Whose image?

Thomas Kleinert

“We know that you are sincere,” they said to Jesus. “We know that you teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one.” How nice of them to say that.

“You teach the way of God in accordance with truth.” That’s quite an endorsement. Had the narrator not warned us at the beginning that we were about to witness a plot designed to entrap Jesus, we might have innocently assumed that they meant what they said. Pharisees and Herodians make odd bedfellows, but stranger things have happened in politics. The name Herodians is shorthand for supporters of the political status quo in first-century Judea, people who, pragmatically or with conviction, collaborated with the Roman rulers. The Pharisees, on the other hand, were not openly opposed to Roman rule like some nationalist groups, but they were certainly not in favor of it.  The Roman occupation of the land may not have been their primary concern, but it definitely was not part of their vision for Israel. What brought the two groups together in this scene, was Jesus and his teachings about the kingdom of God.

Matthew paints a picture of Jesus facing broad opposition. Pious Pharisees and hardball Herodians put aside their significant differences for a moment, and they set up a clever trap. First they buttered him up, and then they dropped the verbal equivalent of a landmine: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Say yes, and it blows up. Say no, and it blows up.

Judea was a province of the Roman Empire, had been since the year 6 CE, and the population was heavily taxed. Estimates range between ca. 20-50 percent of peasant and artisan production was removed through taxes, a significant and damaging amount for those living near subsistence levels.[1] The tax in question was a poll-tax, payable by all subjects of the empire, and in Roman currency. Rome collected it, not for anything like the common good, but to assert its supremacy, and to subjugate, humiliate, and punish the population.[2]

“Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” If Jesus says, yes, it’s lawful, he loses credibility with the majority of the population, including most of his followers, who deeply resent the occupation. If he says, no, it’s not lawful, he’ll be denounced by his opponents for inciting insurrection and arrested.

It’s a brilliant set-up, only Jesus doesn’t play their game. “Show me the coin used for the tax,” he says, and his opponents don’t seem to have any trouble finding a denarius. Clearly they are much more connected to the imperial economy than Jesus whose pockets are empty.

“Whose image is this, and whose title?” he asks.

“The emperor’s,” they say.

Very likely the coin bore the image of emperor Tiberius, and the inscription was more than just a title. Emperor Tiberius, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest.[3] Text and image declared the emperor’s divine authority, and to most Jews, the coin represented a glaring example of gentile idolatry. They probably couldn’t avoid handling it – too much of the economy was under Roman control – but it was an insult, a constant reminder of their subjugation.

Jesus’ opponents were looking for a simple yes or no answer, but he wouldn’t play their simple, either/or game. “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s,” he told them, “and to God the things that are God’s.”

For Jesus and his followers, for all servants of God’s reign, the choice was and is more complicated than simply condoning violent oppression or engaging in outright insurrection. “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves,” Jesus told us, knowing the difficult choices we would be facing as witnesses to God’s reign on earth, “so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”[4] Jesus plays, wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove. He doesn’t solve the dilemma his opponents presented by carving out separate domains of human loyalty, one where God’s in charge, and another where Caesar rules. He doesn’t sketch parallel responsibilities, in parallel dominions, neat and tidy, no, he turns up the light and heightens the contrast and declares the radical nature of God’s claim over against Caesar’s. I hear echoes of Psalm 24, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” That coin? It bears Caesar’s name and image, so let him have it; give it back to him. But don’t you forget that the earth does not belong to Caesar, despite Rome’s claims of global dominion that the tax represents.[5] And don’t you forget that you do not belong to Caesar, but to God. Don’t you forget whose image you bear, that you have been made in the image and likeness of God. Give to God what is God’s — your life, your breath, your loyalty. Give to Caesar what it Caesar’s, wise as serpents and innocent as doves, but serve God’s reign on earth — always aware that it is fundamentally at odds with Caesar’s because its currency isn’t coercion and control.

We are made in the image of God, yet we do forget. Richard Spalding writes,

When we look at each other, or in the mirror, we tend to see the inscription that our business with the world has left on us: you are what you look like, what you have, what you wear, what you do, the company you keep. Nevertheless, underneath all those inscriptions is a much deeper mark.[6]

Underneath all those inscriptions that our business with the world has left on us is a much deeper mark. But we forget. We are made in the image of God, but other inscriptions and images continually overwrite our identity as God’s own with layers of falsehood, and sometimes we can’t look past them, or we refuse to look past them, and all we see are the labels. Jew. Palestinian. American. Fat. Muslim. Immigrant. Arab. Black. Trans. Not a person, fearfully and wonderfully made, created in the image of God, but an inscription. An old white man in Illinois goes and stabs a young mother and her child, stabs this 6-year-old child 26 times, because he’s afraid of Palestinians.[7] In Berlin, a synagogue is firebombed, because, don’t you know it, it’s all the Jews’ fault.[8] Ancient inscriptions. Layers of falsehood. Violent denials of any stories but mine.

Jesus says, Give to Caesar what it Caesar’s, wise as serpents and innocent as doves, and serve God’s reign on earth — always aware that it is fundamentally at odds with Caesar’s because its currency isn’t coercion or fear. Serve God’s reign, give to God the things that are God’s, and let that claim put all other demands made on you in perspective.

As part of every baptism, not just here at Vine Street, just after the person desiring to be baptized emerges from the water, we make the sign of the cross on their forehead, we speak their name and say, “Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” In baptism, the life of Christ becomes ours. We become citizens of the kingdom of God, and with Christ we give to God the things that are God’s — our life, our breath, our days and nights, our whole and broken selves. In the company of Jesus, we live, and learn to live, as citizens of God’s dominion, as people who know that we are not our own, nor anyone else’s, but God’s, and that this is the truth not just about us, but about every human being.

Some of you will ask, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s — what if Caesar is Stalin or Hitler or some other wannabe emperor?” When Caesar was Hitler, and Hitler attempted to bring the protestant churches under his control as so-called “German Christians,” a small group within the church in Germany resisted. In a carefully worded statement they declared,

As Jesus Christ is God’s assurance of the forgiveness of all our sins, so, in the same way and with the same seriousness he is also God’s mighty claim upon our whole life. Through him befalls us a joyful deliverance from the godless fetters of this world for a free, grateful service to his creatures.

We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords — areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.[9]

The Confessing Church was persecuted and driven underground, and its pastors were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The church that counts Dietrich Bonhoeffer among its martyrs was small in numbers, but it faithfully refused to give to other lords the things that were God’s – first and foremost themselves. They were ordinary people who left us a gift that is extraordinary in its simplicity and power: They show us that a life fully at home in the love of God is a life of fearless clarity. Even amid the waves of terror and anxiety which the empires and wannabe emperors of the world so skillfully create and manipulate, love lights a path toward life.

What will topple the false idols? Whatever brings wholeness and healing to fractured communities is a form of resistance to the imperial ethos of domination. Whatever encourages us and others to speak truth and seek justice, to see one another and hear one another out, undermines the imperial logic of invasion and control. That is what we seek to do as servants of God’s reign – wise as serpents and innocent as doves, trusting the love that will not let us go.

[1] Warren Carter, NIBD, Vol. 5, 479.

[2] Warren Carter, Matthew and Empire, 142. 

[3] TIBERIUS CAESAR DIVI AUGUSTI FILIUS AUGUSTUS PONTIFEX MAXIMUS; see Eugene Boring, Matthew – Mark, The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 8 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 420.

[4] Matthew 10:16

[5] Carter, NIBD, 479.

[6] Richard Spalding, Feasting, Year A, Vol. 4, 192.

[7]  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/15/us/muslim-boy-stabbed-landlord-chicago.html

[8] https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-chancellor-olaf-scholz-condemn-synagogue-attack-berlin/

[9] http://www.ekd.de/english/barmen_theological_declaration.html

The Golden Calf

Margie Quinn

The story of the Golden Calf is filled with a whole bunch of bull.

Last week I spoke of my best friend and roommate’s dog, Olive. For those of you not here, we honored the Feast Day of St. Francis, a saint known for his love of animals. Madeleine’s church hosted a blessing of the animals and as she preached in front of her congregation, Olive sat obediently next to Madeleine. What a good girl! Olive ain’t always a good girl, though.

One day, when Madeleine went out of town, she left me to watch Olive, which I done countless times. Unfortunately, I had one of those days where I left home early and didn’t get back until late. When I got back to the house that night, I found that Olive had climbed up on a chair and reached up for the kitchen counter and taken a full loaf of bread and eaten the whole thing, not to mention a few other carbs in our pantry. I freaked out and called Madeleine immediately. “Ugh, she must have gotten anxious that no one was there and started snooping around.” Olive didn’t know what to do in our absence, so she picked something out of desperation to give her comfort when she couldn’t see us—a loaf of bread.

Now, Olive gets fed every morning and every night like clockwork, so don’t get it twisted. But on this day, she seemed to have forgotten the promise her mother and auntie had given to her: we will provide for you, and sometimes you gotta wait.

In today’s passage, all the way down the mountain, there’s a whole bunch of bull going on. Just like Olive, the Israelites have been waiting around for what seems like a long time and have seen no sign of Moses or God. They start to wonder if he has forgotten them. Despite this being the same man who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, who advocated on behalf of them for manna, quail, water (and more water), and the man who threw away his class privilege as an Egyptian to return to them in solidarity and liberate them from their oppressors, they begin to whisper again. “He didn’t grow up with us,” they grumble, ‘he doesn’t understand our lived experience; he doesn’t know what it’s like to wait and sometimes he even speaks for us to God.’”

They see that he has been delayed (he is a tiny bit busy up there) and they go to who we might as well think of as their Associate Pastor, Aaron, Aaron is, relatably, a people-pleasure and a guy who gives into peer pressure. “We don’t see our God!” they shout. “We don’t see our leader! We’re desperate out here! But we see you. Make something for us that we can use for security, comfort and adoration in place of God’s presence.”

They’re doing it, as Karoline Lewis writes, because of an absence of Moses and an absence of God. To what do we resort when we experience that absence or when we question God’s presence?

So, Aaron takes their jewelry and molds it into a golden calf. They worship it and remind each other that these are the gods who brought us out of the land of Egypt, right?

Up on the mountain, God’s blood is boiling with anger. Get back down there, Moses and fix this mess, God commands. Your people are believing a whole lot of bull. They are stick-necked people who raid the pantry like a desperate dog, gorging themselves on bread instead of remembering my promise: that I would be there in the midst of them and provide for them every step of the way. Leave me alone up here so that I can stew up here in my wrath. You know what, I’ll go ahead and consume all of them but with you, I’ll make a great nation.

What a bunch of bull God tempts Moses with. It’s everyone’s dream to clone a nation exactly like us, where we take all of the people who hold different opinions, political beliefs and we toss them aside to create a whole army of Margie’s who go around with their clones, voting the same way, worshipping the same way and thinking the same way. God, Moses says, I see right through your bull.  

Moses implores God: turn away from your wrath, change your mind, and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember my ancestors, who you made a promise to—to multiply their descendants like the stars, not to consume them with your anger, even if they are down there with all of their bull.  

And church, we are here with our bull, too. The bull I’m tempted to worship is the bull of whiteness, blame, money, fame, power, revenge, and violence for the sake of violence. The bull of knowing that I’m right and you’re wrong. The bull of worshiping other people’s opinions or getting jealous of their possessions. The bull of worshipping people who don’t love us or even respect us. We devote our time, our money, our resources and our passion to everyone and everything but God.

Sometimes, America’s bull has become the church’s bull.

We worship anthems and flags idolizing patriotism, sometimes even in church. We prioritize them over God and God’s priorities and over the flourishing and wellbeing of God’s children, as Reverend Will Gafney writes.

Yet down here in our bull, there is a guy up on the mountain who stands up to God and defends his enemies. He defends the very people who keep turning away from him, despite his constant provision. Up on the mountain, a man of slow speech and of slow tongue stands face to face with God, as Exodus 33:11 says, and makes his case. Change your mind, God.

I’m so jealous that Moses gets to see God face to face. While I don’t know what God looks like, I’ve read a lot in the Bible about who God is. God isn’t a manipulative object, made from gold. God can’t be produced. God isn’t stagnant or unchanging. God doesn’t expect perfection or blind conformity from God’s people. God doesn’t reward our golden calves of exhaustion from working too hard or committing to too much; doesn’t reward our greedy accumulation that keeps us further isolated from the least of these; doesn’t boast when we equate our worth with the titles we hold or the grades we make. God knows that’s a whole bunch of bull.

While I don’t know what God looks like, I’ve read a lot in the Bible about who God is. God is willing to change her mind. God is a Shepherd, a soul-restorer, a comforter like Psalm 23 says. God enfolds us in her wings as Isaiah remind us, allowing us to take refuge from the harshness of life. God has compassion on the suffering, has inscribed us on the palms of his hands—each of our names. God is love, 1 John says, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in them. God is a still, small voice as 1 King says. God is a man who took all of our bull to the cross and was executed by the state so that we may feel the sting of liberating love. God forgives us, even when we create things to worship in the absence of God’s love.

Even what I haven’t read about God in the Bible, here is what I imagine God to be:

God is that cardinal sitting on the telephone wire. God is when someone hugs you longer than you think they will, and it breaks your heart open that they held on for a while. God is right there with us when we fumble or fail. God is when you hold a baby and stare at its fingernails. God is when you feel seen, known, heard; when you hear a chord and then another chord and put your hand to your face and realize you’ve been silently crying. 

God is un-nameable and free and uncontainable and never ever leaves us. God is an old woman in a rocking chair, smiling contentedly at us, eternally. God is whatever makes you suddenly, surprisingly, reach out toward the other.
God is the realization that things like money, success, or career are just nouns that may nestle you to sleep but won’t be around when your dad dies or when your friends gets sicker than sick. God is the best artist out there, painting the sky with a different watercolor palette every morning and night.  
God isn’t he or she. God is bigger than language and softer than silk.
God is the oldest friend you’ve got, who just knows you and knows what to say. That’s God to me.

So Moses changes God’s mind and reminds God and us of the “hard way forward,” as Anatheia Portier Young puts it. The hard way forward, she writes, reckons with a divine presence who continues to elude us. The hard way forward is the most honest prayer we can pray that gives God a piece of our mind. The hard way forward trusts, however reluctantly, in the slow work of God. The hard way forward, church, invites us to keep the pantry closed, to put down the bread and to set our bull aside; to believe in God’s forgiveness and to believe that goodness and mercy, as Psalm 23 says, will follow us all the days of our life in the house of God forever.

May it be so.

Shared joy

Thomas Kleinert

In the town where I grew up, the hillsides facing west and south were covered with vineyards, and one of the churches I served on the Swiss border was surrounded by them. Vineyard is a word that takes me home. I see hills with rows of vines, bathed by the sun. I remember the summer silence between the rows, where all you can hear is the buzz of bees and bugs. I remember seeing workers in the winter, pruning back last year’s branches; workers in the spring, tying the tender, new growth to support wires; workers in the summer, removing some of the grape clusters to direct the vine’s nutrients to the remaining ones; and I remember workers in the fall, carrying huge buckets on their backs and harvesting the fruit of their labor, and of the sun and the rain and the soil and the generous grace of God.

A vineyard is not just another field where this year you grow soybeans, and next year you grow corn, and the year after you switch to alfalfa. Vines can live for over a hundred years, and while the yield begins to decline after twenty years, the character of the grapes doesn’t. A vineyard isn’t a patch of dirt that could easily be used otherwise; it is a planting intended to stay and bear fruit.

Vineyard is a much more common metaphor in scripture than, say, barley field. I wonder if it is because the true fruit of a vineyard aren’t grapes, but wine - wine to gladden the human heart.[1] Fields are for daily bread, but a vineyard is for joy, shared joy.

When you are at a wedding reception, you expect the best man to rise at some point and give a toast, and after you’ve been to a couple of weddings, you kinda know what you may look forward to when he gets up. Likewise, in ancient Israel when a man stood and said, “Let me sing for my friend a love song about his vineyard!” everybody knew that it would be a song about the groom and his bride. Any song that begins, My friend had a vineyard on a very fertile hill, holds great promise. Isaiah’s song tells of hard work and careful preparation, and in the listeners’ minds images emerge of a young man who showers his bride with love and attention, who does just about anything anyone could imagine to please her. But suddenly the music ends and the song is over. The vineyard didn’t yield sweet grapes but only sour little things. Not much of a love story – and what follows sounds terrifying.

And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. Isaiah didn’t sing a love song about a friend of his and his bride, he spoke in a parable about God and God’s people Israel. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? Was it wrong to expect a harvest of joy? Well, if not, what went wrong?

God came looking for justice, but instead found bloodshed; for righteousness, but instead heard cries of distress. In the Hebrew this is a vivid pun: God came looking for mishpat, and instead found mispach; for tsedaqah, but there was only tse’aqah. Change just one letter, and you get something very different. Change just one letter and village turns into pillage, laughter into slaughter; a friend into a fiend. God came looking for justice and righteousness, but found only bloodshed and the cries of the oppressed. There was no harvest of shared joy, and here the prophet’s song turns from themes of loving care to violent rage:

I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a wasteland;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns.

Jesus told the temple leaders in Jerusalem a parable about a landowner who carefully planted a vineyard, and they knew right away he was riffing on a theme from Isaiah. They heard him add tenants to the familiar metaphor of the vineyard, wicked tenants who abused and killed the slaves sent by the landowner to collect the expected fruit, but there was only bloodshed. They noticed the not so subtle allusion to Israel’s leaders not only refusing to heed the warnings of the prophets and repent, but silencing them. Jesus told the temple leaders in Jerusalem this parable on Tuesday, three days before he would be executed.

The story becomes painfully transparent for Matthew’s readers. Having killed the landowner’s slaves, the tenants, dreaming of taking possession of the vineyard, killed the landowner’s son. The story ends with Jesus asking, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” And the chief priests and elders jumped right in: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

Those were their words, not his. It was their way of making right what had gone terribly wrong, not his. And Jesus didn’t say, “You are the wretches, and you have judged yourselves.”[2]

When Matthew’s community told this Jesus story, the fledgling Christian community was beginning to separate from other Jewish groups. In the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans in 70 C.E., followers of Jesus and other Jewish groups were trying to make sense of the traumatic experience. Matthew’s community and others saw the violent devastation as divine punishment for the temple leadership’s role in Jesus’ death – and that perspective colored how the stories of Jesus’ conflict with the leaders were told. Some of the scenes, including this one, sound like the narrator is not only talking about Jesus’ arguments with the chief priests and elders, but about the tensions between  Matthew’s own small Christian community and the Pharisees who were also seeking to rebuild Jewish life after the destruction of the temple. They were in the process of separating, and we don’t tell our best stories about each other when we are going through a separation.

Matthew has Jesus tell the chief priests and Pharisees, “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” Matthew wants his small community, made up of Jews and a few Gentiles who followed the teachings of Jesus, to recognize themselves as the “people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” The statement was an affirming and empowering one for a community under pressure and in conflict with other groups over how to live faithfully as God’s people. The tenants of the vineyard, the Jerusalem leadership, had failed to cultivate justice and righteousness, and now it would be the small band of Jesus-followers’ turn to bear fruit in righteousness exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees.[3]

At the time when Matthew’s gospel was taught, composed and written down, this thought was lifting up the lowly, but when the Christian movement went from underdog to most-favored-cult status in the Roman Empire, these words took on a very different flavor. Now they began to be heard as saying, “The kingdom of God has been taken away from the Jews and given to the church.” And the embrace of the idea that the church had replaced Israel as the chosen people of God, led to centuries of violence against Jews, all the way to the gates of the Nazi extermination camps and the harvest of terror, death and ashes. And it didn’t end there. The spirit of supersessionism has shaped European cultures in deep ways over centuries, contributing to ideologies of chosenness and supremacy that poison our life together to this day.

We must read the texts that are sacred to us very, very carefully. We must read them in the Spirit of Jesus. Let’s take another look at the owner of the vineyard. We’re not expected to see him as just another agricultural investor who happens to behave in very peculiar ways. We’re meant to see God, just as in Isaiah’s song of the vineyard. God who sent prophets so God’s people would repent, and our life together would be shaped by justice and righteousness. The owner doesn’t say much in this story; his only line is, “They will respect my son.”

But the tenants didn’t — we didn’t. For as long as we can remember, human beings have looked for ways not to be God’ tenants with sacred responsibilities toward the land, its owner, and toward each other. We’d rather be the owners ourselves. We’re the children of Adam and Eve, created to till and keep the garden, but we’d rather make the whole place our own.

The story ends with the death of the son, the son who asks us who have heard him live and tell it, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” Again, we’re not meant to stay inside the story, because if we did, we’d have to ask, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will those tenants do to him? Why would he expect to be treated with any more respect than the people he sent, including his son?”

In our own imagination, we are quick to envision an ending following the logic of violent retribution, but God is free to write a different ending to the story. We believe and affirm that God has done so by raising Jesus from the dead. We believe and affirm that God’s response to our violence is not more violence, overwhelming violence to end all violence like the war to end all wars. We believe and affirm that God’s response to our violent rejection is life: life in the distinct shape of Jesus. Life in the shape of a community that embraces God’s vision of justice and righteousness, rejecting any visions of supremacy and domination. We believe and affirm that Jesus is Lord, and so we give thanks and repent. And we begin to follow again, humbly and with courage, for the sake of life, the shared joy of life in God’s reign.

[1] Psalm 104:15

[2] See Nathan and David 2 Samuel 12

[3] Matthew 5:20

Strike the Rock

Margie Quinn

One hundred hours. That’s the commonly cited statistic for how long a human body can typically survive at “average” temperatures without access to water. That is roughly four days. The temperature in the Sinai Peninsula, where Moses leads the people in this story, is 81 degrees today. You can imagine how hot it was just a few months ago and even 81 degrees in the desert…I would be grumbling. In such extreme heat and exposure to sun, the timeline for survival shortens considerably. Claude Piantadosi writes: “At 90°F survival time with limited activity easily can be decreased by a factor of two.”

Now we’re down to fifty hours. Exertion — such as walking long distances in the day time, carrying one’s belongings, tents, and small children, and wrangling livestock along the way — shortens the timeline even further. “Sustained high sweat rates can reduce estimated survival time without drinking water to as little as seven hours, or approximately the time it takes to walk twenty miles,” Anathea Portier-Young writes. “One long, day’s march on an unusually, but not impossibly, hot, June day was all it would take to finish God’s people.” Because they had no water.          

On our immersion trip to Tuscon back in June, Jeff, Dair, Liam, Meda, Quinn, Calin and a few other friends and I learned the impact of what it looks like to walk in the desert with no water. One morning, we woke up very early and met up with a guy named Joel in the Sonoran Desert. Joel wore a baggy, Hawaiian shirt, aviator glasses and pants that were too big for him. He told us about his dog named Noodles. Joel wasn’t some flashy guy in a crisp uniform. He was just a concerned man who told me, “I don’t believe in any religion, I just don’t want people dying in the desert.”

 Joel was with an organization called Humane Borders, whose mission statement as it reads on the website is: to save desperate people from a horrible death by dehydration and exposure. Every week at the crack of dawn, even this week, Joel drives around in his beat-up truck in the Sonoran Desert, checking on the water barrels, testing the water pH and refilling any that need water because just in 2023 alone, we have lost 500 of our siblings in the desert to exposure and dehydration. Joel knows the name of every water barrel in the desert (they give all the barrels a nickname). He does this because he doesn’t want people dying in the desert. There should be water.  

When we meet our Israelites in Exodus today, they wonder, too, “Why is there no water?” But let’s back up.

In 15: 22, Moses has crossed the Red Sea, led the Israelites out of enslavement, saved them from the wrath of the Egyptians and after three days in the wilderness, they begin to complain. They can’t find any water and the water they DO find tastes bitter. So, Moses cries out to God who shows Moses a piece of wood. Moses throws it in the water and the water becomes sweet. And there is enough.

How quickly we forget that there is enough.

Two weeks later, the Israelites complain again, going as far as to long for their time in Egypt under captivity where at LEAST they could eat scraps of food, even if they were enslaved. So, God hears them and rains bread down from heaven, asking them to gather just enough for that day. They look at it and go, “What is it?” God tells them to gather what they need, no more and no less but of course some of them gather a little bit more, like those people who hoarded toilet paper during Covid. Rightfully so, the folks that gathered more than they needed looked at their leftover bread at nighttime and find worms in it. It’s like when I open my pantry and forget that I had purchased a loaf of bunny bread and see that is blue from mold. God makes their bread foul-smelling, too.

How quickly they forget that there is enough.

Right before we get to our passage today, we learn that God was going to provide manna for the Israelites for the next forty years. Now we get to Exodus 17, and again, the people start whining that there is no water to drink.  Interestingly enough, the Hebrew syntax here actually favors, “There was not enough water for the people to drink. In fact, geographically, if they had just turned the corner, they would have found a stream.

I call this “spiritual amnesia.” We forget the crossing of the Red Sea, the manna and quail, the bitter water turned sweet and God’s ever-present faithfulness to us in times of scarcity and need.

And yet, I would quarrel and grumble, too! I’m exhausted, my feet hurt, my mouth is parched and when I get to my next resting place, I discover again that there is no water.

Is God among me or not? As Anathea Portier-Young writes, “If God is supposedly with you, in the midst very organs, blood stream, and cells that require water for nutrition, metabolism, temperature regulation, waste removal, shock absorption and more — why is there no water?”
           So, Moses cries out to the Lord. The Hebrew word here is tsa’aq, a word that is exceptionally strong, often used in response to life-threatening circumstances, like when the Egyptians were gaining speed on the Israelites as they fled for the Red Sea and Moses cried out to the Lord.  “What am I to do?” Moses cries out here. “They’re gonna stone me!”

God’s response leaves Moses in a vulnerable position. God asks Moses to put himself out in front: “go on ahead of the people” (Exodus 17:5). The Hebrew verb is ‘br, “to cross over”, followed by the preposition liphnê, literally “to or before the face of.” That is, Moses must cross in front of the people, and witness their anger, fear, and insistence. “In so doing,” Anathea Portier-Young writes, “he will also see the need that is written upon their bodies and in their faces, and he will have to confront and respond to the magnitude of their thirst.” Moses takes that walk, probably one of the longest of his life, and heads up to the rock of Horeb.

He doesn’t go alone, though. He grabs his trusty shepherd’s staff, the same one that has played a role in multiple miracles involving snakes (Exodus 4:2-4), blood-red water (7:14–25), thunder and hail (9:23), locusts (10:13), and the splitting of the sea (14:16). Perhaps the staff is weathered and stained, like a well-worn Hawaiian shirt.

In any case, God commands Moses to go to Horeb with some of the elders of Israel. Remember, this is the same place where Moses got his call, where God met Moses from within a burning bush, “signaling both God’s attention to the people’s suffering and God’s choice to be in the fiery midst of it,” Anathea Portier-Young continues. God shows up in this surprising way as if to say, “I see you, and I am right here.” God’s standing before Moses upon the rock is a bodily testament to God’s presence in the place of contention and thirst.

Strike the rock, God says, and water will come out of it for the people to drink. And it will be enough. Moses obeys, even begrudgingly as he decides to name the place Massa and Meribah: testing and quarreling. This is a reminder to God’s people that when they continue to ask, “Is the Lord among us?” the answer is always yes.

 Yes, there IS enough. There is enough water from the rock. There is enough manna and quail. There is enough from a mysterious man who takes a little boy’s loaf and fish and turns it into plenty. There is enough from a guy named Joel in a Hawaiian shirt who checks those water barrels even today. There is enough.

The life-giving gift of water is symbolic of the ultimate goal that God’s children may not only survive in this wilderness but that they might flourish. Even as they remain in a wilderness place, God provides water and says that there is enough.  

Today is world communion Sunday. As we celebrate this table with Christians all over the world, I feel convicted that for me, there has always been enough. Today, not everyone in our world has enough bread or enough juice to partake in this Holy feast with us. I think I want to remain convicted as I come to the table every week that my commitment as a Christian is to take as much as I need (and not more) and then to go out and to strike the rock so that others, like our friends at Room in the Inn, like our friends in Flint and Louisiana and in Grundy County might have enough. I come to the table, and I try not to take more than I need and then I go out and find my own staff and put on my own Hawaiin shirt or my own wacky pair of earrings and I look for places where there is still thirst, where people are still asking, “Is the Lord among us or not?”    

Church, who are those in your midst who thirst for water, who lack what they need to survive? What surprising resources will your landscape yield to meet their needs? On what rock are we as the Church ensuring that everyone may know that the Lord is among us because the Lord is working through us. We aren’t waiting for people “out there” to do it. We are going out to the woods and finding our own stick, whittling it down and looking for the places in our lives where people thirst. We come to this table to get reinvigorated and re-fed and then to go out and have enough stamina and courage, like Joel, to check the water barrels and to be reminded week after week that when we sit with our friends at Room in the Inn, when we find the places where people thirst in Nashville and beyond, that the Lord is among us and working through us. All we have to do is strike the rock. Amen.

A desire for shared joy

Frans de Waal is a biologist who teaches in the psychology department at Emory. He and his team taught a group of capuchin monkeys to trade pebbles for pieces of food. I watched a video of a monkey in a crate, separated from the lab worker by an acrylic panel with a few holes in it, large enough for the monkey’s hand. The monkey reaches into a small box of pebbles, takes one, offers it to the lab worker, and receives a juicy piece of cucumber. All of the monkeys in the group have learned this behavior, and when they’re not already full after breakfast, they happily exchange pebbles for food, a dozen times or more in a row.

The team modified the experiment so there were two monkeys in separate crates, side by side.[1] The monkey on the right offers a pebble to the lab worker and receives a piece of cucumber. The monkey on the left watches. Then the monkey on the left offers the lab worker a pebble and gets a piece of cucumber. All is well.

Now the monkey on the right offers the lab worker another pebble and gets a grape – that’s like monkey candy. And the monkey on the left is watching. Now he reaches through the hole, pebble in hand, and the lab worker gives him a piece of cucumber. You can tell he’s not happy. He takes half a bite, and throws the rest into the corner, his eyes on the scene in the other crate, where his buddy gives a pebble and gets a grape.

The monkey on the left gets agitated, grabs a pebble, eagerly reaches through the hole, and puts it into the lab worker’s hand. He gets a piece of cucumber, again, and this time he doesn’t even take a bite: he throws it back through the hole, visibly angry, and starts shaking his crate in protest.

All the capuchins in the group do this. They happily munch on pieces of cucumber until they see their buddy in the other crate who gets to eat a grape and they don’t. It violates what we would call their sense of fairness.

Had the workers in the vineyard not seen what the others were paid, all would have gone home happy, we may safely presume, from the first to the last. It’s like the owner of the vineyard did all he could to make the lack of fairness obvious.

Managers and business owners hear this story and wonder what kind of operation the owner of the vineyard is running. How does he recoup his labor costs?

Union reps listen, and they are adamant that you can’t pay some workers for one hour’s work what their fellow-workers make in an entire day.

Take the story to the corner of the parking lot at Home Depot where out-of-work people gather, waiting for someone to hire them, and they smile. They know how hard it is to make a full day’s wage with hourly pay. They know the desperate disappointment of watching truck after truck drive by.

When Jesus first told this parable, many farmers in Galilee had lost their land, and they had to make a living as day laborers. Mid-size and large farms, many of them owned by absentee landlords, were usually operated with day labor rather than slaves; it was much cheaper, and there was an abundance of landless peasants. “Day-laborers constituted a limitless and disposable fuel … that made the ancient economy run,” writes Stanley Saunders.[2] Day-laborers in Galilee were poor, underemployed, and heavily taxed by the Roman authorities. One denarius, a small Roman coin, appears to have been the going rate for a day of field labor, but a denarius was a poverty wage. For a denarius, you could buy bread to feed a family of four for about three days. For a lamb you had to pay 3-4 denarii; for a simple set of clothes, 30 denarii.[3]

The landowner in the story is peculiar. He goes out early in the morning to hire laborers, which was the usual time. But then he comes back at 9 to hire more, and you say to yourself, “Well, he must have realized that he needed more hands to get the work done.” When he comes back again at noon, you wonder if he knows what he’s doing or if he is one of those rich guys who got himself a vineyard and a winery as a hobby. And then he comes back in the middle of the afternoon. It’s hot, everybody is dreaming about quitting time, and he keeps hiring. You’re running out of explanations that would make sense of this kind of behavior. Is he perhaps not quite right in the head? But that’s not the end of it. The sun is already low in the west when he returns again to the marketplace, and he hires every last worker he can find. In this story, the day begins in the familiar setting of the tough Galilean rural economy, but it ends in a world that looks and feels very different.

Imagine you got up at dawn to go to the corner where they pick up day laborers. You know that if you get hired, you can get some bread on the way home and your family will eat dinner. But you don’t get picked in the first round. You go to the other side, hoping to have better luck over there, but you don’t. The younger ones are hired first. The stronger ones are hired first. So you wait, you got nothing else to do, and just when you decide to call it a day and go home, this landowner shows up and asks you, “Why are you standing here idle all day?”

That stings. You already feel like a left-over person, no longer needed, unnoticed, forgotten, and this man calls you idle. This man who doesn’t know how long you have been on your feet, how hard you have tried to find work, or how hungry you are, and how much you dread coming home tonight with empty hands.

“We’re here because no one has hired us,” you say.

“You also go into the vineyard,” the landowner replies. And you go. You’re not doing it for the money, you don’t even ask him how much he’s paying. You go because … who knows. Perhaps it’s just to show him that he can’t call you idle when all you are is underemployed. You go and work in the vineyard.

Soon the manager calls everybody to line up, starting with those hired last, starting with you. You barely got your hands dirty. How much could it be for an hour’s work? It doesn’t really matter. It won’t be enough anyway. And then the manager puts a coin in your hand, and it’s a full day’s pay.

The news travels fast to the end of the line, where the ones hired first are waiting to be paid. Now imagine you’re one of them. You’ve worked twelve long, hard hours. You are dirty, sweaty, your clothes are sticking to your skin and your back is aching. But you’ve seen the ones who got paid first. You’ve seen their faces, how their eyes lit up with surprise, and your back is already starting to feel better. You move to the front of the line, and the manager puts a coin in your hand. It’s a denarius. One denarius.

You turn to the people around you, and they are just as upset as you are. “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” You have made them equal to us. You have offended our sense of justice and fairness. Sure, you can do as you please with what is yours, you’re the boss. The air is charged, a thunderstorm is brewing. As a reader, I’m waiting for somebody to step forward and say the words that bring relief and ease the tension. But this is the end of the story: this uncomfortable silence after the landowner asked, “Are you envious because I am generous?” When Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like this, what does he mean?

The story holds the pain of those in every generation who have been treated as disposable people in the marketplace, unwanted, no longer needed, overlooked, and it holds their hope that a very different kind of payday is coming, when no one counts the hours they have put in, and when all receive the full reward. It also holds the pain and the hope of those in the company of sinners whom no one considers worthy of divine reward, and whom Jesus calls and welcomes into the kingdom.

But this story also holds the anger and resentment of those in every generation who worry that too much mercy for others will only breed further lack of effort on their part. All those in the company of the self-made upright who cannot imagine themselves as recipients of gifts they didn’t earn, but whom Jesus calls and welcomes with equal compassion as he welcomes notorious sinners.

This kingdom story holds a mighty surprise, and whether we respond with joy or with grumbling depends entirely on how we see ourselves: Have I been working since the break of dawn, or am I only just beginning to learn how to be a worker in this vineyard where status and entitlement are meaningless?

We rarely complain, it seems to me, about getting more than we deserve. I watch a capuchin monkey happily munching on a grape while his buddy is shaking his crate in protest. The scene feels uncomfortably familiar, like looking into a mirror.

But there’s another scene, one that feels movingly familiar, also from the depths of evolutionary time. De Waal’s research team ran the same cucumber/grape experiment with chimpanzees; and they found that among chimpanzees, sometimes the one who gets the grape waits to see what his partner gets, and refuses the grape until his buddy also gets one.[4] Sometimes, care and concern for the other and a desire for shared joy are stronger than the lonely pleasure of a sweet grape without company.

Sometimes, when Jesus says, “the last will be first, and the first will be last,” it sounds like the great reversal, the cosmic turning of the tables, when the Mighty One brings down the powerful from their thrones and lifts up the lowly.

Sometimes, though, it sounds like a generous leveling, when “the last will be [just like] the first, and the first will be [just like] the last,” when far from anxious comparison and envy, we all rejoice when the work in the vineyard is done.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2014/08/15/338936897/do-animals-have-morals

[2] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-25/commentary-on-matthew-201-16-5

[3] Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (EKK 1/3), 146.

[4] Guy Raz and Frans de Waal, TED Radio Hour, September 5, 2014 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/338936897

Only vegetables

Thomas Kleinert

In our Tuesday and Wednesday book groups we have been talking about Peter Gomes’s The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus. Just last week we discussed his take on the famous acronym WWJD - What would Jesus do? Gomes argues that we can’t know what Jesus would do, no matter how convinced we are that Jesus, given the choice between a Hummer and a Prius, would drive the latter. Jesus got in a boat a few times, but he walked everywhere he went, and the one time he rode into town, it was on a borrowed donkey. According to Gomes, the better question to ask is, What would Jesus have me do? We are much less likely to speculate, and much more likely to take our own context into account.

I’m driving to work in a Honda van the size of a tank. I like it because he has room for my kayak and all my gear, and when I take the seats out there’s room for a bed in the rear. When I open the sun roof, I can lie on my back and look at the stars. With all the seats in, there’s room for six or more, but most days I drive around by myself. What would Jesus have me drive? Trade in the van for a used hybrid with twice the gas mileage? Leave the van in the garage and take the bus to work? Get an e-bike and only drive the van when I’m going to the river? What would Jesus have me do?

I’ll get to an answer, hopefully soon; one step closer to honoring God the way I believe God must be honored; one step closer to being a neighbor to my contemporaries and to the children of our children’s children. Others will perceive other demands in their desire to honor God; others will ask, What would Jesus have me do? and arrive at different answers.

I believe the late Peter Gomes, chaplain and professor at Harvard, would have loved the story about Ruth Graham, or Mrs. Billy Graham as she would have been properly addressed back in the 1970s when she attended a ladies’ luncheon with wives of conservative pastors in Germany. She dressed for the event as you would expect a white woman of her background and public position in 70s America to dress. A nice suit, modest, but not Amish; something with a little color and a brooch on the lapel. Simple shoes, short heels, well-coiffed hair, nothing showy. The lipstick she had chosen went well with her blue eyeshadow – she had stopped by the ladies’ room to make sure everything was just so, and she was pleased: she looked nice! The German pastors’ wives didn’t believe women should wear makeup at all, or anything that made them look too worldly. One of them, sitting across the table from Mrs. Graham, was so upset by the shameful attire of the famous evangelist’s wife, tears rolled down her cheeks – right into her beer. Mrs. Graham had no idea what upset the woman so. She was too busy trying to contain herself. “What self-respecting pastor’s wife drinks beer, at lunch, at a gathering dedicated to help bring people to Jesus?”

I don’t know if this story would make it past the fact-checkers, but it is a good one.[1] What would Jesus have us do? We come up with very different answers, and what to us is so very important and obvious, may not even be in the picture for others. That’s how Paul ended up writing about vegetables.

Paul wrote a lengthy missive to God’s beloved in Rome to introduce himself. He hadn’t founded the church there, but he was planning to visit soon, and he was hoping for their support. Paul was on a mission to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to Jews and Gentiles all across the empire, and the Lord willing, he would travel as far as Spain. He needed letters of introduction. He needed help with travel arrangements. He needed funding. And he may have been wondering if the churches in Rome would be open to supporting him and his work. There were rumors that his gospel of grace undermined moral behavior, that he was preaching lawlessness. And those rumors weren’t just fake news made up by opponents to discredit him. There was evidence to give substance to the charges. In Corinth, some of the baptized understood salvation by grace to mean that all things were lawful, and he had to push back forcefully against their boastful, self-centered attitudes and actions.[2] 

And beyond the rumors of Paul promoting lawlessness, there was the ongoing challenge in the fledgling churches of having people from all kinds of religious, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds come together in worship and share a meal, the Lord’s supper – Ruth Graham’s ladies’ luncheon was a walk in the park in comparison. So Paul wrote about an issue that we know had been particularly disruptive in Corinth and Antioch: what to eat and who to eat with when Jesus is Lord.[3]

“Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables.” It may sound like a line from a foodie blog, but those believers weren’t fussing over the health benefits of a vegetarian diet or the ecological impact of meat production. In the first-century Mediterranean world most animals were routinely offered to one god or another when they were killed. There were no stockyards or meat packing plants to supply the cities, there were temples. For some Christians, eating meat that was part of a pagan sacrifice was no problem; to them, there was only one God, creator of heaven and earth, and so, with thanks to God the giver, they ate their meat.

For others, this was unthinkable. To them, it amounted to participating in the worship of other gods, and some would only consider consuming meat that had been slaughtered and processed according to Jewish law, and so they reckoned it was best to steer clear of meat altogether. Only veggies; veggies were safe. But from that scrupulously maintained conviction it was only a small step to condemning others for watering down their commitment to Jesus and God’s law by not separating themselves more rigorously from pagan practices.

And those who did eat with thanksgiving whatever was served? They were awfully close to looking down with contempt on their less-enlightened fellow-believers who didn’t grasp the true meaning of Christian freedom.

In those early years, the Lord’s Supper wasn’t just bread and wine; it was a full meal. Can you imagine what may have been said when they came together to break bread? Can you imagine the looks and the things that weren’t said? Paul had his own views, but he didn’t take sides or adjudicate the disagreement. Nor did he suggest that meat-eaters and vegetarians organize themselves into separate house churches so they would be able to worship with like-minded believers. Instead, he reminded those who would hear his words read in the assembly, that both those who ate meat and those who abstained, did so to honor the Lord. It didn’t matter if they ate or abstained, but that they did so convinced in their own minds that this was what the Lord would have them do. What did matter, and did in fact matter greatly, was that they not judge one another, nor condemn or belittle each other, but rather welcome each other as God welcomed them.

Paul wants us to realize that we belong to each other as members of God’s household, not because of our shared piety, our shared love for certain hymns or prayer books, or our shared preference for certain theological traditions: we belong to each other because Christ has made us his own and we belong to him. What matters is that rather than sitting in judgment over each other for the ways in which we honor God with our lives, we submit together to the lordship of Jesus, the Messiah of God. In submitting together we will become better able to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us, for the glory of God.

“Owe no one anything,” Paul wrote in the previous chapter, “except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”[4] That is far from lawlessness, but it is equally far from pious law-enforcement, where what I perceive Jesus would have me do, suddenly becomes the rule for what you must do. No, all of us who confess that Jesus is Lord, must ask what this entails for our worship, and for our life together, and yes, our eating habits, driving habits, spending habits. We must ask and we must wrestle with the answers and help each other become aware of our biases and blindspots.

We Disciples love to quote the maxim, In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, love.[5] We love the statement, but we also know that one believer’s non-essentials are another’s essentials. Meat, makeup, beer, movies, dancing – the list goes on. When it comes to defining who we are, we are quick to elevate our own pious preferences to essentials, and equally quick to judge and dismiss the pieties of others as non-essentials or just plain weird.

But Paul will not let us walk away from each other and claim that it is necessary for the sake of faithfulness. We are one in Christ, one with God and with each other, because Christ has made us his own. That love is essential, and that love is meant to be manifest in all things, in every dimension of our life together.

The revolution of the cross is not about turning others into clones of our own convictions and calling it conversion. The revolution of the cross is about radical welcome, our welcoming each other as God has welcomed us. We risk who we think we are for love’s sake, and together we become who God made us to be.

[1] Based on Mark Reasoner’s account at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=130

[2] 1 Cor 10:23

[3] See 1 Cor 8:13; 10:25 and Gal 2:11-14.

[4] Rom 13:8

[5] For the history of this lovely statement see https://liberlocorumcommunium.blogspot.com/2010/03/in-necessariis-unitas-in-non.html; it may not have been penned first by Rupertus Meldenius (aka Peter Meiderlin) in 1627, but by Marco Antonio De Dominis in 1617 (“In necessariis unitas, in non necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas”).

Not Perfect, but Practice

Margie Quinn

It was about eight months into my previous ministry gig when I received my first scathing email from a congregant. I was sitting in my office the day after our youth had done a demonstration outside of the church honoring George Floyd when someone’s name popped up in my inbox. It was the parent of a kid. He wrote that he strongly disapproved of the action and was shocked by the fact that we had tried to make church political.

A few months later, after having a transgender pastor from Vanderbilt Divinity speak at youth group, I received phone calls from several parents about the ways in which hosting such a pastor was inappropriate and that those conversations should be “saved for the doctor’s office.”  

In May of 2022, after preaching at Confirmation Sunday, the emails flooded in.  “I couldn’t have left more disappointed in my church of 40 plus years,” one woman wrote. “Church is the one place where we should be frees of anything political and focus on worship.” The next email described my sermon as “galling, inappropriate, and narcissistic.” “Shame on you for grandstanding during the middle of a very special day…” it said. And one more: “Punctuated by a rainbow stole, it seemed to me that she was presenting a political statement under the pretense of all-inclusive love.”

I was gutted. Up until that point, I had not had any conflict with members in the church. I felt encouraged by them and affirmed in my energetic, authentic approach to community. Yet, as anyone who is married knows, the honeymoon phase only lasts so long, and my bright bubble of comfort and smiles had…popped.

Our text this morning in the lectionary rotation jumps from Jesus talking to his disciples about taking up their cross and following him to an instructional offering about how to deal with conflict in the life of the church. We skip over some of the flashier stories like the Transfiguration and Jesus curing a boy with a Demon to go right to the nitty gritty of doing community together. Right before this passage, Jesus has just told the parable of the lost sheep, which in some ways might be setting up the disciples to think about what it looks like to care for EVERY member in Christ’s flock, especially the ones who have gone astray.

“If another member of the church sins against you,” he says, “go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” Okay, seems easy enough. “If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. BUT, if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of those two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile or tax collector.”

This passage can be hard to conceptualize in our Western, individualized context because we are not living in communities of 50 people, attending house churches together and relying on each other financially or communally in the same way. In our day and age, perhaps our hurts may be dealt with by leaving the church altogether and finding another church home. That certainly happened to me after another parent did not agree with the way our youth group was heading. After a particularly difficult committee meeting, she took her family elsewhere the next week before we had the chance to reconcile. She may not have handled it perfectly, but I can assure you that I didn’t either, speaking ill of her behind her back instead of meeting with her.

What does it look like to try and reclaim a relationship with someone who has hurt us? And then to welcome a few others to listen and witness to the pain with immense trust? And perhaps, even painfully so, to share that hurt with the church, a concept I’ll be honest I’m still wrestling with and trying to make sense of.

I want to add nuance to this text, too. I think about how many of my female colleagues in ministry have experienced sexual harassment by other congregants or fellow pastors. We know that the statistics on church leaders taking advantage of vulnerable members like children or more marginalized identity groups reveal the systemic pain in our congregations. In those cases, it seems as though the church does deserve to know those painful acts. Perhaps in those cases, the healthiest thing to do as a community is to “treat that person as a Gentile and a tax collector,” which doesn’t mean to excommunicate them with harsh, unforgiving bitterness. But maybe to release them to do their own healing away from those they’ve taken advantage of, knowing that Jesus still loves them and invites them to his table in a different way.

I do think, in the cases of conflict where harsh words are thrown around, or feelings are hurt in a meeting, or a painful thing is said from the pulpit or in a Sunday school class or on a service trip, there is power in practicing how to “fight well.” Fighting well is some relationship advice I got from a friend years ago. “Make sure that whoever you partner with, that you fight well.” Perhaps that should be on our sign out front: “Vine Street Christian Church--Where We Fight Well!” Church--where we first have the courage to reach out to someone who has hurt us and ask them to coffee, or to have a phone call, and in doing so, we trust that God’s presence will be among us when we speak our truth, even if our voice shakes.

Not only does it take courage to reach out but it takes a lot of humility to listen. Looking back, I wish that the people behind those emails had come to me in person. When I invited a few of them to coffee to talk about it more, I got…crickets. Perhaps in our virtual communities too, whether it be over email, social media, or text, when we are poised to type something cruel, we have a responsibility that consider that Jesus is among us there, too.

In essence, what makes us Christian is not whether or not we fight, disagree or wound each other (because let’s face it, showing up for years to a community of familiar faces means we are BOUND to get annoyed by the varying personalities and perspectives), but by how we go about addressing and resolving these issues when they come up…even if it looks pretty clunky. As one pastor said, “Church isn’t perfect, it’s practice.” It’s practicing how to pick up our cross and follow Jesus around. Because he is around, even in this.

When Jesus asks the Disciples, “Who do YOU say that I am?,” maybe he wants them to consider that he is God AMONG us, even in or especially during the midst of conflict.

Charles Hambrick-Stowe asks the question, “If we in church do not forgive and heal, who on earth is going to do it?” If we do not try to overcome our differences and risk relationship with people outside of our gender, age, socioeconomic status, in this place and conform to the individualism or comfort of an echo chamber, then what makes us Christian? Unfortunately for us, we are not free from each other; we are free in each other.”

I always thought the verse, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them,” meant that Jesus is among us when we show up for each other, like when Larry served communion to me and my boyfriend Collin after having lunch at his place, knowing that if there’s more than one, we get to celebrate communion with each other. It’s a meal that cannot be done alone. In context, though, this verse situates itself as guideline for holy practice (not perfect) in a church setting. Holy, clunky practice; like picking up the phone, with shaking hands, and having the courage to address the hard stuff. Like sitting down for coffee after praying hurried prayers for peace and guidance, before looking someone in the eye and naming the hurt; or gathering a group together in the chapel or a classroom to work through a misunderstanding; practicing healing and forgiveness because we believe in inter-dependence with each other, not independence from each other.

            When that parent left our church, I almost picked up my phone to call her so many times. Since leaving that church, I’ve often thought about writing her a letter as a good place to start. But I don’t know if I’m ready to set aside my bitterness and try to forgive and be forgiven and heal. I don’t know if I’m ready believe that Jesus is among me as I stumble my way through conflict. But I want to be there. Maybe by preaching about it, I’ll actually practice it.

Being a community of faith is so hard when we start to devolve into the sad and hurtful places. It is so tempting to walk away; but this morning, I want to encourage you (and myself) to think about what it means to walk toward, to take that first step in acknowledging “where it hurts,” as civil activist Ruby Sales writes, knowing that Jesus is right there walking alongside us. Where does it hurt, church? Let’s practice here—not to be perfect, but to be persistent in our commitment to Jesus, who is among us and always has been, in our clunkiness and in our courage. Where can we meet each other and be balm for the wound, as Jeremiah says?

Will you pick up your pen with me? Or your phone? Will you meet me for coffee? I’ll try to listen to you, and maybe you’ll try to listen to me. We won’t be perfect, but we’ll practice.

Church builder

Who do people say that the Son of Man is? There’s no lack of answers to the question who Jesus is. Everyone has an opinion: the tv preacher who sweats through his suit in under three minutes, whether it’s on AM radio, cable, or youtube; the roofer whose truck displays a fish sticker next to the yellow flag, “Don’t tread on me”; the tik tok opinionator, and your next-door neighbor. Everyone has an answer.

Who do people say that the Son of Man is? Thumb through the gospels, Anna Carter Florence suggests, and you can’t help noticing that people say a lot of things about who Jesus is. He is Mary’s child. He is the light of the world. He is a prophet without honor in his own hometown. He is the son of Joseph. He is the King of the Jews. Jesus is the one who can heal your child, cast out your demon, forgive your sins, and raise your hopes. He is a prophet, a rabbi, a builder, and a pain in the neck. He is alive, he is dead, he is risen, he is on his way. People say Jesus is a lot of things. They say it standing on soap boxes, sitting next to you on the plane, and writing it on billboards. They say it in pulpits and classrooms, on talk radio and in letters to the editor. In just about any context you can imagine, people say all kinds of things about Jesus, because nearly everybody has an opinion.[1]

Who do people say that the Son of Man is? That’s the safe question, a question any reporter and pollster will be glad to investigate; a response doesn’t require any personal involvement or commitment. You shoot off a quick survey, make some phone calls, and list your results: “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” People say all kinds of things, you report. You could spend a life-time compiling all those statements. You could, if there wasn’t the second question. “Who do you say that I am?”

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus responded, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” It was Peter’s proudest moment. He was the first to follow Jesus and the first to declare that Jesus was God’s Messiah, and in response Jesus renamed him, gave him a new identity, a life defined by the purposes of God. “Simon son of Jonah, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

This is the first time the word church is used in the gospel. Knowing who Jesus is not just a matter of repeating the right answer. But neither is it about finding our own unique answer, our own personal Jesus, the personalized accessory to fit our lifestyle and our political sensibilities. Naming who Jesus is means letting him rename us, letting him give us a new identity. Naming who Jesus is means letting him claim us, more than us claiming him: it means letting him make us part of the project he calls my church.

Let’s remember where this exchange is taking place. They were in the district of Caesarea Philippi, that’s about twenty miles north of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus raised the big question not in the disciples’ familiar surroundings of the lake and their home towns, but in the shadow of Rome’s powerful presence. Jesus raised the question in the place where Herod the Great had built a temple to the emperor Caesar Augustus, in the town that Herod’s son Philipp enlarged and renamed after Tiberius Caesar and himself — Caesarea Philippi, Philipp’s Caesarville. Jesus raised the question in a place where Rome’s troops celebrated their victory after the destruction of Jerusalem. Jesus raised the question in a place where the faithfulness of God was profoundly in question. And Peter confessed Jesus to be God’s Messiah in the deep shadow of Rome’s idolatrous, oppressive power.[2] And it was there, with the temple to Caesar in the background, that Jesus first spoke of his church, promising that the gates of Hades would not prevail against it.

And it was then and there that Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.[3] We don’t know why, upon hearing those words, Simon “the Rock” Peter took Jesus aside and objected, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!” It may have been shock. It may have been love, love that cannot stand the thought of seeing the loved one suffer. It may have been political calculus that wanted to chart a different course for a successful Jerusalem campaign. Whatever the motivation, for an instant, Peter sounded like the devil who showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, saying, “You know, there’s an easier way to be ruler of all.”[4] One moment Peter spoke truth like only God can reveal it — You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God — and in the very next scene, he heard Jesus address him as Satan.

Peter is the model disciple, because he is so much like the rest of us: brave, bold, fearful, impulsive, eager, slow - he embodies the whole spectrum of human responses to Jesus, yet, though stumbling and fumbling, he continues to follow him on the way..

“You are setting your mind on human things,” Jesus told him. What’s wrong with setting our minds on human things? Aren’t we human, after all? We set our human minds on human things, using human language, human concepts, and human imagination to make sense of the human condition. I don’t think Jesus scolded Peter for setting his mind on human things. I think he told Peter to get behind him because Peter presumed he had his mind on divine things. Simon “the Rock” Peter became a stumbling block when he presumed to know what was appropriate for God’s Messiah and what was not. In Peter’s mind, suffering and death simply were out of the question. He became a stumbling block when he wasn’t able to fit the way of Jesus into the mold of his familiar categories for divine things.

We do not and cannot know what it means to call Jesus God’s Messiah until we follow him, until we let his life reshape our imagination and reorganize our cherished categories. Likewise, we do not and cannot know what discipleship means until we practice it, until we’re willing to take off our shoes and let our feet touch the holy ground of the way of Jesus and walk in it.

“Those who want to save their life will lose it,” Jesus says, “and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” We know that, don’t we? We know that when we’re too firmly attached to what we have and know, we’re in danger of perceiving change only as threatening. Many fear nothing more than loss, and in holding on to what little we have and think we know we lose everything. We know that, it’s one of life’s great lessons, and we don’t need Jesus to tell us. And Jesus isn’t writing advice columns. Jesus calls us out of our obsession with ourselves — our thoughts, our ambitions, our sins, our fears. He invites us to let the focus of our attention be on him — his compassion, his teachings, his mercy, his faithfulness — his life. Jesus calls us to step out of our carefully constructed and tightly secured little kingdoms. He calls us to follow him on the way to the kingdom of God, to let our feet walk us into the truth of who he is and who we are and what life is meant to be. Jesus doesn’t promise that we will gain the whole world. He says that those who lose their life for his sake will find it. He says that there is life beyond our anxious self-absorption, beyond the hunger to have what others have, and beyond the thirst no earthly drink can quench.

Jesus is building his church with people like you and me and Peter: not with super heroes, but with human beings. We are all there is to make a church with, and the builder is up to the challenge. And that’s why sometimes people crippled by guilt and shame hear the word of forgiveness and raise their heads. That’s why in so many towns and neighborhoods refugees find welcome far from home, and the courage to start over. That’s why there are safe places where victims of abuse discover hope and begin to live again. That’s why there’s a young couple who won’t have to spend the night on the street because the manager of a motel is a brave woman who dares to be kind. Daily, people are fed, clothed, sheltered, healed, forgiven, lifted up, and given new life because Jesus is building his church. In the long shadow of the gates of Hades, Jesus is building his church with people like you and me and Peter, and the gates of death’s dominion will not prevail against it.

[1] See Lectionary Homiletics, Vol. 19, No. 5, 38.

[2] See Eugene Boring, Matthew (NIB), 342.

[3] Matthew 16:21

[4] Matthew 4:8-10

Who do YOU say that I am?

Margie Quinn

I have become an apologetic Christian. And I don’t mean “apologetic” as the defense of one’s faith, taught in seminaries and colleges (people offer classes on how to practice apologetics to build strong argumentative discourse skills).

No, I am an apologetic Christian in the sense that I am a person of faith who constantly apologizes for being a Christian. It stems from a good place. The more that I have studied Christianity and the harrowing history of our faith, the more I have learned about the European Christians who warped the gospel into a Christian colonial movement, killing and enslaving indigenous and black bodies all for the sake of “making believers of all nations.” Since that colonial moment, the Christian church has contributed to the religious trauma of countless marginalized groups, our LGBTQ+ siblings, people going through divorce, victims of sexual assault…we have a lot to apologize for.

So, because I have so many friends and family members who have been burned by the church, I think that I overcorrected. I hold pride for my faith in one hand and shame for its consequences in the other. I try to downplay the importance Jesus has on my life and make sure to give the caveat every time I share my vocation that “But, I’m a cool pastor….at a cool church…” In all the overcorrection, I have forgotten how to say who Jesus is to me.

On Monday, our legislators gathered back at the capitol for a special session. This is where the governor calls back everyone in the House and Senate to address bills that weren’t resolved at the last convening. While there were many bills introduced for this session including bills on mental health and substance abuse services, scholarships and financial aid and school transportation, the focus for many, as y’all know, was on the bills addressing gun reform and gun safety.

The first community event held last week was a prayer. People held hands and prayed for God’s presence in the upcoming week whatever tongue or fashion they wanted to.

I called Reverend Wesley King on Monday morning and asked, “Are you going to wear your stole down there? I don’t want to wear mine and seem self-important.”  “Yes!” he said. “I think it’s important to let people know where the church stands.” In other words, we need to communicate out into the world who Jesus is to us. What a gift his words were. During the march down to the capitol, sitting in subcommittee and committee hearings, standing with ministers during a pastoral press conference and working on the safety team during the vigil on Thursday night, I wore this stole. And I can’t tell you how many people asked me, “What church do you serve?” and I got to say, “Vine Street Christian Church.” Many said to me, “I am so glad that you are here.”

I have gotten so scared of how the Church has hurt others that I have forgotten how to answer Jesus when he asks, “Who do YOU say I am?”

So, let’s look at our scripture today and start with the when. When Jesus addresses his disciples in this passage, what has just transpired is the feeding of the 5,000. Then the Pharisees and scribes demand that Jesus show them a sign if he really is who he says he is. He is being challenged by the religious powers at the time to prove that he is the Son of God. Then he takes the disciples to somewhere called Caesera Philippi. This is the district where the first king of Israel led the northern kingdom of Israel into idolatry. It’s also where the Cave of Pan lies, otherwise known as the pagan gate of Hades. This is a place with a lot of competing powers around, a place to find religious alternatives and a place for the competing voices, as Karoline Lewis says, “for your loyalty, obedience, dedication.” And it is there, in that public place, that Jesus asks his disciples to identify who he is in front of everything competing for their loyalty.

Who do people say that the Son of Man is? What’s the buzz out there? Where are we at in terms of people understanding that I am God enfleshed and stuff?

The disciples tell him, “Some say John the Baptist…others Elijah…others Jeremiah or one of the prophets…” Yeah, Jesus says, but who do YOU say that I am? Some say that I am a crazed prophet or perform miracles with the aid of Satan. But who do you say I am? Some say that I’m loyal to one political party or cultural trend; I’m your “homeboy,” I’m “hippy Jesus,” but who do YOU say that I am? Some say that I am a militant power exploiting the economically weak, a King above all others but who do YOU say that I am? How have YOU seen me witness out in the world?

My dad, after watching the events at the Capitol on Monday, called me on Tuesday morning and told me that he feels angry and doesn’t know what to do about it. He was in his men’s bible study that morning and a man confessed that he didn’t think he was Christian enough because he doesn’t go to church all the time and he doesn’t read his Bible a lot. My dad asked me, with passion in his voice, “What if the measure of our faith isn’t by how much we go to church or read the Bible but by how many tables we turn and how many Pharisees we stand up to?” What if THAT is the mark of following Jesus?

I want to embody my dad’s passion. I want to embody Peter’s confidence when I say who Jesus is to me. Peter, who does not have the best track record. He’s the one who denied Jesus over and over and over again, yet Jesus hears HIS testimony and says, “You are the rock.” Peter who said, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God,” the one who scripture has promised will come. “What I have experienced in you, Jesus, is that you are the Messiah, the one who has been sent to us as a gateway into the kingdom of heaven,” Jin Kim writes. Kim goes on to wonder if Jesus was not responding to Peter’s particular strengths and accomplishments as a disciple (which left much to be desired) but to his testimony.” Peter becomes the rock and foundation of the church through what he says. The church! Which, I guess, isn’t a building but a people like Peter willing testify confidently about a gospel that is both personal and communal to us. I bet it was Peter’s emboldened response that got Jesus to say, “You are the rock.”

“Who do YOU say that I am?”

For Dair, Jesus is nature, grass, the sun.

For Calin, his Lord and Savior.

For Gia, he lives within her and helps her be more like him.

For Jack, he is a guardian.

For my Dad, he is a table-turner, a resistor to the competing powers of this world

For me, he is my compass for justice. He is the ultimate protestor, prophet, advocate for the marginalized. He is the most wild, inclusive love-centered liberator we’ve got. He is as vulnerable as a baby. He is a different kind of King. He breaks bread with every kind of person.

And for Peter, he is the one who has been promised. The son of the LIVING God. Not the stagnant God. The living, breathing God among us.

This week at the capitol, he was a tenacious teenager who got up and spoke in front of many, challenging us and convicting us to walk alongside of our young people when they cry out for help.

He was grieving mothers, “wailing women,” like the book of Jeremiah says, who dump ashes on their heads and wear sack cloth as a way to say, “Look! They say “Peace” when there is no peace.

This week at the capitol, he was organizers sitting in the cafeteria sharing chips and salsa with each other, sustenance for the week ahead.

He was the people passing out the water bottles to activists in that hot heat.

He was the ears to hear. He was the eyes to see. He was everywhere.

Church, I don’t think we have to apologize for who we experience Jesus to be. In fact, I think that when we go out from here to school, to work, amongst friends, at the capitol, we can go knowing that our proclamation of faith might actually appeal to people and invite them in and have them hear who HE is to us and say, “I want to check out that church.” As Abigail said to a friend, “I think you should come to church with me. You wouldn’t hate it here.”

I want to be bold like Peter and like my dad and like those young people at the capitol this week, who are not afraid to say who Jesus is to them. Maybe he’s a table-turner for you. Maybe he’s a peacemaker for you. Whoever who he is to you, the world needs to hear your testimony because it is the rock and foundation of our church. It goes out from these walls and tells the liberating, soul-saving and radical news of our Messiah, the son of the living God. Amen.

Faith

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,” Mark Twain famously wrote in The Innocents Abroad. That was a long, long time ago, long before air planes with hundreds of seats crossed oceans and mountain ranges, and before colossal cruise ships regularly dumped thousands of visitors into small coastal cities, making it practically impossible for the travelers to meet some of the locals, let alone talk with them. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts,” Twain wrote. “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of [humans] and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”[1]

Travel in Twain’s sense is not necessarily about going to far away places, especially when going there is primarily driven by the desire to collect iconic Instagram pics. Travel is about getting out of our little corner to meet the neighbor who is a stranger, to hear their story in their own accent, to taste their food and try to dance to their songs. Travel is about crossing all manner of borders to immerse ourselves in our neighbors’ world – not to appropriate what’s theirs, but to see them and their take on life with less prejudice, and perhaps to see ourselves in new ways.

Today and tomorrow, Tennessee legislators will be traveling to Nashville for a special session of the General Assembly, and I hope at least some of them will not just log miles, but have the courage to get out of their little corner.

The gospel reading for this Sunday is about Jesus crossing borders and a mother pleading with unrelenting persistence for her child’s well-being. We know what having a sick child can do to a parent: it makes you fearless.[2] It makes you say horrible things to the receptionist who won’t give you an appointment until two weeks after Labor Day. It makes you very rude to doctors who run test after test for hours, but won’t give you more than two minutes to tell you about the results. It makes you scream at the insurance rep who tells you that your plan does not cover the treatments your child needs. It makes you stay up all night doing research on the web, finding out where the best clinics are, the best doctors, the most promising programs. Your tender love turns fierce, and you will do anything it takes to make your child well.

Tomorrow, mothers, fathers, siblings, grannies, students and teachers will once again surround the capitol, gather on Legislative Plaza, and stand in legislators’ offices, pleading with unrelenting persistence for the lives of our children and neighbors. We hope their words will find open ears and open minds.

When Jesus crossed into the region of Tyre and Sidon, he entered territory that was foreign in every respect: foreign accents, foreign customs, foreign food, foreign gods – and yet he went there, made a significant detour, in fact, to get there. A woman from that region approached him, shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” It wasn’t proper for a woman to approach a man who didn’t belong to her family for help. It was unthinkable for a Jewish man to be approached by a Gentile woman, let alone when demons were involved.

And this woman wouldn’t stop shouting; she kept at it, insisting on mercy for her tormented daughter. We don’t know why Jesus crossed the border into her world, but we know why she crossed every line of propriety: we know what having a sick child can do to a parent. The barriers of custom, language, and ethnicity were high between her and the man from Nazareth, but they were no match for her love for her child. Shouting without any restraint she begged the Lord Jesus to liberate her daughter. And Jesus showed no reaction whatsoever, like she wasn’t even there.

To the disciples, the whole scene was annoying and embarrassing, and they urged him to put an end to it. “Send her away,” they said. And she kept shouting, “Lord, have mercy!” “Tell her to be quiet,” they said, but she kept pleading, “Lord, have mercy.”

How wide is the circle of God’s mercy that has the life of Jesus as its defining center? Wide enough to include one like her?

When Jesus finally speaks, he doesn’t sound like the Jesus we thought we knew. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Let her shout – she doesn’t belong to the flock I was sent to tend. But this Gentile woman is determined. She throws herself at his feet, praying, “Lord, help me.”

The Jesus we know would reach out and take her by the hand, wouldn’t he? He would tell her to get up and go home, assuring her that her child was well; or he would go home with her and free her child from what was tormenting her. But this stranger in a strange land says, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

How wide is the circle of God’s mercy that has the life of Jesus as its defining center? Which voices will prevail: the woman pleading, “Lord, help me?” or the voices of those already in the house, already at the table, already full, those who are telling Jesus, “Send her away”?

This is a hard story. It reflects the  hard, and often harsh, debate over who belongs and who doesn’t. It’s a hard story to hear because Jesus just taught that it is not what enters the mouth that defiles, but what comes out of it; because in the language we use, our attitudes and commitments spill from our hearts and over our lips. And Jesus says – and it’s Jesus who says it, and not one of the disciples, it’s Jesus, no matter how much I wish it were not so – Jesus says, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

Is he perhaps talking to himself, thinking out loud? Is he speaking to the disciples, inviting their comments? Or is he looking the woman in the face saying it? We don’t know, but we wonder.

Many have wrestled with this story, trying to reconcile the Jesus they thought they knew with the Jesus who not only withholds his compassion, but comes across as incredibly rude. Some have proposed that he didn’t really mean it, that he was merely testing the woman’s resolve – how cruel that would be. Others have suggested that he wasn’t testing the woman’s resolve but the disciples’ understanding, that he was waiting for one of them, just one, to stand with her and say, “Lord, have mercy.” That’s a kind thought, but there’s nothing in the story to suggest that this was a test.

I am intrigued by the fact that Jesus talks about bread. Throwing the bread to the dogs would be wrong, he tells the mother, since it was the children’s supper. She knows all there is to know about feeding children, yet she doesn’t erupt in rage or collapse in silence under the weight of the insult comparing her daughter to a dog. No, she picks it up and, with quick wit, turns it just a tiny bit. “Yes, Lord,” she says, “yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” What she has asked of him won’t take away anything from the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Crumbs of mercy would be plenty to save her child. Hadn’t he just fed 5,000 people with a lunch that looked like nothing to his disciples? And when all had finished eating and all were full and satisfied, weren’t multiple baskets of broken pieces left? She had been paying attention; she knew that what her daughter needed was his to give, and that there was enough for all. “Woman, great is your faith!” Jesus finally said. “Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed.

Almost immediately following this hard story about children and dogs, there is another bread story. Jesus is again with a crowd, curing the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others, and Matthew tells us, they were amazed and praised the God of Israel. Why would Matthew emphasize that they were praising the God of Israel? Because among them, there were now a bunch of Canaanites and other suspect Gentiles.

And now Jesus said to the disciples, “I have compassion for the crowd … and I do not want to send them away hungry.” No more sending away of those who hunger for the bread of salvation. No more sending away of those who hunger for liberation, for healing, for justice, for fullness of life. Jesus took the loaves and gave thanks, broke them, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.

Of this bread, there is more than enough for all of us. There’s no reason to draw circles that keep “them” out, whoever we might imagine “them” to be; no reason to live in fear that there might only be just enough mercy for some.

There is so much that divides us along lines that have been drawn ages ago and continue to be redrawn, with new labels replacing old ones. Division, prejudice, fear and insult have been our lot for as long as any of us can remember. But this perplexing little story shows us how courage and mercy cross those lines for healing.

In mercy, God has drawn the circle wide, liberating us to come out of our little corners and discover the not so distant land where we are no longer strangers and aliens, but all of us members of the one household of God.

[1] Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, Conclusion. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3176/3176-h/3176-h.htm

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