Playing with fire

Thomas Kleinert

A couple of months ago, I talked with a mom whose daughter was attending a Catholic school in their county near the Alabama border. She wasn’t a happy mom, because many of the teachers were nuns who, bless their hearts, should have retired many years ago, but apparently there was a shortage of teachers. I asked why she didn’t sign up her daughter at the public middle school, and she looked at me like I had suggested she sell her child to the traveling circus.

“Public school? And have her use the bathroom with furries who do their business in litter boxes?”

I had heard of furries, but litter boxes?

“Are you telling me there are public schools where they have litter boxes in student bathrooms, for students to use?”

“Yes, it’s been all over the internet, it’s for those kids who identify as cats.”

I bridled my tongue. “That is insane.”

“I know,” she said.

I’m not the kind of guy who grabs his phone, opens Snopes, and holds it under other people’s noses; so we just talked about horses instead.

According to Education Week, “it’s unclear exactly where the litter box hoax came from. In December 2021, a community member shared the rumor during the public comment section of a Midland Public School Board meeting in Michigan that was later debunked by the school district.” But debunking it didn’t stop the story from being shared on social media, and being broadcast by Joe Rogan, and being used by candidates running for public office, including the U.S. Senate, in New Hampshire and Colorado.[1] Well, you’ve heard the saying, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” It’s often attributed to Mark Twain, but it’s not actually by him. Which is delightfully ironic. Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710, “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it,”[2] and even then it had probably been part of oral tradition for generations.

And it’s not just a matter of speed. Back in 2018, when Twitter was still called Twitter, a team at MIT published a study analyzing “every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter’s existence—some 126,000 stories, tweeted by 3 million users, over more than 10 years.” The study found that “by every common metric, falsehood consistently dominates the truth on Twitter. … Fake news and false rumors reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories.”[3] Wider. Deeper. Faster. Sounds like a slogan for the information Olympics, and the truth is not among the medal contenders. “A false story reaches 1,500 people six times quicker, on average, than a true story does,” writes Robinson Meyer in The Atlantic.

And while false stories outperform the truth on every subject—including business, terrorism and war, science and technology, and entertainment—fake news about politics regularly does best. Twitter users seem almost to prefer sharing falsehoods.[4]

The tongue is a fire, says James. What we still call social media, despite its profoundly anti-social effects, seems to systematically amplify falsehood at the expense of the truth, and no one knows how to reverse that trend. Alarmed by the study, a group of political scientists and legal scholars asked, sounding rather helplessly, “How can we create a news ecosystem … that values and promotes truth?”[5] That was a very good question six years ago, when the people talking about AI were limited to some venture capitalists and engineers on the west coast, and the pope in a puffer jacket was a happy deep fake still five years away.[6]

The tongue is a fire, and a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. We used to play three truths and a lie for fun, and most of us cared about differentiating fact from fiction, reality from illusion, but now our “news ecosystem” is threatened by collapse due to what’s called “the illusory truth effect.” It is the human tendency to believe a false or misleading statement is true after hearing it repeated multiple times. This can happen even when the statement contradicts prior knowledge or is implausible. Something sticks, simply because of repetition, and “evidence suggests that global politics have already been strongly influenced by online … campaigns, run by bad actors who understand that all they need to do to help a lie gain traction is to repeat it again and again.”[7] It is like the lies have the power not just to blatantly contradict and unravel the fabric of a shared reality, but to create a parallel universe where the liar spoke again and again, and it was so. The tongue is a fire, says James.

The first gift distinctive to humans, according to Genesis, is the power to name, the power to create language, and by naming and speaking to participate in God’s dominion for the flourishing of life. Moment by moment, all that is and is to be, comes forth from God’s creative speech, and moment by moment, all that is and is to be, is reshaped and given meaning by human language, in praise and science and poetry and campaign speeches.[8] To speak is to play with fire, either way, whether we speak in response to and in sync with God’s creative speech and spirit, or out of sync, out of tune. Holy fire or destructive fire. “Whether we mean to or not, we construct worlds with speech,” says Barbara Brown Taylor.

Describing the world we see, we mistake it for the whole world. Making meaning of what we see, we conflate this with God’s meaning. Then we behave according to the world we have constructed with our speech, even when that causes us to dismiss or harm those who construe the world differently.[9]

The tongue is a fire, says James, and much of today’s passage is about speech, about being careful what we say and how we say it. James remembers and reiterates Jesus’ teaching,

I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.[10]

Sometimes I bridle my tongue. Sometimes I bite it. And often I regret what I said or how I said it. There’s a lot of good advice available, from James and others.

Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates: “Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?”

This bit of wisdom has been attributed to Socrates, Buddha, and the Amish, but don’t tell your friend Jesus said it, just because you half-remember hearing it in church. It’s great advice, if you remember it, and when you don’t, well, perhaps you can delete that ugly text before the person you sent it to has read it. Or make good use of the “undo send” feature in your email — mine is set to 30 seconds. Thirty seconds to “undo send” and attach the file I meant to attach. Thirty seconds to “undo send” and take out that unnecessary paragraph and the snarky bit at the end.

James lived and taught in a world without “undo send” buttons and emojis; his was an oral culture where written text wasn’t in daily use, and so his teaching is not about technical solutions, or the wisdom of having editors, but about the wise use of God’s awesome gift to humans, speech — about speaking and listening faithfully.

Others describe the world they see, in their own language, from their own unique perspective, making meaning of what they see — just like we do. And rather than dismissing them for construing the world differently, what if we were, as James teaches, quick to listen, eager to discover how their rendering of the world might open a window in our bubble and add dimension to our shared reality? What if we were slow to speak for the sake of fully hearing their story of the world? I know it’s hard. Sometimes you just bite your tongue and change the subject from bathrooms to horses. Because the universe of lies won’t be brought down by fact checkers alone, but by good timing and by kindness.

James can sound rather pessimistic.

Every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.

To speak is to play with fire, either way, whether I speak faithfully in response to and in sync with God’s creative speech and spirit, or out of sync, out of tune. My tongue. My choice. My responsibility. I may not be able to tame my tongue, but I sure have a great deal more control over mine than over anyone else’s. So I practice being careful with what I’m about to say. Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? And I practice being careful with what I watch, read, and listen to: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?

A fig tree won’t yield olives, nor a grapevine figs. Only double-minded humans are capable of pouring fresh and brackish water from the same opening, blessing God from our heart with our lips, and cursing with our lips, from the depths of our heart, another human being made in the likeness of God. We may not be able to tame our tongues because we don’t know our own hearts. But James isn’t teaching us to give in to despair, but to welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save our souls.[11] We may yet discover that by becoming discerning listeners, our hearts and lips receive all the taming God wants for us.

Now that we have allowed James to have us consider that the tongue is a fire and a restless evil, I don’t think he would object to my closing with words from Psalm 19. Listen to this beautiful poetry, spoken and sung in our mother tongue, the native language of all creation, praise:

The heavens are telling the glory of God;

and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.

Day to day pours forth speech,

and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words;

their voice is not heard;

yet their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.

May our hearts hear what the heavens are telling, and what day and night declare, and in all our hearing, may we welcome the word that has the power to save our souls.

[1] https://www.edweek.org/leadership/litter-boxes-in-schools-how-a-disruptive-and-demeaning-hoax-frustrated-school-leaders/2022/11

[2] https://freakonomics.com/2011/04/quotes-uncovered-how-lies-travel/

[3] Robinson Meyer https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/largest-study-ever-fake-news-mit-twitter/555104/

[4] See full reference in note 3.

[5] Cited by Robinson Meyer; see full reference in note 3.

[6] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/not-real-photo-pope-in-puffy-coat/

[7] https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/illusory-truth-effect

[8] L. T. Johnson, James, NIB, 205.

[9] Feasting, Year B, Vol. 4, 67; my italics.

[10] Matthew 12:36-37

[11] James 1:21

A Little Back-Talk

Preached by Margie Quinn, Sunday, September 8, 2024

You may or may not have studied the suffragette movement in school. I hadn’t learned about it until I began taking women’s studies classes in college. I had certainly heard the names of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and had even revered them for fighting for my right to vote, but I had never dug deep into the movement itself. Deemed abolitionists, these women advocated for women’s right to vote, and even held a convention to discuss this in 1848, known as the Seneca Falls convention. They wanted all women to be able to vote, right? Yet, there were no Black women in attendance. 

Stanton went so far as to claim that she would not support the Black vote if women were not also granted the right to vote. She wanted white women to have that opportunity before Black men. She is quoted as saying, “We prefer Bridget and Dinah at the ballot box to Patrick and Sambo.” How often we leave out our brothers and sisters of color when we are so close to power and seeming equality we can almost taste it. 

When a woman named Sojourner Truth found out about this, that white women were advocating for only some women to be able to vote, she showed up to the Women’s Right Convention in 1851 and asked, “May I say a few words? I want to say a few words on this matter.” In front of a crowd made of up mainly white, financially secure women, who didn’t want to hear her mix the cause of suffrage with abolition, she spoke: 

“I am a woman's rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now. 

The poor men seems to be all in confusion, and don't know what to do. Why children, if you have woman's rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won't be so much trouble. 

And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and the woman who bore him. Man, where was your part? But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.” This was a woman willing to talk back to those who didn’t consider in their mission for equality for all. 

In our story this morning, Jesus is sprinting around in the gospel of Mark, walking on water and healing all kinds of kinds. He’s on the move, trying to find some place to kick his feet up so that he can take a beat from the overwhelming crowds that are desperate to receive his healing touch. He goes away to the region of Tyre, a Gentile territory, and enters a house. He doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s there, but as we learn time and time again this gospel, he can’t escape notice. But it’s not the people we think who notice him…he was rarely recognized by his family or friends for who he was. No, it is once again an unusual suspect who approaches him. 

A woman, whose daughter had an unclean spirit, hears about him and comes and bows down at his feet. Now, this isn’t any ole’ woman–this woman is a Gentile of Syrophoenician origin. Jesus doesn’t have time for Gentiles right now. His primary mission is to his people, his ethnic enclave. In Matthew’s account of this text, we hear him say, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24). 

Probably knowing this and probably too desperate to care about class or ethnic boundaries at this point, she begs Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter. And, in one of the most shocking and head-scratching verses in the New Testament, Jesus says this: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Did he really just call this woman a dog?

A lot of people have tried to find a way out of this one. 

There is  no way Jesus would say something this rude. It was probably more like a familiar proverb like “charity begins at home.” 

Another theory is that Jesus knew the economic hardships that a lot of the Jews faced in this region. He saw the political imbalance between the wealthy Gentiles and the Jewish peasants and was trying to tell her that those who were well-off shouldn’t expect a seat at the table. 

My theory? Jesus was exhausted. And in a moment of human weakness, he loses sight of the point of his mission, which is to heal all kinds of kinds, and he makes a mistake. He uses an ethnic slur. He offends this woman. He calls her a dog. 

This woman doesn’t hang her head or walk away in shame. Her response? “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  Like a grandma who holds him to higher standards, she scolds him for his harsh words, and in doing so, sets him straight, maybe even surprising him a little bit. She bests him in an argument! The Gentile woman teaches him, the Jewish man, the true meaning of what he has just reminded his own followers in the prior verse: social conventions should not stand in the way of helping those in need. The Kingdom of God isn’t the Roman Empire. It is a different kind of community–one that knows no economic or ethnic boundaries. God’s love expands beyond all barriers. 

We talk a lot about conversion moments in our tradition. I have to wonder if this is a conversion moment…for Jesus? What if the woman’s bold faith, a woman who dares to talk back to Jesus on behalf of her people, on behalf of her daughter, sees that Jesus’s scope of love is becoming a little less wide and attempts to reconnect him to his original course of action? Could Jesus be saved in this moment? 

His response? Jesus changes his mind. He snaps out of it, and says to her, “For saying that, you may go–the demon has left your daughter.” Not only is the girl healed of demon possession but we recognize that a further transformation has taken place in Jesus, who experiences a change of heart and a shift in direction as he ministers among Gentiles. 

Jesus changes his mind. Because this woman dared to talk back, because she called him back to his original mission of infinite compassion for everyone. 

Look what happens next: her faith, her tenacious declaration of her own worth, opens Jesus up. His next stop? Healing a deaf man, putting his fingers in his ears, and saying, “Be opened.” I wonder if he was also talking to himself when he says this, reminding himself to stay open, too? 

If we learn anything from this story, I hope it’s this:

1. Jesus is human. What a relief. Like all of us, he gets exhausted and forgets that we cannot forget anyone. Like all of us, he’s got some blindspots when it comes to who is inside and outside of the movement. 

2. Courage–confronting those who have fallen away from the ultimate goal–could actually change someone’s mind and open someone up to a more expansive way of loving. . It is important to advocate for ourselves, yes, and to advocate for our daughters or friends, for those who need our help fighting for their healing. 

3. When we are willing to hear the truth from someone unlikely, our efforts are not diminished, they are expanded. Our hearts and minds might just be transformed by some faithful back-talk. 

Any time my blindspots appear, I hope to be reminded of a woman who did talk back, who was a Gentile, who had the courage to challenge the greatest change-maker of all. I hope to be reminded of another woman, who said, “Ain’t I woman’s rights?” Ain’t I worth fighting for, worthy of the right to vote, worthy of the same liberation you desire? 

Jesus, between a Gentile woman and a disgraced deaf man, between a hawk and a buzzard, changes his mind, commends her boldness, opens himself up to the reminder that none of us are free until all of us are free, that the mission was, is and should be universal, and that it is in the most unlikely of voices that we are brought home. 

Who are the unlikely voices in your life? Who is attempting to transform your heart and mind, who wants to welcome you back into the fold of faithfulness, with just a little bit of back-talk? 

Amen.

To know and be known

Thomas Kleinert

In 108 verses, James will tell you 59 times what to do, quite directly, bluntly even, some would say. “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,” are good examples from early in the book. That’s good advice, and it was widely taught in the ancient Mediterranean world, almost regardless of a teacher’s philosophical background or religious tradition. “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger” — you can copy and paste that into any online comment thread, and nine out of ten times it will turn out to be exactly what needed to be said.

James used time-tested material. The collections in the book of Proverbs contain gems like,

Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but one who has a hasty temper exalts folly;

or

Those with good sense are slow to anger, and it is their glory to overlook an offense;

or this one,

Those who are hot-tempered stir up strife, but those who are slow to anger calm contention.[1]

James, though, doesn’t just share wisdom memes to fill up the space between the ads on your social media feed. James shares with other New Testament writings the deep desire to shape faithful communities of Jesus followers.

Be slow to anger, because human anger does not produce God’s righteousness, we read in James — and producing God’s righteousness is the point of our assemblies: right relationship with God and with each other and with all of God’s creation.

Be slow to anger, because human anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Slow to anger, it says, not, “Don’t be angry.” Sit with your anger. Question your anger. Ask yourself what’s motivating it. Talk about your anger with somebody you trust.

I’ve long loved a saying attributed to St. Augustine who probably never said it, so the words have to stand on their own, without the borrowed authority of the great teacher: Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are anger and courage: anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain as they are. Be slow to anger, don’t just let it flare up and flame out, see how it can become the embers to fuel the slow work of change.

When James urges us to “be slow to anger” we also hear the echo of God’s revelation of the divine name to Moses at Mount Sinai:

The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name, “The Lord.” The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.[2]

James teaches that we are to become what we know God to be: merciful, gracious, slow to anger, loving, faithful. Our life together is to reflect and make known who we know God to be. Be quick to listen, slow to speak — not like hearers who forget but doers who act. Don’t worry about what to say about God, how to speak about what you know to be true — live what you know.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: To care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Keeping oneself unstained by the world while also engaging with it, that may require a lot of prayer, thought, and conversation… how to change the world without conforming to it[3] — but caring for orphans and widows in their distress is about as plain and straightforward as it gets. “Orphans and widows” is biblical shorthand for the most vulnerable members of our communities — families and individuals in economically precarious circumstances; folks who work every day, and still don’t make enough to pay the rent and eat; folks who don’t have access to good education, good medical care, good legal representation. Our care for them is the standard, according to James, by which the purity of our religion is being assessed — not the truthful articulation of our doctrine, nor the beauty of our worship, nor the fervor of our prayers. Not that truth and beauty, or fervent prayers don’t matter — they do, they very much do! — but only to the degree that they help us become doers of the word and not merely hearers; only to the degree that they form us for righteous living.

Much of the life of faith is aspirational. Many of us would probably hesitate to claim that we are Christians, and be much more comfortable affirming, with a measure of humility, that we try to live as Christians, that we want to follow Jesus. And yet, “When asked about the church, the first word college students think of often is ‘hypocrite’,” Laura Holmes reported years ago from the classroom, and I doubt it has changed dramatically since then.[4] There’s a sizable gap between what we profess and what we do — nothing new about that. Often we find it easier to see where others are talking the talk but are falling short when it comes to walking the walk — you know, folks like your neighbor across the street who tells you she attends a different Bible study every day of the week, and last Friday you heard her yell at the waitress because there was a lemon wedge in her water. Or the driver of the car who cut in front of me in the parking lot at Target and took my parking spot, even though I had my turn signal on, and then I saw the sticker from a local congregation on the rear window. I did bridle my tongue, but I said to myself, loud and clear, in the darker caverns of my mind, “So that is what they teach you over there?” You remember what Jesus said about all that:

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.[5]

So, yes, when asked about the church, the first word young people often think of is one that Jesus thought of as well.

James compares our trouble with becoming doers of the word with people who take a quick glance in the mirror.  You check your hair or make-up, you make sure there’s no spinach stuck in your teeth, and off you go. The moment you turn away, you forget what you were like.

James contrasts that with the look into a different kind of mirror, the word of God, which he calls the perfect law, the law of liberty. This look isn’t a quick glance in passing. It’s an unhurried look, unrushed, honest, one that welcomes with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save our souls.

Bill Coffin said, “I read the Bible because the Bible reads me. I see myself reflected in Adam’s excuses, in Saul’s envy of David, in promise-making, promise-breaking Peter.”[6] You make it a habit to let the word read you to you, and you listen with patient humility. Søren Kierkegaard, a 19th-century Danish theologian and philosopher, taught that,

The fundamental purpose of God’s Word is to give us true self-knowledge; it is a real mirror, and when we look at ourselves properly in it we see ourselves as God wants us to see ourselves. The assumption behind this is that the purpose of God’s revelation is for us to become transformed, to become the people God wants us to be, but this is impossible until we see ourselves as we really are.[7]

None of us become doers of the word simply by making up our minds; it’s all about living with the mirror of God’s revelation; it’s about learning to trust the loving gaze of God.

There’s another saying, this one attributed in various places to both the Sioux Indians and to the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, so it too will have to speak to us without the borrowed authority of Native American or Buddhist wisdom: The longest journey you will make in your life is from your head to your heart. I may have heard and know in my head that “every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above,” but when I know it in my heart, all that I do, will express this generosity. You may have heard and know in your head that God is gracious and merciful, but when you know it in your heart, all your daily actions will express both the character of God, and who you really are. We may have heard and know many things about God in our minds, but when we know in our hearts that we are fully known and loved, our life together will be the life of righteousness, to the glory of God from whom all blessings flow.

[1] Proverbs 14:29; 19:11; 15:18

[2] Exodus 34:5-6; see also Numbers 14:18; Nehemiah 9:17; Psalms 86:15; 103:8; 145:8

[3] I’m reminded of Paul’s warning to the church in Romans 12:2

[4] Laura Sweat Holmes, Connections, Year B, Vol. 3, 276.

[5] Matthew 7:3-5

[6] William Sloane Coffin, The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1999), 41-42.

[7] Stephen Evans summarizing Kierkegaard’s insight as quoted by Robert Kruschwitz https://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/174976.pdf

Learning from John

Thomas Kleinert

Most of you know John, Paul, George and Ringo — some of you sing along by heart, and even if their songs haven’t been part of the soundtrack of your life, you still recognize the tunes.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — that’s a different story. They each sing the gospel song, but each of them plays a different tune. Matthew, Mark and Luke can sound quite similar over long stretches, but they each include material unique to them, and where Mark keeps it swift and short, Matthew likes to linger and elaborate.

John, though, really stands out. In John, Jesus talks, a lot, and yet, there’s not a single story in all of the Fourth Gospel that begins, “The kingdom of God is like…” Reading John in my late teens and early twenties, I remember thinking, “that doesn’t sound like Jesus at all,” and I went back to the three who had shaped my hearing, back to the Sermon on the Mount, and the Good Samaritan, and the Rich Man and Lazarus.

In our 3-year lectionary, each of the three gets a year — we follow Matthew in Year A, Mark in Year B, and Luke in Year C. John doesn’t get his own year, but not a Christmas goes by without him. We can do without Mark on Christmas, but we want Luke’s angels and shepherds, as well as Matthew’s wise men from the east — and we rise to our feet in the dark sanctuary for the glorious poetry of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…” And John gets a lot of play during Lent and Easter.

In my second year of ministry with a robe on, my colleagues decided that it was my turn to read the passion story in the Good Friday service. So I read through John 18 and 19, and I groaned: How was I to read this text with its relentless naming of “the Jews” as Jesus’s opponents, leaving no room for nuance or differentiation, but slapping the same label on all of them? How was I to read this text that to me sounds like a prequel to the speeches of Hitler and Goebbels with their relentless blaming of “the Jews” for everything that was wrong in the world? I thought it best to plan a Bible study after Easter on anti-Jewish texts in the New Testament, and on Good Friday I read John’s words — but in several instances I quietly changed “the Jews” to “the people” or “the crowd.”

David Nirenberg, in his great study of anti-Judaism in the western tradition, writes,

The most sharply drawn sketch of the Jew as enemy comes from the fourth gospel, the one “according to John.” This is the gospel most explicitly focused on the Jews (the word itself occurs some sixty-seven times in the text, far more than in all the [other Gospels] combined). It is also, of all early Christian texts that have become canonical, the one most thoroughly saturated by the theme of enmity.

In this gospel, we “see a cosmic battle taking shape, one in which word, light, and life confront world, darkness, death, and the Jews in a struggle to the finish.”[1] At the same time, though, John makes abundant use of the Hebrew Bible, quoting it directly or alluding to it, and interpreting some of its key characters and symbols, as well as drawing on other Jewish sources and practices. Because of this, “John’s Gospel has been called the most Jewish and the most anti-Jewish of the Gospels.”[2]

Not even once is the term “the Jews” used to refer to Jesus’ disciples who are certainly Jewish with regard to their ethnic and religious backgrounds, and Jesus himself is called a “Jew” only once — by the Samaritan woman at the well, who wonders how Jesus, a Jew, would ask a Samaritan woman for a drink.[3] Adding to the sharp contrast, Jesus calls Nathanael not a Jew, but “an Israelite in whom there is no deceit,” and Nathanael in turn declares Jesus to be “the King of Israel” — an acclamation repeated by the happy crowds who greet Jesus as he enters Jerusalem before his final Passover.[4] “The effect,” writes Adele Reinhartz, “is to distance the reader from any group designated as [the Jews].”[5]

Who are the people who reject Jesus, persecute him, seek his death, and persecute his followers? John’s answer is consistent throughout: the Jews.[6] Those who believe in Jesus are associated with light, life, spirit, salvation, and God — and those who do not accept him, “the Jews,” with darkness, death, flesh, damnation, and Satan.

And yes, you heard it, in John 8:44 Jesus says to his Jewish audience, “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires.” Surely our Jesus wouldn’t say anything like that…!? Not the Jesus we know — but there it is, printed in red, as they say. “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires.” The word hits me in the pit of my stomach like rock that’s been tumbling down the mountain for hundreds of years, crushing faith, crushing compassion, crushing the lives of so many Jewish human beings, and still rolling on — unless I decide, it stops here.

On August 11 and 12, 2017, when white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, for their Unite the Right rally, somebody took a picture of one of them. On his right shoulder he carries the Confederate flag, with his right hand clutching the pole, and in his left hand he holds a poster. “Jews are children of Satan” it says, written in black marker, and he’s even added his source, John 8:31-47, like its a memory verse from Sunday school.[7]

On October 27, 2018, a gunman attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing eleven people and wounding six. Last year he was sentenced to death, and I will not speak his name. I mention him because he regularly posted anti-Semitic threats, memes and conspiracy theories on Gab, a social media platform that proudly promoted itself as a haven for free expression that major social networks wouldn’t allow. His user profile at the top of the page stated, “jews are the children of satan.”[8]

Almost 2000 years of Christian proclamation did not prevent this hateful appropriation, mostly because few Christians ever tried. From early on, the dichotomies between spirit and flesh, light and darkness, truth and falsehood, grace and damnation began to be projected on the opposition between Church and Synagogue until the Jewish people became the embodiment of all that is unredeemed, perverse, stubborn, evil, and demonic in the world. The association of Jews with Satan became pervasive, especially after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire: theological claims were translated into imperial law that excluded Jews from the body of society, and the Church’s theological negation of Jewish existence found expression in political terms.[9]

In medieval art, “the Jew’s affiliation with the devil might be signaled by placing him in hell, perching a demon on his shoulder, giving him subtly beast-like features, wrapping a snake around his eyes, having him give an obscene kiss to a cat, or depicting him with a goatee, tail, and/or horns.”[10] And those depictions didn’t remain hidden away in the margins of hand-copied volumes, they were widely distributed, beginning with early modern prints, copied from generation to generation, an unbroken chain from the anonymous illustrator of a sacred text in some European monastery to the anonymous member of the Goyim Defense League printing flyers for his trip to Nashville.

How do we read a text that quickly evolved into a tool of terror? Clearly, “Jesus said it and that settles it” is not only lazy, but irresponsible.

The Gospel of John was written in response to a deep crisis and conflict. The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 CE was a traumatic event that necessitated a profound reorientation of Jewish religious life. Priests, Pharisees, surviving nationalists, and other Jewish groups, including Christian Jews, were struggling over religious identity and power. With the Temple gone, Judaism was forced to reconstitute itself around a different center, and the Torah, the Jewish Scriptures, became that center. The places where Scripture was studied and taught, the synagogues, now took on more importance. To the Jews who believed in Jesus, those same Scriptures also were crucially important, and they studied them carefully, because to them, Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s promises “according to the Scriptures.”

In the Gospel of John, there are repeated references to Christians’ being cast out of the synagogue — and most likely that’s a reflection of the fear and lived experience of John’s community.[11] Sometime in the last quarter of the first century, a rupture with the synagogue occurred. Prior to that decisive break, members of John’s community were able to hold together their participation in the liturgical and cultural world of Judaism and their faith in Jesus. Once it had occurred, they “understood themselves to be outcasts,” people whom the emerging Jewish mainline “no longer considered to be Jews, a community forcibly removed from its roots and the symbols that formed its identity.”

The wealth and depth of Jewish scriptural allusions and themes in John clearly show that the Fourth Evangelist is not antagonistic to Jewish traditions. No, on the contrary, he is antagonistic to the political forces that have attempted to cut his community off from these traditions.

Outnumbered and without political resources at their disposal, John’s community “had no power to take any actions comparable to their own exclusion from the synagogue. …Their only ‘power’ rested in the force of their rhetoric, in their ability to denounce those who had excluded them.”[12] And in John’s gospel, Jesus gave voice to their anger and their pain, affirming that they belonged to him, and therefore, to God — exclusively.

Our situation as believers in Jesus today is obviously very different, and has been for hundreds of years, but it’s just been so very convenient to adopt John’s language about “the Jews” as a dark mirror for all that Christians are not:“the Jews” are blind and can’t properly read their own Scriptures, but we  see; “the Jews” refuse to hear the Shepherd’s call, but we know and follow his voice; “the Jews” cling to earthly things, but we abide in spiritual truth.

It’s time we learn a better lesson from John. In our own struggles for “the soul of America” and the largely fear-driven battles over who belongs and who doesn’t, perhaps we can learn from the Fourth Gospel and ask ourselves what Gail O’Day considers the “primary question”:

Is it necessary to exclude others so absolutely and hatefully in order to establish community identity?[13]

Paul the Pharisee and Apostle, writing before the destruction of Jerusalem and the predominance of gentiles in the church, never aligned the Jews with Satan. He also struggled with the relation of the developing Christian community and Judaism, but he envisioned a beloved community emerging, not from within fortified walls, but from the breaking down of barriers. So, rather than defining each other out, why don’t we see who we might become together by letting each other in?

[1] David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013), 78; my emphasis.

[2] Adele Reinhartz, in: The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation (United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, 2017), 152.

[3] John 4:9

[4] John 1:47, 49; 12:3

[5] Reinhartz, JANT, 156.

[6] John 1:11; 5:16; 8:40; 16:2

[7] https://x.com/ianbremmer/status/896423542727872512

[8] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robert-bowers-gab-pittsburgh-shooting-suspect-today-live-updates-2018-10-27/

[9] Gregory Baum, in the introduction to Rosemary Radford Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (United States, Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1996)

[10] Sara Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography (United States, Henry Holt and Company, 2014), 7.

[11] John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2.

[12] Gail O’Day, “The Gospel of John,” in: The New Interpreter’s Bible, 9:493-865 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 647-648.

[13] O’Day, 650.

Standing together

Thomas Kleinert

A lectionary is basically a reading plan for public worship: Certain texts are assigned to a congregation’s weekly gatherings and holidays. The practice has its roots in ancient synagogue worship, and, to this day, is shared by most synagogues and many churches. The intention is to reflect the full breadth and depth of the biblical witness over the course of a year or, in the western tradition of the church, three years. Each Sunday is allotted a reading from the Old Testament, a Psalm, and passages from a Gospel and one of the Epistles.

The result represents a pretty comprehensive selection—but there’s still plenty left to be read and studied between Sundays, or skipped for another day. From the book of Judges, over three years, we only get to hear seven verses, from Song of Solomon, only five, and from Zechariah, three. Ezra, Obadiah, Nahum, and Jude aren’t included at all.[1] Psalms 55-61 are skipped in their entirety, and every year on Pentecost, there’s the curious case of Psalm 104: we hear verses 24-34, and 35b—which makes you wonder what’s wrong with verse 35a, doesn’t it? There are good reasons for all that skipping over verses, chapters, and entire books—and many of the passages are indeed included in daily lectionaries or other reading plans and study resources; there’s simply a broad consensus that they are not essential for public worship.

But occasionally, it’s critical to hear some of the verses not heard, to hear them loud and clear, in morning worship. Back in July, members of Nazi groups showed up in downtown Nashville, not for the first time, accosting tourists and residents on Lower Broadway. Some were wearing masks and shirts that said “Pro-White” and “Whites Against Replacement”, they carried swastika flags, shouted anti-Jewish epithets, and raised their arms in Nazi salutes.[2] Before disrupting a City Council meeting that week, they talked with other visitors, including my friend Pat. One of them told her that he hated Jews, and when she let him know that she was Jewish, he stuck his finger in her face and said, “Tell your rabbi, we’re coming for him.”

Seven years ago this past week, “on August 11 and 12, 2017, white supremacists, as the Washington Post reported, ‘mostly young white males,’ gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, for the Unite the Right rally, ostensibly to protest the removal of the statue of confederate general Robert E. Lee by the City of Charlottesville and the renaming of the park in which the statue had stood as ‘The Emancipation Park.’” Magda Teter recalls,

The rally attracted hundreds of white protesters and a diverse group of counterprotesters, each representing different – and clashing – visions of American society and polity. On the evening of August 11, the white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia, torches in hand, chanting “Blood and soil!” “You will not replace us!” “Jews will not replace us!” and “White Lives Matter,” with some donning medieval Christian symbols. The next day the events turned violent. A white supremacist drove into the crowd of counterprotesters, killing thirty-two-year-old Heather Heyer, and injuring nineteen others, while still many others were physically attacked and beaten.[3]

Like I said, occasionally it’s critical to hear some of the verses not heard, to hear them loud and clear, in morning worship. This morning we heard Hebrews 8, declaring with great confidence,

If that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need to look for a second one… In speaking of a new covenant, God has made the first one obsolete, and what is obsolete and growing old will soon disappear.

You may be hearing not-so-subtle overtones of replacement in this language.

Fred Craddock called Hebrews “the finest example of homiletical rhetoric available to us from the first century CE.” It’s not a letter, more like an early theological essay, and its “paragraphs are not written in such a way that they can easily be extracted for devotional or sermonic use” — no neatly packaged clusters of verses that present themselves for spiritual reflection, but a single, grand-scale portrait of the redemptive work of Christ, in an idiom foreign to most of us. “The writer takes us inside the cultus of the tabernacle of Israel’s wilderness journey,” and we’re invited to consider the rituals on the Day of Atonement, the role of the priest, the altar, the sacrifice, and the blood — a very strange world indeed to modern readers.[4] In this portrait, Jesus is presented as “both the preeminent and perfect sacrificial victim as well as the preeminent and perfect high priest,” and as “superior to any other figure: Abraham and Moses, Aaron and the priests descended from him, even angels.”[5]Jewish scholars, A.J. Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, note,

Hebrews claims that Jesus is the “mediator of a better covenant,” for “if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need to look for a second one” (Heb 8:6-7). … [And] just as perfection replaces repetition, so the Christ replaces the Torah. Along with permanence and perfection comes replacement.[6]

And they add, quoting Alan Mitchell, that it is not surprising, that “from the second century C.E., Christians have used [the Epistle to the Hebrews] to promote the view that Christianity, according to God’s plan, has replaced Judaism,” and “the language of  Hebrews and its author’s style lend themselves to this kind of interpretation.”[7]

I wonder why so many white folk, men in particular, feel so very threatened by  black and brown people and why they are so afraid of being replaced, and I wonder how much of it is because, like all of us, they have grown up in a culture where, for centuries, subjugation, assimilation or replacement have been the dominant ways of coping with difference. And some texts in our Bible, including Hebrews 8, texts we hold sacred, lend themselves to supersessionist interpretation, sowing the seeds of replacement ideologies.

James Dunn observed that

where what became known as 'Christianity' and '(rabbinic) Judaism' were only beginning to emerge in the distinctiveness of their identities, the polemic and name-calling have … the character of the sharp tensions between the different factions [within the Judaism of the time]. The embarrassment of the anti-Jewish or anti-semitic charge against the NT for Christians only arises when the historical character and context of the NT writings are forgotten or ignored.[8]

That is a very careful and accurate observation, but what he didn’t take into account is that for centuries that is exactly how the Scriptures were read and their meaning created and absorbed — with their historical character and context forgotten or ignored, through the lens of “a theology of boasting triumphalism.”[9]And that long history of supersessionist reading has left thick layers of unquestioned assumptions in our theologies, our politics, and our daily interactions.

Where do we begin with the work of pulling back the layers? Five things come to mind:

1. When we hear or read lines like, In speaking of a new covenant, God has made the first one obsolete, we aren’t afraid to say, “Wait a minute, I’m not sure I agree with the writer. Nothing Jeremiah says in this quote, actually implies that God’s covenant is made obsolete by the promised new covenant. And frankly, when I look at the church over the centuries, I don’t see much evidence for a covenant written on the heart, a covenant that leads to a obedience as spontaneous as breathing. We’re not there yet, are we?”

2. We remember that the biblical testimony comes to us not in a single voice, but in a chorus of voices among which we listen carefully for the voice and word of God. And when we wrestle with the claim in Hebrews, that in speaking of a new covenant, God has made the first one obsolete, we are grateful for fellow readers who remind us that Paul, in his letter to the Romans, insisted that “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable,”[10] and that God’s covenant with Israel cannot ever be “obsolete,” for God is faithful.

3. We celebrate that after centuries of anti-Jewish teaching, the church in the 20th century, led by the Catholic Church, finally began to repent. In 2015, on the 50th anniversary of a landmark declaration of the Second Vatican Council, a Vatican commission stated,

On the part of many of the Church Fathers the so-called replacement theory or supersessionism steadily gained favour until in the Middle Ages it represented the standard theological foundation of the relationship with Judaism: the promises and commitments of God would no longer apply to Israel because it had not recognised Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God, but had been transferred to the Church of Jesus Christ which was now the true ‘new Israel’, the new chosen people of God. … [But now a] replacement or supersession theology which sets against one another two separate entities, a Church of the Gentiles and the rejected Synagogue whose place it takes, is deprived of its foundations.[11]

It will take time for that new teaching to make its way into the hearts of the faithful, but we celebrate institutional repentance. That same year, 2015, an international group of orthodox rabbis declared,

Now that the Catholic Church has acknowledged the eternal Covenant between G-d and Israel, we Jews can acknowledge the ongoing constructive validity of Christianity as our partner in world redemption, without any fear that this will be exploited for missionary purposes. [12]

4. We mustn’t ever be afraid to look at the whole story of how we got where we are, or think we are. We must bravely ask the question that may take us to the next layer, unafraid to seek honest answers, with courage to hear them or speak them. We mustn’t be afraid to look at the whole story, not afraid to let our children and grandchildren read every book in the library, because freedom awaits those who do the work.

5. We rejoice in hope. Or as Gary Baum put it, “Christianity is a messianism that is unfulfilled. … Christians stand together with Jews looking for the fulfillment of the promises in the future, restless in this world, ever discerning the injustices and the evil in the present, and open to the victorious coming of God’s power to renew human life on this earth.”[13] Or in the words of A. J. Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, “both Judaism and Christianity are unfinished projects awaiting the messiah, though they differ in beliefs about this messiah’s identity and job description. … Both await fulfillment—each in its own way.[14]

Amen to that. We await fulfillment—with joyful hope, for God is faithful.

[1] Along with 1 and 2 Chronicles and 2 and 3 John. See the helpful index at https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/sunday-citations/

[2] https://tennesseelookout.com/2024/07/15/for-the-second-week-in-a-row-neo-nazis-take-over-nashville-streets/

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/davidson/2024/07/16/neo-nazis-disrupt-nashville-council/74434069007/

[3] Magda Teter, Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2024), 1.

[4] Fred Craddock, Hebrews (NIB), 4-5.

[5] Amy-Jill Levine, Marc Zvi Brettler, The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (New York: HarperCollins, 2020), 137.

[6] Ibid., 146; emphasis added.

[7] Ibid., 147.

[8] James D. G. Dunn, Neither Jew Nor Greek: A Contested Identity (United Kingdom, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2015), 649.

[9] Franklin Littell, The Crucifixion of the Jews, 1975, 29.

[10] Romans 11:29

[11] “THE GIFTS AND THE CALLING OF GOD ARE IRREVOCABLE” (Rom 11:29): A Reflection on Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of “Nostra ætate” (No. 4) http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/commissione-per-i-rapporti-religiosi-con-l-ebraismo/commissione-per-i-rapporti-religiosi-con-l-ebraismo-crre/documenti-della-commissione/en.html

[12] To Do the Will of Our Father in Heaven: Toward a Partnership between Jews and Christians https://www.ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/documents-and-statements/jewish/orthodox-2015dec4

[13] Gregory Baum, Introduction, in: Rosemary Radford Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism(United States, Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1996)

[14] Amy-Jill Levine, Marc Zvi Brettler, The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (New York: HarperCollins, 2020), 418.

Three Courageous Friends

Margie Quinn

The book of Daniel is, as one scholar put it, the most unusual book in the Hebrew bible. The first chapters of the book are “court tales” about a mad King, a fiery furnace, and a lion's den. The second half of the book reveals strange visions and wild dreams of beasts from the sea and the like, that are so fantastical it’s hard to make sense of them. It’s an apocalyptic book just like the book of Revelation. But apocalypse doesn’t mean “doomsday” or “end of the world” in this case. It means “unveiling or “uncovering.” It simply reveals what already is. 

Many scholars think that a few of these stories are folklore, told around a campfire as a way to orally preserve stories of faith and resistance. So, let me tell you a little faithful, fiery folklore this morning. 

In the third chapter of this book of unveiling, we meet the mad King Nebuchadnezzar, the conqueror of Jerusalem, the man who is responsible for the destruction of the Temple, who forced many of God’s people, the Jewish people, to live in exile under military occupation. Exile for the Israelites was an experience of military defeat, deportation and oppression in a new and strange land, which ended their days of independence. 

In the same year that the Temple, the true place of worship for God’s people, comes down, this mad monarch wants to erect a golden statue as a new symbol of worship. We’re not quite sure what the statue was of, some scholars think it was of King Neb himself, but it doesn’t really matter: the King had the economic and political power, (and a particular kind of pride that derives its prestige and privilege from the suffering of others) to do whatever he wanted. This statue is set up in the plain of Dura, meaning that the politically occupied people, the colonized people, would have to walk by it every day, constantly reminded of their inferiority in this strange land. 

Isn’t that what colonialism does? We’ve seen it before– settlers take over land that is not theirs and build statues symbolizing their conquests, their inventions, their victories, and their heroes, making sure that the people striving for a kin-dom of God know that this is the kingdom of Babylon. 

Why does he demand the golden statue? Because he can. He’s rich enough. He has enough gold. And not only that, he has enough people in government who hang on his every word, his minions, with whom he can demand obedience. We learn in verse 2 that he sends for all of these leaders, the highest officials of government who represent Babylonian power, to gather around the statue. They have been called by the King to attend his little statue dedication party. When they’re all there, they learn that every time they hear a particular musical ensemble or anthem, if you will, they should fall down and worship this golden statue. And, as verse 6 tells us, “Whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire.”

DUN DUN DUN….are you seeing the set up here? 

Enter Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Which aren’t even their god-given, Hebrew names but the names that the King has forced upon them. Their Jewish names, Azariah, Hananiah, and Mishael, are taken from them, their identities stripped and changed to fit into the language of conquest. Sound familiar? 

The King has changed their names, because as history shows us, the best way to enslave the minds of oppressed people is to take away their cultural identities, change their names, change their hair and their clothes and forbid them from speaking their native language. 

The first thing we learn about these three friends is that they won’t bow down to his object of gold. You see, a group of people come up to King Neb and alert him to the fact that certain “foreigners” living under his imperial control are disobeying his command. These three courageous friends, who were actually given leadership positions to oversee Babylonian affairs, who have already tasted a little bit of what it feels like to be among the political elite, throw a wrench in the King’s plan. The narrative of “whatever Neb wants, King Neb gets,” stops here. 

These three courageous friends, these lowly Jewish exiles, stand in faith before the King as he asks, “Is it true…that you don’t serve my gods or worship my statue?” Giving them one more chance to change their minds, he states again, “Now, like I said before, if you’re ready, when you hear the anthem, fall down and worship…but if you don’t, you’ll be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire, and who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?” 

I hate spoiler alerts but spoiler alert: we know who this God is who will deliver them out of the King’s hands. This is the God who delivered the Israelites from Egypt, who gave Esther the courage to stand up to the mad King Ahasuerus, the same God who likes to do some of his best work in burning bushes and fiery furnaces. I digress. 

These three courageous friends stubbornly refuse to compromise their faith, even in the face of royal wrath and terrible threats. In fact, they double down, despite knowing that their faith has consequences. 

These three courageous friends let him know that they don’t need to get into an argument with him about their Deliverer. In fact, they don’t state that God will definitely deliver them. Instead they say, “ If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.” Even if their God doesn’t deliver them, they still won’t obey the King’s commands. Imagine having that kind of faith, that kind of courage, to resist the powers that be even if you don’t know the outcome of your actions. 

Still, their faith has consequences–it leads them right into the fire. The King orders that the furnace be heated up to 7x its normal temperature and gets his strongest guards to bind them and throw them into the furnace. They are bound and thrown in and because the fire is so overheated, the flames kill the King’s own guards who lifted the men into it. The rage of the King is so great, it results in the senseless loss of some of his own officials. 

The three friends fall down, bound, into the furnace of blazing fire. King Neb is watching the whole thing. “Wait a minute,” he asks his minions, “didn’t we throw in three men?” “True, O King,” they reply.  “But I see four men in there, unbound, walking in the middle of the fire…and they aren’t hurt…and the fourth has an appearance of a god.” 

He immediately approaches the door and says, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!” Did you pick up on that? He recognizes that the God who delivers them is not a god of gold but the most High God, their God. 

So, they come out of the fire. And all of the minions gather and see that the fire “had not had any power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their heads was not singed, their tunics were not scorched, and not even the smell of fire came from them.” 

King Neb blesses them for their courage and admits that an angel of their God has delivered them because they trusted their God. This is, what we would call, a plot twist. All of the sudden, this King who tried to culturally and spiritually assimilate these men by tempting them with power and prestige, recognizes that their God has delivered them. In the big ending of this story, King Neb is humbled enough to give them credit for disobeying his command and “yielding up their bodies rather than serve and worship any God except their own. “The humbling of the mighty emperor,” Daniel Christopher-Smith writes, “was instigated by the civil disobedience of three who lived by another reality, because they served another Sovereign.” Another reality. Another sovereign. 

As people of faith, we have a lot to learn from these three courageous friends. As people of faith, we will inevitably find ourselves in opposition to dominant culture and idolatrous patriotism. As people of faith, we will find ourselves resisting a culture based on military conquests and economic abuse of conquered peoples. 

And we have two choices. Will we fall on our knees to worship the symbols of worldly power in all of its religious expressions or will we refuse to be moved by the music of national interest, unwilling to bow before the golden statues of the people in power? 

We must be willing to walk through the fire, not alone but with courageous friends, knowing that there is an angel of God who walks with us every step of the way. 

We may be afraid, the road may seem long, and it may be very daunting to resist what the King offers. But the most High God beckons us to step into a radical faith, not the Babylon-poisoned faith of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego but the ancient, bold faith of Azariah, Hananiah, and Mishael. 

Amen. 

The Wailing Women

Margie Quinn

There is a group of women in Seattle who call themselves the Women in Black. They stand vigil on the streets of Seattle for one hour any time a homeless person dies from exposure or violence. I remember working with people living on the streets of Seattle. I remember the first time someone from the street that I knew died. His name was Dylan and he was just a kid. He died by a lamp post not far from our office. I know this because on my way to work, I saw a group of youth I recognized from the streets, gathered around the lamp post. They told me what happened. Their dear friend, Dylan, had died. Dylan’s death wasn’t in the news. He didn’t get an obituary, his death went unnoticed for the most part. But the Women in Black noticed, were made aware and grieved for him. 

The Women in Black collect the names of our unhoused neighbors, hold signs with them, announce to the public that one of God’s children has died from the elements, exposure, even street violence. They held vigil for Dylan and still today, they hold vigil for those in King County, cutting through the statistics on homelessness to name the people behind the numbers.
The Women in Black is actually an international organization, standing vigil all around the world when injustice and senseless violence takes lives. They have stood vigil for the 40,000 people who have died in Gaza, and will surely stand vigil for Sonya Massey, a Black woman who was shot and killed by a police officer on July 6th after calling 911 for help. Did you know her name? These women do. 

We often refer to Jeremiah as the Weeping Prophet. His eyes are a fountain of tears, he weeps for his people day and night. He weeps with God throughout the book because of the hurt of God’s people. God’s people have disregarded God’s law and followed Baal’s law. There has been a series of attacks on the Judeans and a significant number of them have been forced into exile by the Babylonians. Violence and destruction overrun the city and the temple. And there is a lot of death. In chapter 9 verse 21, Death is personified as creeping through the windows, entering the palaces, leaving its mark on all. Suffice it to say, there is very little hope for liberation in the book of Jeremiah. 

All of this death and destruction makes God angry. Even before we arrive at Chapter 9, we see the indignation of God as she takes in this chaos. In Chapter 5, God urges Jeremiah, “Run to and fro the streets of Jerusalem, look around and take note! Search its squares and see if you can find one person who acts justly, and seeks truth, so that I may pardon Jerusalem.” 

God’s people, who have eyes, but do not see, who have ears, but do not hear. This God is hurt by the people she liberated from oppression–she is fed up and in the previous verses, declares that she is going to “give them poisonous water to drink, scatter them and send a sword after them” because they have forsaken the law, not obeyed her voice, stubbornly followed their own hearts and worshiped the false idol, Baal. 

Eventually, though, her rage turns to sadness. God feels the devastation of war in his own self. The highly visible wounds inflicted on the city and his people cause deep-seated suffering for God. But instead of turning away from his people, he enters into solidarity with those reeling from trauma. The same God who wanted to poison his people finally breaks down in tears and, In the only message addressed exclusively to women in the Hebrew bible, God calls for the wailing women.  

Listen to what scripture says: “Call for the mourning women to come, send for the skilled women to come. Let them raise a dirge over us so that our eyes may run down with tears and our eyelids flow with water.” 

Who are these wailing women? They are professional mourners. They have been trained in the ritual of public witness, of vocalizing what the people need to express, of lamenting on behalf of a community that has faced extreme loss. They demonstrate how to react appropriately in light of all of the destruction and death. They understand that grief is meant to be shared, that communal lament is a necessary response in the wake of unimaginable pain. They are God’s chosen grievers. 

And yes, they may have traditionally held very little power in the public sphere, but when they are summoned, they have the power to bring the community together to grieve. 

Their grief is not performative or quick. When they enter the stage, as Juliana Classens writes, there is no “happily ever after” moment that comes out of this. They simply raise their voices in lament to help the community deal with its trauma. God calls on them to show a community how to name what they have lost, something that the people in power do not want them to do.

Walter Brueggeman refers to the people in power as having a “royal consciousness.” “Royal Israel” leads people to numbness about death. It delights in apathy, in our ability to ignore the ongoing suffering in our communities and skip straight to despair, knowing that despair paralyzes us, desensitizes us, makes us bitter and unfeeling. It whispers to us that we should move on quickly.

And yet God knows and the women know that a public expression of grief is the way to subvert this royal consciousness. First, it is therapeutic. It helps people deal with societal grief by naming tragedy without avoiding the pain. Isn’t this how we take the first steps toward recovery and healing? Second, it bears witness. It tells the truth about what has happened, urging the community not to forget but to be brave about naming the people and the pain behind the numbers. Third, it is prophetic. It is a powerful, visible expression to the fact things are not as they should be. 

The wailing women have showed up not just in Judea but in our lives today 

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Black Sash, a group of South African women who opposed apartheid. This group began in 1955, when six working-class white women laid a black sash over a replica of the constitution as the powers-that-be tried to take away the voting rights of people of color. These women continued to wear black sashes in protest over the loss of constitutional rights and over the horrors of apartheid. They organized marches, held overnight vigils and wept for the destruction of their country. Perhaps people heard their wailing in the streets, “How we are ruined!” they may have said. “We are utterly ashamed!” they may have cried. 

The Black Sash and the Women in Black know what the wailing women knew…it is not only up to them to grieve the violence and injustice around them. God says, “teach your daughters to weep, and each to her neighbor a lament.” Professional mourning, the ritual of wailing over devastation, cannot just fall on a group of trained mourners. They must go out and teach others how to show up to funerals, lead congregations in songs of grief or give us the permission to let our eyes flow with tears. 

Mamie Till Mobely, the mother of Emmit Till, knew this, too. When she realized that she wouldn’t be able to get through the incomprehensible murder of her son without calling on her neighbors to lament, she made a decision that cut through the royal consciousness of white America. At Emmit’s funeral, she insisted on an open casket so that the world could “see what they done to my baby.” Over 50,000 people surrounded the church that day, weeping and wailing in the streets, grieving together and in doing so, becoming reinvigorated to fight for justice together. Like Jeremiah, their eyes were a fountain of tears. 

Tears–a way of solidarity when no other form remains. Tears–perhaps the only way out of grief toward hope. Tears that cut through the numbness and ache with God. Tears–that break open our hearts of stone, as Ezekiel says, and expose our hearts of flesh. Tears–that allow people to take back some of their power and to boldly say “No” to the forces of domination and violence.

It is tempting, church, to skip Good Friday and run right to Easter, to skip the haunting stories of Herod, who aimed to kill Jesus, and go straight to Christmas. But we are not a people of a candy theology and cheap hope. We are the children of a God who weeps, a prophet who cries and a group of women who grieve. We need to weep, trusting that those who mourn, as the gospel of Matthew says,  shall be comforted. We need to remember that before our savior rose, he wept, reminding us that only those who embrace and name the reality of death will receive new life. 

We need to weep, church, for the ongoing genocide in Gaza, for the death of Sonya Massey, and for the 181 people who died living on the streets in Nashville last year. We need to weep for the destruction of our precious earth, for the victims of mass shootings, and for the losses in our own communities and families. 

This morning, I invite you to become a neighbor of lament with the wailing women, to allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to have a broken heart and to cry out loudly that things are not as they should be. Weep with Jeremiah, ache with God, wail with the women,  Do not shy away from lament, for in doing so you may numb yourself to the possibility of hope. 

Radical hospitality

Thomas Kleinert

Parker Palmer tells the story about an early-morning flight home. “Our departure was delayed,” he writes, “because the truck that brings coffee to the planes had broken down.” I didn’t know coffee was needed for planes to fly; I thought they ran on jet fuel. I was wrong.

After they had been sitting at the gate for a while, the pilot announced, “Good morning, folks, this is your captain speaking. I’m sorry, but we’re going to take off without the coffee. We want to get you to Detroit on time.” Immediately, the under-caffeinated passengers began griping, loudly and at length, about “incompetence,” “lousy service,” etc.

Once they got into the air, the lead flight attendant got on the intercom and said, with sunshine in her voice, “Good morning! We’re flying to Minneapolis today at an altitude of 30 feet…” A little levity might help reduce the tension, she must have thought. Then she continued, “Now that I have your attention… I know you’re upset about the coffee. Well, get over it! Here’s a thought: That bag of seven pretzels you got on your last flight and put in your pocket? Open it, pass it around. Got any gum or mints? Share them. That morning paper you brought? You can’t read all the sections at once. Offer them to each other!” As she went on in that vein, people relaxed and began doing what she had told them to do, laughing and chatting, and quickly a plane load of grumpy travelers turned into happy campers!

A moment later, as the attendant passed by his seat, Palmer signaled to her. “What you did was really amazing,” he said. “Where can I send a letter of commendation?”

“Thanks,” she said, “I’ll get you a form.” Then she leaned down and whispered, “Loaves and fishes, I tell you. Loaves and fishes.”[1]

The story of Jesus feeding a multitude is the only miracle story told in all four Gospels, and in Matthew and Mark, it’s even told twice. Clearly, it’s a favorite across many streams of early Christian tradition. Believers heard echoes of Israel’s wilderness journey with Moses and of the tales about Elisha, the man of God. Palmer writes,

As far as I’m concerned, that story doesn’t involve any magic. It’s about the miracle of sharing in community, an everyday miracle that anyone with some courage can pull off. [2]

That’s certainly one way to hear the story of the loaves and fishes. I agree that it doesn’t involve any magic, but reducing it to an everyday miracle that anyone with some courage can pull off rips out the heart of the story: Jesus. The first followers of Jesus who told and retold this story had little interest in introducing us to a man who orchestrated the miracle of sharing in community so that we may learn how it’s done. The writer of the fourth Gospel we know as John tells us about Jesus so that we may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing we may have life in his name.[3] He writes, because he wants us to come and see in Jesus what he has come to see, and to find the fullness of life he has found in the company of Jesus.

A crowd of five thousand, a boy’s lunch of five barley rolls and some fish, and all ate as much as they wanted until even the teenage boys in the crowd put their hands on their bellies and said, “I’m kinda full.” The disciples went around and picked up the broken pieces, and they filled twelve baskets. Go ahead, do the math. Five plus two, divided by 5,000 equals fullness for all and baskets of leftovers. That’s kingdom math.

Palmer is right, the story doesn’t involve magic, but that doesn’t mean it’s the first-century version of a how-to video. It’s the testimony of the first witnesses about Jesus in whom they encountered the living, life-giving, truth-speaking, grace-outpouring, fully embodied presence of God. The word of God in human flesh. Grace and truth as tangible as bread and fish, as delightful as wine at a wedding, and abundant beyond imagination.

Passover, the festival of liberation, was near, John tells us. Passover was very near indeed, and not just on the calendar. In today’s reading, echoes of manna in the wilderness and the crossing of the perilous sea touch on ancient promises, memories, and hopes of redemption. Passover was near in the person and proclamation of Jesus.

When he saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” John says it was a test, and that Jesus already knew what he was going to do. It was Jesus who talked about buying bread, and Philip quickly did the math he knew. “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little,” he said, no need to mention that none of them had that kind of cash. It was a test, but it wasn’t a math test. Andrew pointed to the boy’s lunch and shrugged, “What’s that among so many people?” Neither went out of his way to offer a solution to Jesus’ question. Neither could see the situation as placing the demands of hospitality on them. They could see themselves only on the edge of the scene, only as bystanders and observers, not at all as capable participants in the banquet of grace.

Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. He didn’t ask them if they were Gentile or Jew or Samaritan. He didn’t inquire if they were getting their second or third serving. They all ate - men, women, children, rich, poor, left, right, locals, strangers, queer, straight - the whole world; they all ate, as much as they wanted. Imagine the scene at any place you want, at any time - in a camp in Sudan, amid the ruins in Gaza, on a bridge in Paris, under a bridge in Nashville - they all ate, as much as they wanted.

What about the boy? What about Philip and Andrew? The focus has shifted away from them. Jesus did all the work. “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost,” he told the disciples, and from the fragments left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. Whereas before we may have identified with the boy, or with Philip or Andrew, or anyone in the crowd, now we’re invited to see ourselves holding baskets — not to-go boxes, but baskets full of bread: more than enough for the feast of life to continue.

In John’s story, the people who encountered Jesus and tasted life in abundance, began to draw their conclusions about him. Like any of us, in the framework of their experience, they tried to identify the place where Jesus fit it, and they called him the prophet. And when Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him to make him king, he withdrew. Why did he withdraw? Why wouldn’t he let them crown him? He healed people, so obviously he knew how to make healthcare affordable and accessible! He fed people, so clearly he knew a thing or two about the economy! His character was flawless; there was not even a hint of corruption. Wasn’t he the best man for the job? Why did he withdraw at the precise moment when he was about to be confirmed as king by public acclamation?

We know he is no king in the mold of the Roman emperors who distributed free grain in the capital to keep the people from rebelling. We know he doesn’t conform to our systems of power. We now he subverts our dreams of domination by giving life and the freedom to live as children of God to all. We know he is the healer, the prophet and the king, and that his life has redefined and transfigured all these terms. We know a lot. What we have a hard time remembering is that as those who’ve eaten at his table and have gathered up the fragments as he told us, we now are holding baskets full of bread in our hands. What we tend to forget is that now it’s all about practicing the radical hospitality of God we have encountered in Jesus.

During the bombing raids of World War II, thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care. But, many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night. They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food. Nothing seemed to reassure them. Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace. All through the night the bread reminded them, “Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.”[4]

I love that story. I love the way people responded to the trauma and the needs of these orphaned children with care and creativity. I love the reminder that pieces of bread tell stories of community and promise.

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”[5] Just imagine, will you, a world where we don’t forget that we are holding baskets filled with bread in our hands, for all to eat.

[1] Based on Palmer’s post at https://onbeing.org/blog/loaves-and-fishes-are-not-dead/

[2] Ibid.

[3] John 20:31

[4] Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, Matthew Linn, Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1995), 1.

[5] John 6:35

Feeding the Flock

Margie Quinn

I feel like a broken record after preaching on the Gospel of Mark over the last month. I’ve reiterated that it’s a fast-paced gospel. Jesus is on the move, trying to flee from the crowds after healing and preaching so that, well my guess is that he can get a little alone time, but also so that he can continue to spread the good news before his inevitable arrest and execution. It’s a gospel on steroids, a gospel that is out of breath. Jesus calms storms, feeds thousands, walks on water. Most resonant with me, though, is the constant, compassionate way in which Jesus heals the people deemed unhealable, untouchable and unloveable. 

In our passage this morning, we meet the Disciples and Jesus, gathered together after Jesus has sent them out in twos to heal people and share the freeing news of the gospel with them. I can feel their eagerness as the Disciples share with Jesus all of the work they have put in. Perhaps they gathered around him, talking over each other impatiently to relay their experiences: “I sat with a woman who was sick and anointed her head with oil!” “I cured a man of his loneliness by offering him comfort and presence.” “I told a big group about you over dinner the other night.” “I had some challenging conversations with people very different from me, offering hope where they had none.” 

I can imagine Jesus’ beaming face, communicating to them with one look the same sentiment he received from God at the beginning of his ministry, “You are beloved, with you I am well-pleased.” 

We learn next that amidst their comings and goings, the Disciples have forgotten to nourish themselves, even to eat. How many of us get so caught up in the flurry of our days that we forget to feed ourselves, to breathe? I can hear the gentleness in Jesus’ tone as he says, “Come away and rest a while.” 

The tender, loving words of a shepherd who attends to his flock.

Before they can even take a load off in a deserted place, the frenzy of people swarm them, him, once again. There is, as usual in the Gospel of Mark, an urgency with which people pursue Jesus. Why? 

The system has failed these people. In this same chapter, we read about King Herod’s birthday party, in which the political elite serve up John the Baptist’s head on a platter. The people in power continue to spread fear, threatened by the growing whispers of hope. 

These frenzied crowds are people who are vulnerable in a predatory world, voiceless and seemingly ignored when they try to speak up and beg to be made well. Who guards their human dignity? Who fights for their economic stability, access to healthcare, reproductive rights?

 They have gotten too accustomed to fending for themselves. They have grown bitter and calloused, unable to utter the words “hope” lest they be disappointed once again. No wonder they chase Jesus around. They are a flock desperate  to be brought back into the fold. 

They have heard that Jesus, as Matt Skinner writes, “who is a dangerous figure in the eyes of the higher-ups, who claims spiritual authority, challenges the powers that be, who draws people to deserted places, along seashores, in villages and cities and farms and marketplaces,” is giving support to harassed people, feeding hungry people and  healing sick people. 

So, Jesus, when confronted with another crowd, doesn’t shoo them off or send them to voicemail. He “had great compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

Compassion, meaning that Jesus chooses to involve himself in their suffering.  

We know the words commonly associated with Jesus. Messiah, Savior, Redeemer, King of Kings, Bread of Life, Son of the Living God–we read the many words that attempt to describe the fullness of the one who came to liberate and claim spiritual authority. But here, today, we have a new word: Shepherd. Does that give you solace, too?

This shepherd has great compassion on them and chooses to involve himself in their suffering. He sees their longing eyes, hears their desperate cries and as usual, stops what he is doing to teach and heal. 

He devotes himself to healing not just physical wounds, but I believe that he works to ensure the human flourishing of heart, mind, spirit. He restores their brokenness, notices their loneliness, offers provision amidst scarcity. He offers rest, he offers food, he tends to his flock. 

What would it have been like? To experience compassion from this authority figure? I look around at our leaders today and shake my head in resignation. We live among shepherds, who, as Jeremiah states, “use their words to scatter rather than attend to.” Shepherds who destroy and divide a flock that is desperate for healing and hope. Then, I read about this shepherd who brings everyone back to the fold and I rest in the words of Mark. I read God’s promise in Jeremiah, that God will “raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd, and they shall no longer fear or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing.” I take a deep breath and remember: My help, my hope, is in the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. 

This maker of heaven and earth sent a shepherd to us, whose compassion had consequences. His actions altered economies in households and neighborhoods, transformed relationships, urged people to consider old allegiances. They give people hope. Remember hope? “The thing with feathers,” as Emily Dickson describes it, “that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all?” 

And never stops at all. 

Lately, my hope wants to stop, to withdraw, to resign itself into scoffing, mocking, numbing.

Until I read about a healer. A shepherd. In whom I place my hope. Who doesn’t use cynicism and fear to control people, who doesn’t stifle human flourishing, who doesn’t threaten the flock but instills in it a thing with feathers, who calls hope out of hiding. Who sees us as beloved. Who leads us beside still waters, prepares a table for us, who invites us to come away from our bustling lives and panicked outlooks and rest awhile, who offers us goodness and mercy all the days of our lives.

A shepherd who folds us all in, missing no one, healing everyone. Who sees our world, our country, the hopelessness and haggardness, the desperation and despair, and has compassion on all of us. May we rest, knowing that our hope is in the one who attends to us and takes care of us, even in deserted places.  

Amen.

Whose Banquet?

Thomas Kleinert

What a gloomy story that is.  You were hoping for something to feed your soul, weren’t you? Good news of great joy. Glad cries of deliverance. Especially now, when the cultural mood can only be described as ‘gloomy’, no matter how blue the skies are.

Instead we get this tale of a ghastly birthday banquet like something straight out of Game of Thrones: Ambition. Scheming. Seduction. Fear. Brutal violence.

It was Herod’s birthday. This was Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great. He loved it when people called him king, because that’s what he dreamed of being someday: the one with the power to make the truth whatever he wanted it to be. The title the Emperor in Rome had given Herod Antipas after the death of his father, was Tetrarch, “ruler of a quarter” in English: rather than trusting one man with the whole realm, Rome divided it between him and his brothers. Antipas got Galilee.

So this was his birthday, and he had invited officials and dignitaries to a banquet at the palace. Course after course of delicious food, prepared and presented to impress, and plenty to drink—before, during, and after dinner. You’ve heard the end of the story, so you already know it wasn’t the kind of party King Charles and Queen Camilla would host on the occasion of the royal birthday. Speaking of the queen, it was common for the women—had they been at the banquet at all—to leave the room after the meal, and then there would be more drinking and after-dinner entertainment.

Herod was in a splendid mood—the wine, the food, the lavish praise of ingratiating toasts—and on a whim he asked the daughter of Herodias to dance for his guests. Herodias was his wife, his second wife, to be precise, but she used to be his brother Philip’s wife, and she wasn’t a widow. No big deal in Roman law, particularly among the leading families, but in Jewish law this kind of marriage was forbidden. John the Baptist, the wilderness prophet, was very clear about it: “It is not lawful for you to have her.”[1] The fact that Herodias was also Herod’s niece apparently was no cause for concern.

Anyway, Herod, not known as a proud supporter of free speech, had John arrested, bound, and put in prison. Mark presents this as some kind of compromise, protective custody, as it were, because Herodias wanted the Baptizer dead. ‘Let him tell his truth to the dungeon walls,’ Herod may have suggested to calm his vengeful wife.

So, after dinner Herod asked the daughter of Herodias to dance for him and his guests. You may imagine a young princess in ballet shoes and a tutu, delighting the guests with a sequence from Swan Lake, but this was not that kind of dance. Let’s just say this was something typically done by professionals, and not the kind of dance your typical dad would want his daughter to perform in front of a bunch of drunk men. But Herod wasn’t your average dad and so he did ask and he watched and he was pleased and he promised on oath to grant her a wish. “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.”

“Kingdom” was a big word, of course, too big, really, but he was dreaming of becoming king, and he wanted to impress not just the girl, but his guests, with his royal generosity, and he may have had a few drinks too many. “Whatever you ask me, I will give you.”

She didn’t ask for a pony. She asked her mother. And she rushed back to Herod, “I want you to give me, right now, on a platter—the head of John the Baptist.” The platter was the girl’s idea.

Herod may have been reluctant to grant the request, but he couldn’t afford to lose face in front of his VIP guests, who had heard him make the foolish promise. Not if he wanted to continue to be the empire’s man in Galilee; not if he wanted to hold on to his kingdom dreams. So he sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head.

The death of the prophet was the final course at the palace, and the closing line of this story shows us John’s disciples who came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.

What do you do with a terrible story like that? Do you find anything resembling life and hope in it? It’s so bloody realistic: the party is over, the prophet is dead. What do you do with a story that ends in a tomb?

Mark, of course, tells us this gloomy tale as part of a larger story, one that encourages us to see beyond the tomb. Mark inserts this tale right after telling his readers about the rejection Jesus experienced in his hometown and how he responded by sending out the twelve two by two. The message I hear, is, Be prepared for rejection when you proclaim the nearness of God’s reign! And the disciples went out and proclaimed that all should repent. And they cast out all kinds of evils that bind and oppress people and they brought hope and healing to many communities. Proclaiming repentance, they did exactly what John had done before he was arrested, and driving out demons, they did what Jesus did, with awesome power—healing, liberating work.

When Herod heard of it, he was afraid: “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” Herod worried the fearless kingdom messenger had risen from the dead. He had sent men who arrested and bound John and put him in prison, and he himself had sent a soldier of the guard to bring him John’s head… Mark tells us how Jesus sent the twelve to liberate and heal, and in the next scene he tells us about Herod who sent men under his authority to bind and lock up and kill. Mark wants us to see, in this and every story of his Gospel, the clash between two visions of power: the empire of death and the kingdom of life. He has inserted the gruesome banquet scene as a commentary between the sending of the Twelve and their return: it’s a flashback to what Herod did to John, and a flashforward to what Pilate will do to Jesus. Don’t be surprised, the commentary goes, when the world doesn’t gladly receive the good news of God’s reign as a gift of liberation and new life—don’t be surprised when the world can only see your message and ministry as a threat to its own dreams of greatness and domination. Mark tells you and me and any who wish to follow Jesus as servants of God’s kingdom, “Be prepared, not only for rejection and ridicule, but also for violent push-back from the servants of empire.”

And to the degree that we ourselves have been shaped by aspirations of domination, we do not gladly receive the good news of God’s reign, but can only see it as a threat to our own dreams of ruling. We would be foolish to assume that the line between the servants of God’s reign and the servants of empire can be drawn as clearly between us and others as it was between Herod’s banquet hall and the dungeon down below—the line runs through us.

The real struggle for us who wish to follow Jesus is to faithfully live as servants of God’s reign, to hear the call to repentance, to hear the call to discipleship, to hear the call to mission and service, and to humbly follow that call, again and again, trusting in the faithfulness of God—especially when fear and gloom are swamping the land.

Mark tells us the story of Jesus to help us see beyond the tomb, beyond all that threatens to bury our hope: The murder of the prophet does not stop the truth of God. The crucifixion of the witness does not put an end to God’s determination to redeem all of creation. And the ridiculing  and silencing of the servants of God’s reign cannot prevail. Why? Because justice is not merely a prophet’s demand; and compassion is not merely the wishful dream of the unnoticed, the unheard and unseen; and love is not merely a fuzzy consolation for those who lack power. The ridiculing and silencing of the servants of God’s reign cannot prevail, because justice, compassion, and love are at the heart of who God is.

Verse 30 is not part of today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark, but it’s very much part of the story. Mark tells us the apostles gathered around Jesus, and they told him all that they had done and taught. They told him about their struggle to live as servants of God’s reign in the world, and they did so surrounded by a multitude of people, men and women, children and adults who were longing for life, longing for healing and forgiveness, for new beginnings—so many, they had no leisure even to eat.

And that’s when we hear about the other banquet. That’s when we hear about the birthday banquet of the world to come where all who are hungry eat their fill, and the leftovers fill twelve baskets. That’s next Sunday’s Gospel reading, stretching the contrast between the banquets across the entire work week: The banquet of Herod the wannabe king, and the kingdom banquet of Jesus.[2]

This is the week when we collect bottles of water for our homeless neighbors. ‘What’s a bottle of water when people need housing and healthcare and jobs?’ you may ask. That’s a very good question, don’t ignore it—just don’t let it keep you from making your contribution to the banquet Jesus is hosting. At Herod’s party of bending tables and bottomless pitchers you’re unlikely to have a single sip or morsel that doesn’t leave a bitter taste in your mouth. There you must be willing to swallow the lies, the shameless flattery, the fear, and the violence. But outside the palace, Jesus is hosting the feast of life.

I don’t want to be at Herod’s party and I want no piece of his cake. I want to be where Jesus makes a banquet from five loaves of bread, two fishes, and a few bottles of water. Where will you go?

[1] See Leviticus 18:13-16; 20:21

[2] My assertion about “next Sunday’s Gospel reading” is not accurate. The Lectionary (Mk 6:30-34, 53-56) actually skips those verses, and moves to John 6 the following Sunday.