Servant song

Thomas Kleinert

Palm Sunday is like standing on the rim of a canyon. It’s a good day, a day of joyous welcome and celebration, the sun is smiling on the crowd waving palm branches and on the curious king riding through the gate of the city on a borrowed donkey. It’s a good day, a very good day, and the arrangers of the sound track have called for fanfares of bright trumpets and happy trombones weaving through wavy layers of laughter, cheering, and applause. It’s a good day, you can see all the way across the canyon to the other rim, and there the kingdom shines in peace and glory.

It’s a good day, but you know there won’t be a crew of angels to build a soaring bridge of light across the depth. You know Jesus won’t just ride on over to the other side. He’ll walk, all the way down into the lonesome valley. The fanfare was fantastic while you watched him coming up the hill toward the city gate, but now he’s inside the wall, and the clip-clop is fading, and you’re not sure what song belongs to this moment.

We heard two poetic texts just now, one from Isaiah, the other from Paul’s letter to the Philippians; the first one is often referred to as one of Isaiah’s four ‘servant songs,’ and the passage from Paul’s letter, as a ‘Christ hymn.’[1] They are like lyrics waiting for a tune to tie the fanfare of the entry to the minor keys and somber silence of Friday.

The Lord God has given me
the tongue of a teacher,
that I may know how to sustain
the weary with a word.
Morning by morning [God] wakens,
wakens my ear
to listen as those who are taught.

There’s a saying in Italian, “Traduttore, traditore” – meaning “The translator is a traitor.” It sounds harsh, but things do indeed get lost in translation, and the Bible is no exception. An earlier revision of the King James Bible, called the Revised Standard Version, translated the opening line:

The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught.

In the New Revised Standard Version, the one we use in worship, this became the tongue of a teacher. I wish the committee in charge had just left that line alone.

The Lord God has given me
the tongue of those who are taught,
that I may know how to sustain
the weary with a word.
Morning by morning [God] wakens,
wakens my ear
to listen as those who are taught.

Both the servant’s attentive ear and skilled tongue are shaped in a community of learners who are taught. The prophet speaks in the first person, and it can be frustrating to try and determine if he is speaking about himself or someone else, or if he refers to an individual, the community of exiles, or the people of Israel as a whole.[2] All of the above seems like a good solution to the dilemma to me, because the role of the servant belongs to the whole community of learners as well as to those individuals who, like the prophet, remind this community of its true identity as God’s covenant people. The prophet speaks poetically about ‘the servant’ not to remind people who he is, but who they are: a community of learners who listen attentively to God who, morning by morning, wakens their ear, and who are given, because they listen attentively, tongues that allow them to sustain the weary with a word. And perhaps that’s the point of being ‘the servant’: knowing how to sustain the weary with a word, how to take some of the weight off their shoulders, how to speak of comfort and the promise of home when long years of exile have only brought grief and compromise after compromise with the demands of the Babylonian empire. The poet continues,

The Lord God has opened my ear,
and I was not rebellious;
I did not turn backward.

I hear confidence in those lines, and courage. This is the voice of one who has kept the faith, and in these lines individual experience comes into view. Some in the community of exiles hear what may sustain the weary, but they don’t want to hear it. They may think the prophet and others whose ears God opened are just stirring up trouble with their talk of making the long journey home when to them, for quite some time, exile hasn’t felt like exile at all. They’re quite comfortable, thank you very much.

I imagine a moment like March 7, 1965, when John Lewis and Rev. Hosea Williams headed out of Selma on U.S. Hwy 80. They were leading some 500-600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, all of them tired of exile, many of them knowing how to sustain the weary with a word, and all of them pointing toward home. You know what awaited them on that Bloody Sunday, and they probably did too. The poet writes,

I gave my back to those who struck me
and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
I did not hide my face
from insult and spitting.

This is painfully specific language, as painfully specific as

Troopers, with gas masks affixed to their faces and clubs at the ready, advanced and knocked the marchers to the ground. …  Clouds of tear gas mixed with the screams of terrified marchers and the cheers of reveling bystanders. Deputies on horseback charged ahead and chased the gasping men, women and children back over the bridge as they swung clubs, whips and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire.[3]

The language is painfully specific like ‘a crown of thorns.’ The poet continues,

The Lord God helps me;

therefore I have not been disgraced; 

therefore I have set my face like flint,

and I know that I shall not be put to shame;

[God] who vindicates me is near.

The Lord God who has opened the ear and spoken and taught the word that sustains the weary, has instructed the servant’s heart in trust, resilience and resolve. Since soon after Easter, Christians have seen Jesus in this portrait, and perhaps Jesus likewise saw himself.[4] In my imagination, he walks and talks and stands like one who knows this poetry to be true.

Who will contend with me?

Let us stand in court together.

Who are my adversaries?

Let them confront me.

It is the Lord God who helps me;

who will declare me guilty?

Again, it’s no stretch to imagine Jesus asking these questions, confident that though council, judge, mob, governor, and the whole sin-sick world might accuse and condemn him, God would vindicate him. Jesus lived and proclaimed the advent of the kingdom of God, and only moments ago we welcomed him to the city, shouting,

“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!”

Where do we find ourselves in the story as it unfolds this week? Will we walk with him? Will we eat and drink with him? Will we stand with him? Will we pray with him?

Morning by morning [God] wakens,
wakens my ear
to listen as those who are taught.

Morning by morning, and sometimes before morning, God rouses our ears to listen — to be attentive as those who are taught, and to let the word we hear sink in and do its work in our starved, stubborn and fearful hearts. Which brings me to the lovely hymn Paul quotes in his letter to the saints in Philippi.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he existed in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God 

as something to be grasped,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

assuming human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a human,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.

The last time we heard these words in this setting was on the Sunday after the Covenant shooting, Palm Sunday a year ago. Since then, we have celebrated Easter, and we have heard proposals from members of our General Assembly to further harden our schools with heavier steel doors and other building modifications, and to arm teachers. Common sense regulations like save storage laws and measures to keep fire arms out of the hands of mentally unstable persons—though having strong bi-partisan support from over 70% of Tennesseans—still have a long way to go. We still have a long way to go. Some of the work we have to do is just unrelenting, old-fashioned, county-level organizing across the entire state.

But there’s more that needs doing. The world is filled with fantasies of a god that are inevitably entwined with fantasies about power. Fantasies that have more in common with the master over a plantation than with the humble God who died a slave’s death on the cross—“in great agony, without regard, without mercy, and without help.” But this week is the culmination of “[God’s struggle] against our bad imagining of God,” as Willie James Jennings has put it so very well.[5] Paul’s song lyrics helps us remember as we make our way through the dark valley how the living God has toppled our fantasies of domination and vindicated the humble way of Jesus. To the untrained imagination, Jesus’ exaltation is the rise of the ultimate ruler who, in a surprise move, claims the throne of thrones. Those who follow Jesus on the way of the cross, though, will recognize his exaltation as “the drawing up of the humiliated, the despised, and all those ground down under the weight of the world.”[6] To them, his exaltation is the leveling up of the whole system to where love alone reigns supreme

[1] The passages commonly referred to as ‘servant songs’ are Isaiah 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13–53:12

[2] See the Ethiopian official’s question in Acts 8:34, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?”

[3] https://www.history.com/news/selma-bloody-sunday-attack-civil-rights-movement

[4] Richard Floyd, Feasting, 160.

[5] Willie James Jennings, Connections, 127, 129.

[6] Ibid., 129.

Hating the World

Margie Quinn

The world is after Jesus. Here is a man who, in one of his final magic acts before being killed, has just raised a man from the dead. People are flocking to see him; crowds have come from all over to witness this miracle maker. Some of these people want to meet him because they recognize him for who he is: the one who comes in the name of the Lord. While others like the chief priests, flock to him with anger, wanting to kill Lazarus, as John 12:11 puts it, since it was “on account of Jesus that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.” Maybe if they kill Lazarus, they can squash this concept of a man who shows signs of resurrection. All eyes are on Jesus, good and bad. In verse 19, the Pharisees say, “the world has gone after him.” 

The world is after Jesus. The Greek translation of “world” here, as Walter Wink reminded me this week, is kosmos. Kosmos doesn’t mean the “world” as in God’s creation but a fallen world alienated from God, in opposition to God’s purposes. Better put, “world” here means the System. The System, which is embodied in the structures and institutions that aggressively shape human life and seek to hold human beings captive to its ways. Does this sound familiar? The System thrives under exploitation and domination and violence. And there is someone in their midst who is messing with the status quo and challenging the System. 

So the World, the System, is after Jesus. 

Let’s spend some time walking through this passage. We begin this story with a little game of telephone. Some Greeks want to see Jesus. They find Phillip and ask him. He finds Andrew, then they both find Jesus to tell him. He replies, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Jesus’s death is imminent, and he knows it. He goes on to tell them that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. This probably goes over Phillip and Andrew’s head. Jesus breaks it down a little more in verse 25: Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in the world, will keep it for eternal life. 

Who hate their life in the world. Those are some strong words, and ones that I have wrestled with this week. 

I love my life. I love the ease with which I can move through the world, never being afraid of what may happen if I’m pulled over by the police, never feeling like I’m the only person of my identity in a room, never wondering where my next meal will come from or if someone will refuse to officiate my wedding based on who I love. Rarely has the System worked against me. But here, that annoying, convicting Jesus strikes again. Are you willing to remove the blinders of your life in order to hate this System so that you may find eternal life? Are you willing to expose the System for what it really is and do everything in your power to work against its death-dealing ways? 

Most days, I am not. I wonder if Jesus had a few days where he didn’t want to, either. 

Jesus continues to talk to Phillip and Andrew saying, “My soul is troubled.” Again, the English translation here weakens the force of the Greek verb, tarasso, which is more like “severe sorrow or pain.” Jesus is in deep pain, knowing what is to come; knowing that the powers-that-be are so threatened and intimidated by him that they need to eliminate him; knowing that he must expose the system for what it is: a way of death, not life. 

“What should I say?” he asks. “Father save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” 

It reminds me of Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings. Frodo, in a moment of deep pain, looks at Gandalf and says, “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf replies in a gentle yet convicting voice, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” 

With the time given to him, Jesus knows that it is short and it is coming to an end but there is still time to show God’s people how to hate the world. 

Now the judgment of this world, he says. Now, the ruler of this world will be driven out. On the cross, he exposes the System for what it is and in doing so, he judges this world and casts out its oppressive rulers. He’s ready, however begrudgingly, to look violence in the face and reject it. 

A lot of people have tried to make sense of what’s going on at the cross. You’ve probably heard many of these theories. One theory is that Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross is a blood offering that he must make on behalf of all of us to an angry, demanding God; a price to reverse all of the sins and disobedience God’s people had participated in and to be the Scapegoat on behalf of us.    But John isn’t interested in the Son of God paying a ransom for our individual sins. He’s interested in how Jesus’s death is necessary and life-giving because as a result of it, a Beloved Community is formed. When we turn inward, when we act as single grains of wheat, we miss the abundant fruit of this community waiting for us on the other side of death. We have to relinquish the life that the world offers us each day in order to follow and serve Jesus. 

The world is after Jesus, and in his final act, he knows the kind of death coming for him. “I love my life,” he may think, “but I hate this world so alienated from the inclusive, radical, freeing love of God. I’m going to expose this world for what it truly is.” 

I love my life, Dr. King may have said to himself many decades ago, but I have decided what to do with the time given to me. When the people drinking the poison of White Supremacy turned hoses and dogs on black and brown activists who were marching non-violently, Dr. King shouted, “Let them get their dogs and let them get their hose, and we will leave them standing before God and the world spattered with the blood and reeking with the stench of their Negro brothers.” “It is necessary,” he went on, “to bring these issues to the surface, to bring them out into the open where everybody can see them.”

Let them get their nails, Jesus may have thought. Let them twist a crown of thorns. I will expose the System for what it is, so that all people are set free to die to a life shaped by captivation and domination and can live fully and freely in the life of me, the life of abundance. 

We may love our lives, but are we willing to lose our hold on them in order to oppose a status quo that steps on our brothers and sisters who are suffering? 

Finally, Jesus says, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” By being lifted up on the cross, Jesus fights for all of humanity to be reconciled to him. The fruits of Jesus’s death is the faith community to come, the one that shows Jesus’s love to the world. No pressure church, but guess what? We are that community. We are this community that has the burden and the blessing of showing Jesus’s love to the world, and that is not a call just to be nice or comfy or reach out with a little bit of condolences, it is a call to die to the lives we love in order to fight against a System that is killing people. Killing their spirits, killing their souls, killing their confidence and killing their bodies. 

“It is by holding too tightly to our lives,” David Dark writes, “that we lose them.” “It is by letting go of our lives that we enter into life most profoundly.” That’s scary stuff.

I love my life. But if I can die to it, the temptation to be the single grain, if I can die to it to look around me at the suffering, if I can die to it, I just might be able to hate the world, the System, with Jesus. The Christ who exposed it continues to expose it today. Are we willing to look around and join him? 

May it be so. 

The celebrity verse

Thomas Kleinert

---

God loves you, honey.

You better believe it.

Where will you spend eternity? the billboard down I-65 asks you every time you drive by.

Believe or else.

Come to Jesus or go to hell.

For God so loved the world… John 3:16, or even more concise, 3:16. Write it on a poster for the endzone; use the fat marker. Ink it on your forearm. Stick it on your bumper. Wear it on your t-shirt whether you’re on campus or at the mall. John 3:16.

I don’t mean to sound mean, but I do, don’t I? The world has taught me well to scorn those who “do faith” in ways that are foreign to me. But the harsh light of my condescension is the wrong kind of bright to let me see that the intention of the meme missionaries may be of the noblest kind: to make known to the world God’s love for the world and all who live in it. In the KJV Bible I read,

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Mary McLeod Bethune, who was born in South Carolina to formerly enslaved parents a decade after the Civil War, grew up in the Jim Crow South to become one of the most important Black educators, civil and women’s rights leaders and government officials of the twentieth century.[1] She declared,

With these words [from John 3:16] the scales fell from my eyes and the light came flooding in. My sense of inferiority, my fear of handicaps, dropped away. “Whosoever,” it said. No Jew nor Gentile, no Catholic nor Protestant, no black nor white; just “whosoever.” It means that I, a humble Negro girl, had just as much chance as anybody in the sight and love of God. These words stored up a battery of faith and confidence and determination in my heart, which has not failed me to this day.[2]

I love “whosoever” – to me it sounds like, “Y’all come. God’s love is big enough for all y’all.” Kerry Hasler-Brooks calls her relationship with John 3:16 “complicated.”

The words … are deep in me. I have no memory of learning them and can go years without reading or reciting them, and yet, in a moment, they are in my breath and on my lips, rising from that deep place: “For God so loved the world.” I remember hearing this verse in my mother’s voice as we practiced memory verses after church.

She recalls how the verse came of age, as she did, in the American evangelicalism of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s.

Billy Graham recited the verse at crusades attended by thousands, who were often gifted copies of John’s Gospel. Sports fans were broadcast across the United States wearing shirts and carrying signs to games emblazoned simply with “John 3:16.” This is the John 3:16 I inherited, the celebrity verse that roared through American stadiums—football games and revivals alike—and the quiet verse whispered by my mother in my childhood bedroom with the paper doll wallpaper.

I’m glad and grateful Kelly Hasler-Brooks writes about these deeply personal resonances, because to me, rousing speeches in sports venues bring up memories that have nothing whatsoever to do with good news, only with propaganda and mass manipulation. I tense up. Hearing about “crusades” makes me suspicious and cautious; “crusades” smacks of military campaigns against infidels, only conjuring up images of violence and coercion.

Mihee Kim-Kort also memorized John 3:16 as a child, in English and Korean, along with a specific interpretation of it.

While many would easily argue for its ability to summarize the Christian faith, I remember only one interpretation of the verse. It wasn’t about God’s love for the world. It was that only those who believed in God would make it to eternal life. I vaguely understood eternal life to mean heaven, and the afterlife. It was the ultimate destination, and belief in God was the golden ticket to it. The only thing that mattered was living forever.

What kind of faith grows in fields of fear? What kind of life is shaped by a fearful faith? Is it the kind of life Jesus proclaims when he says, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”?[3] Is it?

Toward the end of his Gospel, John states in a note to the reader that his testimony is for you, plural, “so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”[4] As Mihee got older, the kind of eternal life she had imagined lost its luster. “I looked around at the people who were the most vocal about who would ultimately make it, and they were often the most judgmental [and] hypocritical… Christians.” She began to realize that, according to John’s witness, eternal life refers to a kind of life, not its length, and how it’s very much about life here and now, and not merely there and then. She found herself invited to participate in God’s love for the world.[5] She began to imagine and live her life grounded in the wondrous love that became, and continues to become, manifest in the life of Jesus, a love that drew her in rather than scaring her to heaven.

“There is no fear in love,” we read in 1 John, “but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”[6] Perhaps the trouble began when the verse became a slogan, when it was no longer heard as part of an encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus, where Jesus talks about being born from above and Nicodemus wonders, “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” Jesus talks about the wind that “blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

As listeners and readers we have a chance to understand what Nicodemus apparently misunderstands; he’s utterly sincere, just a little metaphorically challenged. “Born from above” envisions living life in ways no longer determined by blood or by the will of the flesh or by human will, but by God. What Jesus calls eternal life is life lived in the unending presence of God, not the endless duration of an individual’s existence in the most exclusive club. Eternal life is life as a child of God now and forever, life in the now of the divine presence that is without beginning or end, life that is unfolding in love without ceasing, life that is nothing but life. It is the life Jesus and the one he calls Father share, and more than share, because according to John’s testimony, never afraid to push the boundaries of language, they are this life, poured out in creation. Jesus calls us to believe, in order to be fully part of this life. Pictured as birth, believing is altogether the gift of God, and all the believer does is live and give thanks. Pictured as faith, believing is the result of something we do, and I wonder if it is anything but our continuing intention to live the life in Jesus’ name we have been given. From Jesus’ lips, I hear it as the invitation, “Come and see!” Jesus doesn’t drop slogans; he invites us to turn from easy slogans to the risk of experience. He tells me and you, again and again, “Come and see who I am and who you are becoming with me.”

In September 1954, Martin Luther King Jr. moved from Boston to Montgomery. He didn’t know soon and very soon God would call him from the pulpit to the street. He didn’t know where Jesus would be taking him. His first week in the pulpit at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, King preached on John 3:16. Kerry Hasler-Brooks writes,

That first sermon in his new home bears signs of the voice that one year later would be heard all over the globe—of the man who would stand on the shoulders of Claudette Colvin, Rosa Parks, Jo Ann Robinson, and thousands of other Black women to lead the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956 that would help change the world.

“God’s love has breadth,” said King. “It is a big love; it’s a broad love. … God’s love is too big to be limited to a particular race. It is too big to be wrapped in a particularistic garment. It is too great to be encompassed by any single nation. God is a universal God.”[7]

I wonder if the preacher had sat at the feet of Mary McLeod Bethune, if he had witnessed the kind of empowerment she drew from the wide embrace of “whosoever” in John 3:16, if he had heard her declare, “These words stored up a battery of faith and confidence and determination in my heart, which has not failed me to this day.” He certainly needed faith, confidence, and determination. And so do we.

In John 12, Jesus talks again about being lifted up, and each time he does so, he speaks of his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension as a single movement, mirroring his descent in the incarnation. I find it astonishing how he describes the act of ultimate rejection and humiliation on the cross as an act of exaltation.

“When I am lifted up from the earth,” he says, “I will draw all people to myself.”[8]

I believe him.

[1] https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-mcleod-bethune

[2] Allen Dwight Callahan, “The Gospel of John,“ in True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007)

[3]John 10:10

[4] John 20:31

[5] Mihee Kim-Kort  https://www.christiancentury.org/blog-post/sundays-coming/nature-eternal-life-john-314-21

[6] 1 John 4:18

[7] Kerry Hasler-Brooks  https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/march-14-lent-4b-john-314-21

[8] John 12:32

Where God Dwells

Margie Quinn

I was six months into my last job at Westminster Presbyterian Church when the pandemic hit. This being my first job out of seminary, I already had no idea what I was doing. Then in March 2020, at the onset of lockdown, it appeared that none of us knew what we were doing. The physical church building shut its doors and for the rest of the year, the sign that read “Westminster Gathers Here” could have very well read, “Westminster wants to gather here, but it’s complicated so we’re gonna press pause on gathering here, and we know many of you are emailing us wondering why we can’t just gather here, but we are going to creatively figure out how to gather here metaphorically so that none of us feel isolated.”

We pondered alternatives to doing church the “normal” way. You know what makes people feel seen and connected, together even when we’re not together? Zoom. Have you ever tried to sing a hymn with sixty other people over Zoom? Have you ever prayed on Zoom, your roommate watching tv in the other room, the neighbor’s dog barking incessantly outside of your window? Have you ever preached in an empty sanctuary, having to hold back the “Can I get an Amen’s?” because no, no you can’t?

The pandemic left many of us asking, “What does it mean to be the church today?” 

In our passage this morning, this question could have easily slipped out of Jesus’s mouth as he left the Temple in a huff, clearly distraught that the place he had traveled to in order to observe the Passover feast, didn’t feel like church. Why didn’t it? 

Let’s break it down: In every other gospel reading, this story takes place at the end of Jesus’s ministry but in John, it takes place at the beginning, occurring right after Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding. It is as if John wants us to know from the jump that the Word became flesh and lived among us; not above us or away from us, not only in a Temple with us, but outside of one, too. 

We gotta get a few things straight in this story. A lot of people misinterpret who they deem the “bad guys” in the Temple. This story paints the Jewish people as greedy money changers, selling animals and making the church feel more like a marketplace than a house of worship. In reality, these people were actually necessary for the functioning of the Temple. Money changers were there to make sure that the people coming had the right currencies. The temple tax required a half shekel. You couldn’t pay with any other currency so just like my favorite Vietnamese place in Nashville, you could go to the ATM in the store and get cash. 

The animal sellers were there because a major ritual in the Temple was the sacrificing of animals. You could bring your own animals in, yes, but depending on where you lived or what you did for work, that may not have been possible. The animal sellers were there to facilitate the use of the temple, not stand in the way. 

And, in reality, Herod had begun a massive restoration and expansion of the Temple in order to win over his “ungrateful” subjects. So we’re 46 years into that project, which may feel about the same amount of time that construction projects at churches feel. Really, things going on in the Temple walls made practical sense. They all served as ways to ensure that people could be in the building together to worship. 

And, not to be misinterpreted either, Jesus does not enter the scene as an outsider opposing the Jews, but as an insider himself. We often make the mistake of stripping Jesus of his Jewish identity, an enemy of the Jews, but he is a participant. A faithful parishioner in his own right, Jesus looks around at the hoops people have to jump through to even worship together–making sure they have the right currency, paying for animals who don’t have any blemishes so that they can sacrifice them–and gets angry. Don’t you love Angry Jesus? “No!” he says. “We shouldn’t have to make a marketplace out of a place of worship! And we shouldn’t have to rely on experiencing the presence of God in a building. Here’s a little foreshadowing for y’all: The Zeal for your house will consume me.” 

Destroy this Temple, he demands, and in three days, I’m gonna raise it up. The people hearing this are thinking, as I would, that he is going to literally destroy the building, His fellow Jews respond: This has been under construction for 46 years. We had to do countless capital campaigns to fund this thing. It has smelled like paint in here forever. You’re not knocking this thing down. And there’s no way you could raise it up in three days. 

But, we quickly learn, Jesus wasn’t speaking about the physical temple. Scripture says he was speaking of the temple of his body. 

Jesus challenges the very physical location where his people gather and literally shakes the foundation of their faith. Like the prophets in the Old Testament, Amos and Jeremiah, he challenges the church’s authority and offers his own spiritual hot take: You don’t need to look for the presence of God in here, because you’re looking at him right here.

Jesus is the place where God’s presence dwells now. Like the prophets, he serves as the mouthpiece for God but he doesn’t just speak God’s word, he is God’s word. 

Church happens here, within us, he seems to be saying. Church is the bodies we inhabit, the love we give toward self, neighbor, enemy. Church may gather here but then Church goes out of here, to be the literal body of Christ in the world. 

When the Samaritan woman asks him about the proper place to worship a few chapters later, Jesus responds by blowing her understanding of worship open. Worship can’t be restricted to any physical site, he tells her, it happens in spirit and truth. God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth. Notice how he doesn’t say “God is bricks and mortar…”

The surprise in today’s gospel reading is that Jesus says that the transcendent is present in his body. The gospel of John makes this claim, that a human body — unique but also a lot like your body or mine — is the holy place of God. Jesus was not just “wearing” a human body like a set of clothes. He was a human body, as inseparable from his body as you are from yours. And God was inseparable from him. 

So, what does it mean to be church today? Is church this sanctuary filled with gorgeous morning light? It is the bread and juice you take week after week with people you like and people you don’t? Is it the beds you make for our homeless neighbors on Thursdays at Room in the Inn? Is it the holy music you hear from such gifted voices on Sunday morning? Certainly Vine Street gathers here. 

And also: during the pandemic, I came to realize that church happens out there, too. It happened in the Bruegger’s Bagels parking lot, where me and a group of high school girls would sit in a giant circle, yelling our stories from the week, pulling down our masks to laugh. It happened at every park in Nashville, when I would meet with our youth for “Walk, Bike, and Worship.” It happened when we drove around to every Senior in high school’s house, in a line of cars, honking and leaving gifts in their yard, shouting “Congrats!” at them as they waved from a window. It happened on the steps of the church one Christmas Eve, singing in the freezing cold as snow fell. 

I can’t know where you feel the presence of God. But today I feel the freedom, through Jesus’s words, to look around for it outside of church. This week, it happened at the Capitol as hundreds of people–students, clergy, parents, doctors, teachers–gathered to advocate for safer gun laws. It happened at a vigil last Sunday night, when people from all over Nashville gathered to honor the life of a non-binary teenager killed that week. It happened in the sunset on my drive home. It happened when my puppy looked at me with love, even though I’m not always good at looking at other people with love. God’s presence was in all of this. Church happened here, too. 

This Lenten season, we don’t have to limit the presence of God to one place. We can trust that the presence of God made manifest in the body of Christ begins and ends in the body. And, as Mary Hinkle Shore writes, “we follow the body of Jesus as he travels to Jerusalem, as his hands braid pieces of rope into a whip to herd cattle and sheep out of the temple, as his knees bend to the feet of the disciples to wash them. We watch him eat and drink with his friends, and we follow him to the garden, where the bodies of his disciples unsuccessfully fight off sleep while Jesus sweats through a prayer that he might not have to endure the torture in his immediate future. We see him beaten, crucified, taken down from the cross, and laid in a tomb. And in the stories of his resurrection, he is still a body — huggable, touchable, scarred, and eating.”

Still a body. A body, who, as John says, was raised from the dead after three days, not to build another Temple but to be the Temple. In our passage this morning, it says, “His disciples remembered that he had said this.” After he was raised, his disciples remembered that he said his body was the temple. Will you remember that he said this? Will you try to embody the presence of God with me? The presence of God in you–I see it. The presence of God in me–can you see it? 

May it be so. 

You name me Beloved

Thomas Kleinert

Somewhere in the United States lives a girl named Britney Shakira Beyoncé. You know what happened there; the parents clearly were huge fans of all three, and they couldn’t decide which one to name their little girl after. Perhaps they were secretly hoping for triplets.

Apparently there are 328 people in the United States named Abcde, the majority being girls.[1] And somebody shared on reddit, “My cousin named her kid Harley Davidson. She’s a moron.”[2]

A name is a powerful thing, and sometimes the awesome honor of naming a newborn human being results only in a very good reason to have one’s name changed later in life.

Abram was 75 years old when he and his household left Haran;[3] his wife Sarai was 65 then. They packed their portable belongings and left, following the call and promise of God to go to the land that I will show you – which is all God told them about their destination. And there was the promise that God would make of them a great nation. Twenty-five years later they had journeyed far and wide, but Sarai still was childless. Abram had a son, Ishmael, with Hagar, a slave from Egypt who served Sarai. The boy was a teenager when God appeared to the old man and said, “No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly numerous. You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her and also give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

Not many people, I would be willing to bet, have their names changed at age 99 or 89. But, hey, these two are talking about having a baby, when the rest of their cohort are trying hard to remember the name of each of their great-grandchildren. Abraham and Sarah’s new names reflect the new identity they have been given as bearers of God’s covenant promises. Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and Sarah soon joined him. It’s a perfectly reasonable response, don’t you think? And, of course, “Laughter” would be the name of their boy, Yitzchak in Hebrew, Isaac in English transliteration.[4]

A name is a powerful thing; it binds us to our people and our culture, it becomes part of the stories our families share, and it reflects the unique ways our lives intersect with theirs and the whole story of life.

About half-way through the Gospel of Mark, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Over eight chapters, he has proclaimed the good news of God, driving out demons, healing the sick, touching lepers and declaring them clean, forgiving sins, baffling the authorities, telling stories, rebuking the violent wind, restoring a girl to life, and feeding thousands. Over eight chapters, the disciples, and we with them, have watched and wondered, listened and pondered, and now he asks the twelve and the rest of us who have been trying to keep up with him, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answers, without a hint of hesitation, “You are the Messiah.”

And Jesus, Mark writes, sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. He didn’t say, “No, that’s not who I am,” but apparently he didn’t want his disciples to go and tell folks who thought he was John the Baptizer, or Elijah, or one of the prophets, that he was the Messiah. And then, Mark tells us, Jesus began to teach the disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. The unique shape of his life would determine who he was, Jesus began to teach us, not some title, charged with all kinds of expectations. His name, Jesus, and his whole life and mission would infuse the term Messiah with meaning, and not the other way around.

And Peter, Mark tells us, took him aside and began to rebuke him, because Peter, like the rest of us, at one point or another, wanted him to be his dream-come-true Messiah. And the way to Jerusalem Jesus began to map out didn’t fit in that picture. Peter, Mark tells us, “took Jesus aside,” and that gentle phrase could also be translated, “he took hold of him,” with a hint of, “he grabbed him by the lapels,” and in word and action, Peter strongly suggested otherwise.

A few weeks back, I said that Satan had a part in the Gospel according to Mark, but that he didn’t have a speaking part. Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness to follow a different path than the one defined by his relationship with God who named him Beloved, that temptation is not spelled out in dialogue, but only stated. The closest thing to a speaking part for Satan is Peter’s rebuke to Jesus, his forceful suggestion of a different path. The conflict is not spelled out in direct speech, but the scene is clear enough for us to see that it’s not some mythical horned figure getting in the way of Jesus, but we ourselves when we think there has to be a better way, for Jesus and for us, to proclaim the nearness of God’s reign.

About half-way through the Gospel of Mark, we begin to learn that to call Jesus Messiah means to let go of all our detailed job descriptions for him, and begin, again, to follow him. Jesus is not the fulfillment of our kingdom dreams, but he does embody the reign of God in who he is, and following him, our dreams are renewed. Jesus is not the fulfillment of our visions of salvation, but he is God’s salvation who transforms our vision. Jesus is not the fulfillment of our desire for this and that and the other, but the one who goes ahead of us that we might follow him on the way.

About half-way through the Gospel of Mark, we come to a fork in the road and hear the hard teaching. We are free to say yes or no.

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who will lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

Taking up the cross was not metaphorical to many of Mark’s original readers. In their world, the cross was not a manner of speaking of random forms of suffering. The cross was still known as the punishment Rome imposed on rebels and troublemakers who challenged the status quo. “The cross,” wrote John Howard Yoder, “was not a difficult family situation, not a frustration of visions of personal fulfillment, a crushing debt, or a nagging in-law; it was the political logically-to-be-expected result of a moral clash with the power ruling [their] society.”[5] It will cost you to confess Jesus as Lord; it may even cost you your life. But don’t let your fear keep you from following Jesus; don’t forget that something greater than mere survival is at stake here.

To our ears, this talk of giving one’s life may sound radical and exceptional—I don’t think it is. We all give our life to something or someone, regardless of how many years we live. The real question is, are you giving your life to something worthy of the gift of your days, the gift of your creativity and strength and attention? Are we giving our life to following Jesus on the way, trusting in God’s yes to us, trusting in the promise of God’s coming reign?

Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” is inseparable from the one we ask ourselves all the time, “Who am I? Who am I becoming? Who do I want to be? Who does God want me to be?” Jesus calls us to live into the answers in his company and in the company of all he calls his sisters and brothers. His call to follow him sets us free from anxious self-absorption and draws us into finding fullness of life in God’s covenant of love. His call reminds us that Beloved is not only his first name, but ours as well. A name is a powerful thing.

I heard an old gospel song. I heard it sung by Marian Anderson and Nina Simone, by Roberta Flack and Liz McComb. I told Jesus it would be alright if he change my name. I don’t know who wrote it, and perhaps nobody knows—perhaps it was never written, only sung and sung again. Sung by people whose ancestors had been brought by force from Africa, who had been robbed of their freedom, their homes, their families, and, yes, their names. No longer free, they were given new names by their masters who took their lives as though they were theirs to take and own and use and abuse, masters who didn’t know they too were losing their lives to the soul-crushing idolatry of treating human beings made in the image of God as property.

Yet under the whip and boot of their masters, those men and women, far away from home, far away from anything resembling home, far away from hope and promise, refused to surrender to the religion of their oppressors, and they recognized in Jesus on the cross their brother.

I told Jesus it would be all right
If he change my name

Jesus told me I would have to live humble
If he change my name

But I told Jesus it would be all right
If he change my name

Jesus told me that the world would hate me
If he change my name

I told Jesus it would be all right
If he change my name

It’s a revolutionary moment when people begin to remember their true first name, God-given, the name we share with Jesus, the name he gave his life to make known to all. Beloved.

[1] https://www.momjunction.com/articles/worst-baby-names-in-the-world_00400377/

[2]https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/10bnk5d/comment/j4be4r8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[3] Genesis 12:4

[4] Genesis 21:1-7

[5] Cited in Placher, Mark, 117.

Hang Up Your Bow

Margie Quinn

In Floradale, Ontario, there is a woman named Irian Fast-Sittler who spends her days welding hot steel and metals. A few years ago, she took her grandfather’s shotgun and welded it into a work of art, featuring roses and vines made of copper and brass. In another town, a man named Shane Claiborne and other activists use blacksmithing equipment to melt down weapons like semi-automatic rifles and turn them into gardening tools. And in another town, an artist named Welling Hall, took a hundred pounds of bullet shells from the local police station and melted them into garden shears. 

All three artists and activists were inspired by the passage in Isaiah, you know the one: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war no more.”

“Neither shall they learn war no more.” These artists, among countless others, turn their grief at the world’s destruction and violence into art, reminding their fellow human beings or perhaps reminding God, of a covenant from long long ago, that hoped for peace. 

In another story from a different time, the God of creation hangs up his bow of many colors, art in its own regard, in the sky, as a promise to end warfare and a reminder of his pact made with all of creation: to learn war no more. 

Wait a minute, though. The rainbow in the sky that we’ve read about our whole lives, the rainbow that paints the sky after the flood, that’s actually a war bow? Let’s press pause there.

This week, we’re in the book of Genesis. God has created order out of chaos, a diversity of creatures and people, light and oceans and pear trees. Yet how quickly we warped what God called good. In chapter six, we learn that God was sorry already that she had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved her to her heart. Cain murdered Abel. Adam and Eve turned away from their Loving Parent–and God saw, chapter six says, “that the earth was filled with violence, was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth.”

And what do we do when we witness such careless evil in the world? God resolves to destroy the destroyers. Yes, God! A hard one to reckon with. God picks a 600 year old guy named Noah to go into an ark while God floods the earth. Noah and his family and some snakes and giraffes hop on the ark and wait around for seven days, twiddling their thumbs and raking up cow manure until finally, the flood of waters come on the earth. 40 days and 40 nights pass and we learn that God blots out every living thing on the earth except for Noah and his family. Why are they the righteous ones that God wants to save? What did Noah do to get a VIP spot on the ark? We don’t know and man I wish I did. The Bible can be so elusive like that. 

Anyway, the flood wipes out every living thing before it subsides, but the waters don’t go down for another 150 days before Noah builds an altar to the Lord of burnt offerings. When God smells this pleasing odor of dead birds and other animals (I’m not making this up), God says, “I will never again curse the ground of humankind, nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.” 

And here we arrive at our passage today…bringing with us a lot of confusion and questions about the theodicy of God, which basically means the question of how a loving God could commit or allow evil. Sidenote: We don’t have enough time today to get into how ancient cultures perceived floods and interpreted them as a warrior God committing violence rather than a natural disaster, so I’m going to chalk this one up to a story of how human beings perceive God rather than a story of how God really operates. 

If we stick to the way in which these people perceive God, we see a sad but relatable interpretation that makes a lot of sense to me: God must have destroyed most of creation because we kept committing senseless acts of violence. God wanted to destroy the destroyers. 

And yet: humanity is spinning toward a downward spiral of violence and in this passage today, God doesn’t join us in our chaos but makes a covenant with us instead. In a pretty wild turn of events, when many of us think that our God is unchanging, God changes her mind. Let me repeat that: God changes her mind. 

“I’m not gonna curse y’all anymore,” God says, “but instead, I’m going to make a covenant to remind myself of the promise I made: to turn away from wrath and destruction and to protect humanity, even though your wickedness grieves me.”

Now we get back to the rainbow; which I learned this week is not some vapid, lovey-dovey visual for us to see, but the sign of a covenant that God makes with herself. This rainbow in the sky is actually a qeset, a “war bow” that God hangs up in the sky as a pact with all of creation to end the warfare. This bow in the clouds is a deal between God and…God. It serves to control God’s divine power, in case God wants to lash out once again. 

Isn’t this wild? God changes her mind: she throws up a war bow so that when she peers at the sky, she recalls how her heart has been touched by creation’s suffering. She is willing to accept all of the hurt we cause and feel in order to keep hope alive. 

Seven times in this passage, God references this “covenant.” It is as if God is staring in the mirror, repeating to himself (and I’m reading this word for word now): “When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.”

“When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

“This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all the flesh that is on the earth.” It seems like God realllllly needs a lot of reminders to not be wrathful and stuff. I get that. And in this instance, by binding himself to the fate of humanity,” as David Lose writes, “ God becomes inherently invested in us and keenly vulnerable to being exposed. Not a distant oblivious God who sits back but one whose fortunes are now bound up in humanity. God is not simply committed but deeply invested in the fate of his creation.”

And as Joy J. Moore points out, “I want a God who can handle the horrors of this world…who addresses the oppressor, who doesn’t just say nice little warm fuzzy things…I want a God who says, ‘I made this commitment with humanity as I created humanity and I’m not giving up on that.’” This war bow, this sign of a covenant becomes a reminder to us that God is faithful enough to keep a covenant that God made. 

In our first Sunday of Lent, you may be asking yourself what any of this has to do with Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. Well, Lent forces us into our wilderness temptations, to come face to face with our wild natures. Lent begs us to ask: “Will we repent, accept our finitude and stop grasping for control or will we continue the violence?” God herself repented and the next time the heavens opened, instead of grabbing her war bow, God used her compassionate voice to name Jesus as Beloved and to say that she was pleased with him. 

Church, in this Lenten season, will we continue the violence that is all around us? Or will we be like Irian, Shane and Welling who transform weapons into gardening tools and art? Will we be like our God who hangs up her bow and calls us Beloved instead? 

May it be so. 

Splendor in the world

Thomas Kleinert

Three years ago, on a sunny day in January, a young woman addressed a group of people from the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. The live audience was limited, due to COVID restrictions, but millions of people were watching or listening. Only days after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, at the presidential inauguration, Amanda Gorman, the National Youth Poet Laureate, recited her poem, The Hill We Climb, which she had written for the occasion.

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

Gorman spoke of the possibility of America, and listening to her confident voice, and watching her face, her hands, her fingers, many of us had tears in our eyes. “When day comes,” she declared at the end of her moving performance,

we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.[1]

Brave enough to see the light, and brave enough to be it—the poet lifted up ancient themes of hope and bravery, long pondered by our ancestors and passed down in the Scriptures, reminders that seeing what truly illumines the world is no simple matter and that being part of that illuminating presence takes courage.

Somewhere in Galilee, Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”, and they told him what they had heard and overheard. They mentioned John the Baptist, Elijah’s name came up, and that folks thought of him as one of the prophets. Then Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?”

And Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”[2] There’s no indication that he had to think for a minute. He just said it. He’d been there from day one, and this was his conclusion having witnessed the teachings and healings of Jesus: You are the Messiah. And just then, Jesus began to tell them about the road ahead; that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

Peter wouldn’t hear it. He took Jesus aside for a little feedback, perhaps something along the lines of “You’re not serious, are you?” And you all know how Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Get behind me, Satan!” Harsh words. We don’t get to tell Jesus how to be the Messiah. He didn’t come to live up to our expectations, but to mess with them. In the next scene, Jesus turns to the crowd and says,

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. [3]

Seeing what truly illumines the world is no simple matter and being part of that illuminating presence takes courage, because the cross is not an unfortunate episode in Jesus’ ministry, but central to his mission and to what it means to call him Messiah.

And now Mark has us follow Jesus, with Peter, James and John, up a high mountain. We’re about halfway between Jesus’ baptism and his crucifixion, and there’s this mountain—jutting out not from the topography of Galilee, but from the topography of our desire to know who Jesus is, and who he is to God, and to us. This is the hill we climb: the mountain of revelation, the mountain of transformed vision, of seeing what’s really real.[4] There, Mark tells us, Jesus was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white. They saw Jesus, but they saw him like they had never seen him before. They saw heaven shining through him. The three of them saw him chatting with Moses and Elijah, the great prophets of old; it was as though time had collapsed into one glorious moment of heaven touching the earth.

And Peter got it almost right, again. He was breathing the air of fulfillment. He wanted to build tents, wanted that moment to last, wanted the earth and his own life never to be without this reality of heavenly presence again. What he didn’t see yet was that this moment, the whole reality of heavenly presence, was not tied to the place where they were, but to the one they were with: Jesus.

When at Jesus’ baptism the voice from heaven declared, “You are my Son, the Beloved; I delight in you,” we as readers had the privilege to hear it. None of the disciples were there. And now, just as Jesus began talking about his suffering and death, a voice from the cloud addresses them directly, saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” They are given, along with us, this wondrous affirmation of who Jesus is: God’s beloved Son. We are given this moment of profound insight, because after his baptism we could never have guessed that he was beloved by anybody. Admired perhaps, after those moments when he drew huge crowds and astonished them, but otherwise misunderstood by his followers, rejected by folks in his hometown, drained of his power by scoffing neighbors, and plotted against by his opponents. Beloved? Hardly. And now we’re on the way to Jerusalem with him, where a violent storm is gathering.

“This is my Son, the Beloved,” the heavenly voice said. “Listen to him!” When the three looked around, they saw only Jesus. And down the mountain they went, but the transfiguration wasn’t just a memory. It changed the way they saw him, and it began to change the way they looked at everything. They began to look at the world beyond Galilee in his light. They began to look at each other and themselves in his light.

And Mark, of course, invites us to join them as followers of Jesus, to walk with them on the way, and to find our own answer to his question, “Who do you say that I am?” Our journey with Jesus doesn’t take us out of the world and into lofty realms of pure spiritual splendor —the journey takes us down the mountain to the plain below and to the world longing to be transfigured. Down the mountain where life is broken and the shadows are long and deep; where people languish in crowded camps and flimsy shelters, where too many live as though they were the playthings of demons, where isolation is rampant and courage, rare. Our journey with Jesus doesn’t take us out of the world, but deeper into it—as servants of the kingdom of God, as people who are brave enough to believe that the way of radical hospitality and courageous compassion, the way that led Jesus to the cross, is the way of life.

We go deeper into the world because, in the company of Jesus, we have begun to see what love can heal. We go deeper, because every glimpse of heaven he has given us, has changed us. We go deeper, because he embodies the reality we don’t want the world or our own lives to be without.

Lent is only days away. We know that the other hill we climb in the company of Jesus is the one they call Golgotha. And on that hill, there is no bright cloud overshadowing the scene, only thick darkness. On the mountain, Jesus’ clothes became dazzling white, but under the cross soldiers tear them into souvenir rags. On the mountain, Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus, but on the cross he is taunted even by the men crucified with him. On the mountain, a heavenly voice spoke truth and love, but on Golgotha a hostile crowd shouts ugly insults. On the mountain, Peter wanted to stay and build, but at the crucifixion he is nowhere to be found. On the mountain, we reflect on our desire to see and be with God, but at the foot of the cross, we begin to perceive the depth of God’s desire and commitment to be with us.

Peter didn’t know what he was saying when he told Jesus, “You are the Messiah.” Only after he had failed repeatedly to stay awake and pray with Jesus in Gethsemane, after he had denied Jesus three times, and after he had fled from the cross—only then was Peter ready to follow the Messiah who suffered, died and was raised. It was not on the mountaintop, but at the lowest point of his life that Peter truly saw who Jesus is. When nothing was left but despair and the love of Jesus, and love prevailed, that’s when Peter knew the Messiah and himself as God’s Beloved.

And so we pray for the light of God to shine in our hearts that we might be filled with the knowledge of God’s glory shining in the face of Jesus, as Paul so beautifully put it.[5] We pray for the transfiguration of the world and for our own complete transformation in the image and likeness of Christ. And we pray that we may see God’s Beloved in the face of every human being we encounter.

In her novel, Gilead Marilynne Robinson tells the story of John Ames, a minister in a little Iowa town. The novel takes the form of a letter this old man wrote to his young son, and just before the letter ends and the novel closes, we read these words: 

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of creation and it turns to radiance for a moment or a year or the span of a life and then it sinks back into itself again and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire or light. … But the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.[6]

It strikes me how similar they sound, the old minister and the young poet who declared with confidence that

there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

There is always light because the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of creation… constantly… extravagantly. We may not think of ourselves as the brave ones, but what if we were brave enough to follow Jesus on the way, and be the light we see?

[1] https://www.elle.com/uk/life-and-culture/culture/a35276230/amanda-gormans-poem-the-hill-we-climb/

[2] See Mark 8:27-30

[3] See Mark 8:34-35

[4] See Thomas G. Long, “Reality show,” The Christian Century 123, no. 5 (March 7, 2006), 16.

[5] 2 Corinthians 4:6

[6] Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), 245.

Wounded Healers

Margie Quinn

My friend Margo is not afraid of death. She has lived through the loss of her mother-in-law, several dear friends, her own father and her dear cousin, my sister-in-law, Tallu. Margo is a death doula, a person who guides a person and their loved ones through the process of dying. “Margo’s particular capacity for accompanying people in death and loss,” Tallu wrote before she passed, “has been honed because she herself has experienced so much personal loss. I don’t know that this was ever her life’s plan, but I am struck by how skilled, motivated, confident and comfortable she is entering into this role and these conversations. I watch in awe as she accepts and compassionately passes along the gifts within herself that have cultivated and catalyzed this next part of her journey.”

In our text this morning, Jesus and the guys are just coming from the synagogue and are on the move. John the Baptist has been arrested, Jesus has walked in the wilderness for 40 days and has just healed a man with an unclean spirit, which sort of drew a crowd. Have you ever noticed how the people with demonic spirits are the ones who recognize Jesus for who he is?

His fame has begun to spread all around Galilee. As soon as Jesus and his illustrious crew of four fishermen leave the synagogue, they go to the house of Simon and Andrew. We then learn that Simon’s mother-in-law is sick in bed with a fever. This most likely wasn’t a fever in the modern sense with a 99.6 reading on the thermometer. No, this is more like an infectious disease that would have plagued this woman for a while, at least since Jesus snagged the fishermen and said “Follow me” and all. The guys immediately take Jesus to her. 

As an aside, it’s frustrating that yet again, we have a nameless woman in the gospel while a bunch of the guys are named. The bleeding woman, the poor widow, the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet–all nameless, like a small footnote in Jesus’ grand narrative. And yet…the nameless women in Mark’s gospel often come off as the ideal disciples, whereas his twelve disciples are often portrayed as confused goofballs who struggle time and time again to get the memo. We can certainly name this woman today, because God can handle us talking to or talking back to the text, so I’ll call her Susannah. 

Susannah the Sick, who hasn’t been touched since she got sick; she hasn’t received that comforting hug, a massage, a hand hold. Back in 1st century Palestine, it was taboo for a man outside of the family to touch a woman and at the time was considered unclean to touch anyone who was sick. Yet here comes Jesus, doing some work on the Sabbath even though that’s a big ole violation, and continuing his ministry of touching lepers, outcasts, the mentally ill and Susannah. You could almost say that beyond the miracles of loaves and fishes and walking on water is the miracle of Jesus offering his healing touch to the untouchable. 

And Jesus does just that. He comes and takes Susannah by the hand and lifts her up. I imagine him slowly and gently propping her up, putting a pillow behind her back, cradling her head. The fever leaves her and she begins to serve. 

In a small bedroom in a fisherman’s home, without onlookers or big crowds, Jesus meets Susannah in a moment of deep need. And Susannah knows what to do after she receives the healing hands of God. She does the very thing that the Disciples refuse to do. She uses those very hands to serve. 

To serve. The Greek translation diakonein, is the same verb used when we read that the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve; the same verb that is used of the angels in the wilderness who serve Jesus in the midst of all of his temptation, perhaps offering him a healing touch when he feels lonely, afraid, parched, hungry. 

Susannah’s service becomes a response to that healing touch of Jesus. And Jesus does not command her. She is the one that jumps up and gets going, not waiting for any man to give her the run-down. She has been well aware when receiving Jesus’ help and when responding to him precisely on the Sabbath that it’s time to break some rules and heal some souls because the kingdom of God has come near. 

In doing so, Susasnnah becomes the first deacon in the New Testament, totally getting the picture that the disciples won’t quite realize for many years. “This is no woman bowing to cultural convention and keeping in her restricted place as a servant,” Ofelia Ortega writes, “this is a disciple who quietly demonstrates the high honor of service for those who follow Jesus…who, like Jesus, will not shy from broken bodies or demonic spirits.” 

Word spreads of this healing, and all of the sudden his moment of private ministry turns quickly into a public ministry once again. The sick and demon-possessed and the whole city gather around Susannah’s door. Jesus does his Jesus thing: curing and healing and casting out demons. One pastor talks about how our Susannah may have looked out of her door to see all of these people with fevers like hers and pushed up her sleeves, touching and healing, loving and speaking truth to all of them. She does not hoard her healing or remain stagnant, celebrating her health in private, she immediately embodies Jesus’ ministry by using her healing to heal others. 

Using her healing to heal others. Like my dear friend Margo, who not only cared for Tallu as she died but even wove her a burial shroud. “Into this shroud,” Tallu wrote, “I imagine her weaving past, present and future prayers–not just for the dying but for all of us trying to make sense of death coming too soon.” Margo and I recently talked about how much we miss those last few weeks before Tallu died, which may seem ironic, but if you’ve tended to someone in hospice care, you may have experienced the kingdom of God come near. The way we gathered, day after day, in her bedroom to read poems, cuddle with her, share stories and laughter, break bread, cry…the whole house was filled with family and chosen family, a foretaste of heaven on earth–close and communal, vulnerable and present. 

The thing about Susannah or Margo: she knew what it felt like to go from brokenness to wholeness. Maybe you know that feeling, too. Maybe you still feel broken. Jesus knows that feeling too. The bad news and the best news is that there is rarely healing without suffering. The best healers are the wounded ones, and the best ministers (which is every single one of us), as Henri Nouwen writes, are the ones who make their wound available as a source of healing. 

Margo didn’t stop weaving or healing once her journey with Tallu ended. She now walks with many people, a modern-day Susannah, offering healing touch, colorful shrouds, and an honest and loving presence so that people do not have to die alone, or feel alone as they die. My brother Robbie didn’t stop his healing journey with Tallu, either. A librarian for over a decade, he just started nursing school this year after serving Tallu and seeing others nurse her, too. 

Jesus could have stayed in Capernaum and become a local celebrity, basking in the notoriety of his ministry. And yet, as he often does, Jesus gets up while it’s still dark, takes a moment to pray, and gets going to share his healing with other towns and to proclaim the message that he is here to heal the untouchable. He reminds us that in order for the kingdom of God to come near, we’ve gotta push through the crowds and proclaim the gospel message outside of our private spaces. God wants you to be healed for the sake of your own wholeness but also because there’s a lot of healing to be done out there. Spoiler alert: his next few moves? Touching a leper, healing a paralytic man, healing a man with a withered hand, touching a bleeding woman. 

Church, just by virtue of being here, you’ve been brought into this wild story of God’s love for all of humanity along with smelly fishermen, demoniacs and sick old nameless ladies and the rest of Jesus’ motley crue of a dream team. That’s the gospel for you: it’s confusing and hilarious and heartbreaking and it’s for us. Us who are wounded, us who seek healing and us who can offer it.

May it be so. 

If evil could speak

Thomas Kleinert

“Does the world ever speak?” Julian Bell, a painter and writer, recently recalled how his grandson—an impossibly inquisitive four-year-old—once stopped him in his tracks with that question. “Years later, I still wonder how best to have replied.”[1]

It’s a terrific question, regardless of whether initially you’re leaning toward responding, “Well, yes, of course, the world speaks all the time” or toward, “No, it is certainly filled with speech, but the world itself is silent.”

I imagine I would reply to the youngster, “That’s one of the best questions ever. I have heard the world sing, but I don’t recall hearing it speak. What do you think?”

The Gospel of Mark poses a different question, implicitly. We’re still in the first chapter, and we’ve heard the voice of Isaiah, announcing the “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” We have heard the voice of John the baptizer, proclaiming, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.” eWe have heard a voice from heaven, declaring at Jesus’ baptism, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased;” and we have heard the voice of Jesus, saying to Simon and Andrew, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”

We’re still in the first chapter, yet we’ve already skipped a scene, because the church has long saved that reading for the beginning of Lent, and that’s the two-verse notice about Jesus being in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan.

In the Gospel according to Mark, the devil has a part, but in contrast to Matthew and Luke, it’s not a speaking part. In Matthew and Luke, the devil sounds concerned, friendly even, reasonable and tempting, but there’s not a single line for the devil in Mark.[2] So the question Mark implicitly poses, is, “If evil could speak, what would it say?”

Let’s leave that sitting for a moment. Listen to this: “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.”[3] Jesus said that, sounding like a master thief. “Tying up the strong man and plundering his property” is a rather curious way of illustrating the mission of Jesus, and yet, this is how he himself sees it. He has entered the strong man’s house. Following his baptism, Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan, and now he’s back among people, proclaiming the good news of God. He has tied up the strong one, so his house can be plundered.

It sounds like burglary, but the mission is to free the residents of the house from foreign occupation. Forces of evil have taken up residence in the house, keeping in thrall the people who live there, manipulating them, abusing them, oppressing them. But now Jesus has returned from the wilderness. Now Jesus is in the house. He declares that the time if fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.

On the sabbath, when he teaches in the synagogue at Capernaum, people are astounded. They perceive an authority their scribes — we would call them teachers, preachers, or scholars — don’t possess. I imagine they are beginning to note the difference between those who, steeped in tradition, teach about God, and the one in whose presence and voice the presence and voice of God become manifest.

Jesus is in the house, and while the people are astounded, the anxiety level among the unclean spirits and demons is high: they know who he is and they know the purpose of this intrusion. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” they shriek, and in my mind, because I’ve been catching up on a couple of seasons of Dr. Who during snow week, they sound like the Dalek. “Why are you picking this fight? We know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Jesus is in the house, their time is up, and they know it. This is Mark’s answer to the question, “If evil could speak, what would it say?” The unclean spirits cry, they whimper, they taunt, but they cannot resist the authority of Jesus. “Shut up and come out,” he rebukes them, and the man is free. This is the ministry of Jesus, according to Mark, to spread this freedom, throughout all of creation. Jesus is a Holy-Spirit-empowered invader who reclaims the house of creation that has become a playground for demons.

“What is this?” people ask, amazed. “A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” A new teaching—well, you can get that scrolling on your phone and googling around the web: new, exciting, hip, astounding, and forgotten tomorrow.

This is a different kind of new. This is a teaching that brings about newness like the voice that spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai. Jesus is not just a terrific new teacher who surprises and inspires us, and satisfies our hungry hearts and minds—he does all that. What’s new is that he speaks with the voice of the Holy One who brings light and life into being. He speaks, and it comes to be. He speaks, and the oppressed are unburdened, the possessed are unshackled, the wounded are healed, the shunned are forgiven. He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.

“Mark wants us to know, here at the outset of Jesus’ public ministry — that Jesus’ authority will be a contested authority,” writes Matt Skinner.

Jesus’ presence, words, and deeds threaten other forces that claim authority over people’s lives. These other authorities have something to lose.[4]

They have everything to lose, and yet they have already lost, because when the unholy coalition of temple, empire, and mob accused, condemned, tortured and executed Jesus, God vindicated him. These other authorities that have everything to lose can do their worst and crucify the One who embodied the kingdom of God on earth, but they cannot stop God’s reign from coming in fullness. They can’t silence the voices that declare its nearness. They can’t buy off all its witnesses. They can’t deport those who discover day after day, that with one foot they’re already standing in the kingdom, on solid ground: beloved, forgiven, empowered, free.

Jesus comes from a place of blessing, where in baptism he was filled with the Holy Spirit and a voice from heaven declared, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And Mark contrasts this affirmation and claim with the man in Capernaum, possessed by an unclean spirit, a spirit of lies that will not, indeed cannot ever tell the man who he is — God’s beloved,  a delight in the eyes of God. But now Jesus reclaims the house of creation that has become a playground for demons, and his authority is the authority of his fierce love, liberating, healing, empowering.

The first-century world was full of demons and spirits; they regularly interfered in human life, often capriciously. It was common knowledge that they did control human behavior because they were more powerful than human beings, and evil spirits were widely regarded as principal causes for physical and psychological maladies as well as natural disasters. Most of us don’t think of the world as occupied by demons and other spirit beings, but that’s not the point. The point is that we all continue to experience life in the grip of powers that are stronger than ourselves, ungodly powers that oppress us, individually and collectively, powers that thrive when we believe that this is just the way things are, and that there’s nothing any of us can do about it anyway.

I come from a people who, under self-inflicted authoritarian rule and in the grip of idolatries and supremacist worldviews, unleashed war across Europe and beyond and systematically murdered six million Jews. Human beings, not demons, did this to other human beings. Human beings, not unclean spirits, did this and are responsible for doing what they did and what they didn’t do.

There are historical circumstances to take into consideration, yes. There are economic factors, political and theological failures, cultural trends, yes, but such attempts at explaining the unfathomable can capture the big picture only from a high altitude, and to me, such distance easily feels like betrayal.

There is no room for demons in the house, but they are here because we are here. In the face of evil, explanations will not do. In the face of evil, only fierce love will do. And yes, I will spell it out for you, in the face of white supremacy and proto-fascist aspirations, only steadfast resistance will do, in the name of Jesus and all that is holy.

I need Jesus who has tied up the strong man, to tell the demons to shut up and get out. I need Jesus—living, breathing, loving Jesus, because in his presence the demons become anxious, and when he speaks, the unclean spirits within us and among us are driven from power.

His words and his fierce love loose the bonds of injustice, and he calls us to join him in his life’s work. His words and his fierce love let the oppressed go free, and he empowers us to join him in his work for life’s sake. His words and his fierce love break every yoke, and he unburdens us so we can serve the flourishing of life in his company.

You are not too young, nor are you ever too old, to help others see their true identity and full dignity as God’s beloved. Humbly and courageously, listening to Jesus and following him, we must do our part in casting out the demons that feed on our fear.

Does the world ever speak? I don’t know, but I do know with my whole heart that it’s supposed to sing, all of it, to the glory of God. And it will.

[1] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/12/21/the-emptied-cosmos-gabriel-pihas/

[2] Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13; Mark 1:13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tested by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him. See also Mark 3:23, 26; 4:15; 8:33

[3] Mark 3:27

[4] Matt Skinner https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany-2/commentary-on-mark-121-28-3

Your Own Ministry

Margie Quinn

I heard a story once of a poet who visited his son’s classroom for “Bring your parent to school day.” The man was asked to talk about what he did for a living. He began by asking the children, who were around 9 or 10 years old, what they wanted to be when they grew up. “A fireman!” one said. “An actress!” said another. “A basketball player!” replied a third. Then, he went to the board and wrote down several words: barista, athlete, nurse, artist, writer, construction worker, actor, poet. Guess what? He said. I have been all of these things, and I will continue to be more. I am a poet, yes, but I am a lot more than that. You can be so many things when you grow up! 

You can be so many things. 

The gospel of Mark begins like an alarm clock, as theologian Ted Smith puts it. John the baptist has just been arrested and Jesus is on the move, perhaps feeling a sense of urgency to proclaim the good news, to share that the kingdom of God has come near, to get people to turn away from their greed and individualism, away from their judgment and exploitation, and to believe that another world is possible: a kingdom where all are kin, where oppressive powers are overthrown, where everyone has a seat at the table. He passes along the Sea of Galilee, sees Simon and his brother Andrew fishing in the sea and says to them–Follow me, and I will make you fish for people. Immediately, they throw those nets off to the side, and follow him. Then he keeps going, with the brothers in tow–and finds James and John, another set of fishermen who are in the boat mending their nets. Immediately, Jesus calls them, and they follow him.

Growing up, I bristled at this text because it felt pushy. Drop everything and follow Jesus! Hurry up and chase after him; convince other people to do the same! Now I read it differently. Did you catch it? In this text, Jesus speaks the language of the people he’s talking to at the current moment. In front of him are fishermen, so he invites them to now fish for people. He doesn’t tell them to “bake for people” or “to sing for people:” he uses their own vocation to propel them into ministry. 

Imagine if all of us felt the need to become a pastor. That we assumed there is only one way to do ministry and it is through getting ordained and serving a church. We’d drop everything, even our individual gifts and talents, to preach, teach, and pray. 

What if, instead, we dropped everything to use our specific gifts in our ministry. 

Did you catch it? Later in the gospel of Mark, Jesus multiplies loaves and fishes to feed a crowd, bringing abundance to a people who have been fed the lie of scarcity and not-enough-ness for so long. I wonder who caught those fish for him to share, though. Jesus, the carpenter? There’s no way he knew how to mend nets and cast them out into the sea. He needed fishermen who used their gifts to bring people in in order to fulfill the kingdom of God. 

I have been reflecting on our own congregation and the specific gifts you all bring as ministers to us. Abi uses her voice to bring the Spirit into this place. Ellen draws art for our Advent devotional, bringing us powerful images from scripture. Martha knits hats for our guests at Room in the Inn. One man was so excited about the hat he picked on Thursday. This looks professional like I got it in a store. I love the colors. Larry uses that radio host voice to move us when he reads scripture to us. Thomas bakes bread and then breaks bread with us, remember that delicious loaf from Christmas? I play frisbee with the youth, bringing us together to play and laugh. Are you picking up what I’m putting down? I don’t know how to bake or draw! I can hardly sew a button on my shirt let alone knit a hat! But God doesn’t ask me to. Jesus calls us to live out our particular vocations and passions for the fulfillment of the gospel. Proclaiming good news looks different for each and every one of us. 

Sometimes I get so lost in the weeds with how wide we cast our nets in the church, distracted by numbers and growth and strategies of bait. Have I forgotten to look around and focus on who is already here, doing the very things that Jesus does in the gospel? Being compassionate, sharing our gifts, being satisfied with the quality of our ministries as opposed to the quantity. Jesus’ first act is not to call hundreds of people but to call four. FOUR! Who are not asked to leave behind their life’s work but to bring their calling with them to add richness and uniqueness to the ministry of the gospel.

And did you catch it? They don’t hesitate to do this, they jump up immediately. 

Immediately! The word is used 41 times in the gospel of Mark and only ten other time in the New Testament. Clearly, Mark is trying to tell us something about the urgency with which Jesus lives. As Dr. King puts it, “We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.” Positive action–like when Jesus heals and touches people that no one else wants to touch and IMMEDIATELY the leper is cleansed, IMMEDIATELY the bleeding woman is healed when she touches his robe, IMMEDIATELY the blind man regains his sight and follows Jesus, IMMEDIATELY, Jesus consoles the Disciples when they are scared as heck seeing him walk on water, IMMEDIATELY the paralyzed man stands up and walks once Jesus heals him…not gonna do all 41 immediatelys but are you catching my drift? 

What are you being called into? Where could you begin using your particular calling immediately to fulfill the kingdom of God here on earth as it is in heaven? As Elton Brown puts it, becoming a faithful Christian disciple takes both a moment and a lifetime. It may have only taken you a moment to realize your love of teaching, nursing, gardening, coding. But now, urgently, we bring those gifts into a lifetime of discipleship, together. the specificity of what we do and what they did will matter, how that will continue into their following of Jesus, translate new possibilities into fulfilling the kingdom of God 

My friend Grace approached me on Thursday night. She has been helping out at Room in the Inn. Grace finished culinary school recently and is a baker at Dozen. On Thursday she made a cherry chocolate cake for the guests. “Hey, I’d love to keep baking on Thursdays for the guests. Will you keep letting me know when I can?” We would love, that I said. “Follow me” Jesus tells us, and I will make you knit, bake, sing, paint–for people.” You don’t have to be a minister when you grow up. Be you, all of you, because I’ll need that in my kingdom.” 

May it be so.