Life in Fullness
This is kingdom math: A crowd of five thousand, a boy’s lunch, and all ate as much as they wanted until they were satisfied. Then the disciples went around picking up the left over pieces, and they filled twelve baskets. No wonder this was a favorite story among the first Christians; Jesus feeding the five thousand is the one miracle that found its way into each of the four gospels.
Five plus two, divided by 5000 equals fullness for all and baskets of leftovers. This is kingdom math. What’s missing in this simple equation, though, is the most crucial element; whether our focus is on the overwhelming number of people or on the meager resources the disciples were able to identify, the story draws your eyes to the hands of Jesus: Jesus took the loaves, he offered thanks, and he distributed the food.
The first Christians loved this story because it pointed to the meal they celebrated every time they gathered on the Lord’s day. The same abundant grace that welcomed and fed the multitude by the sea, they remembered and encountered at the table.
We love this story because it shows us how grace flows freely from the source of life, the heart of God, the hands of Jesus, into our hands, our hearts, our lives. This is kingdom math: grace flows freely, and those who receive it discover life in fullness.
The first Christians also loved this story because it points back to the great story of the Exodus; it points to God’s mighty act of liberation when God’s people left the house of slavery and journeyed to the land of fullness, a land flowing with milk and honey.
We get a little hint right at the beginning, "Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near."
Very near indeed, and not just on the calendar, but in the events about to unfold. Passover was near in the person of Jesus. Liberation and the promise of fullness were present in the person 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?”
We get another hint: he said this to test him. Philip didn’t know it was a test, and so he quickly did the math he knew, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.”
But it wasn’t a math test, nor was it an employment test for the position of Director of Procurement and Purchasing. The test is for us: are we who are following Jesus on the way, both in the course of the story and in our lives as witnesses, are we beginning to see who he is?
Jesus’ question sounds very similar to one raised by Moses in the wilderness, when the Israelites were tired and hungry, and began to remember the house of slavery as a land of fleshpots.
“If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.”
And Moses turned to God and said, “Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? (…)Are there enough fish in the sea to catch for them(Numbers 11:4-5, 13, 22)?”
Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” and Andrew pointed out that two fish were barely worth mentioning.
With Moses and Israel in the wilderness, the question was, ‘Are the promises of the Lord trustworthy?’
With Jesus and the disciples and the crowd by the sea, the question is, ‘Are we beginning to see who Jesus is?’
Jesus was about to do another sign. “Make the people sit down,” he said.
Then he 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.
Grace flowed, food abounded until all were satisfied. None were asked if they were Gentile, Jew, or Samaritan. Male and female, young and old, rich and poor, wise and foolish – all ate until they were full. The fragments left over filled twelve baskets – enough for every tribe in the nation; enough for every month of the year, or perhaps simply enough. Whether it is wine at a wedding or bread at a picnic by the sea, there is enough for all to be filled until they want no more. This is more than kingdom math; this is life in fullness.
“Who do people say that I am?” The question doesn’t get asked here, but it is the one lingering in the background; and the people themselves give the answer.
When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.”
They had tasted life in abundance, and they began to draw their conclusions. Within the framework of their experience and knowledge, they tried to identify the place where Jesus would fit in, and 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 didn’t he let them crown him? He healed people, so obviously he knew how to make healthcare affordable and accessible. He fed people, so obviously he knew a thing or two about the economy. He taught people, so obviously he had a passion for education. His character was flawless; not even a hint of corruption. Some people may have questioned his positions on gun control or divorce – but still, wasn’t he the best man for the job? Why did he withdraw? Why did he withdraw at the precise moment when he was about to be confirmed as king by public acclamation?
You may have read the question somewhere on a church marquee, “If God seems far away, who moved?” The question implies that if God seems distant, God isn’t necessarily the one responsible. In this story, however, it is clearly Jesus who moved away, and the people who were left wondering where he went. Jesus withdrew to the mountain by himself.
Withdrawing Jesus showed that he would give what he had to give without claiming worldly power; that he would bring fullness of life only on his own terms, not by being pressed into the crowd’s mold of expectations. The miracle of bread and fish provided them with a glimpse of who he was, and they immediately tried to take his grace and twist it to conform to their purposes and the existing systems of power.
We get a glimpse of Jesus, and we immediately want him to be who we need him to be; but he only gives himself as who he is. As soon as we cast him into the mold of our expectations for a make-over in the image of our desires, he withdraws.
Grace is utterly free, and the path of our knowledge of God is littered with disappointed expectations and broken idols. Jesus is indeed prophet and king, teacher and healer, but he redefines all these terms in the mold of his life and mission. To follow him is to trust him enough to let him dismantle our illusions of fullness; and in their place we receive the fullness of grace and truth he embodies and reveals.
When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea toward Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.
There is the darkness of night fall when the sun slowly sinks behind the horizon, and there is the darkness that spreads when Jesus withdraws. This darkness is the frightening reality of his absence, and at the same time it is the darkness in which the light shines.
The sea is rough, the winds are strong, and the disciples are alone in the boat. Then they see him, walking on the sea as on solid ground, and they are terrified.
Listen to these lines from Psalm 77.
When the waters saw you, O God,
when the waters saw you,
they were afraid; the very deep trembled.
Your way was through the sea,
your path, through the mighty waters;
yet your footprints were unseen.
You led your people like a flock
by the hand of Moses and Aaron.
Passover was near indeed. The One who made a path through the mighty waters of the sea so Israel would be free to live as God’s people, was near in Jesus. The One who said to Moses by the burning bush, “I am who I am,” was near, saying, “I am I, do not be afraid.” They saw who he was; they saw the glory of God in Jesus.
Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.
John loves to play with multiple layers of meaning; his passion isn’t so much for kingdom math as it is for kingdom poetry.
On one level, the land toward which the they were going was of course Capernaum, the town on the other side of the lake, just another stop on the way.
On another level, though, the land toward which they were going was the land of God’s promise, the land of life in fullness.
The moment they saw Jesus – the moment they saw who he was and is and always will be – they arrived. May God bless us that we too may see as they have seen.
Come Away
Summertime, and the living is easy…
The smell of the season is a blend of peaches, tomatoes, and watermelon, hot dogs and fresh corn on the grill, and just a hint of sunscreen lotion wafting through the air. The sound of summer is a mix of children laughing by the pool, the faint thunder of a distant storm, and the raucous choir of crickets and treefrogs at night. The dress code is simple: barefoot, shorts and t-shirt; shaving is optional.
David Johnson, our camp manager at Bethany Hills, saw me after Nancy, Miles and I had spent a great week on the beach in Alabama, and he captured the experience perfectly in a little drawing: a preacher on the beach, with a sign next to his chair, “no shirt, no shoes, no service.”
Summertime – and blessed are those who can sit in the sun and watch the waves rolling up on the beach. You get up when you feel like getting up, and you go to bed when you’re tired. It’s a different rhythm, a different beat, and most would agree a better one than the relentless ticking of the clock driving you from one task or appointment to another.
“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves,” says Jesus, “and rest a while.” What a sweet commandment, and what a pleasure to keep it.
I love getting up early in the morning to make my coffee and sit on the back porch. Sometimes I take a book and read, sometimes I just sit and listen to the world waking up. Early morning is really the only time of day other than the night hours to enjoy the quiet and safely avoid the curse of the suburbs: anytime you sit outside or settle into the comfort of your hammock under a tree, at least one of the neighbors decides to mow their yard. Yet another great benefit of going to the beach: no one feels tempted to bring along a lawn tractor.
“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves,” says Jesus, “and rest a while.” We had arrived on Sunday afternoon, and on Monday morning I got up, made some coffee, grabbed my book and my readers, and sat on the deck. From my chair I could see Mobile Bay on one side and the gulf on the other; I could hear the waves, a few seagulls, and the soft voices of a couple of joggers running past the house. I watched brown pelicans fishing for breakfast as the sun slowly climbed above the pine trees. It was a moment of great beauty and peace – until a horrible sound pierced the morning air—a leaf blower.
I will not repeat the words that came across my lips on that first morning; let me just say that they felt highly appropriate at the time. First I thought that the curse of the suburbs had followed us nine hours south and that not even the early morning hours were safe from disrupting intrusions anymore. Then I saw him. The noise came from the house across the road; a house just like ours, sitting about nine feet above ground on pylons, with two vehicles parked underneath on the concrete slab, and wooden steps leading up to the deck and the entrance. Our neighbor, just as pale as myself and dressed in red shorts – clearly a very recent arrival – was blowing sand from the carport. The house was practically sitting on the beach, but he seemed determined to keep the sand where it belonged.
“I just hope this isn’t part of your daily routine, buddy,” I said to myself, wondering if their house came with a leaf blower or if he had brought it all the way from home. It takes a while to get used to the different rhythm of life by the ocean, I told myself. He probably woke up before everyone else in the house, and he was so used to doing stuff and staying busy, he just had to find something to do until the rest of the family got out of bed, I told myself. The rest of the week, thank God, the leaf blower remained silent.
“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while,” Jesus said to the disciples. They had just returned from their first mission trip. He had sent them out two by two, empowered to proclaim repentance, and bring wholeness by casting out demons and anointing the sick. They were no longer just followers, pupils, students or disciples – Mark refers to them here for the first and only time as apostles, that is, sent ones. They had been hearers of the new, authoritative word, and now they had become its bearers.
These emissaries, these newly-named apostles of the Lord gathered around Jesus, two by two, to tell him what they had done and taught. On their mission they had discovered, to their surprise, that they could do much of what they had observed Jesus do; that his authority and power became manifest in their own words and actions. They had stories to tell; yes, they were tired, but they were also wound up like children who cannot possibly go to sleep until they have shared every wondrous moment of their day.
“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while,” Jesus said to his excited and exhausted missionaries who had no leisure even to eat. There were people everywhere; people driven by curiosity and drawn by the promise of wholeness. People came to wherever they heard he was. So they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves, to a place with the promise of soul-nourishing solitude.
Just to be out on the water in the boat was great.
They pulled away from the shore, away from the daily demands, away from the needs and the noise.
Soon they heard nothing but the sound of the bow cutting through the swells and water dripping from the oars.
It didn’t last, though. When they pulled up on the other shore, they discovered that a crowd had followed them on land. It was as if there was simply no getting away from it all.
They could feel how the care and compassion in their bones was slowly turning into resentment, and they hated it.
They didn’t tell each other because they felt ashamed for what they could only describe as a profound lack of love and presence.
We’re all in that boat, disciples of Jesus, sent to proclaim good news and bring wholeness. But how do we respond when we feel emotionally and physically drained by the brokenness we encounter constantly? Compassion fatigue is a modern expression, but the men and women in that boat have known the reality it describes for centuries. Our emotional capacity to perceive, let alone respond to the demand made on us by human suffering is limited.
Jesus, thou art all compassion, pure, unbounded love thou art, we sing with Charles Wesley, and the song reminds us that we cannot depend on our own wells to draw strength for the great work of loving the world. God alone is all compassion, God alone is unbounded love, and we must learn to draw from the wells that never go dry.
The scene in Mark is so short, you have to intentionally slow down to not miss an important little detail.
As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
We are so eager to know what it was he taught them, that we almost miss what he is teaching us. We are so eager to know what it was he taught them, that we almost miss the fact that we are part of them. He looks at us and has compassion for us, because without him, we are like sheep without a shepherd. And then he goes ashore. And he does the teaching. And we stay in the boat and listen; we receive his gifts.
Some of us hear the word that forgives and renews, equips and sends, and we get up and go. Others hear the sound of the waves lapping gently against the shore, until we doze off, rocked to sleep like babies in a cradle. And when we awake, we rub our eyes and realize that the world turned without us.
We follow Jesus because in his presence we experience a conversion to a depth of life we did not know existed. We follow Jesus because in his presence our heart and mind and strength are transformed. We follow Jesus so we may live as those sent by him, drawing compassion from no other wells but his boundless love for God and the world.
In our mission work of teaching and healing we learn that our small words and actions can make the compassion of Christ manifest.
And when he calls us away to rest a while we learn that the same compassion can be at work without us; that can be a humbling experience for newly-named apostles, but ultimately it’s the most liberating experience for a disciple of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the summer.
Crossing Over
On Thursday I went to the maternity ward to meet Quinn Moseley, who was a just a little more than one day old then. I walked into the darkened room, greeted his parents, and there he was, all wrapped up, sound asleep, a perfect picture of peace.
The only thing I like better than looking at babies is holding them. Earlier this month, I drove to Lebanon to meet Jack McLaughlin, and I got to hold him because he was waking up anyway. I also got to hear him, because something was bothering him and he made it known.
Little Jack made me wonder what we do when something is bothering us before we are born – we cant scream in the womb. Little Quinn suggested that, in the womb, nothing can bother us – food comes to us, steady as our mother’s heartbeat; all other noises are muffled, the temperature is always right, we just curl up in the water and float in complete happiness – until the water breaks, that is. Then it’s gravity and bright lights, cold air, strange sounds and voices, and – very soon – hunger. But being born also means being welcomed by parents who hold us, feed us, whisper in our ears, keep us safe and warm, and respond to our presence with love and care.
It may well be the fact that we spend the first weeks and months of our existence immersed in water like fish in the ocean, that we have this life-long attraction to water. There’s nothing like soaking in a hot tub when your muscles are sore – or your soul. You just float in memories of complete happiness, and the tensions melt, the muscles relax, and your soul sings songs of joy and peace.
We love water; the pleasure of splashing and swimming and jumping in puddles; the satisfaction of a drink of cold water on a hot day; the calming sound of rain on the roof; the fun of water slides and snorkeling; the beauty of rivers, lakes, and water falls; the sound of waves rolling up on the beach; the fragrance of the earth after a gentle summer rain. We love water – it flows through our bodies, it freshens our tired spirits and revives our souls.
Jesus was baptized in a river, and he did much of his teaching by the lake, the Sea of Galilee. When the crowds who gathered to hear him got larger and larger, he asked his disciples to have a boat ready for him, so he could pull away from the shore and teach from the boat.
People heard his parables with the sound of water in the background, little waves lapping up onto the pebbles and rocks. People listened to his teaching while looking at the vast, open stretch of sea and sky. I don’t know if it was as beautiful a scene as I imagine it, but to me sitting by the water’s edge and listening to Jesus are two of my favorite things.
On that day, when evening had come, Jesus said to the disciples, “Let us go across to the other side,” and leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was.
Most of the people on the beach had gone home, they had things to do, meals to prepare, the kids had to get ready for bed; but some stayed and watched the boat go east.
“What business does he have going over there,” they wondered, “it’s all Gentiles on the other side, it’s unclean, full of unholy spirits. It’s not our people over there, not his people, what business does he have going over there?” Dark clouds were moving in, casting deep shadows on what had been a beautiful day on the beach.
Meanwhile, in the boat, the disciples were enjoying the evening breeze and quiet. It had been a long day, they were tired, and the gentle rocking of the boat almost put them to sleep.
But then the wind picked up; dark clouds began to build up behind them, and soon the storm broke lose. The waves beat into the boat, and it was being swamped. Some of the disciples were fishermen; they were accustomed to wind and waves, but nothing like this. Chaos had been unleashed, the raging wind whipping the water into a frenzy of waves and whirls – their little boat nothing but a nutshell.
The disciples got to see water’s other side, they saw that which makes us build fences around our pools, and wear life jackets in our boats, and stay close when our little ones are in the tub, long after they have learned to sit on their own. There’s danger in the water, and we better learn to respect it, because the moment we learn to breathe, we can drown.
The disciples knew that, they knew the danger of capsizing and going down into the deep. But they didn’t know Jesus. They saw him, curled up on a cushion, sleeping like a baby, a perfect picture of peace in the midst of the storm. They woke him, saying, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
Now why do you think they woke their teacher? Did they want to hear one last story before the boat went down? That seems unlikely. Did they need him to help them get the water out of the boat or hold the rudder? If they did, why didn’t they say so or hand him a pail? To me it sounds like they were anxious and they couldn’t stand that he didn’t seem to be the least bit troubled. “Do you not care that this little boat is going down and all of us with it?” They were frantic and the fact that he wasn’t made it worse.
Jesus woke up; Mark doesn’t even mention if he got up from the cushion. He woke up and rebuked the wind and the sea.
“Quiet! Be still!”
And it was so.
He spoke and it came to be.
He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.
Dead calm.
Can you see the disciples? They are sitting down, wide-eyed, barely breathing, their hands clenching the wall of the boat with white knuckles. Before, they were anxious, now they are afraid.
Jesus said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
There is a popular reading of this story where Jesus isn’t rebuking the wind and the waves, but the disciples for being afraid in the storm. According to that reading, we ought to always remember, no matter how high the waves, how violent the winds, that Jesus is in the boat with us – and that we shouldn’t be afraid, and if we had faith, we wouldn’t be afraid. According to that reading, we ought to tie ourselves to the mast of the cross with ropes of faith and laugh at the storm.
I believe this is dangerous nonsense, because the next time your little boat gets hit by a storm, and you know it will, you’ll be afraid, and on top of everthing else, you’ll feel guilty for being afraid. As if fear wasn’t enough.
Jesus didn’t rebuke the disciples, he commanded the wind and the waves to be still. He spoke, and the violent force of chaos was tamed.
Remember, the whole trip was his idea, “Let us go across to the other side,” he said. This was no evening cruise to a restaurant on the other side of the bay. He took them out to sea, away from the familiar coast, away from the land they knew, to the land of the Gentiles. Why? Because demons ruled on the other side and Jesus invaded their territory to proclaim and bring the kingdom of God. Because sin and death ruled on the other side and Jesus crossed over to bring forgiveness, healing, and wholeness to life. This was no pleasure cruise, this was D-day. Little wonder the forces of chaos tried to stop them with waves bucking like bulls and wind gusts strong enough to break everything in their path.
Jesus’ life and mission is one dangerous crossing after another. His presence, his teaching, his actions lead to confrontation between entrenched powers and the reign of God; confrontation between the way things are and the way they are to be. The truth is, when Jesus is near, the storms aren’t far.
But when Jesus speaks, the eternal word that spoke light and life into being is present. When Jesus speaks, we hear the One who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb; who made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling bands;who prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped.”
The truth is, the disciples in the boat were not half as afraid of the storm as they were of Jesus’ authority to tame its power. They were afraid because it finally dawned on them that they hadn’t taken him into the boat with them; Jesus had taken them into the boat with him, and this ride to the other side was the invasion of enemy territory by the forces of grace, forgiveness, healing and wholeness.
“Why are you afraid?” he asked, “Have you still no faith?”
Our Bible translation is very kind, saying, “They were filled with great awe,” when the words can also be translated, “they feared with great fear.”
They were afraid because they began to see that this boat was going to keep crossing to the other side, and that neither death nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor anything else in all creation would be able to stop it before its journey was complete.
“Who then is this,” they said to one another, “that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
They stayed in the boat with him, as they were, with their great fear and their little faith, and they sailed all the way to Easter, all the way to the shore where life in fullness is at home.
Common as Mustard
“With what can we compare the kingdom of God?” Jesus asks. With a garden perhaps, where the weather is perpetually mild and lovely things grow, and creatures great and small live together in peace? Or can we compare it with a city of great splendor, through whose open gates the nations of the world enter, carrying their gifts to celebrate the feast of life?
Can we compare the kingdom of God to nature in its awesome grandeur minus the things that frighten us, or to a global culture where the injustice and pain of history have been redeemed? With what can we compare the kingdom of God?
The task before a small committee, meeting for the first time on a July afternoon in 1776, was much smaller. The thirteen colonies had just declared their independence from Britain, and now these United States needed an official national seal. Three men met to select a design, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. “With what can we compare this revolutionary adventure, or what parable will we use for it?” the three patriots asked, and they had very different ideas. After much discussion, they agreed on a drawing of lady Liberty holding a shield to represent the thirteen states.
Lady Liberty would later have a long career in France, but the members of Congress were not inspired by the committee report. And so more committees met, and eventually, in 1782 Congress adopted a seal designed by William Barton, with just one small but significant change: the golden eagle in Barton’s design was replaced with the bald eagle, because the golden eagle also flew over European nations.
To this day, the great seal shows a bald eagle with a shield covering its breast, holding in its talons a bundle of thirteen arrows on the left, and a thirteen-leaf olive branch on the right. The new nation was still at war with England at the time, and the fierce-looking bird seemed to be an appropriate emblem.
Benjamin Franklin, though, famously frowned at it. In a letter from Paris in 1784 to his daughter he wrote,
For my part, I wish the eagle had not been chosen as the representative of this country. He is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched in some dead tree where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing hawk and, when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish and is bearing it to his nest for his young ones, the bald eagle pursues him and takes the fish. With all this injustice, he is never in good case; but like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. Besides, he is a rank coward; the little kingbird, no bigger than a sparrow, attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district.
Franklin argued that eagles could be found in all countries, and that “a true native of America” and “a much more respectable bird,” the turkey, would have been a more appropriate symbol. He conceded that the turkey was “a little vain and silly,” but maintained that it was nevertheless a “bird of courage” that “would not hesitate to attack a grenadier of the British guards, who should presume to invade his farm yard with a red coat on.”
I don’t know much about the moral character of birds, but Franklin obviously preferred a bird that might be perceived as a little vain and silly over one that might be perceived as lazy and lousy.
“With what can we compare the kingdom of God,” Jesus asks, “or what parable will we use for it?” People in first-century Judea were familiar with images from nature to represent nations and kingdoms; a very common symbol for royal power was the tree. There’s a particularly beautiful example in the book of Ezekiel:
Mortal, say to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his hordes: Whom are you like in your greatness? Consider Assyria, a cedar of Lebanon, with fair branches and forest shade, and of great height, its top among the clouds. The waters nourished it, the deep made it grow tall, making its rivers flow around the place it was planted, sending forth its streams to all the trees of the field. So it towered high above all the trees of the field; its boughs grew large and its branches long, from abundant water in its shoots. All the birds of the air made their nests in its boughs; under its branches all the animals of the field gave birth to their young; and in its shade all great nations lived. It was beautiful in its greatness, in the length of its branches; for its roots went down to abundant water. The cedars in the garden of God could not rival it, nor the fir trees equal its boughs; the plane trees were as nothing compared with its branches; no tree in the garden of God was like it in beauty. Ezekiel 31:2-8
But Assyria, a cedar of Lebanon, was cut down and fell. All the people of the earth went away from its shade and left it. The birds settled on its broken trunk, and among its fallen boughs all the wild animals lodged.
In the book of Daniel we read about a dream the mighty king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had.
Upon my bed this is what I saw; there was a tree at the center of the earth, and its height was great. The tree grew great and strong, its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the ends of the whole earth. Its foliage was beautiful, its fruit abundant, and it provided food for all. The animals of the field found shade under it, the birds of the air nested in its branches, and from it all living beings were fed. Daniel 4:10-12
But Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of greatness and power ends with a frightening announcement.
Cut down the tree and chop off its branches, strip off its foliage and scatter its fruit. Let the animals flee from beneath it and the birds from its branches. Daniel 4:14
Israel’s experience with royal power was that it comes and goes, that kingdoms rise and fall. Israel’s hope was that one day God would plant a tender shoot on the mountain height of Israel, a sprig that would become a noble cedar that would never fall.
When Jesus asks, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?” it is easy to imagine a tree; a mighty tree whose branches extend to the ends of the earth; the tallest, the most magnificent tree of all, forever defining the center of the world; with its top in the heavens and its roots in the depths of the earth; with beautiful foliage and abundant fruit; with shade and food and peace for all living beings.
And then Jesus tells us his parable. He leaves the lofty cedars on the mountain height of our imagination, and goes to the field just outside the village where you work every day.
"The kingdom of God," he says, "is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth."
Oh yes, it’s a tiny seed, but we know the potential of a seed: one acorn has in it not just one oak, but an entire forest, mighty oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord, taller than the cedars of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon or Rome.
Except that in this parable, the lowly mustard seed doesn’t grow into a tree but merely becomes the greatest of all shrubs.
Now if you expect God’s reign to powerfully transform nature and history, and to bring creation to its fulfillment, a scrawny mustard shrub of about 4-5 feet is hardly an appropriate emblem, is it?
If you prefer to keep the tree in the picture, you can read the story in Matthew, where the mustard seed “is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree”(Matthew 13:32).
Or you can go to Luke, where the kingdom is like a mustard seed “that someone took and sowed in the garden; and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches” (Luke 13:19).
According to Matthew and Luke, the ancient hope for an empire where God alone is Sovereign and the nations find peace, begins to be fulfilled in the story of Jesus and his followers. According to Mark, the story of Jesus rewrites the ancient hope for an empire to end all empires from the bottom up.
At the end of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel, the great king arrives at a difficult insight.
The Most High is sovereign over the kingdom of mortals; he gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of human beings. Daniel 4:17
The lowliest of human beings.
The parable of the mighty tree announces a restoration of the Davidic kingdom among the kingdoms of the earth. Other kingdoms will dry up, while that of David will flourish and outlast them.
In contrast, the parable of the mustard shrub speaks of a kingdom which, for all its miraculous extension, remains lowly; there’s nothing mighty or majestic about it.
It grows everywhere, not just on the hights of Lebanon or the seven hills of Rome or by the great rivers of Egypt or Babylon, or wherever the centers of power happen to be.
It grows dependably wherever there’s just enough soil for the tiniest of seeds to take root.
Perhaps the most beautiful detail about the mustard shrub is that it is an annual plant. It doesn’t just sit there and simply get bigger and bigger with the years. The mustard shrub depends on renewed sowing and its perennial promise lies in the fruitfulness of the seed and the faithfulness of the sower.
God’s kingdom is no divine empire, but faithful followers who continue to sow the seed of God’s grace and truth.
We do small things: small acts of compassion, tiny steps toward greater justice, a kind word to the cashier at the check-out line who just got barked at by an unhappy customer – small things that seem utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of human history and cosmic time, but Jesus reminds us that God’s reign grows everywhere and from the tiniest of seeds.
We do small things in lots of small places, things as common as mustard, and God’s reign spreads and grows and nothing can stop it.
With what can we compare the kingdom of God? It is like sowers who scatter seed on the ground, and the seed sprouts and grows and they don’t know how, and their lives bear fruit.
Midweek Sabbath
It's Sunday morning on Vine Street, and the church buildings are full of people of all ages. There's chatter and laughter on the steps and in the hallways, singing, prayer, and music in the sanctuary - lots of energy, from early in the morning until the last after-worship conversation over coffee has ended. Sunday is a day of worship and learning, nurturing relationships and making new friends, a day of celebration and sabbath rest.
A few weeks ago the Elders created a sanctuary of a different kind, a window to sabbath rest in the middle of the week. We used to use our chapel only for worship on Sunday morning and on occasion for a small wedding or funeral. Now we gather there every Wednesday evening at 5:30 p.m. for Evening Prayer, led by one of our Elders.
The chapel is especially beautiful at that time of day. The sun is low, and the mild light pours through the windows, bathing the entire space in a warm glow. It is wonderful to just sit there and enjoy the peaceful silence.
Evening Prayer is a brief service, lasting only about thirty minutes, of responsive readings from the book of psalms, a reading from scripture or a short meditation, the Magnificat, a. k. a. the song of Mary from Luke 1:47-55, prayers of intercession, and the Lord's Prayer.
You could wait for a particularly hurried week to come by the chapel on Wednesday evening to immerse yourself in the peace of God, or you could just come next Wednesday to sit and rest, to pray for the church and the world.
Sometimes I cannot participate in this midweek Evening Prayer, but whenever I do, I leave enveloped by that light, and with a sense of deep joy.
Signs
There was a funeral on Saturday in Wichita, Kansas. Dr. George Tiller had been shot last Sunday in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church as he handed out bulletins before worship. For years, Dr. Tiller and his family had lived in a gated community, he drove a bullet proof car, and he wore a bullet proof vest – he had been shot before, and his office had been bombed. Dr. Tiller was murdered because he performed abortions.
Security was tight at the funeral service, with dozens of uniformed and plainclothes officers mingling among the mourners inside and outside the sanctuary. A few blocks from the church a dozen or so protesters gathered in a holding area, one holding a sign, “God Sent the Shooter.”
Inside the church, near the end of the service, Mrs. Tiller rose and, standing in the chancel, sang “The Lord’s Prayer” in a clear, strong, unwavering voice. I am glad that hundreds stood with her and only a handful with the person outside holding up a sign with a lie.
I carried with me this week a passage from the gospel of John reminding us that God does not send shooters.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved trough him.—John 3:16-17
Throughout the week I questioned if these words had any strength left in them, if John 3:16 could be anything but a slogan, tattered and worn out by too many bumper stickers, t-shirts, and posters held high during ball games. The words have become a cliché, an empty formula, little more than a password for a tribe – but no matter how ragged and frayed they appear, they are true: God sent the Son, not the shooter.
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world, and to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.—John 1:9, 12-13
Nicodemus had seen things he didn’t understand, strange and wonderful things, signs whose significance he did not know.
There was a wedding feast, and Jesus was there. When the wine gave out, he told the servants to fill large jars with water; and when the chief steward tasted it, it was the best wine.
One day Jesus went to the temple, and he drove out sheep and cattle, poured out the coins of the money changers, overturned their tables, and said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
These actions raised a lot of eye brows and questions, but many believed in his name because they saw the signs that we was doing. Nicodemus had seen the signs, but he didn’t know what to make of them, or what to make of Jesus. He had seen what Jesus did, and he thought that God was connected, somehow, but he didn’t know how. He was in the dark.
Nicodemus came to Jesus by night and said, “We know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
We know, he said, like someone who has studied long and hard, taken his time to observe, and carefully drawn his conclusions. We know, he said, speaking for more than himself. Did he represent the Pharisees? Maybe. Did he speak for the religious leadership in general? Possibly. Does he stand at the beginning of a long line of many who are in the dark about Jesus, yet are drawn to his light? Certainly. Nicodemus speaks for all whose souls thirst for the living God, all who long to learn about and live the life of the Spirit, all who are attracted to Jesus, recognizing something extraordinary in him but not yet believing. Nicodemus speaks for all who come to Jesus with our considerable knowledge, our well-established certainties, and our questions.
We know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.—John 3:2
We have seen the signs, we have drawn our conclusions, and now we come for more. And Jesus responds, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
This is very confusing to Nicodemus who knows his religion and knows it well. He is a learned man, steeped in scholarship—and now Jesus is telling him that in order to know the life of the Spirit in the kingdom of God he must be born anew, a second time. How can this be?
How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?—John 3:4
Brian Williams took a large crew of reporters and videographers to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to document a day inside the Obama White House; some of you may have seen the program. At one point he talked with Vice President Joe Biden about saying things off the cuff that the White House staff had to carefully rephrase or creatively interpret afterwards. And Joe Biden’s reply was basically, “Look, you don’t teach an old dog new tricks. I am who I am, and some things I just can’t change.”
Old age and new beginnings just don’t go together. It’s not like you can just go back and start over and undo who you have become. Nevertheless, Jesus speaks of birth.
Jesus tells Nicodemus, tells you and me that seeing the kingdom, entering the dominion of God is a birth.
Do you know what you did in order to be born?
Nothing. Exactly. You didn’t choose your parents or your birthday. All you did was listen to your mother’s heartbeat and suck your little thumb. And on your birthday, surprised, you submitted to the force that pushed you down the birth canal, you squinted at the light, and you cried until somebody held you close and tight and warm. Your birth was an awesome and exhausting event, but it wasn’t your doing.
“Do not be astonished,” Jesus tells us, “that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.”
Nicodemus comes to Jesus to find out where the man from Galilee fits in the framework of his knowledge and experience, and Jesus talks about two of the most uncontrollable, uncontainable of human experiences, birth and wind. He tells him that the life eternal is a mystery beyond human knowledge and control.
Nicodemus has come no closer to understanding Jesus. He is confused by this talk of wind and spirit, water and birth. He cannot fit Jesus into his knowledge of God and the traditions he has followed for many years. He cannot fit Jesus into his life and who he has become. The thought of birth confuses him because there’s nothing for him to do—no books to read, no papers to write, no exams to take.
The only thing birth requires of you is to relax and rest in the labor of God. To be born again, to be born from above is an adventure in trust.
An adventure in trust, not control. Nicodemus has so many questions and he can’t just give himself to the life Jesus offers. At the end, though, he does not argue with Jesus or depart in protest. He simply throws up his hands, asking somewhat helplessly, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? How can these things be?”
It doesn’t end there. In chapter 7 we read that it was Nicodemus who publicly spoke up on behalf of Jesus when the religious leadership accused him without giving him a hearing (John 7:50-52).
Then after Jesus’ death on the cross, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, and Nicodemus came to prepare Jesus’ body for burial—Nicodemus bringing a hundred pounds of fragrant myrrh and aloes (John 19:38-42).
In the end, Nicodemus didn’t participate in the world’s hatred against Jesus. Instead, his actions reflected neither confusion nor fear, but boldness, generosity, and most of all, love. John doesn’t tell us that Nicodemus had become a believer, but he shows us a man who loves fearlessly and extravagantly.
The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.—John 3:8
I cannot shake the suspicion that the hands that at the funeral held the sign, “God sent the shooter,” on other occasions have held a sign, “John 3:16.” I am troubled by the air of certitude and knowing that surrounds these signs. I am troubled by views that can see the world solely in black and white, ignoring the colors that love paints between them. I am troubled by the portrait of a God who is an enforcer of texts, rather than the lover of the world.
When I look at the cross, I see a different picture. I see the light that shines in the darkness. I see the face of God who comes not to condemn but to save. And I hear the call I believe Nicodemus heard: to participate in what God is doing, which is to love the world.
The Adventure of Life
Miles and I joined the Mission Trip to Nashville group last night to watch "UP."
It's a great animated movie, and if animation makes you think, "Hm, kid stuff," you're on the wrong track.
This is great story telling, great animation (with amazing attention to detail), and great fun.
The journey to Paradise Falls (the name alone is a lovely variation on an ancient theme) is a beautiful meditation on the things that give us the courage to live.
Go and see this movie. Borrow somebody's kid if you need an excuse.
Rain on the Driest Place
The driest place on earth, according to climatologists, is the Atacama desert in the north of Chile. There are sterile, intimidating stretches where rain has never been recorded, at least as long as humans have measured it. You won’t see a blade of grass or cactus stump, not a lizard, not a gnat. The air is so dry, it literally sucks the moisture out of your finger nails and turns them brittle as autumns leaves.
It is dry in the Atacama, but it’s not the driest place on earth. The driest place is where hope has evaporated:
The driest place is the desolate land between Israeli cities and settlements and Palestinian villages and refugee camps where every peace initiative seems destined to fail.
The driest place is among the walls of destroyed schools in Pakistan’s Swat valley, where the Taliban have ruled that educating girls is against God’s will.
The driest place is in a little suburban house somewhere in the U.S. where a young man has to decide whether it’s OK to stay in college after both his parents lost their jobs.
The driest place on earth is the place where all roads come to an end and you know you can’t stay there, but you can’t see a way out either. The driest place is the place where all hope has evaporated and nothing moves.
Ezekiel has seen this place; it is a valley full of bones. He didn’t want to see it. He didn’t go there out of curiosity. It was the Lord who set him down in the middle of the valley. It was the Lord who led him all around so he would get a good look. There were very many bones, and they were very dry.
When I was little, I hid behind the couch when a tv program got to scary for me. And I still close my eyes sometimes when I don’t want to see what I’m afraid I’m about to see.
When I was little, and I didn’t want to hear what I was being told, I put my hands over my ears and started chanting, “I can’t hear you – I can’t hear you – I can’t hear…” and I still pretend I can’t hear sometimes when I don’t want to hear what I’m afraid I’m about to hear.
When I was little, I ran up the stairs from the dark basement to the kitchen where my mom was, and she thought it was all youthful energy, but I knew it was fear of the dark. And I still want to turn around and run sometimes. Instinctively I reach for the remote to change the channel from disturbing and unsettling to distracting and entertaining. I don’t want to be in the driest place; I’m afraid it will suck me dry. Give me a story that puts hands over my ears and eyes.
Ezekiel stayed; he stayed, with open eyes and ears, and the Lord asked him, “Mortal, can these bones live?” Now he could have responded, “No, Lord, this is where all roads come to an end, and the only thing awaiting these bones is to be turned into dust.” Or he could have given the perfect Sunday school answer, “Yes, Lord, these bones can live, for with you all things are possible,” and turned around and gone home.
But Ezekiel stayed and replied, “O Lord God, you know.” You must decide whether you want to hear that as a statement of profound confidence in God or as a challenge – something like, “You’re asking me, if these bones can live? What do you say?”
And the Lord said to him, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.”
Ezekiel didn’t go to the driest place by choice, but when the Lord set him down in the middle of it, he stayed long enough to see, long enough to hear the question, long enough to hear the call, “Speak to these bones.” He stayed long enough to hear the word of life, “Thus says the Lord God, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
And Ezekiel’s tongue may have been brittle as a leaf in the fall, but he spoke as he had been commanded, and as he spoke, the bones became bodies, and the bodies a people, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
The Spirit of God came with the words of the prophet who stayed long enough to see and hear and obey. And in the driest place on earth, the words of the prophet are like rain in the Atacama.
On Pentecost, the church celebrates the outpouring of God’s Spirit on the disciples. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is particularly concerned to prepare his followers for the time after his death and return to God.
“I will not leave you orphaned,” he promises them, preparing them for the reality of feeling abandoned like motherless children.
“Love one another as I have loved you,” he commands them, again preparing them for the time when he would no longer be physically available to them.
“Abide in me as I abide in you,” he urges them, leaving them wondering how he would abide and go away, be present and absent at the same time.
Three times Jesus speaks of someone who would come from God to be with them. In our Bible translations we call him the Advocate, the Counselor, the Helper, or the Comforter; the greek word refers to someone called to the side of another to help.
Jesus says, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever.”
“The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.”
“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.”
Having seen the glory of God in Jesus, the disciples would not face the world alone, but testify together with the Spirit to the grace and truth in Jesus Christ. Having heard the words of eternal life from Jesus, they would not face the future alone. The Holy Spirit would proclaim the teachings of Jesus to them in the new and changing circumstances of their lives. Jesus’ revelation of God would not be limited to the first generation of believers to whom Jesus was visible in the flesh and tangible; his ministry would continue in the ministry and witness of the disciples and the Spirit. The work of the Advocate is to make Jesus present, to mediate fresh encounters with his words of eternal life, given at the time of need. And in the driest place the need is great.
On Pentecost, the church celebrates the outpouring of God’s Spirit on the disciples. The Advocate did not remain a kind promise to the confused and frightened followers of Jesus. The Holy Spirit came – and continues to come – to inspire, empower, and teach the church to act with love and speak with boldness. It is through the Spirit that Christ abides in us and we in him.
According to John, the Holy Spirit is not busy bestowing particular gifts on individual believers, nor is the Spirit’s presence discernible as an internal experience of the individual believer or an outward display of spectacular spirituality. The Holy Spirit is given to the community for the life of the community, and the community’s calling is to be in the world as witnesses, as those who love as we have been loved, and proclaim as we have been commanded.
The Holy Spirit is given to us so we can be in the driest places where hope has evaporated and nothing moves, and not turn away, not run away, but abide with those for whom going away is not an option. The Holy Spirit is given to us so we can be there long enough to see, long enough to notice the great silence behind the world’s chatter, long enough to hear the question God is asking, long enough to hear the word of life, long enough to speak it. The Holy Spirit is given to us so we can hear and proclaim Jesus’ words of eternal life, words that comfort and challenge, words that guide, illumine, teach, convict, and liberate.
Very few of us can be in the parched place where Palestinians and Israelis no longer live as neighbors but as enemies. And very few of us can be in the parched place where the education of girls or the participation of women in public life are forbidden in the name of God. But we can listen to their stories with hearts strengthened by the Spirit, hearts ready to hear and respond.
And we can be in the driest place where families struggle with making ends meet, where co-workers go through trying times without a friend, and where fear is creeping in from all sides.
We can be there. It may be hard to stay, to see and hear and understand what’s really going on. It may be hard to bear the burden of knowing without seeking easy answers that are almost always too easy.
It may be hard, but the Advocate is given to us so we can continue to live as witnesses of our risen Lord even in the driest place.
The Advocate is given to us so we too can be advocates, comforters, helpers, vessels of God’s refreshing and renewing love.
Journey Home - A Model
The new addition to Room in the Inn's facilities began with a vision and years of planning and fundraising. Last Thursday was the groundbreaking.
I wanted to share a portion of the program with my readers; a paragraph that describes beautifully the work and vision of Campus for Human Development:
This expansion to our facilities and programs will enable us, using Mayor Karl Dean's words, "to complete the Campus." What this means is that we will be able to open a path for a person to make the "Journey Home," from living on the streets to securing a permanent apartment all under the guidance and support of our Room in the Inn community. In 1995, we formed the Campus for Human Development, becoming the city's only single site of services, offering an array of both emergency and long-term services. Today we stand on the brink of a new chapter in our long story. Specifically, what we will be able to create is a larger Campus that includes increased medical, educational, and day service space; and, for the first time, 38 affordable housing apartments. In short, we will expand and complete Nashville's comprehensive center for the homeless.
I hope the Mayor will remember this development - a single site with comprehensive services for the homeless - as a great model.
Nashville has a variety of services, both government-based and through non-profits and congregations, that address poverty in the city. Unfortunately, the system is very difficult to understand and not easily accessible. In many cases, multiple appointments with various agencies across the city are necessary. This is very time-consuming and potentially frustrating, e.g. for people who depend on public transportation or who can't afford to take an entire day off of work to meet with just one or two agencies.
It would be a significant step in the right direction, if we could combine those services in a network of neighborhood-based, single-site access points. One social worker could work with an individual or a family to help them understand all the resources available to them and assist them with completing the necessary applications. Non-profit organizations and neighborhood congregations that work on related issues like substance abuse, adult literacy, parenting skills, budgeting etc. could be partners at these centers.
Head Start Centers or community centers come to mind as potential sites for more comprehensive services for Nashvillians battling the causes and consequences of poverty.
Kneeling
It was on the evening Jesus and the disciples gathered for one last meal, when he took off his robe and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin, washed the disciples feet, and wiped them with the towel. He spoke for a long time that evening, but what we remember, without even opening the pages of the gospel, is that act of hospitality and service; what we remember is Jesus the Lord kneeling on the floor.
I was reminded of that beautiful scene when Hope and I were standing in the little courtyard of the Campus for Human Development on Thursday morning. Several hundred friends of Room in the Inn had gathered under the smiling sky to participate in breaking ground for a new facility where Nashville’s homeless would find shelter, food, medical care, counseling and education. The Governor couldn’t be there, but he sent a representative with the gold-embossed certificate declaring May 21, 2009 Room in the Inn Day in Tennessee. The Mayor was there, the Chief of Police, the Attorney General and the Public Defender, and many other community leaders, together with representatives of the more than 150 congregations who support the many services provided under the umbrella of the Campus for Human Development.
It was a great day for Nashville, and I already look forward to the day when we will dedicate the new building, including 38 units of affordable housing (I am excited that with our recent grant of $10,000 to Campus for Human Development, Vine Street will help families and individuals transition into permanent housing).
It all began in 1977 when Fr. Charlie Strobel, then the priest at Holy Name Catholic Church on Woodland, gave a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to a homeless man at the door of his rectory. It didn’t stop there – the simple gesture of sharing food with a person in need led to the creation of Loaves and Fishes. Charlie’s simple gesture of opening the doors of the rectory to those sleeping outside in the cold led to the creation of a cooperative ministry by six Nashville congregations known as Room in the Inn. And it didn’t stop there. Last year, 151 congregations in and around Nashville provided 26,737 beds and served 64,779 meals to their homeless guests from November 1 to March 31.
Today the PBJ has iconic status among the people of Room in the Inn; it speaks of God’s unconditional love for all human beings, and especially the poor and dispossessed; it stands for the truth that relationships of trust and respect are healing; and it reminds us that even the most complex problems can be addressed with caring gestures we all know and understand.
Standing in the courtyard, I was reminded of Jesus who taught us how to be the community of his friends by kneeling on the floor with a basin and a towel. That evening, after he had washed the disciples’ feet, he returned to the table and began to teach them, or rather, continued to teach them. He didn’t tell any stories or parables, and only the image of the vine and the branches can anchor the many words of his farewell speech in our imagination. The vine and the branches speak of being the community of Jesus’ friends, of having roots and bearing fruit, even when the full meaning of the many words printed in red eludes us.
At the end of his farewell speech, after Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven. Throughout the evening, his eyes and attention had been on the disciples: he washed their feet and wiped them dry, he spoke to their troubled hearts, he promised them fullness of joy and truth, he taught and encouraged them.
Now he looked up to heaven, and the words he spoke were addressed to the One he called Father. At the end of the evening, before they crossed the Kidron valley to go to the garden, Jesus prayed.
“I have glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.”
This is not the prayer of a man in agony, wrestling in the dark night with God’s will and the knowledge of his impending death; there is not even a hint of struggle. This is the prayer of a man who has complete confidence that the purposes of God will be fulfilled in the events about to unfold. It is the prayer of the Son whose earthly mission is completed in his death and return to the Father.
Most of the prayer, however, is more than merely a reflection of the love and intimacy the two share with each other. The prayer opens up to include the community of Jesus’ friends; his eyes are lifted up to heaven, but his arms are stretched out to embrace all believers.
“Now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”
Most of Jesus’ prayer is intercession for the future life of his followers, for generation after generation of believers. He prays for us and our work and witness in the world. He prays for us, because we live in the world, but we don’t belong to it.
We belong to the community of Jesus’ friends; we belong to the communion of life, based in the mutuality of love and intimacy between Jesus and God. We don’t belong to the world, but we live in it as those sent to reveal the glory of God by embodying the friendship of Jesus. We live in the world as the living, breathing invitation to life in communion with God and one another.
Twice in this prayer, Jesus speaks of unity. “Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”
In these times of deep division within the church over how to be church, how to respond faithfully to God’s call to ministry, perhaps the first thing to remember is that Jesus is praying for us.
His words are not instructions for us on the subject of unity. We are not to determine the character of the relationship between Jesus and the Father in order to come up with ecclesial principles and organizational flow charts. Jesus entrusts the future of the church not to the church itself and our capacity to understand, agree on, or live that unity. With the same confidence with which he entrusts himself to the love and power of God, he places the church’s future in the hands of God.
We participate in his prayer by overhearing it and remembering that we are a community that not only needs Jesus’ prayer, but can depend on it. Gail O’Day wonders how the Christian community’s self-definition would be changed if it took as its beginning point, “We are a community for whom Jesus prays.” To me, it is profoundly comforting to remember that.
Anthony Healy is a church consultant, and one evening he was sitting in the fellowship hall of a congregation that had been plagued by trouble throughout its existence and wanted to move on.
Part of his work was to trace that painful history, touching gently on the episodes that had befallen that community with a senseless regularity. It was a distressing yet necessary process.
He looked around the room and saw sorrowful faces, eyes close to tears turned toward him. Then he noticed on the opposite wall a picture that had to that point escaped his attention.
It was the picture of the Laughing Jesus, you have probably seen it many times. Healy asked himself, “What in the sorrows of this church is so humorous?” He was convinced there was a reason he noticed the laughing face of Jesus when he did, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
He completed his work with the congregation, and a few weeks later the epiphany emerged from this seeming outbreak of divine levity over a church’s troubled past. The message was: Ease up. Even as they are, these people are my people. Even as it is, this church is my church (see Healy's book, The Postindustrial Promise). Smile, we are a community for whom Jesus prays.
Jesus’ words in the gospel according to John are written for repeated reading, for slow, persistent ruminating – the individual phrases come to life only in the context of the whole. I used to dread reading John, but not anymore. Every time, it seems, I open the pages, I hear echoes and notice patterns I hadn’t seen before. Reading John is like walking through a garden that looks different every time you set foot in it, and as soon as you think you have finally determined the layout of its paths it takes you to a corner where surprises grow. The secret, I believe, is to keep walking. The secret is to live in that garden.
Reading and rereading the chapters of Jesus’ farewell speech I noticed that the tall columns of words in red were flanked by two beautiful and memorable images: At the beginning, Jesus kneeling on the floor, close to the ground, washing the disciples’ feet, and at the end, Jesus looking up to heaven, his arms stretched out to embrace all whom the Father has given him, praying for the disciples.
Jesus calls us to live and abide in the communion of love he shares with the Father and to love one another as he loved us. Jesus sends us into the world to be the living, breathing embodiment of the reconciliation he brings.
Until we discover an even fuller expression of our calling, let us serve as he served, with humility and loving attention, and remember that he prays for us.
And when we pray, let us pray as he prays, with confidence and loving attention.
Falling Over
On Sunday, KK and the kids talked about things we do with our hands in worship and ministry. Clapping, shaking hands, holding hands, hugging - they came up with over forty things we do with our hands to share God's love with one another!
At one point, KK was shaking her hand in a way that reminded me of dusting the furniture. "This is something Thomas does a lot," she said. I was confused. "Dusting?" I asked, and she started laughing. "Not dusting, writing! Thomas writes a lot!" and there was the motion again. I fell over backwards on the carpet, laughing.
Then the kids led the congregation in what TJ calls, "Jazz hands!" a.k.a. applause in American Sign Language, thanking me for five years of ministry at Vine Street.
Carol Doidge, John Marshall, and Greg Bailey added words of thanks and Greg handed me an envelope with a thank-you gift.
I didn't open the envelope until after our worship service - and I almost fell over backwards again! Thank you all for this wonderful gift, and for the relationships, the conversations, the prayers, the songs, the meals, the work, the laughs and smiles and tears of the past five years.
Thank you, Vine Street!
For the Peace of the City
Requests to the church office for housting assistance have been going up steadily since October 2008. In these difficult times, more individuals and families need help so they can stay in their homes and pay their utility bills. At the same time, funding for local non-profits that focus on helping Nashvillians stay in their homes (or assisting them in getting back into permanent housing) has dried up: many charitable foundations have lost 40% or more in assets in the current economic downturn.
I am happy to report that Vine Street Christian Church decided to meet this critical moment with a strategic move. The Official Board voted on Monday, May 18, to invest, in addition to current outreach commitments, $30,000 in local agencies who address the need for housing from different angles. The details of the proposal had been worked out by Julia Keith, Chair of Local Outreach, and Hope Hodnett, representing the staff.
Checks for $10,000 each will be sent to
- Disciples Village, a retirement home in Nashville that opens its doors to low-income elderly in our community;
- Room in the Inn, a ministry that assists people without housing with essential services and help to find permanent housing; and
- Rooftop, an organization that provides funds to individuals and families in need of emergency financial help with the goal of preventing homelessness and providing hope.
What Abides
In April, the U.S. lost 563,000 jobs, and who would have thought that this labor statistic could be cause for cautious optimism: The numbers are down 100,000 or so from the 663,000 jobs lost in March; we may have reached the bottom. Since December 2007, 5.7 million jobs have been cut – that’s about ten times the population of Nashville.
These numbers are important, but they don’t tell us how dramatically life has changed for the individuals and families directly impacted by those losses. This summer, high-school students are competing for summer jobs at Nashville Shores and for other seasonal work with men and women who must make a living for themselves and their families. Every day the church office receives multiple requests for financial assistance to pay rent, utilities, medications, gas or food. We use my discretionary fund to help individuals and families stay in their homes – and last month, for the first time in five years, it was almost depleted. Rooftop, one of the key non-profit agencies in the city assisting people with housing expenses, ran out of funds for the month of May after only two days.
We are currently working on a proposal to the Official Board to double our outreach funding by strategically using endowment earnings and designated funds. We want to use those funds specifically for housing here in Nashville, because once a family loses the roof over their heads, issues like loss of work and income, lack of education and health care become a lot more difficult to address.
I am telling you this because this is what the staff here is working on every day. I am telling you this on mother’s day, because this year, whenever I call my mom, she asks me three questions, and I know today will be no different: First, how are the kids and Nancy? Second, what’s new at Vine Street? And third, how are people dealing with the depressed economy?
My mom taught us that love isn’t a word we write on a card on occasion, but our response to the world and to the needs of others. In her life and her faith, love has always been a lot closer to solidarity than to sentimentality. She taught me that love is the power that keeps us from getting lost in fragmented isolation.
When people lose their jobs, they lose more than their income. Work is our way to make a living, but it is more than that. Work is how we each turn the gift of life into our life. Work is an important part of who we are, it gives us a sense of purpose, the deep satisfaction of having something to offer – skills, products, and services that others need and appreciate. The work we do is an essential piece of the story we tell about ourselves.
Let me tell you about Emilio. Emilio was sixteen at the end of World War II when he came to the U.S. from Sicily. He married Flavia and they had two boys. [My thanks to Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character, for insight and inspiration]
Emilio had little education, and he worked as a janitor all his life. Working hard, saving regularly, and playing by the rules, he and Flavia were able to buy a little house in the Boston suburbs and send their two sons to college. Whenever the boys talked about their class work, Dad didn’t understand a word, but that didn’t diminish his pride. The little house and his sons’ education were visible results of his life’s work. To his colleagues and neighbors Emilio was a friend they could rely on, and he was a respected member of the catholic parish in what was once an Italian neighborhood.
His son Rico graduated from a local university in electrical engineering, went to business school, and married a fellow student – Jennifer was neither Italian nor Catholic, but that was OK. School prepared the young couple to move and change jobs frequently, and they did, following the demands of an economy that values flexibility. In fourteen years at work, Rico and his wife have moved four times, from New York to California, then to Chicago and Missouri, and back to the east coast.
The world they live and work in is very different from the one Emilio and Flavia knew. Stable routines and predictable career tracks are things of the past. Staid bureaucracies and hierarchical management have given way to flatter, more fluid networks. Flexibility has replaced long-term commitment. No more gold watches after thirty years with the same company.
In some ways these changes are positive; they make for a dynamic economy. But they are also destructive.
There was a time when the word “career” referred to a carriage road – a means to help you get from one place to another. Applied to work, a career was a path with fairly predictable stops and turns. You would start at the bottom and work your way up over time in just one or perhaps two companies. Or you would choose a field, get the required training, and all you had to do was fine-tune a skill set that would remain valuable for decades.
We can no longer count on that. The estimates change constantly, but college students are advised these days to anticipate more than ten job changes during their working life. Flexibility is key – colleges are preparing young people for jobs for which no job descriptions have been written yet.
And it’s not just flexible minds that are needed, the demand for flexible bodies is also growing. Recently, when IBM closed a facility in California, they told 200 engineers they could keep their jobs if they were willing to move their families to India.
Flexibility makes for a dynamic economy, but it cuts roots and makes it more and more difficult to sustain family ties and friendships.
Rico makes more in a month than his dad made in a year, but he is worried. He grew up with values like mutual commitment, self-discipline, loyalty, and trust. “You can’t imagine how stupid I feel when I talk to my kids about commitment,” says Rico. “It’s an abstract virtue to them; they don’t see it anywhere.” Flexibility means, there is no long term; stay loose, keep moving, don’t be dependent, don’t get too attached, it only hurts when you have to leave.
I find it curious how changes in our economy lead to the loss of homes for thousands of workers and their families, and at the same time create a sense of being uprooted and disconnected, a sense of homelessness among those most successful in this new world of constant and rapid change.
I have thought much about housing recently, simply because the number of people looking for help to prevent eviction has gone up. I have thought about the things that can give us a sense of stability when everything is in flux, a sense of being at home in the world, if you will.
Some of those thoughts were triggered by an old-fashioned word, abide, repeated again and again in today’s readings from the gospel according to John and from First John. We don’t use the word abide much anymore, and even in parts of the country where traditions and the King’s English are honored, highway motel signs don’t read, “Abide with us.” They simply flash, “Vacancies” or perhaps, “Stay here.”
“To abide” has to do with staying, even if it is only for a night. But it also has to do with dwelling, persevering, and lasting.
Perhaps you remember the ending of chapter 13 of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, where the Apostle writes, “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
All things come to an end, but love outlasts them all. Love is the power that keeps us from getting lost in fragmented isolation.
In the gospel according to John, Jesus gives us this beautiful image, “I am the vine, you are the branches.”
We want to lead fruitful lives, we have a need to lead fruitful lives, and we need a sense of belonging that can outlast the ever-changing circumstances of our lives. Jesus points to himself as the place where we can stay. He gives us roots we can rely on no matter where in the world we are. He invites us to draw strength from him and bear fruit, fruit that brings joy to the vinegrower, to us and to those with whom we share the gift of life.
Love abides: not as a principle or a virtue, but as the living relationship we have with God and with each other through Christ the Vine.
Love abides because Christ abides, because Christ lasts, endures, perseveres, hangs in with us, holds on to us.
Love abides because Christ binds us together across boundaries of income, education, ethnic origin, and political philosophy.
I am not sure if we will be able to create just and sustainable ways of producing and distributing goods around the world, but I hope so. I am not sure if we will be able to build political and economic institutions that serve the well-being of all, but I hope so. I am not sure if we will ever be able to promise each other that none shall have to live on the street, but I hope so. I have the courage to hope because I believe that love abides. I have the strength to hope because Christ is risen, Christ abides.
The love of Christ is the power that saves us from getting lost in fragmented isolation. The love of Christ bears fruit in our lives in all the ways necessary for God’s planting to flourish: we become generous and creative in making sure individuals and families have a roof over their heads; we encourage our children and each other to trust God and think about more than just ourselves; and we practice disciplines that help us to abide in him who so faithfully abides in us.
The love of Christ is the power that saves us from getting lost in flexibility.
Make yourselves at home.
In love laid down for me
“Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” It’s not about words, it’s actions that matter. I think I know what the writer of 1 John has in mind. Let’s not just talk about love. Let’s not just sing pretty songs about love. Let us embody love and put it into action.
But words do matter, or the writer of 1 John wouldn’t use so many of them to try and convince us. Words do matter, or we wouldn’t lose any sleep over hate speech. Words do matter, because to speak or to write is to act. The words of 1 John are not just words, but testimony, argument, authoritative demand, and urgent plea.
Let love determine what we say and how we say it, what we do and how we act, the letter insists. Let love be the fabric that weaves together all strands of our being, let love be the pattern of our days.
And not just any love. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and the love of power thrives in its company. No, not just any love will do.
“We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” Jesus is the pattern. Jesus laid down his life for us – he sought neither power nor wealth. The center of his attention was occupied by God and God’s will, life in abundance for all. Jesus didn’t think of himself outside of these relationships – with the One he called Father, and the many he called brothers and sisters. Not once did he place himself outside of these relationships in splendid isolation. Not once did he participate in the game, where everything and everyone can become a means to selfish ends, and every action is calculated, every step and gesture and word.
Let us love, but not just any love will do. We know how easy it is to mask our desire to have as affection – or our need to control, our hunger for attention, our need to be needed, all dressed up in love-talk.
“We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” Frightening words; we wonder if we’re supposed to be willing to die for each other.
Jesus didn’t wait until the end to lay down his life. Jesus didn’t wait until government, religion, and public opinion came together in uncommon accord, condemning him to death and executing him – Jesus laid down his life for us from the beginning. Every step of his, every gesture, every word, every touch, every breath was life laid down for us.
How do we lay down our lives for one another? In 1 John, the answer comes in the form of a question: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?”
The laying down of our lives begins not with a big, bold, once-and-for-all yes, but with just one small no that is not spoken, neither in word nor in action. The laying down of our lives begins with seeing a brother or sister in need and not turning away, and it continues in the slow, persistent refusal to think of ourselves outside of our relationship with that brother or sister and God. The laying down of our lives is complete when we can no longer say “I” without saying “you” and “You.”
I believe this is what Jesus calls the life abundant. I believe this is what Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon has in mind when he teaches, “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.” The abundance, the fullness comes with the laying down.
By happy coincidence I watched a movie last week that offers great commentary and insight on what it means to lay down one’s life. The Mission, released in 1986, tells the story of a Jesuit mission in the heart of South America.
Father Gabriel, played by Jeremy Irons, climbs the steep rock face of Iguazu Falls to bring the faith to the Guaraní, an indigenous people living above the falls. He can’t expect a friendly welcome; the last missionary to go there had been strapped to a cross and sent over the falls to his death. Father Gabriel enters the forest, and when he notices that he’s being watched, he sits on a rock, assembles his oboe, and begins to play. Soon he’s surrounded by curious warriors who listen to his music. They let him live and take him with them.
Then we meet Rodrigo Mendoza, played by Robert de Niro, who makes his living as a slaver, kidnapping indigenous people and selling them to the nearby colonial plantations. Rodrigo stabs his brother in a jealous rage, and his guilt buries him alive. Father Gabriel visits him and invites him, as an act of penance, to come to the mission with him.
So Rodrigo also climbs the falls, dragging behind him his heavy armor and weapons, tied into a net. He drags his guilt all the way to the Guaraní camp, where one of the men cuts the rope, releasing him from the weight of his past. Armor and sword are thrown into the river, and Rodrigo begins a new life. He becomes a member of the mission community, a community of peace and learning, of music and worship, where life in fullness thrives.
But suddenly the political circumstances change dramatically. The colonial powers, Portugal and Spain, have come to an agreement that portions of the land claimed by Spain would be signed over to Portugal, including the land above the falls. Portugal wants the Jesuit missions closed, in order to pursue without interference the conquest of the land and the expansion of the plantation economy based on slavery.
The Pope sends an emissary to survey the Jesuit missions and decide which, if any, to allow to continue. Cardinal Altamirano is faced with a difficult choice: If he closes the missions, the indigenous people will certainly die or become enslaved. If he rules in favor of the missions, the Jesuit order may be forced to leave Portugal and all its colonies. The decision is made: Father Gabriel’s mission is to be abandoned, along with all other Jesuit missions.
Now Portuguese troops and militia gather at the foot of the falls; Father Gabriel and Rodrigo, the former slaver, debate how to respond to the violent threat. Rodrigo once more takes up his sword that a boy has retrieved from the river; he cannot stand the thought of the people he has come to love becoming slaves. Fr. Gabriel shakes his head and says to him, “If might is right, then love has no place in the world. It may be so, it may be so. But I don’t have the strength to live in a world like that, Rodrigo.”
They both prepare for the attack. Rodrigo by organizing the defense and building weapons, Gabriel by praying and gathering women, children, and old people in front of the church.
The battle begins, the defenders fight bravely, but they can only slow down the attackers – there’s no stopping them.
Rodrigo is shot several times and lying on the ground, he watches Fr. Gabriel leading the unarmed congregation out of the burning mission compound toward the river. They sing, and all they carry is a crucifix and a monstrance, all they carry are symbols of the good shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep. The soldiers hesitate for a moment, but when the order comes, they fire, some of them crossing themselves before they pull the trigger. Dying, Rodrigo watches his friends fall, one by one, only a handful escape by running away to the jungle. Rodrigo watches until he sees Fr. Gabriel collapse, his body pierced by bullets.
“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” says Jesus according to John. Rodrigo and Fr. Gabriel both laid down their lives for their friends by living with them, teaching them and learning from them, receiving their forgiveness and offering it, working with them, building a community of peace with them. Rodrigo took up arms in defense of the defenseless, Fr. Gabriel refused to live in a world where might leaves no room for love. Both died a violent death because of their commitment to that life of embodied, daily love. Who wants to decide which one made the right choice?
At the end of the film, we see a group of Guaraní children loading a few salvaged belongings into a canoe. One of the girls notices a broken violin floating in the water, next to Fr. Gabriel’s scorched oboe. She picks it up and takes it with her as they set off, up the river.
I hope that somehow, after all the brutality and loss, she will be able to play the tune Fr. Gabriel had played and invite those around her to trust the power of love.
The film doesn’t end with that scene. It ends with Cardinal Altamirano, the Papal emissary, concluding his written report: “So, your Holiness, now your priests are dead, and I am left alive. But in truth it is I who am dead, and they who live.”
This the Fourth Sunday of Easter. This is the fourth Sunday of the new song, the fourth Sunday of praise, the fourth Sunday of bold hope: might does not equal right – Christ is risen from the dead. The good shepherd continues to seek the lost and bring back the strayed, to bind up the injured and strengthen the weak. He doesn’t send out the dogs to round up the herd, or emissaries to negotiate with the wolf; he calls, he talks, he sings the shepherd song and plays the kingdom tune like only he can play it. “I lay down my life for the sheep,” is the chorus. “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”
Christ is risen and he sings for Jews and Gentiles, for slavers and Guaraní, for priests and warriors, for all who hear and recognize his voice in the wilderness we have made of God’s world.
Pick up the broken violin and learn to play.
You Are Witnesses
We’re moving on, and we’re moving fast. After Easter, there are so many things to do. Gardens and flowerbeds need to be planted, graduation invitations need to be mailed, and with camps, vacation, summer internships, General Assembly, and the family reunion coming up, summer plans need to be made. It’s two weeks after Easter, and we’re moving on – it’s almost May; and we know, before we’ll be finished saying, “Happy Mothers Day!” it’ll be Memorial Day.
But a big boulder is sitting in the rapids of time. The church’s lectionary – quietly, yet stubbornly – resists the rush.
The ‘lectionary’ is a set of recommendations that has evolved over the centuries, recommendations for how we read Scripture when we gather for worship, and what portions we read and when. The lectionary is also the church’s calendar where every Sunday and every holiday is given a name, and today, perhaps to your surprise, is not the Second Sunday after Easter, but the Third Sunday of Easter.
Spring is rushing toward summer with bright-green speed, the schoolyear is rushing toward graduation with flying gowns, and the lectionary – quietly, yet stubbornly – resists the rush. Easter lingers, and today is only the third Sunday of it.
We open the Bible for the gospel reading, and in Luke it’s still the first day of the week. The entire chapter 24, his final chapter, walks us through the day that began with the women coming to the tomb. They returned with a story, but their words seemed to the others an idle tale.
Then Luke tells us about two of the disciples going to a village called Emmaus and talking with each other about all the things that had happened. They shared their story with a stranger who came near and went with them, told him about Jesus and what a prophet he was and how they had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel; told him about how he had been condemned and crucified and how the women had astounded them with their words. You know the story, how the stranger interpreted to them the scriptures, how he accepted their urgent invitation to stay with them for the night, and how they recognized Jesus in the stranger in the breaking of the bread.
That same day, they returned to Jerusalem and found the eleven and their companions gathered together – and now everybody had a tale about the risen Lord! And while they were sharing resurrection stories, Jesus himself stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”
No one had let him in; he just showed up, startling them. Now perhaps you think that this was the third time, after all, that the resurrection disrupted the flow of their day, and that by now they should have been able to deal with the fact that Jesus was not dead but risen. But they were still startled and terrified, then disbelieving and wondering.
Perhaps you think it was time for them to get it and move on – but move on where to? What did it mean for them that Jesus was not dead but powerfully present? What does it mean for us?
In the gospel according to Luke that first day begins at early dawn, but it never ends. There’s not a single word indicating that eventually everybody got tired and went to bed. Jesus ate a piece of broiled fish, and then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. How long do you think he taught them? Until the next morning?
Until their imagination was unlocked; until a few closed doors in the hallways of their minds swung open. Jesus interpreted for them the witness of scripture until they understood that his rejection and his death were part of God’s work to redeem humanity and renew creation.
Jesus opened to them the witness of scripture until they could hear the call: Now that Christ is risen, repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem.
Jesus is neither a dead man, nor a ghost, but the risen Lord who teaches, sends, and blesses us for ministry. “You are witnesses,” he said to them, he says to us. You have a story to tell. You have a story to embody and live.
In the gospel according to Luke, the entire final chapter is dedicated to the first day when Jesus rose from the dead; and the sun doesn’t go down on that day, night doesn’t fall.
The chapter ends with Jesus leading them out as far as Bethany, and, blessing them, being carried up into heaven. The sun doesn’t go down, night doesn’t fall. The gospel concludes with the disciples worshiping him and returning to Jerusalem with great joy.
The first day doesn’t end; it culminates in the disciples’ return to the city, and the way I see it, they are not alone. Returning with them in an unending procession of great joy are the nations who have heard the good news of repentance and forgiveness of sins.
On Easter Sunday, the children sang,
“Every morning is Easter morning from now on, every day’s resurrection day, the past is over and gone.”
What they are telling us is not that our days are an endless repetition of a day that began and ended two-thousand years ago. They are telling us that we are living in a new day. A day that is not defined by sunrise and sunset, but by the Lord Jesus, crucified and risen. This day is defined not by humanity’s sinful past, but solely by God’s power to create and redeem. Easter lingers because this day does not end.
Jesus is neither a dead man, nor a ghost, but the risen Lord who teaches, sends, and blesses us for ministry. “You are witnesses,” he says to us. You have a story to tell. You have a story to embody and live.
Like every generation of disciples before us, we move on not to leave Easter behind, but to live in it more fully every day of our lives.
We move on – from words that seem an idle tale to moments of recognition.
We move on – from the burial of hope to the table where our eyes are opened.
We move on – from having our vision impaired by fear and doubt to having our minds opened to understand the scriptures.
We move on – from being slow of heart to believe, to hearing the call of Christ in any kind of circumstance.
“You are witnesses of these things,” he says to us. And we want to respond, “Who – us?” because the world has a way of robbing us of our hope, filling us with fear, closing our minds, and colonizing our imagination.
But he continues to break into that reality saying, “Yes – you.” We have a story to tell. We have a story to embody and live, a story the world cannot be without.
In the spring of last year we got into a little boat, big enough for all of us, yet small enough to remind everybody that this is no cruise ship where some are crew and the rest are passengers. We set sails, allowing the Spirit of God to blow freely and pull us forward. We called our adventure ‘The Journey.’
We were very intentional about listening to each other. We gathered in groups of various sizes, heard presentations and shared comments, and then we met in groups of three for a hundred days. One hundred days of prayer – obviously some of us were more reluctant than others to participate in that part of the journey, but it turned out to be the most rewarding.
We talked and listened, we prayed, we watched in wonder how trust and friendship grew among us; we had our hearts and minds opened. We moved from the safe surface to the secret places, and were not our hearts burning within us again and again?
No idle tales; we were free to share our hopes and fears, our frustrations and our dreams. Insights emerged and visions, discoveries were jotted down, ideas refined.
The summer of prayer turned into a harvest season of gathering and rejoicing. And like wheat becomes bread to strengthen the human heart, and the grapes gathered in the vineyard become wine to gladden the human heart, the harvest of our conversations and prayers has become a story to nourish the heart and kindle the imagination.
It is not just any story, it is our future story, Vine Street 2019. I’m not spilling a secret when I tell you that we will watch a video presentation of that story during lunch today – the 30-second trailer was released online on Thursday afternoon, and it had over 70 views already by Friday.
We will watch a video premiere, but this little film is more than the play of light on a screen and sound waves on the air – although it is that. It is more than the product of the creativity of a writer, a director, a photographer, and an editor – although it is that. It is more than the faces and voices of several of our members – although it is that.
It is the embodiment of our work and prayer of an entire year. It is the call we have heard and the beginning of our response. It is the shape we will give to our witness over the next 5-7 years, beginning in Nashville and extending to all nations around the world. Yes, it is that big.
This is how we intend to live in the day that began with the women coming to the tomb and finding the stone rolled away.
This is how we intend to live as witnesses of our crucified and risen Lord.
This is how we intend to live as God’s Easter people in the world.
Audio of this post is available.
And here's the video:
Delicious and Imaginative
The Resurrection Continues
It is a strange reversal, when you think about it. Jesus is out of the tomb, risen from the dead and on the loose in the world – and the disciples? Hiding behind locked doors, prisoners of fear.
There was little conversation, nobody had remembered to get something to eat, but no one really felt like eating anyway.
Mary had told them that she had seen the Lord and what he had said to her, but her tesimony, for whatever reason, hadn’t made the slightest difference. We don’t know if they didn’t believe her of if they couldn’t imagine what her words might mean.
One of the stories I suspect was in circulation in the first century but John didn’t write down, is the one about Mary pulling her hair in frustration: all she had were words, and her words were not enough to break the paralysis of fear and guilt, not enough to let them hear what she had heard and see what she had seen.
It is strange reversal; Jesus is out of the tomb, and the disciples are in it.
Then Jesus came and said, “Peace be with you.”
The first word of the Risen One to the gathered disciples was peace. The last time they had been together, he had told them, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid (14:27).” And now Jesus stood among them, after their betrayal, their denial, and their abandoning him – Jesus stood among them and spoke peace into their troubled, fearful hearts.
He showed them the wounds in his hands and his side, and his presence transformed the dark tomb into a house of joy, with laughter pouring into the street. Their fear melted away and the living Christ was once again the center of their lives.
“Peace be with you,” he said, not, “Shame on you, you sorry bunch” or “OK, friends, let’s talk about this,” but, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
Suddenly they saw the world outside, the world of sin, death, and fear no longer as a threat, but as the object of God’s love. Only moments ago they had been little more than bodies in a tomb, now they were a community with a mission, sent by the risen Christ.
In the book of the prophet Ezekiel, the prophet looks at a valley full of bones, and the Lord asks him, “Mortal, can these bones live?” And the Lord tells him to prophesy to these bones, to speak to the bones and say to them, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord (Ez 37:1-14).”
In Ezekiel’s day, the bones represented the people of God in exile, lifeless, dry, dispirited and discouraged.
I know Mary must have felt like she was talking to a pile of bones when her words couldn’t break through the pall of fear and grief that lay on the disciples. But now Jesus was in their midst and he breathed on them and they received the Holy Spirit. A small band of fearful men, held together solely by habit, shame and fear – now they were the church, commissioned and empowered by the living Christ, born into living hope.
Can these bones live? We shall see – the mission of Christ continues, and his disciples follow him telling the story, forgiving sins and serving others until the peace of Christ, the shalom of God, fills earth and heaven.
Since the days of Mary and the other apostles, frightened disciples could be church because the Risen One keeps breaking in on us, breathing on the white bones of our lives, leading us out of our tombs, and placing in our hands the gifts of God for the world: peace and forgiveness. Because Christ is risen from the dead, we no longer live toward the horizon of death, but toward the horizon of fullness of life for all creatures.
The resurrection isn’t something that happened to Jesus two millennia ago, but rather something that began with him and continues with those who hear the word of life. It is the transformation of our old, tired world into the new creation. It is the wind that blows from the future of fulfilment, the breath that brings life to dry bones, the dew from heaven that renews the earth.
Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus came in the evening of that day. Neither were any of us around then. All we have is what Thomas was given, the words of witnesses.
The other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But their words, just like Mary’s before, didn’t have the power to break through whatever kept this disciple from hearing them with faith.
He didn’t know whom or what they had seen, what apparition might have fooled them. He needed to see for himself, and more than see.
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
He needed to see, he needed to touch, he needed to get close. Thomas wanted proof – not a convincing argument about the general possibility of bodily resurrection, but tangible proof that this Risen One was indeed the Crucified One.
He had questions nobody could answer for him with a reference to scripture or to some other authority. He needed to see, he needed to touch, he needed to get close.
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. That is remarkable, isn’t it?
There are plenty of churches where you are no longer welcome when your questions cannot be answered with a quick reference to scripture or to some other authority.
There are too many Christian communities where no one voices their doubt or their struggles for fear of being excluded or declared spiritually challenged.
And there are countless individuals who hear the words of Mary and the disciples, but they won’t be back a week later with their questions and their need to experience for themselves what the words declare.
In this gem of a story, the community of disciples consists of those who have seen and those who have not; no one is pushed out or forced in; they’re together. And the scene repeats itself, solely for Thomas’s sake, we suppose.
Jesus comes and stands among them and says, for the third time now, “Peace be with you.” He turns to Thomas and, far from rebuking him for his stubborn insistence on something more tangible than words, says, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”
And Thomas responds, “My Lord and my God.”
The one who wanted proof, the one who didn’t want to settle for repeating the words of others but held out for an experience of the Risen One on his own terms, this Thomas made a confession of faith unlike any other in the gospels.
Thomas has been remembered in the church as the doubter par excellence and called to the aid of authorities whenever the questions of some became uncomfortable and needed to be squelched. I don’t think we should remember him as a doubter, though, but rather as one who insisted on the continuity between the ministry of Jesus and the mission of the church, one who insisted that the glory of God is revealed in the wounds of the crucified Jesus.
The gospel according to John begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Close to the end of the gospel, it is Thomas who, after much struggle, affirms that statement in the presence of Jesus, crucified and risen.
The resurrection is not something that happened to Jesus two millennia ago, but rather something that began with him when God raised him from the dead.
The disciple whom Jesus loved came to the tomb and saw the linen wrappings; then he went inside, got a little closer, and he saw and believed.
Mary Magdalene had seen angels at the tomb, but they had no comfort for her; then a stranger spoke her name, and she recognized Jesus and believed.
The disciples believed when they saw the risen Jesus, and they rejoiced, “We have seen the Lord!”
Thomas believed when he saw Jesus with the other disciples, and the word of the risen Jesus moved him from unbelief to confessing, “My Lord and my God.”
Not a bad conclusion to the gospel story.
But in the final verses of this chapter it becomes clear that the Sunday evening scene wasn’t repeated solely for Thomas’s sake, but also for ours.
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
We have not seen what the first disciples have seen, but we hear their witness.
In the final verses of the chapter, we read a note from the author to the readers, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”
We trust the Word that comes to us through the proclamation of the first witnesses.
We follow the call that comes to us through their word and the work of the Holy Spirit.
We continue the mission of Jesus Christ, embodying his peace and forgiveness in how we live our lives.
We believe, not because we have seen, but because we trust that we will see the shalom of God filling earth and heaven.
And we continue to be witnesses who declare what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life.
The resurrection continues.
Now the Story
The little boat has served us faithfully.
We got on board in the spring of last year, and the Spirit of God blew across the sails – gently sometimes, forcefully occasionally, always pulling us forward.
We gathered in groups of various sizes, heard presentations and shared comments, and then we met in groups of three for one hundred days. How surprised we were to find this portion of the journey to be the single most rewarding!
All the insights and discoveries, all the thoughts, hopes and dreams were harvested – no, not to be stored in a pretty barn. Like grapes become wine and wheat becomes bread, the harvest of our conversations and prayers has become a story. Are you curious?
On Sunday, April 26, during our Spring Luncheon, we will present “Vine Street 2019,” our future story. This is not only a premiere you don’t want to miss; it is a sacramental moment: it is the embodiment of our work and prayer of an entire year, it is the call we have heard.
Tallu in Nicaragua
On Monday, April 20, Tallu will fly from Nashville to Managua/Nicaragua to work for one year in a community development project coordinated by Church World Service, Week of Compassion, and CIEETS.
Tallu is a member of Vine Street Christian Church in Nashville; we are very proud of her, of course, and we look forward to this opportunity to build relationships with the people she'll be working with. I hope she'll soon have her blog up!
For today, have a safe trip, Tallu, and God bless your adventure in ministry!