Unimportant. Forgettable.

The first line of the New Testament reads, An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. The gospel according to Matthew opens with a long list of names, beginning with the age of the patriarchs, then tracing the line of David through the age of kings to the deportation to Babylon, and from the exile to the Messiah. Imagine you’re the reader at the lectern. The opening verses of Matthew, that’s your worst-night-mare scenario: line after line of near-unpronounceable names from A like Aminadab to Z like Zerubbabel.

When you quietly read the Bible by yourself, those are the parts you usually skip, why would anybody think that stuff like that ought to be read in worship? Well, the lectionary which recommends readings for each worship service of the year, skips those parts, too, and goes straight to Jesus, Mary and Joseph in verse 18. Yet our ancestors in the faith found significance in that long list of names; we miss that by skipping them.

We miss the names of four women sprinkled among the names of all those fathers: Tamar, the widow of one of Judah’s sons, who was found to be pregnant long after her husband’s death; and Judah harshly denounced her until he realized that he himself was the father.[1] Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute from Jericho who was praised as righteous.[2] Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, who became pregnant by David and told him.[3] And Ruth, the Moabite, who slipped under Boaz’s blanket to convince him to marry her. These four women practiced a kind of righteousness that might appear scandalous, and they prepare us for a seeming scandal in the fifth woman named in the Messiah’s lineage, Mary. They also prepare us for Joseph who is called to practice a kind of righteousness that might appear scandalous, but serves the saving purposes of God.

What we miss by not reading the genealogy is that of the fourteen kings that Matthew lists only two could be con­sidered as faithful to God’s covenant laws. “The rest were an odd assort­ment of idolaters, murderers, incompetents, power-seekers, and harem-wastrels,” as Raymond E. Brown put it.[4] We also miss that most of Jesus’ ancestors after the Babylonian exile were unknown people whose names were never entered in the records of “sacred history for having done something significant.” What we miss is the marvelous unpredictability of God who clearly is not in the habit of choosing the best or the noble or the saintly, and who accomplishes the divine purposes through people whom “others regard as unimportant and forgettable.”[5]

Unimportant and forgettable describes Joseph quite well. In our Christmas pageants, he rarely ever gets a speaking part, and if he does, it’s little more than a brief exchange with a grumpy innkeeper. On paintings of the nativity, he is usually depicted as an older man in the background who is trying to make himself useful by holding a lantern or putting a blanket on Mary’s shoulders. Of the four gospels, Matthew is the only one that draws our attention to him at all. Luke barely mentions him. And even in Matthew, he appears in chapter one, disappears by chapter two, and never utters a direct sentence. Unimportant. Forgettable.

Joseph was engaged to Mary and in his day that meant they had already signed the marriage license. Even though they weren’t yet living under one roof together, everyone knew them to be husband and wife. In those days, if some problem arose during this transition period, you couldn’t just cancel the cake and the caterer, you had to file for divorce. And for Joseph, a problem had arisen indeed, and with every passing week, the problem got a little bigger. An old English carol tells us,

Joseph and Mary walked through an orchard green,
Where was berries and cherries, as thick as might be seen.

O then bespoke Mary, so meek and so mild:
‘Pluck me one cherry, Joseph, for I am with child.’

O then bespoke Joseph, with words most unkind:
‘Let him pluck thee a cherry that got thee with child.’[6]

That’s not what Matthew tells us. The carol ends with Jesus, from the womb, commanding the tallest tree to bend down before Mary so that she can pick as many cherries as she pleases. The boy and his mother take center stage, and Joseph, once again, is pushed to the edge of the scene. Matthew is more than careful to note that Joseph was anything but unkind. Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. Of all the options he had, Joseph chose the kindest one. He could have chosen to shame Mary by publicly demanding a divorce. He could have chosen to have her stoned to death for adultery—he could have, it was perfectly lawful, and some of his neighbors, had they known about the situation, probably would have expected him to uphold the demands of a man’s honor and of God’s law, which in this and many other cases were identical.

Joseph was a righteous man, a man who sought to live according to the commandments of God, but apparently he didn’t “just do what the book says.”[7] He was living a different kind of righteousness. The only way to honor God’s law and Mary was to divorce her discreetly so as not to humiliate her and her family or endanger her and the child. And just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” What appeared to be a moral outrage and cause for righteous indignation, turned out to be, according to the words of the dream angel, a divine initiative. The child in Mary’s womb, the angel said, was not a violation of God’s holy will, but an expression of it, a gift from the Holy Spirit, for the salvation of God’s people. [8]

It was a moment that called for great courage in obeying. Joseph was to keep his marriage to Mary and he was to name Mary’s child Jesus, thus adopting him as his son and making him a son of David. When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife … and he named him Jesus.

We can read the Bible as a book of rules, and seek to live a kind of righteousness that keeps everything in proper order. We can read the Bible and find justification for abusing, humiliating, disgracing, and hurting, and it’s all in proper order. But the story of Jesus starts out with proper order being completely rearranged, which is Matthew’s way of saying that with the coming of Jesus a new kind of righteousness is moving from the background to the center. A righteousness of radical grace. The story of Jesus begins like the story of creation, with the stirring of God’s Spirit. Through this baby, God is making all things new.

According to Fred Craddock, “Joseph is the first person in the New Testament who learned how to read the Bible.” He rose above conventional morality and read Scripture through a lens of radical grace, the lens of a God who authors salvation in unpredictable ways on the crooked lines of our lives. And with great courage Joseph embraced the new life God had initiated and asked him to adopt, quite literally. Joseph was the first person to face the tension of “You have heard that it was said … but I say to you,” the tension between the prevailing understanding of God’s commandments and the newness that entered the world through Jesus.[9] To Matthew, Joseph was the first disciple, already living out the new and better righteousness of the kingdom which Jesus came to proclaim.[10]

Back to the genealogy. Laura Mendenhall suggests, that “when the angel came to Joseph, perhaps God had two adoptions in mind.” The first one would have been Jesus’ adoption as a son of Joseph and therefore a son of David and a son of Abraham. And through the second one “Joseph and his whole family were made part of Jesus’ family.” All the way back to Abraham, the whole family was included into the story of Jesus who came to save his people from their sins. “That whole family tree, the good, the bad, and the ugly, were all adopted when Joseph named the child Jesus.”[11]

The God who wrote the beginnings of our redemption with crooked lines also writes the rest of the story with crooked lines, and some of those lines are our own lives and witness. God continues to use the unknown and the unsung for God’s saving purposes. No one is unimportant. No one is too insignificant to contribute to the story of Jesus Christ in the world. Joseph remains on the edge of the scene, but not his kindness, not his courage. May they illuminate our hearts as we await the final coming of Christ.

[1] Genesis 38

[2] Joshua 2 and James 2:25

[3] 2 Samuel 11

[4] Raymond E. Brown, A Coming Christ in Advent: Essays on the Gospel Narratives Preparing for the Birth of Jesus: Matthew 1 and Luke 1 (Collegeville, Minnesota: LTP, 1988)

[5] Ibid.

[6] The Cherry Tree Carol http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch054.htm

[7] Fred Craddock, “God is with us,” The Cherry Log Sermons (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) 5.

[8] See Thomas G. Long, Matthew. Westminster Bible Companion, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 13.

[9] See Mt 5:21-48

[10] Mt 5:20

[11] Laura S. Mendenhall, “Adoption” Journal for Preachers Vol. 25, No. 1 (Advent 2001), 41.

Patient impatience

Isaiah is a great poet among the prophets of Israel. Again and again, his oracles read like they want to be sung, and in today’s joyous announcement of God’s Advent, even the desert, the most lifeless place on earth imaginable, sings.

Isaiah sings of the day when the parched, desolate land rejoices, and bodies that were bound by weariness and despair, sing and dance in a glorious procession of life, on the way to the city of God. Listen! The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. Listen and see the dry and desolate wilderness turned into a verdant and fruitful landscape. See the deathly, desperate land transformed with an eruption of lush life. Listen, look, hum along, and sing! Watch as human beings are being transformed: hands strengthened, knees made firm, hearts healed, eyes and ears, limbs and tongues! Every part of the body not yet engaged in praising the Giver of life is strengthened, opened, healed, unbound! Somebody’s wondering, How can this be? Take it in, let it be.

Chuck Campbell taught preaching at Columbia Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, before he went to Duke. In one of his classes, he required students to lead worship and preach at the Open Door Shelter for unhoused people in downtown Atlanta. One day they were gathered for worship in front of the shelter, amid the noise of rush-hour traffic. They sang a song, despite the noise, against the noise, and then Chuck’s lesson plans were interrupted.

I noticed one homeless man waving to me and pointing to himself. I was surprised when I saw him for the man can neither hear nor speak and is normally very reserved. But there he was, eager to do something. He stepped into the middle of the circle, bowed his head in silence, and began to sign a hymn for us. It was beautiful, like a dance… In that moment our notions of ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’ were turned upside down. The rest of us had been shouting to be heard, but the noise was no problem for our friend.[1]

Normally very reserved, the man burst into song with his hands, his arms, his whole body, fully alive in the worship circle that pointed to the beloved community and embodied it.

“Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come and save you.” God is here. God will come. The prophet offers assurance for the present and the future. God will come, and God’s salvation will encompass all of creation. In Isaiah poetry of redemption, the desert becomes a sea of blossoms, and it rejoices with joy and singing; the lame person is able to walk – but they don’t just walk, they leap like a deer; and the speechless person doesn’t just talk, they shout and sing, with hearts and hands and voices. All of creation is over the top with life and joy! Patricia Tull writes,

It’s true that presuming every blind eye will open — whether literally or metaphorically — is a presumptuous mistake. But so is expecting no blind eyes to open.

In faith, however, we do not take a stance of presumption, but of radical openness to the presence and promises of God. We take a stance of hope and expectancy. And hope proceeds not simply from God’s expected reversals, but from the people the prophet seeks to inspire: a small band of exiles who embrace the promise;  they push back the chaos and recultivate the burned land; they let hope strengthen their weak hands, they let faith make their feeble knees firm, and in wonder they witness the courage of their once fearful hearts. “This is a reversal we don’t have to wait for,” writes Patricia Tull. “It’s one we can enact every day.”[2]

Isaiah sings and James counsels patience. He does so after pronouncing God’s judgment on greed and exploitation. “Come now, you rich people… listen!” he declares at the beginning of ch. 5.

The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.[3]

James counsels patience—until the coming of the Lord. This patience isn’t stoic acceptance, let alone resignation. It is anticipation. And anticipation inspires action.

On November 30, 1955, the night before the launch of the Montgomery bus boycott, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said,

There comes a time when people get tired. We are here this evening to say to those who have mistreated us so long that we are tired—tired of being segregated and humiliated; tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression. We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white [siblings] the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved… to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.

It matters greatly who counsels patience, in what context, and to what end. In April 1963, Dr. King responded to a group of ministers who were counseling patience, by writing his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was “well timed” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait.” … This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” … We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” … There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over … I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.[4]

The white religious leaders in the crosshairs of his Letter were not outliers but reflected the views of majority American society, according to Matt Skinner. One survey from 1964, the year after King penned his “Letter,” found [that] 63% of Americans agreed that “civil rights leaders are trying to push too fast.”[5]

It matters greatly who counsels patience, in what context, and to what end. Again in Montgomery, in 1965, at the end of the march from Selma, Dr. King said,

I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” Somebody’s asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?” Somebody's asking, “When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?… How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?” I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because “truth crushed to earth will rise again.” How long? Not long, because “no lie can live forever.”[6]

James counsels patience until the coming of the Lord. This patience isn’t stoic acceptance, let alone resignation. It is anticipation. And anticipation inspires action.

The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.

Yes, but the farmer does more than sit around and wait for rain. When James counsels patience, he encourages his audience, he encourages you and me, to be steadfast and determined in following Jesus on the way, in marching with Jesus on the way, in shouting, singing, and dancing with Jesus on the way—and to refuse, with holy stubbornness, to abandon the anticipation of the promised harvest. Frederick Buechner, who died in September at age 96, said it best, as he often did.

To wait for Christ to come in his fullness is not just a passive thing, a pious, prayerful, churchly thing. On the contrary, to wait for Christ to come in his fullness is above all else to act in Christ’s stead as fully as we know how. To wait for Christ is as best we can to be Christ to those who need us to be Christ to them most and to bring them the most we have of Christ’s healing and hope because unless we bring it, it may never be brought at all.[7]

Patience is anticipation, and anticipation inspires action. There have been days when God’s people asked, “How long will it take?” And there will be days when God’s people will ask, “How long until the mourning land will rejoice and sing? How long until the blind eyes will be opened?”

Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, is a patient woman, glowing with holy impatience. After yet another gun control measure had gone to the U.S. Senate to die, she wrote,

I woke up the morning after the Senate vote thinking about Sojourner Truth, one of my role models, a brilliant and indomitable slave woman who could neither read nor write but who was passionate about ending unjust slavery and second-class treatment of women. At the end of one of her antislavery talks in Ohio, a man came up to her and said, “Old woman, do you think that your talk about slavery does any good? Do you suppose people care what you say? Why, I don’t care any more for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea.” 

“Perhaps not,” she answered, “but, the Lord willing, I’ll keep you scratching.” 

Patience is anticipation, and for Edelman this means,

We must be determined and persistent fleas… Enough fleas biting strategically can make the biggest dog uncomfortable. And if they flick some of us off but even more of us keep coming back with our calls, emails, visits, nonviolent direct action protests, and votes – we’ll win.[8]

We are walking in the light of God. We are marching, singing, dancing in the light of God. Following Jesus on the way to the city of God, we know the one whose coming we await.

[1] Charles L. Campbell, The Word before the Powers: An Ethic of Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 123-124.

[2] Patricia Tull https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23-2/commentary-on-isaiah-354-7a-4

[3] James 5:1, 4-6

[4] https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf

[5] Matthew Skinner, When Patience Becomes Complacency https://sojo.net/articles/when-patience-becomes-complacency-why-we-cant-wait

[6] http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prestapes/mlk_speech.html

[7] https://www.frederickbuechner.com/blog/2021/2/1/weekly-sermon-illustration-waiting-for-christ

[8] https://www.childrensdefense.org/child-watch-columns/health/2013/we-must-never-give-up/

Real life

Pastor Kimberly was sitting on the rug with a group of children. She showed them a small statue of a lion lying down, with a lamb resting on its outstretched paws. She asked them what they thought of this. Brandon, one of the youngest theologians in the group, said, “Well in the Bible it says they will rest together. But in real life the lion would eat him!”[1]

Ellen M. drew a picture of the scene from Isaiah as her contribution to our Advent devotional booklet this year. In Ellen’s picture, the lion doesn’t eat the lamb. Both look at the viewer, together with the leopard and the goat and the calf – all of them look at us from the page with wide open eyes, perhaps a little startled by this most unusual arrangement of peace between predator and prey. In Ellen’s picture, only the wolf doesn’t look at the viewer, but at something off to the side, beyond the edge of the page. Perhaps the wolf is watching the toddler playing at the adder’s den, waiting for the peaceful moment to come to a sudden end? Disbelief creeps into the scene, we can’t help it. “On the day the lion and the lamb lie down together, only the lion is going to get back up,” Woody Allen once dryly remarked.

Prophetic vision is one thing; real life is something else. Real life is reflected in news headlines and end-of-year statistics, we tell ourselves, not in Bible stories. In real life we are anxious to hear about the war in Ukraine, the protests in Iran and China, the growing despair in Haiti, the famine in East Africa, and the water levels in the Mississippi. Real life, young Brandon has come to understand, follows its own rules, and in the real-life world, the visions of the prophets are strange announcements.

Isaiah is no stranger to real life, though, as young Brandon will soon discover, assuming he continues to hang out with Pastor Kimberly. Isaiah is fluent in the real-life language of legislation and judicial proceedings and economic analysis.

Woe to you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey!

When orphans are made prey, the predators who eat them up aren’t wolves or lions. “What will you do on the day of punishment,” Isaiah shouts into their dens.

What will you do in the calamity that will come from far away? To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth, so as not to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain? [2]

Isaiah underlines what connects the local habits of oppression and what he calls the calamity from far away: the armies of Assyria. “The rod of my anger,” the God Isaiah serves has called them. “The club in their hands is my fury!”[3]

Look, the Sovereign, the Lord of hosts, will lop the boughs with terrifying power; the tallest trees will be cut down, and the lofty will be brought low. He will hack down the thickets of the forest with an ax, and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall.[4]

Isaiah is no stranger to real life; big trouble is on its way south, approaching Jerusalem, and the lopping and chopping, cutting and hacking in Isaiah’s sentencing speech is at once an accurate description of the devastations of warfare and the divine verdict against the real-life leaders.

I imagine the prophet walking through the streets of the city, but in his sad and furious, broken heart, he is stumbling through a devastated, clear-cut, and trampled landscape, with only smoldering stumps emerging from the ashes that cover the land. I am reminded of images and reports from the Amazon, where thick clouds of smoke hung over the rainforest as work crews burned and chain-sawed through it. The native peoples driven from their land and driven to extinction together with the forest, know the devastation better than any of us, in every aspect of their life and culture. The rest of us depend on satellite images to reveal the extent of destruction, once the rains have washed the smoke from the air: thousands of square miles of forest razed, swaths of jungle the size of small countries destroyed in a matter of months.[5]

Isaiah is no stranger to real life. It was a common tactic in war: the enemy troops set up camp in a ring around the city, just beyond reach of the defenders’ spears and arrows. They stopped all incoming and outgoing traffic, putting an end to all trade. Then they burned all fields and systematically chopped down every fruit-bearing tree in walking distance, clearcutting a wide swath of land around the city. Then they just waited until the inhabitants ran out of food and water – why risk the lives of your troops in battle if you can starve a population into submission?

I imagine Isaiah walking amid the stumps. The land of promise has become a wasteland; the city sits in dust and ashes. He doesn’t lift his head; he doesn’t raise his eyes, he keeps them on the ground, waiting for a word from the God of Zion. I imagine Isaiah walking the land, witnessing the devastation, the continuing violence and oppression, and the lack of true repentance among the people and their leaders. And then he sees on one of the stumps, pushing through the scorched bark, bright green and full of life, a tiny shoot. And it speaks the word of the Lord to him:

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

Jesse was the father of king David, long before Isaiah’s time. God had made a promise to David that his house and kingdom would be established forever in Jerusalem. [6] Forever, however, was profoundly in question given the record of the house of David. Forever assumed a kind of rule congruent with the purposes of God, the kind of rule described in Psalm 72:

Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to a king’s son.
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.

Hopes were high that the reign of God in heaven would be reflected in the life of God’s people on earth. But it wasn’t justice and peace that flourished in Isaiah’s days; the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, much as in our own time. I imagine the prophet kneeling in the dust, clinging to the faithfulness of God.

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

This one wouldn’t be a puppet of the powerful, for a change. The spirit of the Lord would rest on him, and his governance would be in tune with God’s will. This one would judge the poor with righteousness and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. Kneeling in the dust and ashes, the prophet receives a reaffirmation of God’s commitment to justice and peace. And this commitment is cosmic in scale: Not only are the widow, the orphan, the migrant worker, and the refugee no longer prey for those in power – the shoot from the stump of Jesse establishes a peace that stills every terror, every fear in all of creation.

The lion’s idea of peace is simple. It is the good life without competition: no leopards, no bears, no wolves or shepherds; just a steady supply of tender lambs and fatted calves – all for the lion. The lion’s idea of paradise is a world where the lambs are so fat that they can’t run away, or so stupid that they won’t even try.

The lamb’s dream of peace is a world without lions. Yet Isaiah speaks of one who brings peace to the lamb and the lion. Real life, Isaiah insists, is not what we think we’ve always known, but rather this vision of peace that inspires us to hope and to dare.

Isaiah’s vision of the peaceable kingdom includes human beings, young children – the nursing child, the weaned child, the little child – but no adults. Paul Duke suggests that this is because “the new creation wants a human presence – new, bright, undefended, and free – to love and care for it all.” And then he adds, “This, of course, is the child we seek in Christ, in whom the lion of Judah and the lamb of God are one. In this Child we meet the divine vulnerability and the divine strength.”[7]

Real life emerges in the reign of the one who is the lion and the lamb, who accomplishes in us the “deep, radical, limitless transformation in which we – like lion, wolf, and leopard – will have no hunger for injury, no need to devour, no yearning for brutal control, no passion for domination.”[8] Or as Thomas Merton put it, “The Advent mystery is the beginning of the end of all in us that is not yet Christ.” [9]

Asked about the lion with a lamb resting on its outstretched paws, young Brandon said, “Well, in the Bible it says they will rest together. But in real life the lion would eat him!”

We are here to encourage him to trust, together with Ellen and the rest of us that Isaiah’s fantastic vision of wide-eyed wonder is more real than the diminished life we create for each other without such vision. We encourage him and one another to believe in the deep, radical, limitless transformation in which we – like lion, wolf, and leopard – will have no hunger for injury, no need to devour, no yearning for brutal control, no passion for domination – only life in the fullness of God’s peace.

[1] See Journal for Preachers Vol. 28, No. 1 (Advent) 2004, 6.

[2] Isaiah 10:1-4

[3] Isaiah 10:5

[4] Isaiah 10:33-34

[5] See Matt Sandy https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/world/americas/amazon-fires-bolsonaro-photos.html

[6] 2 Sam 7:16

[7] Paul S. Duke, Feasting, Year A, Vol. 1, 31.

[8] Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 1-39 (WBC), 103.

[9] Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration: Meditations on the Cycle of Liturgical Feasts (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2009), 77.

Walking in the light

It’s a light display that puts Clark Griswold’s to shame and landed a family a spot in the Guinness World Records, I read at some online news outlet.[1] Tim and Grace Gay, together with their three children, of the Hudson Valley, proudly hold the record for the most lights on a residential property. The family earned the title in 2014 when they hung 601,736 lights around their home, spanning eight miles of extension cords, in a display of spirals, stars, animals, snowmen and icicles – synchronized to a playlist of 250 songs. They beat their own record [last] year when they set up a dazzling 686,526 lights on their property.[2]

We light one candle. And this year we do it again in the company of folks gathering for vigils. Once again the images have come across our screens of people holding a single candle in their hands, or leaving it at an improvised memorial in a parking lot people mourning the violent deaths of a janitor working his shift at a Virginia Walmart, a 40-year-old woman returning home to Colorado Springs for the holidays, and a young man at his girlfriend’s side, watching her friend perform in a drag show. Three college football players. A mother who worked to help foster children. One bartender who remembered your drink and another who danced. White and Black, gay and straight, old and young. Fourteen people who did not know their last Thanksgiving was already behind them. Tuesday’s rampage, in which six people were killed in a Walmart in Chesapeake, Va., was the 33rd mass shooting in November alone, and the nation’s 606th this year.[3]

We light one candle. One candle to contain our grief, our anger, our solidarity, and, yes, our hope. The first word from scripture we hear in Advent is spoken by the prophet Isaiah. In days to come the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be raised above the hills, and all the nations shall stream to it. They shall come – not to conquer, not to kill, plunder, and destroy as in days past, no – they come to learn God’s ways and walk in God’s paths. And they come not because they have been defeated and forced to pay tribute and to submit to the gods of the victors, no – they come willingly, uncoerced, eager to learn. Nations come to Jerusalem to let God’s justice be their justice, and under the Lord’s governance they are finally free to beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. The sound of Advent on this first Sunday is the sound of people coming from the ends of the earth making their way to the city of God. It is the beautiful noise of their chatter and their shouts, their stories and songs, their laughter — and above the happy clamor, the clanging of hammers falling on anvils, ringing across the land, bright and clear as bells. Swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, tanks into school buses and war ships into bridges, fighter jets into bicycles and M16s into water pumps – every tool of destruction is being forged into a tool of shared life.

Hope wasn’t Isaiah’s first word, though. His first word was a clear-eyed description of what he saw when he looked around the city and the land: what stands out from just the first four verses of the book’s opening chapter are words like rebellion, iniquity, sinful, evil, corrupt, estranged – and it doesn’t stop there. The religious festivals have become a burden God is weary of bearing. The country lies desolate. The city is marked by injustice. Her silver has become dross, her wine is watered down, her princes are companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them. The prophet’s first word is a long litany of indictments, line after line written with tears of grief and burning rage: “The strong shall become like tinder, and their work like a spark; they and their work shall burn together, with no one to quench them.”

Hope is not the first word the prophet utters. First come accusation and judgment and fiery conflagration, and then Isaiah abruptly stops. It’s as though he has picked up bits and pieces of a different tune, a song as old as creation and overflowing with the promise of newness. It’s like he must start over, because in the gloom of corruption and injustice in his beloved city, a heavenly light shines. And so he begins to speak of days to come, of a marvelous newness far beyond what current circumstances might suggest. He draws a wide horizon of hope, not because the citizens of Jerusalem suddenly changed their ways, but because God’s faithfulness is greater than our faithless ways.

Ruby Bridges was one of four children to integrate New Orleans public schools in 1960; she was the only black child to enter the William Frantz Elementary School that year. On her way to school, for days that turned into weeks and weeks that turned into months, this child had to brave angry mobs who were hurling threats and slurs at her. Every day, federal marshals walked with her to school and brought her home. At first, she attended school all by herself, because of a total boycott by white families. She sat alone in the classroom, and only one teacher overcame her own fear and taught her.

Robert Coles was a young psychiatrist working in New Orleans, and he volunteered to talk with Ruby to help her process the daily terror. A teacher told him, “I was standing in the classroom, looking out the window, and I saw Ruby coming down the street, with the federal marshals on both sides of her. The crowd was there, shouting, as usual. A woman spat at Ruby but missed; Ruby smiled at her. A man shook his fist at her. Ruby smiled. And then she walked up the steps, and she stopped and turned around and smiled one more time. You know what she told one of those marshals? She told him she prays for those people, the ones in that mob. She prays for them every night before going to sleep.”

Coles asked Ruby why she prayed for them. “I go to church every Sunday, and we’re told to pray for everyone, even the bad people, and so I do.” When the subject came up again she said, “They keep coming and saying the bad words. But my momma says they’ll get tired after a while and then they’ll stop coming. They’ll stay home. The minister came to our house and he said the same thing, and not to worry, and I don’t. The minister said God is watching and He won’t forget, because He never does. The minister says if I forgive the people, and smile at them and pray for them, God will keep a good eye on everything and He’ll be our protection.”

Coles asked her if she believed the minister was on the right track. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I’m sure God knows what’s happening. He’s got a lot to worry about; but there is bad trouble here, and He can’t help but notice. He may not rush to do anything, not right away. But there will come a day, like you hear in church.”[4] 

Young Ruby looked at the people who harassed and assailed her, but her eyes were fixed on God’s promise. There is bad trouble here, and God can’t help but notice. He may not rush to do anything, not right away. But there will come a day.

There will come a day. Ruby had learned, young as she was, that the most important question to ask is not, “When?” but “Who?” The future doesn’t belong to the haters and harassers, but to the One who is coming. About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

When, no one knows, but we know the One who is coming is the same who has come and who is with us now. There is bad trouble here, but the future does not belong to the gun manufacturers and those who worship at the altar of the Second Amendment gods. The future belongs to the One who has made us his own and called us to walk in his paths. The future belongs to Jesus who lived fully for God’s reign and who entrusted himself completely to God’s faithfulness. Jesus died alone on a hill that looked nothing like the mountain of the house of the Lord. He died, scorned and taunted, surrounded by swords, pierced with a spear. And in the thick darkness of that Friday, the full depth of God’s commitment to Jesus and to us and to all of creation was revealed.

We didn’t start the fire in the forge where the nations will beat their swords into plowshares. God did by raising the crucified Jesus from the dead. John Calvin wrote,

A blessed resurrection is proclaimed to us – meantime we are surrounded by decay. We are called righteous – and yet sin lives in us. We hear of ineffable blessedness – but meantime we are here oppressed by infinite misery. We are promised abundance of all good things – yet we are rich only in hunger and thirst. What would become of us if we did not take our stand on hope, and if our hearts did not hasten beyond this world through the midst of the darkness upon the path illumined by the word and Spirit of God?[5]

What Calvin has in mind is not a faith that flees the world, but one that walks in it like Ruby Bridges did. A faith that sees clearly that there’s bad trouble here, like Isaiah did, and yet keeps its eyes on the horizon of God’s promises. The future doesn’t belong to the haters and harassers, but to him who fills all of creation with the light of his love. Come! Come let us walk in the light of the Lord!

[1] https://www.wvlt.tv/2021/12/14/familys-christmas-lights-breaks-their-own-guinness-world-record/

[2] https://www.mlive.com/news/2021/12/see-homes-guinness-world-record-setting-christmas-display-of-nearly-700k-lights.html

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/24/nyregion/shootings-virginia-walmart-club-q-thanksgiving.html

[4] Robert Coles, The Moral Life of Children (New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986), 22-24.

[5] John Calvin, quoted in Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 18-19.

"Disempiring" power

On the night of Jesus’ birth, angels sang and shepherds marveled. There was joy in the air, and the small cradle was big enough to hold all our hopes. “Do not be afraid,” the angel said to the terrified shepherds; “see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”[1] 

The songs of the heavenly hosts grew fainter, and soon there were other voices: tempting whispers about the possibilities of power—stones turned into loaves of bread, global rule over all the kingdoms of the earth. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here; God’s angels will protect you.”[2]

At the cross, the devil’s rhetoric is amplified many times in the taunts of leaders and soldiers and even a man who was crucified with Jesus: Are you not the Messiah of God? Are you not the king of the Jews? Show your power, do something, come down, save yourself and us.

Jesus remains silent amid their mockery. When he opens his lips, he prays, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” Forgive them, he prays, and we wonder who they might be—the soldiers who, as always, were only following orders? Those who gave the orders? The leaders who are always quick to assert that they only act with the best interest of the state in mind, or the temple, the church, the nation? Forgive them — those who stood by watching the scene? Or is he praying for all of us who stand by and watch when the witch is burned, the wimpy kid is bullied, the black man is lynched, the inmate on death row is executed?

For a moment, the waves of ridicule and abuse subside, and we hear the curious king who lives up to nobody’s expectations pray for forgiveness. Many of us have been in his company long enough to know that he wouldn’t ask for armies of angels to swoop down and smite the enemy. We have been in his company long enough to know that his kingdom is not of this world, but very much in the world.

In the gospel of Luke, only three characters say the word kingdom. The first one is the angel Gabriel who comes to Mary and says, “You will bear a son and you will name him Jesus. He will reign forever and of his kingdom there will be no end.”[3] After the angel, it is Jesus who speaks of the kingdom in teaching after teaching. And he doesn’t just speak the word, he manifests it with healing and food, by breaking the power of ungodly forces, and with his faithful refusal to follow a different path. The third character in the gospel according to Luke who says the word is a dying convict. After rebuking his fellow convict for taunting this man who has done nothing wrong, he turns to Jesus and says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He speaks of a kingdom hidden in the improbable future of a crucified man, and in this kingdom he wants to be remembered. He doesn’t know any better than you and I what it might look like, this kingdom. All he knows is that it is Jesus’ kingdom. All he knows is what we have noticed in the life of Jesus: a heart of immense compassion, the determination to end the reign of exclusion and condemnation, and the unfolding of a reign of mercy. What this convict knows is Jesus’ refusal to save himself or to curse his executioners. What he sees, perhaps, is an end of the ancient cycle of violence and vengeance, and the promise of a reign of forgiveness.

As requests go, “Remember me” is modest; but Jesus responds with royal extravagance. “Today,” he says to him, “you will be with me in Paradise.” Like one of the kings in his parables, Jesus generously lavishes gifts on the humble petitioner, granting him life in the presence of God. And in the face of death, this man finds himself closer to life than he may have ever been. Today, Jesus says to him. Like he said that day at the synagogue in Nazareth, after reading from Isaiah, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”[4] Like he said to Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector in Jericho, “Today salvation has come to this house.”[5] The last occurrence in Luke of this full-of-promise “today” is here, at the cross, in the hearing of a dying man, and in the hearing of all who long for a fullness of life no earthly kingdom can offer.

The reign of Christ is not a new and improved version of the kingdoms of the world. It is the end of our royal ideologies and the dreams of domination that feed them. It is a new way of relating, thinking, speaking, and acting in the name of Jesus.

Many say, offering good reasons, that we shouldn’t continue to call Jesus “the King.” Our imagination is already overstuffed with men on thrones. Some of us watch The Crown and follow the gossip on Harry and Meaghan, William and Kate, but royals don’t rule us, and we no longer think of power in royal terms. But first-century Galilee was a time of kings and rulers, as Katie Givens Kime urges us to remember. “The roots of our faith are located here, not in isolated issues of individual piety, but rather in resistance to the idolatry of power.”[6]

The crucifixion was a spectacle of humiliation, designed to project Rome’s power in even the most remote parts of the Empire. And the crucifixion carried a message: the crucified one is not a person, but a thing, an object of derision and complete subjection, a tool of terror and intimidation, a means to further the power and interests of Rome.

The first Christian witnesses, however, countered that arrogant assertion with the divine protest of the resurrection. In Colossians, Paul makes an audacious attempt to sort out the powers of the universe, declaring that this crucified victim is indeed the cosmic ruler whose reign is founded on the experience of suffering, and whose peacemaking is accomplished through the absorption, not the perpetration, of violence.[7] He is the firstborn of all creation. All things were created through him and for him, and in him all things hold together. All of creation, all of life, all people and things have their purpose and fulfillment in him. Nothing is outside of Christ.[8]

And because he is the firstborn from the dead, all of creation is redeemed through him. In Paul’s vision, “salvation is not the rescue [of individual souls] from a totally evil world but the claiming of the rightful possession of this world by the one who was an agent in its creation.”[9] The world does not belong to the Empires, but to Christ. Therefore, the powers that exercise authority in the world may in part shape the structures of the world in which we live. “But the cross, not the powers, determines the shape of Christian existence.  Christian discipleship, therefore, seeks to live in keeping with the power of Christ, a power that challenges and overthrows the ungodly powers of the world.”[10]

As those whom God has rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the reign of Christ, we serve the flourishing of life. “We are as the power that rules us,” says Arthur McGill.[11] Yes, God has transferred us into the reign of Christ, but we must constantly ask ourselves, to whom do we give the power to tell us who we are? To whom do you give the power to define your dignity and worth? Who or what has the power to shape our moods and our minds? Who has the power to determine what is important and what is not? And how might we act, who might we become, if we knew in our bones that all authority has been given to Jesus Christ, that the Crucified One whom God raised from the dead is the Power of Powers?[12]

The reign of Jesus Christ is not a new and improved version of the kingdoms of the world. His reign does not call for crusades and invasions. His reign is the end of our imperial ideologies and the dreams of domination that feed them. It is a new way of relating, thinking, speaking, and acting through him and for him. In Colossians 3, Paul writes,

You have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

In celebrating the reign of Christ on the last Sunday of the church year, we rejoice in God’s renewal of creation in Christ. We rejoice, because nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord—and in that love, nothing will ultimately be able to separate us from each other and from the blessed communion of life which the universe was created to be. Thanks be to God.

[1] Luke 2:10-11

[2] See Luke 4:1-13

[3] See Luke 2:30-33

[4] Lk 4:21

[5] Lk 19:9

[6] Katie Givens Kime https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2013-10/sunday-november-24-2013

[7] See Andrew Lincoln, Colossians (NIB), 609.

[8] Jennifer Wyant https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/christ-the-king-3/commentary-on-colossians-111-20-5

[9] Andrew Lincoln, Colossians (NIB), 610.

[10] Marianne Meye Thompson, Colossians & Philemon, 35.

[11] Arthur McGill, quoted by Michael Pasquarello III, Connections, Year C, Vol. 3, 510.

[12] See Katie Givens Kime https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2013-10/sunday-november-24-2013

Beyond imagination

At a small event space somewhere in Brooklyn, 19 people gathered in a circle. They included a therapist, an immigration lawyer, a climate activist, an artist and a reporter. They were there for a workshop called “Cultivating Active Hope: Living With Joy Amidst the Climate Crisis.” To the reporter, the title sounded wildly optimistic. “Have you ever known someone who … doled out carbon offset gift certificates at the holidays?” she asks in a story she wrote about the experience. “[Someone] who sees new babies and immediately flashes to the approximately 15 tons of carbon emissions the average American emits per year? Who walks around shops thinking about where all the packaging ends up? You do now.”

Her name is Cara Buckley. She knows the planet is in trouble. And she does what she can: She donates to environmental causes, eats vegan, composts, takes public transport, carries around bamboo utensils, buys second hand and stocks up on carbon offsets — and yet none of it has been balm. “I [feel] complicit by merely existing,” she writes. “After all, I [belong] to the species that [is] taking most of the other ones down.” A friend suggested that her climate angst was an extension of her melancholic leanings, which struck her as plausible, but not quite right. “We know that the future is looking bad, that the present already is, and that inaction, especially here in America, is making it all worse. But how are we supposed to live in our hearts and souls with such an existential threat?”

What she took away from the workshop was a prescription for learning to live with hope. The facilitators taught her ancient wisdom: to seek out a spiritual path to forge gratitude, compassion and acceptance. Operating out of denial, fear, anger, and blame only burns us out. She began to see that what is needed is a way to move to a place not of tacit acceptance, but of compassion, fierce, roaring compassion, as she called it.[1]

Wanjira Mathai also knows the planet is in trouble. She’s a Kenyan environmentalist, and on the sidelines of the climate summit in Egypt, she commented on the testy deliberations about how we are going to pay for the transition to carbon-free energy production and for various mitigation measures. Wealthy nations like the United States, Great Britain, and European countries have been responsible for emitting the most greenhouse gasses into the environment. The world’s poorest countries, however, have been facing the gravest consequences of climate change, including floods, droughts, and deadly heat waves. Many agree that the economies that reaped the greatest benefits from development driven by fossil fuels also ought to pay the greatest share for the transition to a sustainable global economy. Even as negotiators contend with how to make those payments, Ms. Mathai said, “if we do not get over the fact that there is a crisis in how we see people of different colors, cultures, genders and geographies, we are cheating ourselves. We are lying to ourselves.” To her, the issue, in the final analysis, is not an economic or a political one. “We have a crisis in empathy,” she said. “We don’t acknowledge just how connected we are.”[2]

Where do we turn to learn compassion, to broaden our capacity for empathy? We turn to Jesus. During the final days of his ministry, he and the disciples were in Jerusalem, and they spent much of their time in the temple. Jesus overheard people marveling at the building’s size and splendor, and with great calm, I imagine, he said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

The temple was still under construction then. It was one of Herod’s biggest and most ambitious projects. Begun long before Jesus’ birth, the temple itself was completed in less than two years, but work on the outer courts and decorations continued until 64 C.E., decades after the disciples had begun to proclaim the good news of Jesus’ resurrection.[3] It was an enormous complex. Scholars estimate that the outer court could hold 400,000 people, and that during pilgrimage festivals it frequently held crowds of that size. “And the exterior of the building wanted nothing that could astound either mind or eye,” wrote the first-century historian, Josephus.[4] It was a space of great splendor, built to the glory of God. 

It was also a space that didn’t reveal at first or second glance how it was being funded. In the same chapter of Luke, just before this scene, we read about Jesus seeing rich people putting large gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”[5] She put in all she had to live on. The church has long held her up as an example of generosity and trust in God, but the magnificent structure would be associated with Herod’s name, not hers. The Jewish people knew it was a house for the name of God to dwell, but they also knew that Herod had reasons for building it that had little to do with God’s name and a lot more with his own.

“As for these things that you see,” Jesus said, “the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” Construction wasn’t even finished yet, and Jesus spoke of destruction and collapse. The disciples wanted to know when; they wanted a detailed forecast. They worried about news of wars, earthquakes, famines and plagues, just as we worry about what the future holds for our children and their children. Jesus warned them not to go after those who claim to know the endtime like it was a cosmic train schedule. You will go through times of blow after blow of heartbreaking and soul-draining news, and inevitably there will be those who will tell you how it all makes sense, how each event is a mile marker along the tracks to the great and final day. Do not go after them. Stay on the way with me, he said. Follow me. Don’t confuse the kingdom of God with beautiful stonework or with a glorious set of ideas that fit together seamlessly like blocks in the temple wall. The days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down and turned into a heap of rubble. Yet even amid the rubble, trust in God. Trust in the promises of God. Trust in the faithfulness of God. Trust in the power of God to create newness beyond the limits of your own imagination. Don’t go after the apocalyptic calculators, but continue to cultivate love: in your relationships with each other and with your fellow creatures, in your relationships even with your enemies. Cultivate love, and watch your compassion grow and your empathy broaden. Trust in the slow work of God, within you and among you.

“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” says the Lord, and it’s more than a saying. It’s a song of promise and hope, a song about a city without tears, a city of justice and fullness of life for all. It’s a song that carries echoes of our beginnings in God’s garden, of life in the blessed conviviality of creation. The song is the sound track of Jesus’ life and ministry. Trust in the promises of God. Beware that you are not led astray. Do not be terrified. Do not worry. Cultivate love and trust in the slow work of God.

Beautiful words. True words. On way too many days, though, a world of no more weeping, no more laboring in vain, and no more bearing children for calamity, seems so far away, and I find it much easier to imagine the whole world heating up and flooding in humanity’s denial, ignorance, and selfishness. Walter Brueggemann suggests that Isaiah’s vision of new creation “is outrageous because the new world of God is beyond our capacity and even beyond our imagination. In our fatigue, our self-sufficiency, and our cynicism, we remain convinced that such promises could not happen here.”[6] But Jesus, tirelessly, not only pointed to such promises, but lived them faithfully. Jesus embodied the fantastic truth of God’s profound solidarity with creation, and in particular with all of us, the creature made in God’s image, in our struggle to be who we were made to be.

That brief scene in the temple, the word about the collapse of even the grandest, most sacred structures, was among Jesus’ final teachings before his arrest. What followed was the overwhelming flood wave of rejection, betrayal, denial, ridicule, and torture, and at the end, his execution. Every lie, every injustice, every self-righteous illusion, every hateful word and angry blow — we let him have it. And he died, bearing it all for love’s sake.

And God, in fierce, roaring compassion, raised Jesus from the dead, for love’s sake. It was the dawn of a new creation, the first day of new heavens and a new earth. What a fantastic truth. What a fantastic occasion to finally acknowledge just how connected we are; not only through our common ancestry and intricate webs of mutual dependence, but through our shared belonging in the covenant of love which binds us to God and to each other. How do we cultivate active hope amid the crises of our days? We go to work, trusting in the unrelenting love of God.

[1] Cara Buckley, “Apocalypse Got You Down? Maybe This Will Help”, New York Times, November 15, 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/sunday-review/depression-climate-change.html

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/11/11/climate/cop27-climate-summit

[3] Six years later, in a Jewish uprising against the Roman occupation, the entire structure was razed by Roman troops, leaving only portions of the outer wall standing.

[4] Josephus, Jewish War 5.222

[5] Luke 21:1-4

[6] See Lectionary Homiletics Vol. XV, No. 6, 61.

Attention-getter

At his hometown synagogue, Jesus was reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”[1] Jesus was reading ancient words, but when he spoke them, they were his own. That day at the synagogue, Jesus spoke Isaiah’s declaration, and throughout his ministry, he filled it, every word and syllable, with the fullness of his life — with his full attention, with his whole heart, with his every breath. When John sent word to Jesus from prison, asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” he said, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, …[and] the poor have good news brought to them.”[2]

The God who sent Jesus is openly partisan, and some might say, shockingly so. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,” Jesus declared. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Jesus didn’t declare that somehow it is a blessing to be poor, hungry, hated, or excluded. The poor, the hungry, the hated and excluded are blessed, because God is on their side.

In the world the poor and the hungry too often find themselves pushed to the margins of attention, that’s the way things work around here, but Jesus embodies and proclaims God’s reign. The good news proclaimed to the poor is that the kingdom of God is theirs, and not the property of those who like to think they own everything worth owning in the world. The good news proclaimed to the poor is divine solidarity, the assurance that God is for them and with them—and not sometime, someday, but now. “God has a preferential love for the poor,” says theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, “not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will. The ultimate basis for the privileged position of the poor is not in the poor themselves but in God.”[3] So what is it, we wonder, the rich have proclaimed to them? Every one of Jesus’ beatitudes is mirrored by a woe. Woe to you who are rich! Woe to you who are full now! Woe to you who are laughing now! Woe to you when all speak well of you! What are we to make of that? Is woe somehow the opposite of blessed? Does it mean cursed or damned? Jesus may have picked up from Isaiah the rhetorical style of woes linked together in a chain:

Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!  Woe to those who rise early in the morning in pursuit of strong drink, who linger in the evening to be inflamed by wine, whose feasts consist of lyre and harp, tambourine and flute and wine, but who do not regard the deeds of the Lord or see the work of his hands!  Woe to those who drag iniquity along with cords of falsehood, who drag sin along as with cart ropes! Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter![4]

Woe does not mean cursed, New Testament scholar, Matt Skinner, insists, and certainly not damned. “Like the English word yikes, it is more of an attention-getter and emotion-setter than a clear characterization or pronouncement.”[5] Well, Jesus got our attention, didn’t he? “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”

Who are the rich? The term denotes economic well-being and security, as well as belonging and power, and, in Luke, a sense of arrogance: the rich need not look to God’s reign for encouragement about the situation in which their social and economic status puts them. The rich are the ones who insist, “Oh, I’m not rich, I’m just comfortable.” The consolation of the comfortable is their wealth. The consolation of the poor is the kingdom of God.

Woe to you who are comfortable, for you have received your comfort. Woe to you who expect the future to be little more than a continuation of your comfortable present. Woe to you who say to the seers, “Do not see,” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things; prophesy illusions; leave the way; turn aside from the path; let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.”[6] Woe to you who can’t lean into God’s future together with those who long for a world where justice and peace embrace, and where all who hunger feast at the banquet of life. Woe to you when your wealth traps you in illusions of self-sufficiency, mastery, and control.

In the opening declarations of his sermon, Jesus isn’t delivering notes on sainthood or listing qualifications to get into heaven, nor is he dividing his audience into winners and losers. He speaks words of encouragement and affirmation to those who, by the world’s standards, have little to show. And he speaks words of warning to those who can’t ask for anything but more of the same. With encouragement and warning, Jesus is calling all who are listening – rich and poor, hungry and full, sorrowful and carefree – to lean into the dawn of God’s reign together and to live by the light of God’s mercy. Paul, in Ephesians, calls this “to see with the eyes of the heart enlightened”[7] – to see all things and ourselves in the embrace of divine love, where we are each fully ourselves and one with each other. Paul identifies this unity as both the ground of our being and the horizon of our journey in time.

The world, of course, is ruled by powers hostile to the creative and redemptive power of love, but before the foundation of the world, God chose saints to be agents of God’s reign, in every generation.[8] God chose ordinary people to live as God’s people, people set aside for God’s purposes, people who would let their attitudes, actions, and words be determined by the boundless love of God. In today’s passage from Luke, Jesus doesn’t speak of the love for God and the love for one’s neighbor as equally central to our lives as disciples; instead, his opening teaching, after the blessings and woes, is about loving our enemies, loving those who hate, curse, mistreat, beat, rob, and deprive followers of Jesus of what is rightfully theirs.[9] His descriptions reflect experiences of rejection and exclusion many believers in the first century had to endure, trials that pushed their love for God and their love for their hostile neighbors to the limit. For many of them, only the memory and example of Jesus on the cross gave them the strength not to give in to violence, retaliation, or hatred. The good news of the kingdom is more than a word spoken with conviction; it is a word lived by the followers of Jesus, a word embodied by the community of saints who bear the name of Christ. We desire to live the word that is good news to the poor, and we are fortunate that our commitment to this life isn’t being tested by violent rejection and persecution. One of our teachers at the abbey this summer told us a very short story about the power of loving one’s enemy.

Upon having his monastery invaded by Chinese soldiers and a gun pointed in his face, the Tibetan monk remained calm, continuing his prayers. The soldier angrily shouted, “Don’t you realize I have the power to kill you?” Undeterred in his prayers, the monk replied, “Don’t you realize I have the power to let you?”[10]

The message of radical love that Jesus brings and is, calls for change: change of perspective, change of vision, change of behavior. That’s a lot of change. And resistance to change, fear of change are widespread these days; they are among the main drivers in our current politics, both nationally and globally. But Jesus calls us to let ourselves be changed, to let ourselves be conformed to his radical love, to lean into the dawn of God’s reign and dream. Willie James Jennings writes,

Without dreaming, even holy dreaming, voting loses its compass and can be driven by anxiety, anger, or the desire to harm others. Such holy dreaming is not utopian – it is absolutely crucial to civic action that resists the powers of death. People of faith should remind everyone that they vote not simply to elect officials but to aim [the] world toward hope. The most important test of an election season should always be: Do the candidates, the proposed policies, the platform agendas, the bonds or propositions all promote a shared life, or do they draw us toward segregationist ways of living and thinking?[11]

In Luke we read that Jesus spoke the blessings and woes, and all the teachings that followed, on a level place. I like to think of the level place as the place where every valley has been filled and every mountain and hill has been made low, where the crooked has been made straight, and the rough ways smooth.[12] In my dream, in the level place, the powerful have been brought down from their thrones, and the lowly have been lifted up.[13] In the level place, Jesus comes face-to-face with us, all of us, the whole company of saints and sinners, and we come face-to-face with each other, recognizing one another as kin, and together we lean into God’s future, a shared life where love reigns.

[1] Luke 4:18

[2] Luke 7:20-22

[3] Quoted in Culpepper, Luke (NIB), 145.

[4] See Isaiah 5:8-22

[5] Matt Skinner https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/all-saints-day-2/commentary-on-luke-620-31-4

[6] See Isaiah 30:9-11

[7] Ephesians 2:18

[8] See Ephesians 1:4

[9] See Fitzmyer, Luke, 630.

[10] Nathan Foster, The Making of an Ordinary Saint (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2014), 23.

[11] Willie James Jennings, Aiming the World Toward Hope https://reflections.yale.edu/article/spirit-and-politics-finding-our-way/aiming-world-toward-hope

[12] Luke 3:5

[13] Luke 1:52

Sticky labels

On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus passed through Jericho. The city lay at the intersection of major trade roads and was a beehive of commercial activity. In the Roman province of Judea, it was one of the top markets for the collection of tolls and fees. The system was simple and effective: the collection rights for all districts were auctioned off by the Roman authorities to the highest bidder, then the bidder paid the governor and hired locals to collect tolls at bridges and gates.

In Jericho, Zacchaeus had won the auction. He wasn’t just a tax collector; we’ve met plenty of them already in Luke’s gospel. He was a chief tax collector. Whatever bothered people about tax collectors, Zacchaeus represented, as they say, a whole nother level of bad. And he was rich. Luke doesn’t tell us how Zacchaeus got rich, but a good number of people in Jericho probably would have been quick to tell you that that fancy house of his had been paid with coins from their pockets. Needless to say that he wasn’t a popular man. People shunned him, ignored him when they could, and the day Jesus came to town, they could.

The streets were packed with onlookers, and Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was, but he couldn’t, on account of the crowd and since he was small in stature. He didn’t measure up, both in terms of his height and on the likability index. He was a short fellow, and nobody was going to let him through. When I picture the scene in my mind, I see somebody like Danny DeVito staring at the backs of a wall of people standing shoulder to shoulder, with barely a crack between them. He stretches his neck, stands on the tip of his toes, he even attempts a few jumps, but he can’t catch a glimpse of the man he wants to see. Luke tells us that eventually he ran down the street a little way, and he climbed a tree for a better view. You have to like the fellow; so determined to see who Jesus was, he didn’t mind that everybody was laughing at him.

Zacchaeus was rich, and in Luke news about the rich is consistently bleak: They are the ones sent away empty when the hungry are filled with good things.[1] They are the fools who can only think of building bigger barns after a good year.[2] They are the gluttons feasting daily who don’t seem to see Lazarus starving at the door.[3] And the last time Jesus had looked into the eyes of a rich man, he said, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”[4] But rich as he was, Zacchaeus didn’t enjoy life strolling in the sunshine of his fortune and of his neighbors’ respect. Yes, he lived in Jericho, and he may have had one of the nicest houses in town, but he didn’t feel at home. That wall of bodies he tried to squeeze through? That was something he faced every day, one way or another: being ignored, rejected, excluded.

Why did he want to see who Jesus was? It had to be more than just curiosity. No grown man runs down the street and climbs a tree like a little boy merely out of curiosity. Zacchaeus was rich, but he was cut off from the life of the community like he didn’t even exist. Perhaps he had heard people talk about Jesus, the prophet from Galilee. He may have heard them call him a friend of tax collectors and sinners, and they said it with disdain in their voices, but to him it sounded like hope, like the promise of a different kind of life. Perhaps he was sitting up in that tree because he had been wondering for some time, if it could be true: acceptance, belonging, friendship even, for someone like himself.

Haven’t you sat in that tree? Some of you may have been sitting in it for quite some time, wondering who this Jesus is, who is so compassionate, so ready to forgive, so quick to relate to any person as a beloved child of God — Jesus who heals, and challenges, and calls us with great love. You want the stories to become real in your life. You want to see him, you really want to see him, know him, be with him.

A magical moment happens in the story: Jesus comes near the tree and he looks up, and he doesn’t turn away and move on, no, he stops, and he sees Zacchaeus and says, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” Luke says, So he hurried and came down, and he welcomed him joyfully. Joy erupts! The pronouns in the scene are ambiguous. He hurried and came down, and he welcomed him joyfully. We assume it’s Zacchaeus welcoming Jesus, but it could just as well be Jesus welcoming Zacchaeus, and of course both readings are true because the welcome is mutual and the joy complete. Either was eager to see and be with the other, and now they are on the way together to the welcome table where the guest is the host and Zacchaeus is at home.

Such joy, you’d think, would be uncontainable and contagious; such joy would pull in the whole crowd, you’d think, and they would all follow the two on their way to the table of gladness—but no, the old labels are very sticky, they don’t come off that easily. All who saw it, Luke tells us, began to grumble. All who saw it didn’t see what Zacchaeus saw, didn’t see what Jesus saw. All who saw it only saw what they’d always seen, and they began to grumble.

Grumble is the perfect word here, I hear it as a blend of growl and rumble.It’s a  protest that can’t quite bring itself to speak, but remains a mumbled growl, a muffled thunder, a dangerous rumble just below the surface, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” This has been a constant in Jesus’ ministry, practically from day one. Back in Galilee, Jesus saw Levi, sitting at the tax booth, and said to him, “Follow me.” And Levi got up and followed him. And then there was a great banquet at Levi’s house, and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them. There was joy in the house, but some who were watching, grumbled, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”[5] Notice that in those early days the grumblers were still talking to Jesus, rather than about him. Later, though, when Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, a similar scene: Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus, but some who were watching, grumbled, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”[6] According to Luke, whenever people are watching Jesus and grumbling, it’s about the same thing—sinners are drawn to him, and he just can’t distance himself properly from them; on the contrary, he appears to be quite intentional about seeking them out. The grumblers are watching, but they can’t see what Jesus sees, they can’t see what the people in his company see, they can’t see the mercy of God dancing right in front of their eyes.

Zacchaeus doesn’t grumble; he stands and speaks. “Look, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold.” Some readers think, Zacchaeus is making a promise here, that in his former life he might have been selfish, greedy, and corrupt, but from now on he would act generously and justly. Others point out that his words are in the present, not the future tense, and that apparently Zacchaeus isn’t making a promise to bear fruits worthy of repentance, but protesting against being labeled a sinner.[7] According to that reading, Zacchaeus is finally able to tell us, and we are finally able to imagine, that he is indeed a generous person with a profound sense of justice, and not the stereotypical “sinner” of our labels. Zacchaeus is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew name Zakkai, and in Hebrew the name sounds like upright, innocent, righteous. This is who the man truly is, even when all the grumblers see are labels like sinner or taxman or camel forever stuck in the eye of the needle. 

Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” Today salvation has come to this house, because in the presence of Jesus we are seen and known, we get to be who we are, and we get to see one another for who we are: sons and daughters of the covenant, siblings of Jesus, members of the household of God.

Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was, and he did. In his desire to see, I hear echoes of lines from Psalm 63, O God, you are my God; I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Zacchaeus was rich, but he was thirsting for life, for connection with his neighbors, for a sense of belonging. He wanted to see who Jesus was, because like us he had heard that others had found life in his presence. Zacchaeus was seeking Jesus, and looking down from the tree, his eyes meeting the eyes of Jesus looking up, he discovered that in this relationship he was not the only seeker; Jesus was also seeking him.

So what? What does this mean come Monday morning? For the sake of life, seek the Lord with all your heart, knowing that the Lord is seeking you. And try to remember that, no matter how sticky your labels are, no person is beyond the reach of mercy.

[1] Lk 1:53

[2] Lk 12:16-21

[3] Lk 16:19-31

[4] Lk 18:25

[5] Lk 5:27-30

[6] Lk 15:1-2

[7] The Jewish Annotated NT notes, “Zacchaeus is less repenting than he is attesting his righteousness.” David Lose asks, “Are the present tense verbs in verse 8 to be understood, in fact, as present tense, thereby describing the current and ongoing behavior of Zacchaeus (as in the RSV and KJV)? Or shall we give them a future cast, describing Zacchaeus’ penitent pledge of future behavior (as in the NRSV and NIV)?” Scholars and translators are divided. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-3/commentary-on-luke-191-10-2

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