not being at one with each other, not being at one with ourselves. It was the Samaritan, the outsider, who was attentive and who recognized that with Jesus the realm of God was present. He saw a new reality of belonging. He saw an embrace so wide and welcoming, it wouldn’t create yet another camp in this broken, divided world, but a new community, one that included Jews and Samaritans; he saw the promise and presence of a redeemed humanity, made whole by God’s mercy. The Samaritan saw grace so deep, mercy so wide, his whole being became gratitude and praise.

“Get up and go on your way,” Jesus said to him; “your faith has made you well.” Ten had been healed. Ten had been restored to life and community. But one of the ten returned, and not just to say, “Thank you, Jesus.” He returned and praised God. Martin Luther was once asked to describe the nature of true worship. His answer: the tenth leper turning back.

The story of the grateful Samaritan can help us see that “to be saved is not only to be healed and forgiven but to be delivered from [anything] that inhibits grateful praise.”[6] In grateful praise we live the life we were made for, abandoning ourselves in trust and gratitude to the One whose we are.

The story of the grateful Samaritan can also help us see that there are people in the region between in our world, people who belong neither here nor there, people who would be invisible if mercy didn’t have eyes.

Now we can pray, “Mercy, will you look through my eyes, that I may see what is there to see, that I may let my whole heart be yours, and my hands your hands—my whole life yours?”

May it be so.

[1] Walter Brueggemann, Israel’s Praise: Doxology against Idolatry and Ideology, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1988), 1. The first sentence is a quote from Geoffrey Wainwright, “The Praise of God in the Theological Reflection of the Church,” Interpretation 39 (1985), 39.

[2] See John Burkhart, quoted in A Sourcebook about Liturgy, ed. by Gabe Huck (Chicago: LTP, 1994), 148.

[3] Russell Johnson, “Attention, Please,” Sightings, September 22, 2022 https://mailchi.mp/uchicago/sightings-218364?e=6562fb9336

[4] See Johnson, “Attention, Please”

[5] Leviticus 13:46

[6] See Eugene Boring and Fred Craddock, People’s Commentary, 247.

Table power flip

Ashley Jones wrote a poem about Sally Hemings. Sally Hemings? Ashley Jones says, “It’s safe to say I’ve always been fascinated by the ways that history is taught in America.” And she goes on,

Let us tell it, 1492 was a year of great discovery and exploration instead of the start of mass genocide and pillaging. Slaves and masters were happy together. The Emancipation Proclamation marked the end of second-class citizenship for Black people in America. We know these things aren’t true, that history is painted over to make us seem more heroic, more loving, more okay with the way things are.

Ashley Jones wrote a poem about Sally Hemings because she’s “interested […] in the discrepancies between the story in our history and the reality of what happened.” She says,

Some people will tell us that Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson’s mistress, lover, girlfriend, etc., but none of that is possible because she was a slave. She could not give consent, and in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of her master, she wasn’t human enough to feel such a complex feeling as love. [...] Thomas Jefferson didn’t think of Sally, of any Black person as a full human being. In [Notes on the State of Virginia], Jefferson asserts his belief that Black people are scientifically inferior to White people for many reasons, but some of note are that we are smellier (more sweat), require less sleep, are incapable of complex cognition, and we are unable to feel love, only lust.

Ashley Jones wrote a poem about Sally Hemings because she’s interested in the discrepancies between the story in our history and the reality of what happened. She’s interested in the discrepancies between the story in our unquestioned assumptions, our comfortable assumptions, our oft-repeated assumptions and the reality of what happened. “As the poem developed,” she says, “I realized I wanted the facts to stand alone so the reader could draw her own conclusions. I didn’t want to moralize, as Sally’s voice has been silenced enough—I wanted her life to exist on the page so everyone could see who she was and what was done to her. I wanted her to finally get to tell her truth.”[1]

Ashley M. Jones, What It Means To Say Sally Hemings

Bright Girl Sally
Mulatto Sally
Well Dressed Sally
Sally With the Pretty Hair
Sally With the Irish Cotton Dress
Sally With the Smallpox Vaccine
Sally, Smelling of Clean White Soap
Sally Never Farmed A Day In Her Life
Available Sally
Nursemaid Sally
Sally, Filled with Milk
Sally Gone to Paris with Master’s Daughter
Sally in the Chamber with the President
Sally in the Chamber with the President’s Brother
Illiterate Sally
Capable Sally
Unmarried Sally
Sally, Mother of Madison, Harriet, Beverly, Eston
Sally, Mother of Eston Who Changed His Name
Sally, Mother of Eston Hemings Jefferson
Eston, Who Made Cabinets
Eston, Who Made Music
Eston, Who Moved to Wisconsin
Eston, Whose Children Were Jeffersons
Eston, Who Died A White Man
Grandmother Sally of the White Hemingses
Infamous Sally
Silent Sally
Sally, Kept at Monticello Until Jefferson’s Death
Sally, Whose Children Were Freed Without Her

Jesus seems uncomfortably comfortable talking about slaves, not as persons with names, persons with their own stories, but as nameless characters in his parables. “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’?” he says, and the expected answer is, “No one; it would be unthinkable.”

According to Luke, Jesus told this story to the apostles — are we to assume then that there actually were owners of slaves among the first followers of Jesus? Or was this question just another conventional way to begin a story? Like, “In a certain city there was judge” or “there was a rich man who had a manager”?

The question may have been just another conventional way to begin a story, given that slavery was a painfully common institution in the first century and beyond. The word slave occurs more than 150 times in the Greek New Testament,[2] and our hearts are heavy with grief and shame and anger, because we know how this frequent occurrence was used for centuries as a convenient cover to justify chattel slavery in this country.

The stories of masters and slaves, or slaves and fellow slaves, presuppose the institution of slavery as it existed in the first century; and the writers of the New Testament appear to have largely accepted it as a given of the social order. Explicitly the institution wasn’t questioned until later, but Jesus’ teaching, together with the unsettling reality of his dying a slave’s death on the cross and his being raised by God on the third day, undermined the whole structure of divisions between Jews and Gentiles, free citizens and slaves, male and female, and the old world began to crumble, and a new one began to emerge.

All of creation was radically renewed with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the pouring out of God’s Spirit on all flesh—but the wave of reconciliation unleashed by God’s act of new creation did not spread at the speed of an imperial army; it spread at the speed of trust: one gesture of brave hospitality at a time, one faithful act of service, one small step toward wholeness at a time.

The story that begins with the question about your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field is Jesus’ response to the apostles’ request to increase their faith. Why increase it? Are they looking for more, bigger, better, faster faith? New and improved faith? This year’s model of faith? In the preceding verses, Jesus teaches the disciples about repentance and forgiveness. “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive,” he says. And then he adds, “And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent’, you must forgive.”

Rebuking the offender? Not a problem. Forgiving if there is repentance? Perhaps you could say a bit more what true repentance looks like… But seven times? Increase our faith.

They’re like most of us. They don’t think they have quite enough of what it takes to be forgiving like that. They don’t think they’re ready for what they perceive to be the major leagues of Christian living. And Jesus tells them in so many words that they have all the faith they need for one small step toward wholeness and then another; for one gesture of courageous hospitality that lets the stranger in, and then another; all the faith we need to look at our history and at each other and let go of one comfortable assumption, and then another, and begin to know what it means to say Sally Hemings and Uncle Nearest[3] and David Drake[4] and Abraham.[5]

In Jesus’ story the assumption is presented that the slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field doesn’t get to eat and drink until he has prepared supper for his master, put on his apron and served his master while he eats and drinks.

“Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?” Jesus asks, and again the expected answer is negative, “No, such a thing would be unthinkable.” Up to this point, the apostles and all of us who have followed Jesus’ story, have been encouraged to identify with the master, regardless of whether we did so comfortably or not. But now Jesus flips the scene, something he likes to do a lot.

“So you also,” he says, “when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We servants deserve no special praise. We have only done our duty.’” Forgiving a person seven times a day is nothing extraordinary like hitting sixty-one home runs; it’s as everyday as it is for a slave to plow, tend sheep, prepare food, or serve at the table. Forgiving, offering hospitality by making space for others and letting them in by listening to them, entertaining their thoughts, eating their food and offering ours, letting go of comfortable assumptions—all these actions are simply things we do because we follow and obey Jesus.

And because it is Jesus we follow, there’s one more twist. In a later scene, where the disciples are busy debating which one of them ought to be regarded as the greatest, Jesus asks them, “Who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table?” All heads nodding. Some still quietly composing seating charts for the great banquet. And Jesus adds, “But I am among you as one who serves.”

We know he likes to flip the scene. In chapter 12 of Luke, we hear him say, “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes.” Here the master is the one who comes in, not the slave. We wonder what the master will tell the slaves. We wonder who will sit at table and who will put on the apron. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.” The master is the servant, and the slaves are the guests of honor. And we are only beginning to know what it means to say Jesus is Lord.

[1][1] From Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press, 2017); all author’s quotes and the poem at https://poetrysociety.org/poems-essays/in-their-own-words/ashley-m-jones-on-what-it-means-to-say-sally-hemings

[2] According to https://biblehub.com/greek/1401.htm, the word group δοῦλ- is used more than 150 times. In English translations, the word slave is used 130 times in the New Testament, 31 times in Luke alone, if you read the version we read in worship, the New Revised Standard Version. Other editions, including the King James Version and the New International Version prefer the translation “servant.”

[3] https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/industries/2022/06/22/uncle-nearest-whiskey-preserving-historic-legacy/7610307001/

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/arts/design/-enslaved-potter-david-drake-museum.html

[5] http://truthsofthetrade.winterthur.org/silver-spoon/

The gate of heaven

You remember Mary’s song, don’t you? The one she sang when she was pregnant with Jesus? The song about God who has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly, who has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty?[1] And do you remember Jesus’ sermon at Nazareth, where he declares that he’s been anointed to bring good news to the poor?[2] And you remember Luke 14:12, don’t you, where he admonishes his followers not to give dinners for friends and family and rich neighbors, but to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you remember how he told a certain ruler who wanted to inherit eternal life, “Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”[3]

Poverty and wealth are of great concern to Jesus. Greg Carey calls today’s story from Luke a “juxtaposition of obscene luxury and abject poverty.”[4] Topics of great concern to Jesus are thrown into sharp relief in this story. Barbara Rossing calls it “a wake-up call, pulling back a curtain to open our eyes to something we urgently need to see before it is too late.”[5] A wake-up call, in case we got drowsy and dozed off when Jesus declared, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. … But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”[6] Poverty and wealth are of great concern to Jesus.

The poor man in today’s story has a name, which is remarkable. Lazarus is the only named character in all of Jesus’ parables. The name is the Latin rendering of Eleazar or Eliezer, which means “God helps” — and no one else in the story does. We live in a world where the rich have names and the poor are statistics. The rich have their names written on large buildings, and spoken with hushed reverence at fundraising dinners; tour busses drive by their homes and the guides point to the gates and speak their names and everyone on the bus knows who they are. The poor are nameless and countless. But Jesus tells a story of a nameless rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. A rich man dressed in purple and fine linen and feasting sumptuously every day, and Lazarus, covered with sores, lying at the rich man’s gate, longing to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs were licking his sores. Perhaps the dogs were also snatching the pieces of bread the rich man’s guests used to wipe their greasy hands — bread napkins, tossed under the table. Perhaps Lazarus was too sick, too weak to jump up and grab even a morsel.

Jesus doesn’t tell us if Lazarus died of starvation, or if one of the sores got infected, or if it was one of those nights when temperatures outside the gate dropped into the upper 20’s. Lazarus died and he was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died, but no angels came to carry him away. He died and was buried. We may imagine that it must have been a lavish funeral in one of the city’s choice cemeteries, with an opulent reception, but that kind of detail doesn’t get any attention in Jesus’ story. Both men died, as all of us eventually do, and at the moment of death, suddenly their relationship was reversed.

Lazarus’ suffering was over, he reclined in the seat of honor at Abraham’s table, and the rich man was in agony in the flames of Hades. He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.” Have mercy on me, he said, and we wonder if Lazarus used to shout or whisper those words at the rich man’s gate to deaf or distracted ears. And did you notice? The rich man spoke of Lazarus by name. So he knew him, he recognized him, and now we wonder how long he might have known his name without acknowledging his presence and his need. And he didn’t say, “Lazarus, would you come over and help a brother out?” He asked Abraham to send him — still he could think of Lazarus only as socially inferior, somebody to be sent on an errand.

Abraham told him, “Between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” Who was it that fixed the great chasm?

I suggest that it was the rich man himself. The great chasm between him and Lazarus is nothing but the reverse manifestation of the one that existed in their earthly lives — only now their separation is permanent. The time to bridge the yawning abyss with a little attention and kindness has run out. The gate where Lazarus begged and waited, the gate that kept him outside, was and is and forever will be the very gate that keeps the rich man out of Abraham’s banquet.

In Anton Chekhov’s story, Gooseberries, one of the characters says,

Apparently, those who are happy can only enjoy themselves because the unhappy bear their burdens in silence, and but for this silence happiness would be impossible. It is a kind of universal hypnosis. There ought to be a man with a hammer behind the door of every happy man, to remind him by his constant knocks that there are unhappy people, and that happy as he himself may be, life will sooner or later show him its claws, catastrophe will overtake him – sickness, poverty, loss – and nobody will see it, just as he now neither sees nor hears the misfortunes of others. But there is no man with a hammer, the happy man goes on living and the petty vicissitudes of life touch him lightly, like the wind in an aspen-tree, and all is well.[7]

We don’t know if Lazarus bore his burdens in silence. We don’t know if the rich man ignored the poor man at his gate, or if the poor man’s presence and need had blended into the background of the rich man’s life, together with the dogs and the people on the sidewalk and the traffic noise. We don’t even know if the rich man was happy. All we do know is that he was well-dressed and well-fed and that Lazarus was neither, and when the great reversal came it was too late to do anything about it.

In a way, the rich man was saying to Abraham, “Behind the door of each of my brothers, there ought to be a man with a hammer, to remind them by his constant knocks that there are people in great need. Send Lazarus that he may warn them.”

And Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” The commandments are clear: Do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.[8] The words of the prophets are indeed constant knocks at the gate: Share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house.[9] The commandments speak of obligation. The prophets proclaim the word of the Lord with urgency, and when their words fall on deaf ears, they “lament over people who can see nothing about which to lament.”[10]

Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, who lounge on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of [my people].[11]

The rich man in Jesus’ parable doesn’t have a lot of confidence that his siblings will heed the scriptures. “No, father Abraham,” he pleads; “but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.”

Will we? Are we listening to the man with the hammer? Are we reaching across the great chasm that separates us one from the other? Do we hear Mary’s song with joy and hope and join her in singing it? Do we want to see every valley lifted up and every mountain and hill made low?[12] Are we letting God guide our feet into the way of peace, across bridges of mercy and compassion and difficult, demanding justice? Or are we happy enough with the way things are?

Poverty, hunger, and homelessness are very complicated issues, but they are also very simple: open the gate. Because lying at the gate is not a bunch of issues and problems; lying at the gate is a human being with a name, a person made in the image of God. The man with the hammer wants us to pay attention and repent. He wants us to refuse to sit in the isolation which horded wealth creates. He wants us to realize that, as one of America’s martyrs wrote from jail, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”[13] The gate between me and the neighbor waiting at my threshold is the very gate of heaven.

Jesus calls us to repent, to turn and walk with him on the path of faith and compassion. His love lifts us out of our fear and pride. His love gives us the courage to let our neighbor in. His love, embodied in countless daily acts and gestures, bridges the great chasm between us.

Jesus told us the parable of the rich man and Lazarus so we would rewrite its ending with our lives. Imagine, one morning the rich man stepped out of his gated existence and said, “Good morning, Lazarus. Come on in. I just made some biscuits and a fresh pot of coffee.”

[1] Luke 1:46-55

[2] Luke 4:16-21

[3] Luke 18:22

[4] Greg Carey https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26-3/commentary-on-luke-1619-31-2

[5] Barbara Rossing https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26-3/commentary-on-luke-1619-31-4

[6] Luke 6:20,24

[7] Anton Chekhov, Gooseberries, 1898 http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1290/

[8] Deuteronomy 15:7

[9] Isaiah 58:7

[10] Donald Gowan, NIB, 398.

[11] Amos 6:4-6

[12] Isaiah 40:4

[13] Martin L. King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf

Shrewd like that

Where do I start? Thank you. Thank you for letting me take a sabbatical of more than three months. It was wonderful just to be, to hike, to pray, ro read, to paddle, to be with family, to rediscover forgotten rhythms and practice new ones.

I read Scripture in worship a couple of times while I was at Mepkin Abbey in July, but I haven’t planned a worship service or prepared a sermon since the end of May. And a lot has happened since then in your lives, in mine, and in the world. We’ll be catching up for a while, I imagine, and our stories, questions and experiences will weave their way into our conversations for who knows how long.

I haven’t lived with the rhythm of weekly preaching since the end of May, and when I looked at the lectionary readings for this Sunday, a voice in my heart whispered, “How about this one?”It’s one of the most baffling of Jesus’ parables; in it, a master summons his manager and says,

“What is this I hear about you? Give me an account of your management.”

The master has heard reports, rumors perhaps, that this manager had been squandering his property.

“What is this I hear about you? Give me an account of your management.”

I found myself once again drawn to this line; it has resonated with me for many years because the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, as it says in Psalm 24, but many of us have lived on it as if it were ours, to do with as we please. At the end of today’s passage, Jesus asks, “And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?” We are stewards destined to be heirs, but if we aren’t faithful stewards, what will we inherit? Certainly not the fullness of life God desires for God’s creation.

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, and the owner demands an account from the squanderers. I’ll come back to this.

You’re still wondering, “What did he do with over three months of time off?” and you don’t demand an account, but you want to know what I did, what I saw and heard and tasted, whom I met and what I learned, what joys and sorrows I encountered. I had one of the best summers of my life, and today, since the gospel reading alludes to a ledger, I thought I’d share with you some numbers from the only document of this summer that looks anything like a ledger. In June I spent eleven days hiking in the Italian Alps, and I used GPS to track distance and altitude. I walked about a hundred miles, but walking may not be the best term, because what I did day after day was climb or clamber up and down — up from the valley to the pass, and down on the other side into the next valley. I climbed up a total of about 33,000’, and down a total of about 35,000’, and the highest pass I crossed was Passo del Maccagno at 8,179’. Those eleven days in the Alps were also the only days that I wore socks all summer long until this morning. Now back to the story.

There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. That’s all we’re told. A lot is left unsaid, not even hinted at. We don’t know if this manager was incompetent or corrupt; if “squandering” meant he had missed his quarterly earnings goals for the fifth time in a row or if he was embezzling. We don’t know if this manager was an employee or a slave, although some of the language suggests the latter.

The rich man summoned the manager and demanded to see the books. The manager had to think and act fast. He may not have been strong enough to work the soil, and wouldn’t consider begging, but he was quick. One by one, he summoned his master’s debtors, and together they rewrote the paperwork.

“How much do you owe my master?”

“A hundred jugs of olive oil.”

“Take your bill, sit down, make it fifty.”

Those weren’t the jugs you keep in your kitchen cabinet, the ones most of us can easily lift with one hand. Each of those jugs held about ninety gallons. They were looking at a lease agreement or a loan document involving 900 gallons of olive oil. And the manager said, Cut it in half. And to another who owed a hundred containers of wheat, he said, “Take your bill and make it eighty.” 20% off, that’s still a substantial discount. We can assume there were other debtors, although none are mentioned, because nobody needs a manager to handle only two accounts. But we don’t know if the manager was giving away what was his to give, say his commission, or if he was reducing payments owed only to his master.

The purpose of his actions, though, is obvious: he made sure that tomorrow his master’s debtors would owe him. He knew how to make the best of a critical situation, and he may have been a squandering scoundrel, but he sure was a clever one.

But now comes a curious twist: his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. What kind of master would commend a dishonest manager? What is going on here? And then there’s another twist, because now Jesus holds him up as an example, telling us to make friends for ourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome us into the eternal homes.

Jesus’ parable of the dishonest manager has always puzzled its readers. It’s an old story that bucks like a young horse the moment you try to put a saddle on it. We’re looking at a man running out of time, making urgent decisions under the pressure of a world coming apart; and Jesus praises him—not for being dishonest, but for being shrewd: he was quick, creative, and decisive when he realized that his squandering days were over.

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, and we have been notified that charges have been brought against us that we have been squandering the master’s property with careless, loveless, and sometimes clueless stewardship. We clearly need to be reminded constantly, that we cannot serve God and wealth. “The domain ruled by wealth is a dangerous habitat,” writes John Carroll, “for attachment to wealth entangles one in concerns that run counter to the … commitments of the realm of God.”[1] And five hundred years ago, Martin Luther wrote,

Many a one thinks that he has God and everything in abundance when he has money and possessions; he trusts in them and boasts of them with such firmness and assurance as to care for no one. Lo, such a man also has a god, Mammon by name, i.e., money and possessions, on which he sets all his heart, and which is also the most common idol on earth.[2]

No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

Some of the clothes I wore on the trail and on the water this summer were made from recycled one-way water bottles and discarded fishing nets that were pulled from the ocean. Several of them were made by Patagonia. On Wednesday, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, revealed that he and his family had given away the company and that all future profits from the apparel maker would go toward fighting the climate crisis.

“Rather than selling the company or taking it public,” David Gelles wrote in the New York Times,

Mr. Chouinard, his wife and two adult children have transferred their ownership of Patagonia, valued at about $3 billion, to a specially designed trust and a nonprofit organization. They were created to preserve the company’s independence and ensure that all of its profits — some $100 million a year — are used to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe. …

“Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,” Mr. Chouinard, 83, said in an interview. “We are going to give away the maximum amount of money to people who are actively working on saving this planet.”[3]

“Earth is now our only shareholder,” Chouinard wrote in a letter posted on the company website.[4]

I tend to read corporate PR with great suspicion, especially when they tell me what I want to hear. But I hope they will be successful and that others will follow their example.

Our squandering days are over. The manager in Jesus’ story realized that his familiar world was coming to an end and he jumped into action. He invested himself and all his resources in the world to come. Shrewd like that is how Jesus wants us to be so that we may inherit fullness of life.

[1] John T. Carroll, Luke: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 125-126.

[2] Large Catechism, Explanation of the First Commandment at http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/catechism/web/cat-03.html

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-climate-philanthropy-chouinard.html

see also

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/climate/yvon-chouinard-patagonia-philanthropy.html

[4] https://www.patagonia.com/home/

God's Language of Imagination

For many reasons, I love Children’s Bibles. When done well, they are a wonderful tool to help learners of all ages and abilities to hear about God’s presence in the world and God’s relationship with God’s people. I love the artistic interpretations that illustrators create. I love that they can cover massive amounts of text in a way that is accessible and understandable. And I love the fact that with careful listening, adults can hear familiar stories in a new way. No, they aren’t exact translations. Yes, they are an invitation into God’s story. So this summer, most weeks we’ll hear at least one story from a Children’s Bibles. For kiddos, I invited you to listen and hear God working in the world. And for adults, I invite you to notice some differences and wonder why some of those choices were made. And I invite you to ask some of the kids this summer, “What did you notice? What made you wonder?” You may be surprised at their answers!

This story of Pentecost is an invitation into the people of God. It’s an invitation to imagine what could be, to imagine what the Kingdom of God on Earth might look like and sound like and feel like. It’s an invitation to engage and create something new, at God’s insistence. It compels a response to God’s call. For those who lean on empire and coercive power, imagination can be a dangerous exercise. It leans into abundant possibilities that liberate.

“The book of Acts speaks of revolution. We must never forget this.”[1] writes theologian Willie James Jennings. After the seemingly endless news of violence over the past days, weeks, and months, after the seemingly constant barrage of accounts and witnesses of injustices, the idea that the story of Acts speaks of revolution feels almost like relief. But, as we see in this story, and heard in other stories of Acts—Peter and Cornelius, Tabitha, Paul and Silas—this revolution isn’t coercive or violent. No, this revolution is compassionate and invitational. It invites us, as listeners and readers, into the story of and into relationship with God: A God that is revealed and made known, again and again, in new and surprising ways; a God that does not rely on the power of empire, but is made known in the wisdom and experiences of the child, the widow, the slave, and the oppressed. “God speaks people fluently. And God, with all the urgency that is with the Holy Spirit, wants the disciples of his only begotten Son to speak people fluently too. This is the beginning of a revolution that the Spirit performs.”[2]

Again and again, we’re invited into the story. We’re invited to recognize God’s presence and God’s spirit. We’re encouraged to imagine what a new world, what God’s Kingdom on Earth, might look like and feel like. And we’re invited to help shape that reality, not only as individuals but as larger communities. We're invited to imagine and we’re invited to ask others to imagine with us.

Like John the Baptist proclaiming, “Repent! The Kingdom of God is at hand!,” Peter and the apostles proclaim God’s presence in the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Peter and the apostles praise a God whose Spirit and presence is revealed and made known in a rush of wind and tongues of fire. But, as miraculous as it was to hear such news in a variety of languages—it was a struggle for many to believe. It was easier to write Peter off by saying they were drunk. Still today, it’s a struggle and a challenge to yield to God’s Spirit, following God into the new that God imagines and is bringing about for the world.[3] To imagine, to wonder, to lean into to God’s Spirit that doesn’t work in the ways that we’re used to can be hard in a world that often demands black and white answers and is too often fueled by greed and violence. 

And yet God continues to show up in the world, constantly, continually, throughout time and place. God continues to be in relationship with the world, speaking to people fluently, in ways that we might understand. The story in Acts shows us what God’s design might be for the world—that in all our diversity, we are known by God and that we seek to continue to know God. It makes plain God’s call and our response, our call and God’s response.

Sometimes that requires a different voice or different language, different imagery and illustrations, different life experiences and different questions to help each of us recognize God’s expansive love, that God knows us and wants us to know God and others. We’re reminded that God is not made in our image, but that we are made in God’s. And so we celebrate the diversity and work to understand friend, neighbor, stranger, and even enemy. And maybe in turn, even be truly known. It’s a powerful, revolutionary act to speak in a way that another understands. It’s a gift in and of itself.

My father’s first language is Samoan, but growing up in Southern Indiana didn’t afford us many opportunities to interact with the Samoan community. And even though he lived in the States longer than he lived in Samoa, whenever he met someone from “back home,” he was noticeably different. His countenance visibly changed. He held himself differently. His eyes seemed brighter. And after switching back to English, he spoke differently, almost as if his Spirit was lifted from that encounter. Because he didn’t have to explain his experiences or code switch and he didn’t have to deal with micro-aggressions. He could just be known. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve recognized what a gift it was to him.

Church, what are the languages we need to learn so that this revolution of the Spirit might be more fully known? What is the language of God we most desperately need to hear so that we might be transformed?[4] How might we be changed so that the Spirit’s daring revolution might break us open in ways that we might not only imagine possibilities, but that we might work towards making them a reality here on Earth?

Over a year ago, a “Faith Formation Task Force” gathered to help name what was integral to our community of faith and helped give language to principles/pillars that help ground us so that we might share the love of God with ourselves, our neighbors, and the world. These pillars invite us to practice together, to make space to be authentically known, and to affirm our many gifts. They have been written about and shared briefly, but this summer we’ll be taking a deeper dive to each of these eleven pillars so that we might imagine together, be transformed together, that we might offer welcome, and that we might recognize God’s presence in and among us.

May we give thanks for the multitude of diverse ways God’s makes Godself known to us in big and small ways. May we celebrate the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. May our language, our minds, and our actions be opened to the Spirit’s transformative and revolutionary ways. May we learn together to speak to and with people a little more fluently. Guided by Christ’s teachings, may we imagine together. And may we work together in compassion, justice, and love.

[1] Pg.1 Jennings WJ. Acts / Willie James Jennings. First edition. Westminster John Knox Press; 2017.

[2] Ibid. 30. 

[3] Ibid. 2.

[4] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/ecopreacher/2017/06/lengua-dios-pentecost-language-god/. Accessed June 1, 2022.

Courage to love

My friend Virzola is a pastor in Texas. On Wednesday, between prayers and outrage, she wrote a post about her granddaughter. “Ava had lots of questions still this morning. We tried to shield her from the news. Her mom put her to bed … but she woke up and saw us watching the news. And this morning she said, ‘Today is super hero day at my school.’” Virzola did everything she could not to cry, but tears flowed as her little girl, dressed in pink tights, with a shiny pink satin cape draped around her shoulder, proclaimed, “Ava will save the day.”

“She had questions,” Virzola wrote, “and she had answers.” And I have a lot more confidence in a little girl’s super powers, than in the ability of some of our political leaders to stand up straight with anything resembling a backbone. Dressed in their navy power suits, they repeated the old talking points of the gun industry. “What we need now is a top-to-bottom security overhaul at schools all across our country. Every building should have a single point of entry,” one of them said on Friday in Houston, at the great assembly of the true believers. “There should be strong exterior fencing, metal detectors and the use of new technology to make sure that no unauthorized individual can ever enter the school with a weapon.”[1]

They refer to this as “hardening soft targets.” We need to harden schools, and I assume that means we must also harden grocery stores. And churches, and synagogues and temples. And don’t leave us vulnerable at malls and movie theaters. And perhaps we ought to consider replacing school busses with armored personnel carriers? The hardening of soft targets goes hand in hand with the softening of constitutional thinking that insists, against all historical evidence, that the Second Amendment “gives anyone, anywhere in the country, the power to mow down civilians with military weapons.”[2]

Asking for prayers, the archbishop of Chicago reminded the faithful that “the Second Amendment did not come down from Sinai.” But the second and third commandment certainly did. Another bishop spoke of sacrifice, stating that “this bloody sacrifice of children enabled by the death-culture of guns cannot be justified by appeals to ‘rights’.” And a chaplain at Harvard also spoke of sacrifice, “Our society is in deep crisis. We desperately need to relearn how to sacrifice for one another.”[3]

The bishop’s decision not to call the massacre at Robb Elementary School a tragedy but a “bloody sacrifice of children” shocks us into realizing that what we have witnessed again is the idolatrous ritual of a blasphemous death cult. And the chaplain’s words point to the reversal that is needed: from sacrificing others on the altar of our presumed “rights” to “relearning how to sacrifice for one another.”

After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School ten years ago, Garry Wills wrote,

Few crimes are more harshly forbidden in the Old Testament than sacrifice to the god Moloch (for which see Leviticus 18.21, 20.1-5). The sacrifice referred to was of living children consumed in the fires of offering to Moloch. Ever since then, worship of Moloch has been the sign of a deeply degraded culture.

Wills quotes lines from Paradise Lost, where Milton represented Moloch as the first pagan god who joined Satan’s war on humankind:

First Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood

Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,

Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud

Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire

To his grim idol.

Against the noise of distractors Wills insists that

The horror [of the massacre] cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. … Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. … The answer to problems caused by guns is more guns, millions of guns, guns everywhere, carried openly, carried secretly, in bars, in churches, in offices, in government buildings. Only the lack of guns can be a curse, not their beneficent omnipresence.[4]

How can we turn away from this horrifying idolatry? How can we “relearn how to sacrifice for one another”? I am convinced little Ava knows the power that’s needed. “Ava will save the day,” she declared with great confidence, ready to step into the world, with her pink satin super hero cape. Ava knows she is loved by her mom and dad, her granny, her siblings and cousins, and she knows all of them are loved by Jesus, and that God, who is big enough to love all people and all animals and the whole universe, does indeed love all people and all that God has made. Ava knows she is loved, and that’s the best super power of all. In her family, and in the company of Jesus, she is learning how all people and all thing are one in the love of God, and that gives her the courage to love others.

The gospel reading for today comes from Jesus’ last night with the disciples. He has shared a meal with them. He has washed their feet and told them, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”[5] He has responded to all their worried, anxious questions about his going away. And now he stops addressing them, and starts praying for them, praying for us. His final words that night aren’t last-minute instructions about how to be God’s people in the world. His final words are words of prayer, and we have the privilege of overhearing what he says. In the other three Gospels, when Jesus prays before he is arrested, he is in Gethsemane, and he prays alone. Even his most trusted disciples are some distance away from him, and rather than praying with him or keeping watch, they fall asleep.[6] In John, the disciples, and we with them, get to witness the intimacy of the relationship between Jesus and the one he has consistently called “my Father” and “your Father.”

“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you,” Jesus prays, “may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” He prays for us to be drawn into the intimacy and mutuality of their life. And he prays for us to be drawn into the communion of love that is God, he doesn’t just make it so, because there is nothing coercive about this love. The commandment he has given us is new not in commanding us to love one another, but to love one another as he has loved us. This means that the center of the circle of love that holds us, as well as the radius that determines its reach, have been marked and drawn by Jesus, the Word of God made flesh. And the purpose of this wide-reaching unity is not only for us to find fullness of life in our communion with God and one another. The purpose is beyond us. The purpose is for the world to be fully alive. It was for love of the world that God sent the Son, and in Jesus’ great intercession, the farthest horizon of love’s reach is still the world, even the hostile world, the idolatrous, violence-torn, gun-obsessed world. He prays for us that our unity in love will be a living witness to God’s love for the world, and that the whole world may let itself be drawn into the consummation of life in the communion of love that is God.

We have been entrusted with the sacred responsibility of making the love of God visible and tangible in the world. Frightened and prone to stumbling into idolatrous paths as we are, God has entrusted the continuation of Christ’s mission to us. And John wants us to know that we belong to the community for whom Jesus prays. We are not alone in our mourning. We are not alone when our capacity to hurt each other breaks our hearts. We are not alone in our prayers for the world’s healing. We are not alone when we sacrifice for one another. And we are not alone when we ask for the courage to love as Jesus has loved us.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-schools-must-harden-after-uvalde-texas-already-tried-that-1711100

[2] See Garry Wills’s article from 1995 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1995/sep/21/to-keep-and-bear-arms/

[3] Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago; Archbishop Elpidophoros, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America; Greg Epstein, humanist chaplain, Harvard University https://religionnews.com/2022/05/25/uvalde-school-shooting-faith-leaders-offer-comfort-call-for-reform-of-gun-laws/

[4] Garry Wills, “Our Moloch,” New York Review, December 15, 2012 https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/12/15/our-moloch/

[5] John 13:34-35

[6] See Mark 14:32-42 and parallels

Clarity will come

Paul was in prison when he wrote his letter to the Philippians. But despite the most unpleasant circumstances, joy and gratitude infuse his writing from beginning to end. “I thank my God for every remembrance of you, always in every one of my prayers for all of you, praying with joy for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”[1]

When Luke later wrote in Acts about this partnership in the gospel from the first day, he lifted up one woman in particular. Her name was Lydia, and according to Luke, she was the first person on European soil to embrace the gospel with faith.

Paul and his missionary team had been traveling in what is today Turkey. They had been city-hopping, as it were, following the Roman roads that were major arteries for the exchange of goods and ideas, but it doesn’t appear that they had planned their route well in advance. Luke writes, “They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.” Forbidden by the Holy Spirit, Luke writes, without any further explanation what that might have looked like. “When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” It was the Spirit of Jesus, Luke insists, in case some of us readers might wonder if perhaps it was the spirit of censorship or the spirit of fear that did not allow them to take their proclamation to those regions. “So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas.”[2]

“They stumble around the region, running into one barrier after another set up by God,” writes one commentator. “Barred by the Spirit from going south and west into Asia or from going north into Bythinia, Paul [and his team appear] backed into a coastal corner at Troas by God’s strange and repeated ‘no.’”[3] I mentioned last Sunday that the book of the Acts of the Apostles might as well be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit, because everything that unfolds in the wake of God’s pouring out God’s Spirit on all people is Spirit-infused, Spirit-guided, Spirit-driven. I wish Luke had written a little more about how they determined that their next stop wouldn’t be Bythinia, how they knew it wasn’t because they weren’t trying hard enough to get there, but because God had a different route in mind for them.

So now the team was on the coast in Troas, with no idea where to turn next. And there, during the night, a vision came to Paul: it was a man from Macedonia urging Paul, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” And now something marvelous happens in Luke’s story. Up to this point, it’s all “the disciples did this and the apostles did that, Peter did this and Cornelius did that, the circumcised believers did this and the Gentile believers did that.” But in Troas, in the morning, the narrator’s perspective shifts:

Immediately after Paul saw the vision, we prepared to leave for the province of Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.

As readers, we’re still following the carefully investigated and compiled account of a historically informed writer,[4] but now the story is no longer presented from an observer’s perspective, but from the perspective of a participant. The story is no longer just their adventure, it’s ours: Immediately after Paul saw the vision, we prepared to leave for the province of Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. Paul received the vision, but interpreting it wasn’t up to him alone. We discerned, writes Luke, that this was God’s call, and that the help which was needed was the preaching of the good news, and that the call was for immediate action.[5] Again, I wish Luke had written a little more about the process of discernment; clearly it wasn’t a matter of Paul coming down the stairs in the morning, pouring himself a cup of coffee, and telling the rest of the team who were sitting around the kitchen island, “I had a dream last night. Pack your things. We’re going to Macedonia.” The church, over the centuries, has been in Troas countless times, not certain where to go next, often wrestling with the nagging worry that perhaps God wanted it to go to Bythinia after all, that perhaps the last time it had attempted to go there, it just hadn’t prayed hard enough, planned hard enough, worked hard enough. Luke doesn’t go into the details of discernment, and I think he doesn’t because to him it’s not a matter of meticulously following a detailed process — the church forever doing just what the apostles did and how they did it. The way I understand Luke’s witness, the only thing that really matters, is for the church — every manifestation of the church, from the ministry team of two or three, to the congregation, to the conference of bishops, and the World Council of Churches — the only thing that matters, is for the church to entrust itself wholeheartedly to God’s movement in the world. With such trust in the Spirit of Jesus, clarity will come.

Paul and his team got into a boat to the island of Samothrace, then sailed on to Neapolis, a lovely seaside town in the northern Aegean, and once on land they didn’t linger on the beach, but walked eight miles inland to Philippi. No meandering here, no attempting to go this way or that way, just a straight journey from Troas to Philippi, a Roman colony, as Luke mentions. “[The city] was the heart of the Empire’s project in this corner of the world,” writes Brian Peterson, “a place that lived like an extended section of Rome itself, intended to be an example of what Rome offers to the world.”[6] And now this little missionary team showed up, this gospel avantgarde of the kingdom of God, a community of witness to a way of life that subverts systems of domination, a living testimony to what Jesus offers to the world.

Upon their arrival in the city, nothing much happens for a while. Luke isn’t very specific, only tells us that they were there for “some days.” The appeal in the vision was urgent. The team’s response to it was immediate. But then they were just there for some days, waiting for God to move.

Luke doesn’t mention a synagogue, and perhaps there wasn’t a large enough Jewish community in the city to sustain one. Synagogues were typically the first stop for Paul and his team, according to Luke. Philippi wasn’t typical. On the sabbath, they went outside the gate to the river, thinking they might find a group of worshippers there. And they did, and most of them, possibly all of them, were women. And one of them was Lydia. Paul’s vision was about a Macedonian man, but the first to receive the gospel of Jesus with faith in Philippi was a woman, and to add one more layer of holy unexpectedness, she wasn’t even Macedonian: Lydia was a business woman from Thyatira, a city in the Roman province of Asia, from the very area where the Spirit had forbidden the team to go. When you entrust yourselves to the movement of God in the world, apparently you better brace yourselves for some old rugs of expectation to be pulled from under your feet.

Paul talked and Lydia listened eagerly, but Luke doesn’t mention even a word of what Paul had to say, because it was God who opened her heart. The heart has ears no preacher can open, not even Paul — charm, eloquence, conviction, empathy and wisdom are wonderful gifts and skills, but at best they can lay words on a listener’s heart. Only God can open hearts to receive the Word. Only God can open eyes to recognize Christ in the stranger. Only God can open minds to let the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus, which is God’s way of subverting our proud dreams of supremacy, domination, and empire with the promise of God’s reign.[7]

Lydia was baptized along with her entire household, which makes me wonder if God opened all those other hearts as well, or if workers and children simply had to follow the head of household’s lead — I hope it was the former. Lydia was a business woman of substantial means, and entrusting herself to the movement of God in the world, she opened her home to become the first mission station in this Roman colony, making her the first leader of what may well have been the first house church in Europe. When Paul wrote his letter to the church in Philippi, thanking them for their partnership in the gospel, he didn’t mention Lydia — I hope this was only because there were too many local leaders to mention by name.

Luke tells us, that after Paul and Silas were released from jail in Philippi, and before they got on the road to Thessalonica, they went to Lydia’s home.[8] There they encouraged the brothers and sisters, and no doubt received encouragement for the long road ahead. Together they entrusted themselves to the movement of God in the world. May we go with them.

[1] Philippians 1:3-5

[2] Acts 16:6-8

[3] Brian Peterson https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-of-easter-3/commentary-on-acts-169-15

[4] See Luke 1:1-3

[5] See Brian Peterson https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-of-easter-3/commentary-on-acts-169-15

[6] Ibid.

[7] Compare the various divine openings that occur in Luke 24: 31,32,45; Philippians 2:5

[8] Acts 16:40

Conversions

The book of Acts is volume two to the Gospel that bears Luke’s name. It’s full name is The Acts of the Apostles, yet it could also be called The Acts of the Holy Spirit Poured out on all Flesh. It tells the story of the first believers struggling to keep up with the movement of God’s Spirit after God had raised Jesus from the dead. The opening chapters of Acts are centered in Jerusalem, but the Spirit pushes outward, and soon we hear about Philip’s witness in Samaria and the wilderness baptism of a man on his way back from Jerusalem to Ethiopia. But what presents the most difficult challenges to the first witnesses isn’t geography or the hardships and dangers of travel: it’s learning to think about themselves as participants in God’s movement in the world.

One of the most significant divisions in the ancient Jewish world was between Jews — God’s people, called to live in righteousness and holiness — and Gentiles, seen as living far from God in the darkness of their idolatrous ways. And now the good news of Jesus was spilling over into the Gentile world, crossing boundaries and reshaping identities that had been in place for generations. In Acts, Luke masterfully compresses this gradual, very difficult, and contested development into a sequence of dramatic scenes with Peter as a key character.

Last Sunday, Nancy read Acts 9:36-43, the story about Peter praying at Tabitha’s bedside. Tabitha had died, and after praying for her, Peter told her to get up — and she opened her eyes and got up. The scene concludes with the narrator’s comment, “This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.” The next verse, verse 43, seemed a little odd as a conclusion to the reading, so Nancy asked, “Do I have to read the last verse? Meanwhile [Peter] stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner. What does that have to do with anything?” So, she ended the reading with verse 42. That odd verse 43 doesn’t add anything to the story about Tabitha, but it prepares Luke’s audience for the story that unfolds over the next two chapters. Peter was in Joppa, a port on the Mediterranean, on the edge of the Jewish heartland, where he was staying at the home of Simon the tanner. Tanners work with animal carcasses, and their occupation made it very difficult for them to remain ritually clean. Many pious Jews would have chosen a different place to stay on a visit to Joppa. So, Peter wasn’t just on the edge of the Jewish heartland; he was awfully close to the boundary line of purity and holiness. Some would have thought that Peter had already gone too far, but this was only the beginning.

Now Luke introduces Cornelius, an officer in the Roman army, in Caesarea, forty miles up the coast from Joppa. Caesarea was a thoroughly Gentile port city, but Luke lets us know that Cornelius was a devout, God-fearing man. They knew him at the synagogue, and they liked and respected him. He participated regularly in the daily prayers and shabbat services, and he gave generously to those in need. Cornelius was as close to being a Jew as a male Gentile could be without undergoing circumcision. And one afternoon Cornelius had a vision. An angel of God came to him and said, “Cornelius! Your prayers and gifts to the poor have ascended as a memorial before God. Send messengers to Joppa and bring back a man named Simon, who is known as Peter. He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.” Cornelius called two of his servants and a soldier from his personal staff, and sent them to Joppa.

In the next scene, we see Peter on the roof the house, where he’s praying. He became hungry, and while the meal was being prepared, he had a vision. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being lowered to the earth by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four-legged animals, as well as reptiles and birds. And a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”

“Absolutely not, Lord!” Peter exclaimed. “I have never eaten anything that is impure or unclean.” The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” This happened three times. Three times — who would have thought that a heavenly voice could run into such resistance! Clearly a lot was at stake here for Peter. What he was told to do went against some of his most deeply held convictions, things he had been taught since he was a little boy.

Now while Peter was wondering what to make of this very persistent vision, the men sent by Cornelius arrived at the gate, and the Spirit interrupted his thoughts, “Simon, three men are looking for you. Get up and go downstairs, and do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them.” So, Peter went down and the men told him, “We’ve come on behalf of Cornelius, a centurion in Caesarea; he is a righteous and God-fearing man, who is well-respected by all Jewish people. A holy angel told him to ask you to come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say.” Peter invited the three into the house as his guests, and the next day he went with them, and some of the believers from Joppa went along.

Anticipating their arrival, Cornelius had gathered his relatives and close friends. Upon entering the house, Peter found a large gathering of people, and he said to them, “You all are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. However, God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?” Cornelius told him of his vision and said, “It was good of you to come. Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to all that the Lord has commanded you to tell us.” And Peter said, “I now realize that God shows no partiality to one group of people over another. Rather, in every nation, whoever worships him and does what is right is acceptable to God.” And while he was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. God was indeed pouring out God’s Spirit on all flesh! Peter declared, “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water; they have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” So he ordered the whole Gentile assembly to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

An ancient boundary, deeply embedded in Jewish life and tradition, was eroding and collapsing. It was astonishing, yet for all who were there, their actions only followed the lead of God’s Spirit — they certainly felt quite uncomfortable on the way, but they went anyway, prodded by the Spirit, and to them their actions didn’t manifest disobedience, but rather true obedience.

Back in Jerusalem, Peter was criticized for crossing the line: “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them?” Brian Peterson writes,

To those serious about Israel’s covenant, eating with Gentiles carried a whiff of idolatry. It might have been understandable to preach the good news to these Gentiles. It might even have been acceptable to baptize the household, especially if the Spirit was as evident as Peter alleged. However, those in Jerusalem apparently did not agree with Peter in how to interpret, and even more importantly how to embody, what this event meant. Baptism admitted these Gentiles into some level of belonging.[1]

Maybe Gentile faith and baptism meant that they could be welcomed at the table where the disciples of Jesus gathered; but should disciples of the Lord really join a Gentile table?

Luke then tells the story of Peter telling them the whole story, and it all ends beautifully. Peter says, “God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ—who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?” And his critics praise God and say, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

Even to the Gentiles. The church in the first generation moved from a carefully bounded ethnic identity to a multi-ethnic, Christ-centered identity, and it wasn’t the church’s doing. The initiative was God’s and the church followed — slowly, hesitantly, but Jewish and Gentile believers followed. Both Cornelius and Peter were given visions that allowed them to see what God was up to. Both were given new identities as recipients of God’s boundary-crossing initiative. Both were given new purpose as witnesses to the wideness of God’s embrace of the whole human family. And Luke shows us repentance that leads to life not only among the Gentiles in Cornelius’s household, but also among Peter’s circumcised fellow believers in Jerusalem. We witness a miraculous change of heart, inspired by the Lord, that infused the early believers with a radically transformed sense of the kind of community that is possible in God’s new realm.[2]

It is tragic that for centuries, conversion has meant that they have to become like us in order to be acceptable, or that we have to become like them. But Luke tells a different story, a powerful corrective to that dominant story of conversion: in obedience to the Spirit’s guidance people welcome one another despite all that divides them. They welcome the stranger, ready to hear what divine word they might bring. They enter the house of the stranger, not to take it over and make it their house, but completely entrusting themselves to the Spirit’s movement and work.

What if we, amid the seismic shifts we’re experiencing and the deep divisions we watch only getting deeper, what if we entrusted ourselves to the Spirit’s movement and work? What if we went, wherever we go, trusting that God is already there, preparing encounters for our continuing conversion into the likeness of Christ? What if we embraced, in every encounter, the repentance that leads to life?

In Revelation, the end of our story is seen as a city. “See, the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them; they will be God’s peoples, and God will be with them and be their God.” According to John, our story doesn’t end with all of them finally becoming like us; it ends with God being at home with God’s peoples. And you heard that right, it’s peoples, plural. The One who is making all things new delights in plurality and is at work even now to heal all our divisions. Thanks be to God.

[1] Brian Peterson https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter-3/commentary-on-acts-111-18-4

[2] See Karl Kuhn https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter-3/commentary-on-acts-111-18-5