Far above

Luke tells us a very funny story. I think it’s one of the funniest in all of scripture. The disciples were having a conversation with Jesus when suddenly he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

How do you visualize the scene? Do you see Jesus slowly floating up like a balloon or is he zipping skyward like Iron Man?

Then the disciples are just standing there, gazing up to where they last saw him. Two men in white robes appear and ask them, “Galileans, why are you staring up toward heaven?” Why? What else would they be doing? And yet, it’s funny to imagine them standing there with their heads back, staring up for who knows how long.

You have probably all seen depictions of the Ascension— paintings, stained glass windows, art projects in Vacation Bible School. The old masters show Jesus floating upward in flowing robes, soft clouds around his feet, while the disciples look up, their faces expressing a range of emotions from fear to wide-eyed wonder and devotion. In one painting, the body of Jesus has all but disappeared, and at the upper edge, you can only see the hem of his robe and his feet sticking out from under the frame.[1] It looks like his toes would disappear any moment now, and then the disciples would be on their own again.

For some of us the scene is just a little too fantastic for our sober minds; for others, though, it’s not nearly fantastic enough, spoiled as we are by Hollywood power myths paired with spectacular visual effects. Is Luke giving you too much or too little with this curious story?

Our perspective changes when, rather than watch the scene from a distance, we enter it. Now we find ourselves in the company of men and women who have been going through a season of profound change. For forty days— in biblical lingo that means a good long time— Jesus presented himself alive to them, appearing to them and speaking with them about the kingdom of God. His painful absence after his death on the cross had turned into a startling and confusing sense of presence— with fear, joy, disbelief. and wonder washing over them in waves. He was with them. He was opening their minds to hear the ancient scriptures in new ways. They were learning, growing. And just when they thought they knew him again in a whole new way, just when they thought that now the world was ready for God’s kingdom to come in fullness, just then the one who was supposed to claim the throne slipped away, again.

Luke turned that sense of Jesus slipping away into a very funny story; but there’s nothing funny about that moment. One moment you have a sense of God’s presence, perhaps even a sense of new familiarity, and then it goes from clear to cloudy and blank. And where do you turn when the familiar becomes foreign, the tangible, intangible, the presence, an absence? Luke suggests our attention is glued to that moment, that spot where presence turned into absence. Why are we staring? Because our hearts are tied to that loss. Because our souls are incapable of movement without him.

What Luke wants us to hear and understand is that Jesus didn’t go away, but that he ascended to heaven. God exalted Jesus— the same Jesus who ate and drank with sinners, who suffered and died in shame— God exalted Jesus as Lord.

According to the witness of Paul, God has seated Jesus at the right hand of God, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.[2] Far above— that’s not meant as information about Jesus’ whereabouts— ‘far above’ is a declaration of his status and position. The friend of sinners sits on the throne of heaven.

We know about rule, authority, power, and dominion. Fear wants to rule us. Ignorance may sit in authority over us. Selfishness may present itself as the ultimate power in the world. Callousness may dream out loud of its cold dominion. But Jesus and his reign expose them as impostors: the throne is his, and heaven’s reign is revealed in his friendship with sinners and his radical hospitality for neighbors of all sorts. Before him, idols shake on their foundations, they crumble and fall, and what will abide is his reign of peace.

“Jesus departs from his followers so that he might exercise his authority and influence over all things, places, and powers,” writes Matt Skinner. 

The ascension does not mean the cessation of his ministry. It does not mean Jesus’ absence. It does not mean the suspension of God’s activity to reclaim the world. Quite the opposite.[3]

Jesus said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.” Absence would again become powerful presence, and ordinary people, fishermen and tax collectors, freshmen and professors, young, old, queer, straight, trans, left, right— ordinary people would be witnesses to the love that has found us. We would be messengers of reconciliation. We would be truth tellers and ambassadors of the Lord’s reign to the ends of the earth.

When our gaze is stuck on that spot behind the cloud where we last perceived God’s presence in the world, angels gently redirect our attention. It’s no use looking up if we want to see Jesus. We will see him. He will come to us. Our attention needs to be where his attention was when he walked on the earth: On people craving connection, people starving from lack of compassion, people desperate for a taste of hope, places and situations where life is far from flourishing. Our attention needs to be directed by his, and when we’re not certain what it is he wants us to notice, we wait. He will come to us. We will be clothed with power from on high.[4]

Or so he told them, we might say; so he told the few who would become his apostles. But those were different times, simpler times, we imagine. They didn’t have polls relentlessly reporting the declining numbers of believers; for them, in those days, it was just natural to believe in the promises of God and they, of course, weren’t nearly as busy as we are—or so we like to think. Annie Dillard wrote beautifully about this odd assumption:

We are busy. So, I see now, were they. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead—as if innocence had ever been—and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved. But there is no one but us. There never has been. There have been generations which remembered, and generations which forgot; there has never been a generation of whole men and women who lived well for even one day.[5]

No need, then, to paint the past in a rosy glow, whether it’s the days of the apostles or the years of innocence when tall steeples went up like grass after a spring shower. There is no one but us. There never has been. Us and the promise of God. Us and the promise that we are not on our own, but that God is at work in the world. Us and the promise that we will be clothed with power from on high and be just right—just right, you and me, just right to participate in Christ’s continuing mission to the ends of the earth.

Paul tells us that God raised Jesus from the dead and seated him at the right hand of God in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion. Far above doesn’t mean far away. The movement of God is not away from the world, but deeper into its brokenness in order to heal it. The movement of God is not away from us, but always to us and through us to the world.

Christ reigns far above all rule and authority and power and dominion. Christ reigns, and we have the privilege of letting our lives witness to his sovereign rule.

[1] https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/110001279

[2] Ephesians 1:20-21

[3] Matt Skinner

https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/seventh-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-acts-16-14

[4] Luke 24:49

[5] Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 56-57..

Making love real

It was the night when they were having their last meal together. Judas had already left the table and gone out; the rest of them didn’t know where he’d gone or why. Jesus knew, and he knew it was time. “Little children, I am with you only a little longer,” he said.[1] Sometimes he sounds like a mom or a dad, doesn’t he? Little children he called them, and I imagine that’s how they felt. Not like grown-up friends, not like adults who know that sometimes life can take unpredictable turns and you just deal with it, but like kids. Like worried kids. That night he also told them, “Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other.” But Peter and the rest of them weren’t quite ready to hear those words. When you feel like a kid, it’s really hard to love like a grown-up. They worried what would become of them. “Lord, where are you going?” they asked.[2] When will you be back? Why can’t we come with you? What are we supposed to do without you?

Little children he called them, and that’s how they felt. Worried kids, not at all excited about the prospect of having the entire house to themselves with no one around to tell them what to do. “I go to prepare a place for you,” he told them, “so that where I am you may be also.”[3] And he went on like this for a very long time, telling them everything they needed to know before he left them. “I will not leave you orphaned,” he promised, but the loop playing in their minds, I imagine, was, “He’s leaving us.”

Barbara was the eldest of three daughters and the designated babysitter in her family. “From the time I was twelve, I was the one my parents left in charge when they went out at night,” she writes.

First my father would sit me down and remind me how much he and my mother trusted me—not only because I was the oldest but also because I was the most responsible. This always made me dizzy, but I agreed with him. I would not let the house burn down. I would not open the door to strangers. I would not let my little sisters fall down the basement steps. Then my mother would show me where she had left the telephone number, remind me when they would be home, and all together we would walk to the front door where everyone kissed everyone good-bye. Then the lock clicked into place, and a new era began. I was in charge.

Turning around to face her new responsibilities, what Barbara saw were her sisters’ faces, looking at her with something between hope and fear. They knew she was no substitute for what they had just lost, but since she was all they had they were willing to try. And so was she. She played games with them. She read them books. She made them pimento cheese sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off. But as the night wore on, they got crankier and crankier. “Where are mommy and daddy? Where did they go? When will they be back?” She told them over and over again. She made up elaborate stories about the wonderful things they would do together in the morning. She told them to go to sleep and promised them that she would make sure mommy and daddy kissed them good night when they came in.

I tried to make everything sound normal, but how did I know? Our parents might have had a terrible accident. They might never come home again and the three of us would be split apart, each of us sent to a different foster home so that we never saw each other again. It was hard, being the babysitter, because I was a potential orphan too. I had as much to lose as my sisters, and as much to fear, but I could not give in to it because I was the one in charge. I was supposed to know better. I was supposed to exude confidence and create the same thing in them.[4]

When Jesus prepared his disciples for his departure, he called them little children. Having washed and fed them, he sat them down to give them his instructions and left them in charge. So we’re the responsible ones now, the ones he has trusted to carry on in his name. But what about the times when we feel not quite grown-up enough for the responsibility we were given, when we feel abandoned, desolate, vulnerable, frightened—in a word, orphaned? What about the moments when our little brothers and sisters look to us for a story to comfort them, for a brave song that will keep the monsters from coming up the basement steps; when they look to us for assurance that all will be well in the morning? And when we worry about what will become of us and of the world—how are we supposed to exude confidence and create it in the ones who look to us?

“I will not leave you orphaned,” he promised. And he kept his promise.

In the Fourth Gospel, the disciples are anxious because their relationship with Jesus was to come to an end. It was the most important relationship in their lives, one that had redefined everything for them: how they saw themselves, how they looked at each other, how they viewed God and the world. And soon, they were afraid, this relationship would be reduced to the past tense of their fading memories of Jesus. How would they know him, follow him, love him after his return to the Father?

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth.” Jesus promised the coming of another Advocate, another Comforter, Counselor, or Companion as other translations have rendered the term; the Spirit of truth who would continue to make available the truth Jesus embodied and revealed. Jesus’ return to the Father wouldn’t mean he’d abandoned them, but that they would encounter him differently—in and through the Spirit, in and through each other. They and generations after them would encounter the truth of Jesus through a community where the love of God becomes tangible and real, a community shaped by the Spirit of truth.

While Jesus was with them as the Word of God incarnate, his mission was limited to the one place where he was at any given time, and to the people he met then and there. With his resurrection a new era began. His friends, the disciples, every generation of disciples, were given the Spirit and became the community of love where the living Christ, the living God is at home.

We’re the responsible ones now, the ones he has trusted to carry on in his name, gifted with all that is needed. We worry, because we think it’s all up to us now. There’s so much to do in this love-starved mess of a world. And we already have so many things to do. And how much more can we do, over-scheduled as we are? And do we really have all it takes to do all that?  We barely know where we are anymore—how can we do what needs doing?

We worry, because we let ourselves be defined by what we do and how much or how little we accomplish. But doing is not the whole truth, it’s not even half the truth. Jesus is the truth, and who we are—who we become and come to see ourselves to be in the company of Jesus: beloved children of God. Any good we do, any good we can do, will flow, not from anxious busyness, but from knowing that we’re not orphans, from letting ourselves be rooted, held, and transformed in the love of God becoming tangible in the community of believers.

On Thursday evening mourners gathered at New Song Church outside of Dallas to honor Kyu Song Cho, 37, Cindy Cho, 35, and their 3-year-old son, James. They had been killed last weekend in a mass shooting at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, where a gunman, armed with an “AR-15 style assault weapon” and a handgun, had killed eight people and injured a half-dozen more. Among the survivors of the shooting—the second deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. this year and the second in Texas in a little over a week—among the survivors was the Chos’ six-year-old son, William.

At the funeral, the boy’s grandfather said, “I request a prayer from all of you that he live a healthy life, to be bright, to love everyone, and to be loved.”[5] This is the Spirit of truth addressing us in the words of an old man whose heart was broken in ways I’m too afraid to fully imagine. We have been asked to pray that this young child may love everyone and be loved. We have been asked to give ourselves to making love real for this young child and every child. The Spirit of truth, the Comforter, the Advocate, the One called to our side is a living presence among us. A living presence. “Those who love me,” Jesus said that night, “will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”[6] The divine presence the first disciples encountered in Jesus, the divine presence we seek and so often question, that presence is promised to those who give themselves to making love real in this love-starved mess of a world. In this love, God is at home in the world and we are at home in God.

[1] John 13:33

[2] John 13:36

[3] John 14:3

[4] Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine, 80-81.

[5] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/grandfather-child-orphaned-texas-shooting-asks-prayers-emotional-funer-rcna84150

[6] John 14:23

Chosen strangers

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

This is the first line in Peter’s letter. The letter is addressed to God’s chosen strangers in the world of the diaspora, who live in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia—provinces in what is today Turkey. He calls them chosen strangers, because they no longer quite belong where they live, because God has chosen them.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

New birth into a living hope—Peter refers to his readers as newborn infants, and urges them, urges us, like newborn infants to long for the pure, spiritual milk, the pure milk of the word.[1] In First Corinthians and Hebrews, milk also is mentioned; there it is baby food for baby Christians who haven’t matured enough in their faith to digest the solid food of weightier teachings.[2] Peter, though, is playing a different theme. Peter is not talking about milk for newborn infants who’ll eventually become meat-and-potatoes Christians.

Peter is writing to believers who struggle with how to live as people chosen by God, how to live the life that erupted with Christ’s resurrection from the dead, and he points to babies. Look at them, he says, they are new to the miracle of life, and yet they know instinctively what they need to thrive. You pick them up, you cradle them in your arm, with their head nestled in your elbow, and if they’re even just a little hungry, they’ll turn their little face toward you and with their mouths open they begin to feel their way to the source of all goodness and joy. “Since you have tasted that the Lord is good,” Peter writes, since you have tasted the sweet forgiveness, the rich mercy and abundant grace of God, desire that new-life milk and drink it. Nourished by it you will grow into salvation. Be done with pretense, be done with deceit and prejudice, be done with envy and ugly gossip, and whatever else they serve at the bar of your former life; that stuff has zero nutritional value. Not only does it not nourish you, it consumes you and those around you. Look at a baby: that’s you in the arms of Christ. Drink the love that will not let you go, drink the life given for the life of the world, drink until you want no more, drink until you drowse in sunlit bliss.[3]

At this point, the apostle makes a rather abrupt turn. Peter steps away from the beautiful intimacy between mother and child, and now he writes about stones and buildings. Stones are hard and rigid. Stones are lifeless. Dead as a stone, we say. But Peter wants us to ponder the image of a living stone. Christ is the stone that the builders rejected.

When we build something, we make a plan, and we choose and reject expertly according to our plan. We have trained our eyes to judge what is useful for our purposes and what is not. We build lots of things: Houses, towers, walls and bridges. We build homes, careers, families, lives. And we build egos. We look at others, and we are quick to assess them according to our needs, calculating whether they might be useful for our purposes. When we find them wanting, we toss them to the side—not suited for the project we’re working on, disposable people. Sin encourages us to build our lives according to our own plans and purposes and to choose or reject those around us accordingly. Sin encourages us to make ourselves the measure and judge of all things.

Christ is the stone that the builders rejected. Christ is the stone which human builders toss aside. We have our own designs and ideas, our own vision of life, our own carefully planned projects—and he doesn’t fit in. But in God’s eyes, this misfit, this reject is chosen and precious. God is building a house in the world, and Christ is critical to the design and realization of the project.

Come to him, a living stone … and like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.

Peter’s first audience were diaspora churches, scattered all over the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. The fledgling Christian communities were without legal or social status, and their members often were subject to harassment and persecution. Their faith in Jesus, the Crucified One whom God had raised from the dead, often made them strangers in their own towns and neighborhoods. They knew the sting of mockery, the pain of rejection and exclusion. They lived like resident aliens who didn’t know where they belonged and who they were or would be.

Come to him, a living stone … and like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.[4]

The word “house” has rich meanings in the Scriptures. It signifies not just shelter, but belonging, identity, community. God called Abraham to go from his father’s house, from his country and culture, to form a new house, a house founded on his trust in God and God’s promise. This new house, this new people of God found themselves in exile in “the house of bondage” in Egypt. Yet God brought them out in a mighty act of liberation, and at Sinai God made a covenant with the former enslaved people and they became “the house of Israel.” In Jerusalem, the temple was built and rebuilt as a dwelling place for God’s name, a house of prayer for God’s people marking the center of their world. We read in the gospels that one of the disciples said to Jesus as they were coming out of the temple, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Jesus told him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”[5] It was as though in those days all things were being swallowed up by the house of Caesar. Yet it was in those days that God began to build a new house in the world, and in that house, Jesus, rejected by human builders, is God’s chosen cornerstone.

Cornerstones are laid as part of the foundation upon which all else rests. They are selected for their size and strength, and the entire structure is only as strong and reliable as those stones. We don’t think of cornerstones as essential structural elements anymore. We consider them ceremonial add-ons to commemorate the year a building was begun. But Jesus is not merely a commemorative ornament in the corner of the building, not in the house God is building. So perhaps we should consider an alternate translation like keystone instead of cornerstone.

The keystone sits at the high point of an arch and it is essential for its structural integrity: remove it, and the arch will collapse. In the house God is building, Jesus, the stone that human builders rejected and continue to reject, is the keystone that holds everything together. Empire builders have no use for Jesus, but God is building a house in the world, a living structure of living stones, with Christ as the foundational cornerstone upon whom the whole projects rests, with Christ as the keystone that provides structural strength and integrity. And all who come to him likewise are living stones forming an integral part of the house, sharing a common life and offering their lives in praise and service to God.

With Christ, all who come to him are a chosen race: as living stones they become the one humanity made in the image of God. With Christ, all who come to him are a royal priesthood: they make their lives an offering of praise and gratitude in response to the unceasing flow of God’s grace and mercy. With Christ, all who come to him are a holy nation: nationalism with all its excluding attitudes gives place to a community that is consecrated to God and God’s purpose to unite all nations in their diversity into one house. With Christ, all who come to him are God’s own people: chosen and precious, a living sign that God desires one human family sharing life in justice and peace. With Christ, all who come to him proclaim with their very lives the mighty acts of him who called them out of darkness into his marvelous light.[6]

Peter does tell his readers what to do, what to desire, what to be done with, but the emphasis is on who we are and who and what we are becoming in the house God is building. We may be living in the house of Caesar, we may be living in the house that colonialism built, but we don’t belong here. We may be living in the house where every brick, every floor board and rafter speaks of ingenuity and skill, but also of injustice, domination, and exploitation. We may be living here, but we’re not at home here, we’re far from home here. We don’t belong here. We’re chosen strangers.

God is building a house in the world. This house is not built with the stones we are tempted to throw at others when we forget that none of us is without sin.  This house is not built with the life-less stones of our hardened hearts. This house is not built on the dead stone that closed the tomb. The house God is building in the world is a house of living stones, a living, breathing, growing house, a dwelling place for God and a house of prayer for all peoples. In this house we hear each other’s stories, the whole story of each of us and all of us, and we see each other, we really see each other, and together we grow into salvation.

Peter’s picture includes no glimpse of a completed house, only of a house under construction. The Apostle wants to encourage us to trust the master builder. When it is finished, the house of humanity will reflect Christ in every detail.

In a similar way, the image of individual believers never arrives at any stage later than that of infants who have just left the womb, nuzzling the breasts of a maternal Lord.[7] We trust this one who is the source of all life and goodness and joy. We trust and drink and let ourselves be built into the house that love builds.

[1] See 1 Peter 1:14, 23; 2:2

[2] 1 Corinthians 3:2; Hebrews 5:12-13

[3] Penelope Duckworth, “Milk (for Clare),” Congregations 30, no. 3 (2004): 19

[4] 1 Peter 2:4

[5] Mark 13:1-2 parr.

[6] See Philip A. Potter, “Christ is God’s delegated and precious living stone,” International Review Of Mission 72, no. 288 (October 1983), 540-541.

[7] Paul Sevier Minear, “The house of living stones: a study of 1 Peter 2:4-12,” The Ecumenical Review 34, no. 3 (July 1982), 246.

Spirit-induced community

On Friday, I devoted myself to the baking of bread. I had started a pound of pre-ferment on Thursday, and in the morning I weighed and added the other ingredients to the mixing bowl — flour, water, and salt. I devoted myself to measuring, blending, kneading, and waiting. With a good, active pre-ferment it usually takes about three hours for the community of microorganisms to turn the whole batch from a sticky mess into smooth, bubbly, and bouncy dough. They were doing all the work while I was catching up on a couple of podcasts.

Ezra Klein was talking with Sheila Liming, who teaches at a college in Vermont. He told her about his surprise when reading

this recent study by Cigna that found that about almost twice as many adults aged 18 to 24 reported feeling lonely versus seniors aged 66 and older. So 79 percent of young adults and 41 percent of seniors. And by the way, 79 percent of young adults feeling lonely — I mean, that’s really bad. And you can attribute some of this to the pandemic. But this structure of young adults feeling lonelier than the elderly was consistent in pre-pandemic research, too.

So you teach college students, as you mentioned. I’m curious what you observe about how people in that age group, which I think are canonically and stereotypically understood as the most social, what kind of trouble they’re having socializing, not socializing — how you understand the particular loneliness epidemic among young adults.

She quickly responded, “Oh, they’re having a ton of trouble,” and she talked about some of her observations. Then she described a typical scene:

I think about what an average college classroom is like these days when I walk into the room before the start of class. And generally, when I walk into the room at the start of class, and there’s a lot of young people, and they’re getting ready to start class, it’s dead silent. And everybody’s staring at their phones. And I don’t blame them. And what they’re doing is they’re talking to people most of the time. They’re talking to someone who is somewhere else who is going to have a conversation with them, who’s going to talk with them about their day, who’s going to help them process whatever’s going on in their life. And I don’t think it’s a lack of a realization that they could have the same conversation with the person sitting next to them. I think it’s more about a fear of the risk that comes from doing that — that there’s this kind of public exposure that’s going to happen, or you’re going to be judged in the act of trying to start a conversation with somebody you don’t already know yet.[1]

The two continued to share other observations and findings about trends in our culture that drive fragmentation, isolation, and loneliness. The third voice that was present for me, was Luke. He writes about the community of believers that emerges on Pentecost.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Another way to translate this is

They were constant in their attention to the teachings of the apostles, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers.[2]

They were constant in their attention to four things. I can listen to a podcast while I’m kneading the dough, but if I do it while I’m measuring the ingredients, it’s highly likely I will either follow the conversation and mess up the dough, or attend to the dough and miss parts of the conversation. They were constant in their attention to four things, Luke insists.

Who were they? Luke is writing about Pentecost, about the Spirit that inspired, empowered, and directed the mission of Jesus, that same Spirit being poured out on the disciples. Luke is writing about one of the apostles, Peter, proclaiming salvation in Jesus, the crucified Messiah whom God raised from the dead, and the Spirit was moving, breathing, nudging, weaving—and those who welcomed Peter’s message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. Three thousand in a day—Awe came upon everyone because many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles! Wonders and signs indeed. But think about that for a moment: three thousand Jews from all over the known world, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, speaking different dialects, eating different foods, with different interpretations of Torah, all with their own personalities, preferences, attitudes, fears, prejudices—three thousand in a day!

Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread in their homes and ate their food with glad and generous hearts.

Think about those doing the cooking day by day, or those coordinating which believers would meet in which house, or who would bring what to the potluck. And just when all of them were beginning to learn the names of those sharing dinner with glad and generous hearts, newcomers would show up at the table—because daily, Luke writes, the Lord added to their number.

And all who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.

“No doubt there’s a touch of idealization in Luke’s presentation,” comments one scholar.[3] For hundreds of years, interpreters have proposed that Luke offers his readers “a symbolically idealized portrait of communal life,” writes another. And “idealized”always implied exaggerated, hyperbolic, in reality short-lived, limited in scope if ever actually attempted, a state of affairs that looks extremely attractive, yet utterly unrealistic or beyond our reach. “So much tempts us to dismiss these verses as quaint,” comments Matt Skinner, “even as we claim to yearn for such conditions as a sign of God’s reign among us.[4]

But not all have given in to that temptation, not all are giving in to it. Luke’s utopian vision of what the church might be in its finest realization has inspired monastic movements, liberation theologies, experiments in communal living, and countless other, everyday moments of daring to live out with others—difficult others, complicated others, lovely others—God’s vision and promise of life.

Luke paints for us a quick image of fulfillment at the dawn of the church’s mission. He doesn’t write a set of rules or design the one, true structure for Christian living—he paints possibility. This is what the Spirit of Christ can do; this is what our witness to the reign of God can be—the reign of God that Jesus lived and proclaimed in his earthly mission and confirmed with his death and resurrection. The reign of God can be reflected in our life, in our proclamation, in our service, in our mission and witness because the Spirit who inspired, empowered, and directed Jesus, now inspires, empowers, and directs his disciples.

We are easily frustrated in our attempts to build community that represents an authentic embodiment of the gospel, a community where love becomes real because Christ is known. We are easily frustrated because we see what we’re up against in our culture, in our relationships, in our own hearts. What Luke wants us to know and remember is that we’re not left to our own devices in building true community or in pursuing justice or in seeking fullness of life. The Spirit of the risen Christ is present and at work in any situation we may only be able to look at with frustration or fear.

I keep thinking about the sad reality of 79 percent of young adults feeling lonely. And the professor walking into her classroom, and instead of the happy hum of chatter and laughter, there’s everybody staring at their phones in dead silence. Remember what she said?

I don’t blame them. … They’re talking to someone who is somewhere else who is going to have a conversation with them, … who’s going to help them process whatever’s going on in their life. And I don’t think it’s a lack of a realization that they could have the same conversation with the person sitting next to them. I think it’s more about a fear of the risk that comes from doing that.

We’re afraid. We’re afraid of being judged. We’re afraid of being rejected. We’re afraid to drop our kids off at school. We’re afraid to accidentally knock on the wrong door or go up the wrong driveway and get shot. And we’re afraid to ask our neighbor to be considerate and not shoot his gun in the yard, so the baby can sleep. We’re afraid he might say, “I’ll do what I want to in my front yard,” and show us what he means – or worse, show our babies.[5] We’re afraid. We’re also sad; and furious; and exhausted; and numb.

What are we to do? I do my best to listen to Luke, who writes,

They were constant in their attention to the teachings of the apostles, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers.

The words are breathing, I can hear the Spirit whisper. They were constant in their attention not to four or more things, but to one thing, and it changed everything. They were constant in their attention to remaining open to the Spirit of Jesus; open to the love that drives out fear; love that is patient and kind; love that doesn’t insist on its own way; love that rejoices in the truth. They were constant in their attention to the Spirit who opened the Scriptures and their minds, and who continually drew them into newness of life with strangers, inspiring them to be generous and fearless in what they did with their time, their food, and their possessions. I hear them inviting us to join them.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-sheila-liming.html

[2] Luke Timothy Johnson, Acts (Sacra Pagina), 56.

[3] James Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem, 196.

[4] Matt Skinner https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-acts-242-47-2

[5] https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/29/us/cleveland-texas-shooting/index.html

Walking together

I come from a family of walkers. My grandparents never drove anywhere. Oma walked to the village to do her shopping, and if she had to go to the city, she walked to the bus stop. Opa walked to work at the leather factory, he walked to choir practice, and on Sundays he walked to church. He walked to his apple orchard on the other side of the valley, and he walked in the forest, be it to get firewood, or just for the pleasure of walking. He never drove a vehicle, and the only thing with wheels he ever operated on the street was a rattly handcart he used to haul sacks of apples for cider or chicken feed.

My dad drove to work in the city every day, and my mom got her driver’s license in her thirties. One day she backed into another car in a parking lot, nothing big, just a broken tail light, but that was the end of it. She never drove anywhere again. She walked to do her shopping, she walked to church, and when she needed to go to the city, she walked to the tram stop. She’s 89, and while she walks much less than she used to, she feels most like herself when she does.

I come from a family of walkers. My siblings and I walked to school every day until fourth grade, and then we walked to the tram stop to get to school in the city. We walked to church, to youth group, to the pool in summer, or to visit friends. One of my friends lived one valley over, on the other side of the hill, about six or seven miles away, and I loved the short hike through the woods I took when I went to spend time with him. I rode my bike a lot as well, but I had discovered that there’s nothing better than walking to think about stuff; something about the rhythm of simply putting one foot in front of the other and letting your thoughts wander.

When I heard about veterans hiking the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Cress Trail, or the entire U.S. from coast to coast, I wasn’t surprised. They seek healing for their souls, hiking by themselves or in groups, processing the stuff they couldn’t just leave behind or forget when they returned from the battle field. “We are eternally perplexed by how to move toward forgiveness or healing or truth,” writes Rebecca Solnit, “but we know how to walk from here to there, however arduous the journey.”[1]

Jesus walked everywhere he went, except for that short ride into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey. And for his followers, walking with Jesus was not just a matter of getting from Capernaum to Bethsaida, or from Jericho up to Jerusalem. It’s how they learned that following was about more than their minds absorbing his teachings; following him was something they they did with their feet, with their whole bodies. It was a way of being in the world. It was a particular walk defined by his pace, his direction, his attention, his goals. They followed him all the way to Jerusalem, full of expectation, and then things just fell apart: the temple leadership, the Romans, the crowds, betrayal and arrest, fear and denial, and the horror of the cross.

And then, on the third day, early in the morning, rumors of resurrection. Some of the women returned from the tomb with words they had received in a vision of angels, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen.” Well, if he was risen, why didn’t he show himself? Why didn’t he enter the city in triumph? Why didn’t he restore the kingdom to Israel? They waited, remembering his words about rising on the third day, but then they set out on the long walk back.

We don’t know where exactly to look for Emmaus on the map, but we know the road. It’s where we walk when we can’t tell if we’re sad, furious, or tired; when our hope has shrunk from cosmic dimensions to a mere glimmer. “Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go,” Frederick Buechner wrote, “to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas that [human beings] have had – ideas about love and freedom and justice – have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish [people] for selfish ends.”[2] The road to Emmaus is where you walk when faith is little more than a memory. When you have no idea who you might become now or what might become of the world. Walking gives you something to do; it helps you sort things out; it gives rhythm to the waves of thoughts and feelings washing over you. “I walk a lonely road, my shadow’s the only one that walks beside me” Green Day sing in Boulevard of Broken Dreams. “Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me. Till then I walk alone.” Sometimes you walk alone. Sometimes you wish you had somebody to walk with you.

Cleopas and the other disciple were on the road together. They were talking: the joy of Jesus’ arrival in the city, the shock of his arrest, the guilt they had to bear for abandoning him, the trauma of his execution, and then, earlier that day, the astounding story the women had shared with them. It was all too much, too confusing, and so they walked. A stranger came near and was going with them. It was Jesus, Luke tells us, but they didn’t know it. All they knew were the brutal facts of Friday and the numbness of Saturday and the story the women had told them. Friday had weight. Friday was verifiable. Betrayal, fear, torture, death, hope shattered and silenced – there was a record of Friday, engraved on their hearts. Resurrection was a rumor. Some said, an idle tale.

“What are you talking about?” the stranger asked. They told him about Jesus and how they had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. And the stranger walked them through the Scriptures, beginning with Moses and all the prophets. He taught them to see how what had taken place in Jerusalem was at the heart of God’s story with the world, and how it revealed the full depth of Israel’s witness to the faithfulness of God. In the stranger’s words, the promises of scripture opened up like blossoms, and the two companions opened up along with them. “Stay with us,” they urged him when they reached the village and he was walking ahead as if he were going on. “Stay with us; it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. And at the table, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. That’s when they recognized him. That’s when the resurrection was no longer a rumor, but their life, their world renewed.

“The sacred moments,” wrote Fred Buechner, “the moments of miracle, are often the everyday moments, the moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears, reveal only… the gardener, a stranger coming down the road behind us, a meal like any other meal. But if we look with our hearts, if we listen with all of our … imagination … what we may see is Jesus himself.”[3] The risen Christ subverts our ways of knowing, making an ordinary moment shine and opening to us a horizon of hope we cannot perceive with our minds alone. At first, we struggle to squeeze what we are told happened on the third day into our frame of understanding of how the world works. But then, suddenly or gradually, we begin to see how the world with all its wonders and its horrors is not only being reframed, but remade, in the new creation where the Crucified One is risen. Resurrection is no longer the odd event we can’t quite square with our knowledge of the world, but rather the horizon that allows us to see all things surrounded and held by God’s mercy.

On Friday, the Tennessee General Assembly adjourned from its 2023 session. Voices for a Safer Tennessee, the group that organized the human chain in support of common-sense gun laws, in a statement commended Governor Bill Lee “for his leadership and courage in urging our lawmakers to ‘set aside politics and personal pride [and] to do the right thing,’ and for proposing new gun safety bill language for the legislature to consider. This was an important first step.” Yes, indeed, an important first step. The statement continued with an echo of today’s Gospel reading where the two disciples are able to speak of hope only in the past perfect sense, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” The statement says,

While we had hoped the General Assembly would act more quickly and discuss the proposed legislation during its regularly scheduled session, we respect that many of our legislators need and want more time to educate themselves on how other states have conservatively, but successfully, protected Second Amendment rights while also protecting citizens.

We had hoped, but because something has noticeably shifted in Tennessee, we continue to hope that the first step was indeed the beginning of a new walk. Governor Lee has already called a special session to discuss firearm safety legislation.[4] A date hasn’t been set yet, but there’s movement, and there’s more time for our elected officials “to hear from their constituents - including the majority of Tennessee Republicans who polled as supporting extreme risk laws (71%), closing background check loopholes (73%), and safe storage laws (68%).”[5]

Imagine some of our elected officials hearing the Gospel reading in their home churches this morning. Imagine some of them calling a colleague, “Let’s go for a walk.” Imagine them walking together, listening to each other. And imagine them listening to the stranger who walks with them, the stranger who holds the power to let them see the world in a whole new light.

[1] Wanderlust, 50.

[2] Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat, 85-86.

[3] Ibid., 87-88.

[4] https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2023/04/21/tennessee-gov-bill-lee-calls-a-special-session-on-gun-reform/70140521007/

[5] https://www.instagram.com/p/CrUiRL6suab/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D

Breath of life

It is a strange reversal, when you think about it. Jesus is out of the tomb, risen from the dead, on the loose in the world – and the disciples? Hiding behind locked doors, prisoners of fear. I imagine them in a dark, cramped room, with little air, little conversation. Nobody has remembered to get something to eat, but nobody really feels like eating anyway. I wonder how long they’ve been in there.

Mary has told them, “I have seen the Lord!” She has shared with them the words of the Risen One. But her Easter message clearly hasn’t connected. John doesn’t say they didn’t believe her or that they didn’t know what her words might mean. They just don’t show any signs of life. One of the stories about the apostles John didn’t write down, but one I like to visualize in my mind, is about Mary pulling her hair out in frustration: all she had were words, and her words were not enough to break the paralysis of fear and shame, not enough to let them hear what she had heard, and see what she had seen.

Then Jesus came and said, “Peace be with you.” The first word of the Risen One to the gathered disciples was peace. The last time they had been together, that night before he was crucified, he had told them, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”[1] And now Jesus stood among them and spoke peace into their troubled, fearful hearts. He showed them the wounds in his hands and his side, and his presence transformed the dark, tomb-like room into a wide-open space of joy and laughter. Jesus was once again the center of their lives, and their fear melted away.

“Peace be with you,” he said, not, “Shame on you, you sorry bunch.” He didn’t say, “OK, friends, we need to talk,” but, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” In the blink of an eye, they began to know themselves as sent ones, and they began to remember the world, not as a frightening threat, but as the object of God’s love. Only moments ago, they had been little more than lifeless bodies in a tomb—now they were a community with a mission, sent by the Risen One.

In the book of Ezekiel, the prophet looks at a valley full of bones, and the Lord asks him, “Mortal, can these bones live?” And the Lord tells him to prophesy to these bones, to speak to the bones and say to them, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”[2] In Ezekiel’s vision, the bones represented the people of God in exile: lifeless, dry, dispirited and discouraged. I imagine Mary must have felt like she was talking to a pile of bones when her words couldn’t break through the pall of fear that lay on the other disciples. But now Jesus was in their midst and he breathed on them and they received new life. This small band of fearful men and women, held together solely by habit, shame and fear—now they were the church, commissioned and empowered by the living Christ, born into living hope. Can these bones live? We will see; the mission of Christ continues, with his disciples serving in his name, telling the story, forgiving sins, bearing fruit—until the peace of Christ fills earth and heaven.

Since the days of Mary and the other apostles, frightened disciples could be church because the Risen One keeps breaking in on us, breathing on the white bones of our lives, leading us out of our tombs, and entrusting us with gifts for ministry in Jesus’ name, for the life of the world.

The resurrection isn’t merely something that happened to Jesus two millennia ago, but rather something that began with him, something that continues with those who hear the word of life. It is the transformation of our old, tired world into the new creation. It is the breath that brings life to dry bones. It is the dew from heaven that renews the earth. It is the wind that blows our little boat to the future of fulfillment.

Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus came. That makes him one of us, one of the many who weren’t there that night. And all we have is what Thomas was given, the words of witnesses. “We have seen the Lord,” the other disciples said to him, but their words, much like Mary’s before, didn’t land, didn’t click, didn’t trigger an eruption of joy. He didn’t know whom or what they thought they had seen, what apparition might have fooled them. He needed to see for himself, and more than see. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” He needed to see, he needed to get close, he needed to touch. Thomas wanted proof—not some elegant argument about the general possibility of bodily resurrection, but tangible proof that this Risen One was indeed Jesus, the One who had died on the cross. He didn’t need more words, he had to see for himself, he needed to get close enough to touch the body.

A week later the disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. I find that remarkable, because many people hesitate to express their need for something more tangible than words for fear of being labeled spiritually challenged, but Thomas didn’t hesitate—and he didn’t go home. When they came together, he was there with them—with his questions, with his doubts, his needs. According to this gem of a story, the community of disciples consists of those who have seen and those who have not—and no one is pushed out or forced in; they’re together.

And now the scene repeats itself, solely for Thomas’s sake, we suppose. Jesus comes and stands among them and says, for the third time now, “Peace be with you.” He turns to Thomas and, far from rebuking him for his stubborn insistence on something more tangible than words, says, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” And Thomas responds, “My Lord and my God.” In the Gospel of John, the one who doesn’t settle for repeating the words of others but holds on for his own experience of the Risen Christ, makes a confession of faith unlike any other in the gospels.

Many in the church have remembered Thomas as the doubter par excellence, and those in positions of power love bringing him up whenever uncomfortable questioners need to be quieted. I don’t think we should label him a doubter, though. To me, he’s one who insisted on resurrection faith rooted in experience, rather than the authority of an individual or a group. One who insisted that the risen Christ of our proclamation is still recognizable as the Crucified One.

The Gospel of John opens with exalted language,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.

Close to the end of the Gospel, it is Thomas who utters the final words spoken by a disciple, affirming the confession of Jesus as Lord, in the presence of Jesus, crucified and risen.

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus calls his followers to come and see, and that call doesn’t change now that Jesus is present through the Holy Spirit. We are called to come and see. On Easter morning, the disciple whom Jesus loved came to the tomb and saw the linen wrappings; then he went inside, got a little closer, and he saw and believed. Mary Magdalene had seen angels at the tomb, but they had no comfort for her; then a stranger spoke her name, and she recognized Jesus and believed. The disciples believed when they saw the risen Jesus, and they rejoiced, “We have seen the Lord!” Thomas believed when he saw Jesus and heard him speak, and he moved from questioning the testimony of Mary and the other disciples to adding his own voice to theirs.

We weren’t there when the disciples huddled together in fear and confusion, and Jesus came and gave them peace, and Thomas wasn’t there either. And when the Lord came and stood among them a second time a week later, we suppose it was for Thomas’s sake, but not solely for his sake. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,” Jesus said to Thomas, for all of us to hear. The blessing of life in fullness is not just for those who have seen what they saw, but for all who have come to believe what they believed: that in the life of Jesus, the life of God is revealed. We have not seen what the first disciples saw, but we have heard their witness. And we follow the call that comes to us through their word and the work of the Holy Spirit.

And we continue the mission of Jesus Christ, seeking to embody his peace and forgiveness, linking arms with any who work for justice and peace in God’s beloved world. We believe, not because we have seen, but because Jesus continues to break in on us, breathing on the white bones of our lives, leading us out of our tombs, and sending us. We believe in Jesus, because he so fiercely believes in us. And so we practice resurrection until the peace of Christ fills earth and heaven. And we add the testimony of our lives to the great cloud of witnesses, declaring what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life.[3]

[1] John 14:27

[2] Ezekiel 37:1-14

[3] 1 John 1:1

Easter people in a Good Friday world

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (she may have been Jesus’ mother[1]) had followed Jesus all the way from Galilee. They were among the women who had come with him from Galilee, who followed him, because in his presence a world where the poor are the blessed ones was tangibly near. They hungered and thirsted for righteousness, and when they were with him they were filled. Jesus had shown them a world where love embraces all, even the enemy. A world where all who mourn are comforted. They witnessed how he touched and healed the sick, broke bread with friends and strangers, and declared God’s forgiveness to people stumbling under the yoke of sin. Somewhere along the way, they had begun to believe that the kingdom of heaven had indeed come near, and that he embodied it.  They looked at Jesus and they saw the whole creation held by divine grace and infused with God’s mercy. He had awakened a dream in their hearts, the dream of a redeemed world. And on Friday, after Judas had betrayed him, Peter had denied him, and the rest of the Twelve had deserted him, on Friday, they were still there, watching his life drain from his body. And they watched Joseph of Arimathea as he wrapped Jesus’ body in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.[2] The funeral was over, and everybody but the two Marys had gone home.

We live in a Good Friday world. In Matthew, death-dealing human authority seeks to suppress God’s purposes from the beginning of the story. Herod’s  response to the news that a new king had been born was to kill Bethlehem’s children.[3] And when the religious and imperial authorities at last succeeded in their quest to kill Jesus, they had soldiers seal the tomb and guard his body, to make certain he stayed dead, buried, and silent.[4] “Go, make it as secure as you can,” the governor said, as though armed guards in the cemetery could keep the kingdom of heaven from bathing the world in divine light.

We know we are living in a Good Friday world. We know that life is fragile. We know that in this country, the idolatrous cult of the Second Amendment is better protected than the lives of our children. We know that peeing in a fellow legislator’s chair won’t get a representative expelled from the Tennessee legislature, or being convicted of domestic assault, or admitting to sexually assaulting high school girls they coached, or exchanging racist and sexist texts with staff members—no, but speak out on behalf of the victims of gun violence and demand legislative action, and do so out of order, and you will find yourself expelled in the name of “decorum.”[5]

We are living in a Good Friday world, but as Easter people we know that the voice of justice cannot be silenced. We know that the will of God for life to flourish in true community cannot be broken. Thomas Reese writes,

Holy Week is not just a single week in the year. Rather, it is the daily life of millions of people around the world who suffer because their consciences tell them to live and work in ways that political and religious authorities find objectionable. They, like Jesus, suffer and die because of their commitments to justice, freedom, peace and love.[6]

Martin Luther once said, “If I were God, I’d kick the world to pieces.”[7] Thank God, he isn’t. The God we know in Jesus Christ is out of the tomb and on the loose, kicking to pieces anything that would keep the world from fully living the life God has given it. The two women went to see the tomb, but they walked into an earthquake of cosmic proportions: it was the rumble of God kicking to pieces the chains of death, and breaking down the walls of fear and despair.

We know we are living in a Good Friday world. Sooner or later, one way or another, we all stare at the massive stone that secures the tomb where our soul has been buried, together with our hope. Everything, it seems, collapses into this enormous black hole. Sooner or later, one way or another, we all stare at the stone and we feel abandoned by God or that there is no God to abandon us, just the predictable cruelty of the Good Friday world where might makes right.

But today we sing. Today we sing with joyful stubbornness against the world as we know it. Today we sing the song of the world to come. We sing because on this mother of all mornings the guards of death shook for fear and swooned, and two broken-hearted women heard an angel speak,

“Do not be afraid, I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’”

Jesus is risen; death could not hold him. We are living in a world where the way of Christ, the way of the cross doesn’t end in the tomb, but has been powerfully affirmed by God as the way of life. “Good Friday is at the center of this world,” said Jürgen Moltmann, “but Easter morning is the sunrise of the coming of God and the morning of the new life and is the beginning of the future of this world.”[8] God knows we are living in a Good Friday world, but it is a world recentered in Easter hope:the one whose life was a gift of compassion, healing, and forgiveness, has been raised from the dead. Jesus was betrayed, denied, and deserted by his friends; he was tortured, mocked, crucified and buried, but God raised him from the dead. And the resurrection changed more than the body of Jesus and the hearts of his disciples: the resurrection redirected the course of creation from death to life.

The women met him when they ran to tell the disciples that he had been raised. “Do not be afraid,” he said to them; “go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” With death defeated and the way of Jesus revealed as the way of life, there is nothing to be afraid of. Ordinary women and men are now free, as followers of Jesus to live, imagine, and proclaim the kingdom of God.

Mary and Mary are the mothers of the church, apostles to the Apostles. They ran to proclaim his resurrection, but they didn’t run because they had seen him; it was the other way round. They saw him when they trusted the words of an angel who spoke to them at the tomb. They saw him when they trusted those words enough to turn around and wonder, “What if?” They knew the reality of death, they knew the darkness of shattered hope, but by the grace of God they found the courage to take the first step. What if God did raise Jesus from the dead? Then the triumph of the powers that want Jesus dead is not final. If Jesus has been raised, the myth that any and all paths end in the tomb is shattered. If Jesus is risen, the light and life of the world will illumine even the remotest depths of the universe.

We know we are living in a Good Friday world, but this morning the two Marys stand in our midst, laughing and crying, out of breath from running, telling us to go to Galilee; telling us to make room for faith the size of a mustard seed, just enough to take the first step on the way. “Question your old certainties,” they say, “the tomb is empty, and the guards of death are like dead men. The rulers of the world thought they were finally finished with Jesus, but Jesus isn’t finished with the world—his mission continues. Make room in your over-certain hearts for a little subversive resurrection faith—Jesus is on the loose in the world, and you will see him. Kindness and mercy are not lost causes in these violent times. Forgiveness makes the world larger, selfless service bears fruit. Your struggle for justice and your work for peace in the name of Christ are blessed. Go to Galilee; follow him on the way; listen to him, and you will see him.”

Rep. Justin Pearson certainly heard what the two and multitudes after them declared. “Oh, we have good news, folks!” he said on Thursday.

We’ve got good news that Sunday always comes. Resurrection is a promise, and it is a prophecy. It’s a prophecy that came out of the cotton fields. It’s a prophecy that came out of the lynching tree. It’s a prophecy that still lives in each and every one of us in order to make the state of Tennessee the place that it ought to be. And so I’ve still got hope, because I know we are still here, and we will never quit![9]

We live in a Good Friday world where the guards of death make the tomb as secure as they can, but that’s all they can do. Christ is risen.

[1] See Judith Jones https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/vigil-of-easter-3/commentary-on-matthew-281-10-7

[2] Matthew 27:55-61

[3] Matthew 2:1-18

[4] Matthew 27:62-66

[5] See Holly McCall’s tweet from April 6, 2023. https://twitter.com/jhollymc/status/1644132005175590912

[6] Thomas Reese, SJ https://religionnews.com/2023/04/04/christ-continues-to-be-crucified-in-todays-world

[7] Frederick Buechner http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week633/feature.html#right

[8] Jürgen Moltmann, Cole Lectures at Vanderbilt 2002; Jürgen Moltmann, Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, Passion for God: Theology in Two Voices (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 84.

[9] https://www.democracynow.org/2023/4/7/justin_jones_tennessee

Humble courage

Every year, at the beginning of Holy Week, we hear Paul’s Christ poetry from Philippians, and this year is no exception. We sit with the words, listening for the word of God, the word that speaks to our grief, our rage, our numbness. “Not again,” we whispered and howled on Monday, again. What does this terror do to the souls of our young ones? What does dose after dose of trauma do to them, to us? What can we do to break the pattern?

Every year, at the beginning of Holy Week, we hear Paul’s Christ poetry from Philippians. He uses poetic speech to illustrate for us the way of Jesus, a pattern of thinking and living which the church is to embody for the sake of the world. “Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ,” Paul tells the church, “united in spirit and mind, side by side in the struggle to advance the gospel faith.”[1] Side by side in the struggle – that resonates with me this week. Side by side in the struggle to more fully embody and live the pattern of Christ.

Paul emphasizes unity, describing it as being “of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.”[2] I have little doubt that already among Paul’s first-century audiences there were those who thought, “Oh, I’m all in favor of everybody being of the same mind, as long as we come to full accord around my mind.” I have a hunch that’s why Paul included having the same love. Unity of mind can still go hand in hand with coercion or exclusion, where they belong to our unity only if they come around to thinking the way we think. Having the same love ends such patterns of domination, because in love the focus of attention is on the other—the child, the lover, the neighbor, the stranger. The focus is on them and their need, their perspective, their hope. And so Paul urges us to do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. “In humility regard others as better than yourselves. Look to each other’s interests and not merely your own.”[3]

Humility was not considered a virtue in Roman society. Roman culture was built, much like ours, on the pursuit of status, and it valued force and competition. You move up, and you cultivate networks of people who can help you move up even higher. You don’t look back. You press on, your eyes on the next rung of the ladder. You push hard for your interests.

We know the pattern. In 25 states, you don’t need a permit to carry a handgun—three years ago, that was the case in only 16 states. “That has been the most rapid expansion of gun rights at the state level that we have seen,” a professor specializing in firearms law said. And Tennessee may lag behind every other state in the nation in providing stable foster care, but our legislature competes at the highest level when it comes to expanding gun access.

In recent years, … the Tennessee State Legislature … [has] passed a series of measures that have weakened regulations, eliminating some permit requirements and allowing most residents to carry loaded guns in public, open or concealed, without a permit, training or special background checks.[4]

In 2021, Representative Andy Ogles, whose district includes the Covenant School, posted a Christmas photo of his family posing with assault style rifles. You’ve all seen it. Asked this past week if he regretted posting the picture, he said, “Why would I regret a photograph with my family exercising my rights to bear arms?”[5] Quick to point out “my rights,” Mr. Ogles seemed unwilling to consider the rights of children to go to school without fear for their lives and the lives of their friends and teachers.

In 2020, gunshot wounds became the leading cause of death among children and teenagers in the U.S., replacing auto accidents, which was the biggest threat to their lives for decades prior. “Firearms account for 20% of all child and teen deaths in the U.S., [including assault, suicide, and accidental shooting] compared to an average of less than 2% of child and teen deaths in similarly large and wealthy nations.”[6] It clearly isn’t life-giving when we each focus solely on “my rights,” without consideration of the needs, interests, and rights of others. “Look to each other’s interests and not merely your own,” writes Paul. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” Let your doing, thinking, and speaking be transformed after the pattern of Christ.

According to Paul’s poetic declarations, Jesus enjoyed the highest status imaginable: equality with God. But his life showed that he did not regard his status as something to be held onto at all costs or used to his own advantage. Jesus humbled himself. Holly Hearon observed, that

the primary contrast [in this passage] lies … between the form of God and the form of a slave. In terms of the social hierarchy of the ancient world (much alive in the world today), the contrast could not be more extreme. God is the one who reigns above all other rulers, before whom every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth bends… In between God and slaves are many social strata, each one serving those above while also being served by those below. A slave, however, only serves.[7]

A slave only serves. Paul is not glorifying self-degradation, though, or blindly affirming societal arrangements of power and status. His point is that our salvation comes by way of love’s humble invasion of the world’s deep brokenness. Jesus came down, all the way down, nothing but the will of God on his mind, compassionate, vulnerable, and utterly faithful.

Every year, in time for Passover, the Roman governor moved his headquarters inland from Caesarea on the coast to Jerusalem. He brought along elite Roman troops to keep order and to quell any outbursts of enthusiasm that might turn into a governor’s nightmare. Lots of people were on the road before Passover. Imagine two processions approaching Jerusalem at about the same time. One a festive, happy throng of pilgrims, colorful and noisy, with small children, goats and sheep; the other a long, orderly column, rows and rows of foot soldiers, led by troops on horseback, with the governor at the front, riding high on the biggest horse in all of Judea. You hear the sound of drums, hoof beats and marching feet, the clanging of weapons and armor. You see banners flying overhead, golden eagles mounted on poles; helmets and weapons glistening in the sun. Rome knew how to project power. The ceremonial entry was a spectacle of intimidation.

Meanwhile, Jesus, who had walked all the way from Galilee to the outskirts of the city, told his disciples to go and get him a donkey. The prophet Zechariah declared, “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”[8] But Matthew doesn’t quote the whole verse. He drops the big words “triumphant and victorious,” so all that remains is, “Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey.” This humble king, greeted by crowds of ordinary people, projects a very different kind of power from what’s on display on the other side of the city, and he certainly doesn’t carry an AR-15.

Jesus enters a city in turmoil. He rides his borrowed donkey all the way down Broadway, up to Capitol Hill, and down to city hall. He comes to bless and to heal, but also to confront and challenge us. Back in Galilee, he had said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”[9] We call this week ‘holy’ because Jesus’ life on earth, and particularly his final days, reveal to us the heart of reality, and it’s not self-assertion at any cost. It’s not “my rights.” It’s divine love in pursuit of true community.

In the passion narratives of the Gospels, the emphasis is on how Christ is humiliated—spat upon, tortured, mocked, and crucified. In Paul’s poem, no one does this to Jesus. Jesus chooses. Jesus humbles himself. Jesus acts. And in emptying himself of his status, he does not give up his self—no, he gives full expression to his self in his relationship with God and with us.[10] He reveals who he is. And by raising him from the dead, God gives him—the abused, tortured, mocked, and crucified non-person—the name that is above every name. We call this week holy, because the story of Jesus reveals who God is. We look to the cross and we see love that goes all the way for our liberation from the power of sin, love that goes all the way for the life of the world.

Amid the polarization in this country, we can’t see a way forward toward unity of vision. Paul urges us to cultivate patterns of thinking and living that are shaped by the humble way of Jesus. What might that look like in the days ahead?

Former Governors Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam wrote a column in The Tennessean this past week. Both have a deep respect  for the wisdom of the late U.S. Senator Howard Baker who often told people that whenever you have two sides that are hopelessly divided, the trick is to find something, even a little thing, that you can agree on, and then build from there. In their judgment,

the assault rifle issues are at an impossible impasse, but if we disengage there for now and turn our attention instead to smaller steps, doable and still useful, there are possibilities. We could start with “red flag” laws—a way to identify people with potentially dangerous mental health issues and a legal process to remove their access to firearms.  … Another small step might be making gun owners take more legal responsibility for securing their weapons. Anyone, conservative or liberal, who believes in the value of personal responsibility should be able to agree that it is irresponsible to possess a dangerous weapon and not reasonably secure it from misuse by others.[11]

Those aren’t big steps, but in the current political climate, they would be significant steps in the right direction. And to encourage them, we can go back to the capitol tomorrow and show our state representatives how much we would appreciate any step of humble courage.

[1] See Philippians 1:27-30 (NRSV and REB)

[2] Philippians 2:2

[3] See Philippians 2:3-4 (NRSV and REB)

[4]  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/us/nashville-gun-laws.html

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/29/us/nashville-gun-laws.html

[6] https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/

[7] Holly Hearon https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sunday-of-the-passion-palm-sunday-3/commentary-on-philippians-25-11-14

[8] Zechariah 9:9

[9] Matthew 11:29

[10] See Hearon, reference above.

[11] https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/contributors/2023/03/31/gun-law-reform-possible-tennessee-governors-red-flag-laws/70066151007/

Death no dominion

Ezekiel never has been our favorite prophet, has he? We much prefer Isaiah, especially the words we can copy straight to our Christmas cards. We also like Amos and Micah, who speak out with such passion and courage for justice for the poor. But Ezekiel? He doesn’t show up much in our Sunday school lessons or in our lectionary; he does get quoted, though, sort-of, several times by Samuel Jackson’s character in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.[1] Ezekiel is strange; some would say, he’s weird. His visions and voice are imaginative, often incomprehensible, with violent and pornographic tendencies, and his most fervent readers tend to be of the wild-eyed kind.

Ezekiel, son of Buzi, was a Judean priest, or perhaps a recent graduate preparing for the priesthood. He was part of a first wave of exiles from Jerusalem whom King Nebuchadrezzar deported to Babylon in an attempt to subdue the troublesome leadership of Judah. We don’t know much about Ezekiel’s personal life, but I imagine that as a priest he felt utterly out of place in that foreign land. You can be a teacher without a school building; you just gather your students in the living room or under the tree in the back yard. You can be a bricklayer or a weaver anywhere in the world, as long as you have your tools. But Ezekiel was a priest of the Lord whose temple was in Jerusalem, and outside of that sacred place he was a man without a purpose. His entire community had been uprooted, and they all struggled to make sense of this devastating experience.

It was in exile that Ezekiel became a prophet of the Lord. He had visions, he heard voices, in the grip of God’s spirit he traveled far, and he shared what was revealed to him with his compatriots. Ezekiel insisted that their exile did not reflect the defeat of their God by the gods of Babylon, as some surmised; no, their loss was the judgment brought down on them by the Lord, and in Ezekiel’s mind, it was altogether justified and deserved. In his reflections, there was no room for historical or geo-strategic analysis that might explain Jerusalem’s defeat as collateral damage in the conflict between the global powers of the day, Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt. In Ezekiel’s mind, it was all God’s doing, and the God he knew was consumed by wrath and bent on violence. The fire burning in Ezekiel’s belly was one few if any of his fellow exiles had ever even gotten close to. And the bad news continued to pile up, layer upon layer of loss and grief.

The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes, yet you shall not mourn or weep, nor shall your tears run down. Groan quietly; make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your turban, and put your sandals on your feet; do not cover your upper lip or eat the bread of mourners. So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died. And on the next morning I did as I was commanded.[2]

Ezekiel declared that the Babylonians would breach the walls of Jerusalem, burn the buildings to the ground, slaughter many of the inhabitants, and deport the rest. And those who thought that Ezekiel was out of his mind weren’t so sure anymore when more news arrived from Jerusalem. “In the twelfth year of our exile, in the tenth month, on the fifth day of the month,” he wrote in his diary, “someone who had escaped from Jerusalem came to me and said, ‘The city has fallen.’”[3]

Everything that once made them who they were as a people, had been taken away or destroyed: the land, the temple, the city and throne of David, their proud theology of the city that shall not be moved.[4] All gone. All they had left was their exhaustion and despair.In the midst of that, Ezekiel heard a new  word—or was it the memory of one he had heard long ago?

A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.[5]

He heard this word, or half-remembered it, but who among his people could hear it? Was he ready to say it? He wrote it down, but he couldn’t say it. The words of judgment had come to him more easily. And the losses they had experienced were much more tangible than these first whispers of hope that were seeking a way to his lips, whispers of a new heart and a new spirit.

Then the hand of the Lord once again came upon Ezekiel, and the Lord brought him out by the spirit of the Lord and set him down in the middle of a valley. It was a journey into the heart of the people in exile, a journey into the depth of his own heart. Ezekiel didn’t just see a valley full of bones, he walked around in it. The Lord led him around as if to make sure he would take in the full extent of life’s absence.

Ezekiel was a meticulous diarist, noting, e.g., that the word of the Lord came to him in the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth day or in the seventh year, in the fifth month, on the tenth day.[6] But Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones, unlike his other visions, does not bear a date, as Elie Wiesel noted. Why not? Wiesel suggested, because every generation needs to hear in its own time that these bones can live.Because in every generation, those who have reached the end of the miserable road that took them away from home, away from joy and life and hope—they need to hear in their own time that these bones can live. All of us in the valley of history hear some echo of the Lord’s question, “Mortal, can these bones live?” And all of us need to hear some echo of Ezekiel’s words, spoken with fantastic courage or holy madness, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live. … You shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.” Ezekiel was about as far away from the garden of creation as the human imagination can go, and there, in the dust where life once was, in the desert of tired despair, he spoke the word of the Lord.

And a rustling sound / as of leaves in autumn wind / started amid the dry bones. / A whisper, then a drumbeat! / They stood erect, those bones, and knitted firm! [7]

One human being, walking like the last chronicler through fields of destruction, Ezekiel spoke the words of God,

and the spirit entered the bones. / First a whisper, / then a drumbeat, / then reverberant – / a heartbeat! / They took breath once more! and / walked about! and / conversed one with another! / joyful, harmonious, / an immense throng, / the newborn, / the living![8]

The prophet spoke, and hope began to sing: Death no dominion! “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live!”

It was God who made humans from dust and breathed into them the breath of life.[9] It was God who brought Israel out of Egypt, making covenant with them at Sinai, and bringing them to a good land. And now, Ezekiel saw and declared, God would bring new life to a weary people whose bones were dried up and whose hope was lost. The spirit of God is blowing in the valley, he told any who would listen—let it breathe on you, let it breathe in you; allow it to give breath to your voice and inspire your actions. You are not cut off from the presence of God—breathe, the spirit of God is as close to you as your own breath. Breathe—this is not the end of the road.

In the Gospel of John, the reality of death is stated less poetically by Martha who says it as it is: “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Then Jesus speaks, and Lazarus emerges from the tomb. Jesus speaks the word that gives life to the dead,[10] and it begins to dawn on Martha, and on us, that Jesus is the word that gives life to the dead. In Jesus we meet the human being who embodies the life-giving word of God so fully, that the Gospel of John declares him to be the word of God—not merely a great teacher of the word, or a prophet who faithfully proclaims the word, but the very word of God living life with us as a human being.

We know the place where we say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost.” We know the place where despair presents itself as the only reasonable response to the course of the world. We know the place, and anytime we get there, it’s good to have a friend like Ezekiel who’s been there and returned with a vision of God’s insurrection against hopelessness. We know the place where nothing seems more real than death, and when we’re there, may we know in our bones that Jesus is there with us, breathing and speaking life—the life that ends death’s dominion.

[1] “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/characters/nm0000168 Cf. Ezekiel 25:17 “I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful punishments. Then they shall know that I am the Lord, when I lay my vengeance on them.”

[2] Ezekiel 24:15-18

[3] Ezekiel 33:21

[4] Psalm 46:5

[5] Ezekiel 36:26-28

[6] Ezekiel 8:1; 20:1

[7] Daniel Berrigan, Ezekiel: Vision in the dust (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997), 114.

[8] Berrigan, 115.

[9] Genesis 2:7

[10] cf. Rom 4:17

Be the light

“Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light,” the apostle writes. As far as metaphors are concerned, it doesn’t get more elemental than darkness and light. “Let there be light” were the first words spoken by God on the first day of creation, according to Genesis 1. Darkness and light are night and day, fundamental to the ordering of time and the rhythms of life.

“Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light,” writes the apostle, and we hear echoes of creation, echoes of life’s beginning. Ephesians seems to have been a baptismal sermon which was circulated as a letter among churches in Asia Minor. Unlike other New Testament letters, it doesn’t address the day-to-day struggles of a particular church, but rather the big-picture challenges of living a baptized life.

Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. You noticed that the apostle didn’t write, “Once you were in the darkness, but now in the Lord you are in the light.” It’s the same contrast, but apparently, for the apostle, it might invite the misunderstanding that baptism is merely a change of environments, a change of religious affiliation from one cult to another, with the identity of the person making the transition left basically untouched, like moving from one room to another, from one job to another. Baptism, this preacher wants the church to understand, is our transition to our true identity as God’s beloved children. Once you were darkness, now you are light. Earlier, the apostle wrote, “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, … but God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us …, made us alive together with Christ.”[1] Once you were dead, now you are alive. Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light. Walk in ways that show who and whose you are. Let your life shine. Christ is your life. Be the light. Shine. Let the light of Christ shine in you and through you. And don’t be afraid, the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.

When you start to think about it, the fruit of the light sounds like a weird mix of metaphors, but less so when you consider that the light of Christ shines in and through the lives of human beings, who we are, what we say and do, and how we say and do—Christ wants to and does shine in and through all of it,

and all of it is fruit of the light for the harvest of light.

Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light—you are who and what you were meant to be, and it doesn’t matter if you hear yourself addressed as a person first or as a community, if you hear singular or plural, you or y’all: you are light. For many of us, Lent is a season when we take a closer look at our lives, when we ponder how fully and faithfully we’re living the life we have been given, when we wonder if we’re still trying to find out what is pleasing to the Lord or if somewhere along the way we’ve settled for what is pleasing to ourselves. It’s easy to get lost in the weeds of our known or perceived shortcomings; it’s easy to imagine the light as harsh, inescapable, and as somehow delighting in exposing our inconsistencies and contradictions; it’s easy to end up in a place of pervasive shame and guilt, stuck. The apostle warns us, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather, expose them”—not to the harsh light of the relentlessly chatty and relentlessly critical voices in our minds, but to the light of grace and truth. When Paul writes, “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice,” he has the whole community of the baptized in mind. “Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” That is the light. Kindness shines in the darkness of bitterness. Compassion and forgiveness shine in the darkness of wrath and malice. That is the light.

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us.”[2] We often treat others the way we treat ourselves, or the way we believe we deserve to be treated. Lent is a wonderful opportunity to walk intentionally under the loving gaze of God and let ourselves be loved—not for who we wish we were, but for who we are, beloved children.

At the end of today’s passage from Ephesians, Paul writes, “Therefore it says, ‘Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’“ The apostle is not quoting scripture; most scholars think the line is most likely from a baptismal hymn his initial audience would have been familiar with. “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” It’s a lovely line, whether you hear it as a thundering wake-up call with bugle blasts, or a gentle voice whispering in your ear.  Many theologians of the first centuries heard echoes of a line from Isaiah, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you”—you can hear it too, that lovely echo, across the ages, can’t you?[3]Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Arise! Shine! Be who God made you to be! However, Isaiah was also quite aware of the masters of deception: what many call light, some will call darkness. “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] And we know exactly what he’s talking about.

We have presenters on news programs who intentionally lie for the sake of ratings, and some of us do want somebody to tell us that evil is good; and the mob storming the capitol on January 6? Those were actually groups of patriots on a self-guided sightseeing tour. We have state legislators and a governor who call the state-sponsored denial of medical care for transgender youth, protecting our children. And after the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth reported the state’s foster care system is the worst in the nation, the administration really stepped up its efforts to turn things around—by dropping a plan to dissolve the Commission. A spokesperson for the governor’s office called the effort

another meaningful step to better serve Tennessee children by incorporating important services within child and family-serving state agencies, which includes DCS. To be clear, Tennessee is not cutting services for children or families, but rather, integrating them into state government, meaning that current services will remain intact and be relocated.

“If that’s the case,” comments the Tennessee Lookout’s Sam Stockard, “we have to wonder whether the fox will be guarding the henhouse if the commission’s work is shifted into the Department of Children’s Services, which has been falling short on the job for years.”[5]

A book for young readers comes to mind. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle was first published in 1962 and has been in print ever since. It has also faced several challenges and attempted bans: it was ranked #23 on the American Library Association’s 100 most frequently challenged books from 1990-1999, and #90 on the ALA’s list from 2000-2009.[6] Only in the last decade did the award-winning young adult novel drop from the top 100 list.[7]

A Wrinkle in Time is the story of Meg Murry, a high-school-aged girl who is transported on an adventure through time and space with her younger brother Charles and her friend Calvin to rescue her father from the evil forces that hold him prisoner on another planet. The three children learn from three celestial guides that the universe is threatened by a great evil called the Dark Thing. Several planets have already succumbed to this evil force, including Camazotz, the planet on which Meg’s father is imprisoned. On Camazotz, conformity rules, and everything is controlled by IT, a giant disembodied brain. Meg, Charles, and Calvin try to fight IT, but without success. They manage to escape, but Charles remains possessed by IT, a prisoner of Camazotz. One of the celestial guides tells Meg that she has one thing that IT does not have, and this will be her weapon against the evil. However, Meg must discover this weapon for herself. And, of course, she does: her love for her brother sets him free from IT’s clutches and he becomes himself again.

Some challengers thought the book was too religious, others, that it wasn’t religious enough; I think young readers are perfectly able to come to their own conclusions. Right around the time that L’Engle was writing A Wrinkle in Time, Dr. Martin Luther King preached, “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”[8]

In 2018, A Wrinkle in Time was adapted into a motion picture by Walt Disney Pictures, directed by Ava Duvernay, and featuring Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling as Mrs. Which, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Who, the celestial guides. The movie’s promotional tagline passed on the insight of Mrs. L’Engle, Dr. King, the Sermon on the Mount, Ephesians, and Isaiah—the whole, deep, beautiful tradition: “The only way to defeat the darkness is to become the light.” So, whether you are contemplating the landscape of your heart or the world around you, let Christ shine. Be who and what you were meant to be. Be the light.

[1] Ephesians 2:1-5

[2] See Ephesians 4:31-32; 5:1-2

[3] Isaiah 60:1

[4] Isaiah 5:20

[5] https://tennesseelookout.com/2023/03/17/stockard-on-the-stump-killing-the-commission-on-children-and-youth-wont-be-easy

[6] https://bannedbooks.library.cmu.edu/madeleine-lengle-a-wrinkle-in-time-draft/

[7] https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/decade2019

[8] Strength to Love, 1963.