Tangible new life

Thomas Kleinert

In Acts, Luke paints a scene where we see the apostles standing before the council. They are being questioned. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, didn’t we, and yet here you have filled the city with your teaching.” And they respond, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”

It was human authority that killed Jesus to silence him. It was human authority that resisted his authority to teach and forgive; human authority that brought charges against him, declared him guilty, and executed him. It was human authority that did all it could to put an end to Jesus. But God raised him up. And we are witnesses to these things.

Who would have thought that frightened disciples would have the courage to take a stand like that? Who would have thought that they would look human authority in the eye and defy it with such bold humility? Who would have thought they could be so free?

In John, the evangelist paints a very different scene. Jesus is risen from the dead, but the disciples are hiding behind locked doors, prisoners of fear. It’s the first day of the week, and Mary Magdalene has told them, “I have seen the Lord! He told me to tell you this: ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” But clearly, her words haven’t made much of a difference. I imagine her pacing back and forth, mumbling, perhaps pulling her hair in frustration: all she has are words, and her words aren’t enough to break the paralysis of fear and shame, not enough to let the other disciples know what she knows or see what she saw.

This dark, stuffy  room, according to John, is a snapshot of the early church: A terrified little band, huddled in the corner of the room with a chair braced against the door. This bunch will have only one thing going for them — divine persistence: the insistence of God who raised Jesus from the dead that his resurrection wasn’t his alone, but the first, decisive act of transformation that would touch every part of creation. Jesus is out of the tomb, but the disciples are still in it. And John wants us to know that we can count on God’s persistence: Jesus came and said, “Peace be with you.” 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 gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”[1] And now Jesus stood among them, after they had betrayed, denied, abandoned him – Jesus stood among them and the first word he spoke in the dark was peace. The risen Lord spoke peace into their troubled, fearful hearts; light and joy filled the room, and their fear melted away.

Please note that he said, “Peace be with you,” when we wouldn’t have been surprised to hear him say, “Shame on you, you sorry bunch” or “OK, friends, let’s talk about this.”

“Peace be with you,” he said. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.Now the resurrection was no longer just something Mary Magdalene had tried to convey with her words. Now they themselves were new people, living new lives, in a world made new and illuminated by the peace of their risen Lord.

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.”[2]

In Ezekiel’s day, the bones represented the people of God in exile, lifeless, dry, dispirited and discouraged. I imagine Mary Magdalene felt like she was talking to a pile of bones when her words couldn’t break through the pall of fear, shame and grief that lay on the disciples. But now Jesus was once again in their midst, breathing new life into their nostrils, and now this small band of followers, held together by little more than habit and fear, was the church.

Can these bones live? We will see – the mission of Jesus continues in the world, and his disciples are the ones called and sent to live and tell the story, to love and forgive in his name, and we continue to learn from his teachings. Since the days of the first witnesses, frightened disciples could be church because the Risen One keeps breaking in on us, breathing on the dry bones of our lives, leading us out of our tombs, and sending us to live and proclaim God’s forgiveness and peace. And so the resurrection continues to unfold until the whole creation knows the peace of God.

Thomas, of course, wasn’t there when Jesus came to the apostles 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 Thomas 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.” Thomas needed to see and touch. He wanted proof – tangible proof that this living one his friends had seen was indeed Jesus whom the Romans had crucified. He had questions that couldn’t be answered with a reference to scripture or to some other authority. He needed to see and touch the truth; he needed to see and touch the new life.

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. That small fact in itself is remarkable. There have been plenty of churches since those early days where you were no longer welcome when a quick reference to scripture or to some other authority didn’t stop your questioning. And there are too many Christian communities where no one voices their struggles with believing for fear of being excluded or declared spiritually challenged. And there are many who have heard the words of the witnesses, and a week later they won’t be back with their questions and their need to experience the newness of life the words declare. But in John’s story, they’re all together. And now the scene repeats itself, solely for Thomas’s sake, we suppose.

Jesus comes and stands among them and says, for the third time, “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 many times he’s been called up by church 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 didn’t just want to hear about new life, but know it in its tangible reality.

“In the beginning was the Word,” John’s gospel declares in its opening verses, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And here, close to the end of the gospel, Thomas makes his confession, affirming that he has encountered God in Jesus, crucified and risen. That is his testimony to us. Now what will we do?

We might wish that the proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection would just catapult us into this reality of “all things new.” Certainly our faith and witness would be fearless and bold then! But we’re not that different from the first disciples: our lives are a mixture of fear and peace, and our faith fades in and out of focus, we move back and forth between blur and clarity — and that’s quite alright, because Jesus did not leave us orphaned: he has breathed on us, and he continues to breathe in us and among us through the Holy Spirit. We have not seen what the apostles have seen, but we have heard and continue to hear their witness.

In the final verses of John’s chapter, we read a note from the evangelist 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.” The living Word continues to come to us, and we trust that the Spirit will guide us into all the truth: We will hear what we need to hear, see what we need to see, and touch what we need to touch in order to have life in Jesus’ name. We can count on God’s persistence. The resurrection continues.

[1] John 14:27

[2] Ezekiel 37:1-14

Your hearts will rejoice

Thomas Kleinert

A few days ago, I believe it was Monday, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski addressed a room full of Alaska nonprofit and tribal leaders at a conference in Anchorage. She spoke about the tumult of tariffs, executive orders, court battles, and cuts to federal services under the current administration. “We are all afraid,” she said; and then there was a long pause — about five seconds. It was as though she suddenly realized what an astonishing thing she had just heard herself say. “It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. And I’ll tell ya, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.” She called on Alaskans to “be affirmative” in protesting on behalf of programs they want to remain in place. “I think it’s important the concerns continue to be raised,” Murkowski said, “rather than letting the fatigue of the chaos grind you down.”[1] We are all afraid, but don’t let the fatigue of the chaos grind you down.

A few days ago, I believe it was on Palm Sunday, the White House press office released a statement by the president.

This Holy Week, my Administration renews its promise to defend the Christian faith in our schools, military, workplaces, hospitals, and halls of government. We will never waver in safeguarding the right to religious liberty, upholding the dignity of life, and protecting God in our public square.[2]

I’m quite confident that God doesn’t need protection in the public square or anywhere else, least of all by the government of the United States. And instead of promising to defend the Christian faith — or what the MAGA regime imagines our faith to be — the president should perhaps remember his oath of office and “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”

A few days ago, I believe it was Thursday, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen was finally able to see Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man illegally abducted by the United States government. Mr. Garcia is married to a U.S. citizen, he had been legally living in Maryland for more than a decade, and he was never charged with any crime. A federal judge ordered the administration to facilitate Mr. Garcia’s return home, an order upheld by the Supreme Court, but the president invited his El Salvadoran counterpart to a sham press conference where they each shrugged their shoulders, smugly pretending to be helpless in righting this grievous wrong — and all of this during Holy Week.[3] I hear echoes of Pontius Pilate washing his hands. The arrogance of power knows no limit. We are all afraid, but don’t let the fatigue of the chaos grind you down.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. Wasn’t she afraid to go out by herself in the dark? I bet she was, but she went anyway. Why? Mary of Bethany had already anointed Jesus’ body with precious nard.[4] Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had already lavishly prepared Jesus’ body with a hundred pounds of myrrh and other spices before they laid him in the tomb.[5] There were no more tasks to complete, no more final kind gestures to offer. So, why did she go?

I believe she just wanted to be there. She wanted to get as close to Jesus’ body as she could, as soon as she could. I believe she went because her love was stronger than her fear. She was heartbroken and sad, and I imagine she was angry at the world and at those who ruled it so violently. Or perhaps she was way past anger, sliding into numbness. She loved this man who encouraged her and his other followers to embrace the vision of a world where masters wash servants’ feet, where the sick are healed and the hungry fed, and all who mourn are comforted. He had awakened hope in her, boundless hope. Because of him, she had begun to believe in the possibility of forgiveness, the possibility of a community shaped by mutual love, the possibility of life in fullness for all.

And now he was dead. Her joy was gone, and all she could see in the dim light was that the stone had been removed from the tomb. After everything she had lost, even that last place of tangible connection with Jesus’ body had been violated. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

“It matters little what we see when despair takes hold,” writes Jonathan Walton. “We will interpret all reality through this prism.”[6] They have crucified the Lord. They have extinguished the light of his luminous presence in the world. And now they have even taken his body. They have managed to make his absence unbearably complete. It was as though the predawn darkness became even thicker for Mary.

John seems to think we could use a little comedy now. He presents an interlude with the curious footrace between Peter and the other disciple: who got there first, and who saw what first, and who was the first to believe, and then, how the two of them, get this, how the two of them went home. The light of this first day certainly takes a while to dawn, doesn’t it?

Mary Magdalene, though, bewildered and bereft, doesn’t walk away. She doesn’t turn away from the painful reality; she stays with it, right there by the open tomb where the absence is most palpable. She stays and she weeps.

“Woman, why are you weeping?” the angels ask her.

Why am I weeping? Why aren’t you? Haven’t you been paying attention? Don’t you see what is going on? Don’t you see how they take away all things bright and beautiful, how they destroy anything that is promising, and how they pile up only ugliness and lies, all for the sake of power? How can you not weep when they have put out the light of the world?

The angels have no comfort to offer. They just sit there, the silence of heaven in the face of human loss and pain. What do angels know about hope and grief?

Then she sees the gardener, and to us, at first glimpse, that’s another bit of comedy, a case of mistaken identity, because the narrator has already told us who this is. But he actually is the gardener. The whole early morning sequence resonates with echoes of the creation stories — the darkness before the light, the first day, God who planted a garden and walked in it in the cool of the day — and we may recall the words from the first chapter of John,

He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.[7]

Mary sees the gardener, but she doesn’t recognize him. Mary stands at the dawn of a new creation, and she doesn’t know it. “Woman, why are you weeping?” he asks, sounding just like one of the angels. “Whom are you looking for?”

On the night before his arrest, Jesus told the disciples, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.” They said, “What does he mean by this ‘a little while?’” and he responded, “You will weep and mourn, you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice.”[8] And now he does see her, but she doesn’t see him until she hears him speak her name, “Mary!” — and light floods in and everything becomes new in an instant.

Jesus’ vision of God’s reign awakens hope in us, but amid the fading of the world as it is and the coming of the world as it shall be, our hope often gets shaken or buried. We mourn, we weep, we seek to reconnect with what we once knew, wondering who has taken it away, wondering where we might go and find it. We run back and forth, much of what we see is ambiguous, and sometimes, like Peter and the other disciple, we just go home — except that without hope, home isn’t much of a home.

So let me suggest we do what Mary did: stay as close as we can to what’s real even when it makes us weep, or perhaps especially when it makes us weep, because amid the chaos our tears bear witness to what is good, beautiful, and true. We stay until we hear him call our name and everything becomes new.

The resurrection is not a turning back of the clock that somehow undoes the reality of injustice and suffering, or the cruelty of those in power. The resurrection is the beginning of new life in the midst of the old. It is the dawn of the world’s redemption from anything that would keep it from being a home for all.

When Jesus met his first followers, he asked them, “What are you looking for?” and he invited them to come and see.[9] When Mary stood outside the tomb, mourning and weeping, he asked her, “Whom are you looking for?” and, calling her by name, he invited her again to come and see.  Like them, we listen for that call and we follow; we seek, we find, we get lost; we hear our name; we see and we want to hold on, and we let go for the promise of fulfillment beyond our imagining. Like Mary, we do not cling to the Jesus we once knew, but to the promise that he will not leave us orphaned in a world of our own making. We are all afraid, but we won’t let the fatigue of the chaos grind us down.

The stories of Jesus’ life and ministry, of his humble birth and cruel death, his radical hospitality and boundless compassion, and his resurrection from the dead — all these stories tell us that there is a great love at work among us, a love stronger than any fear; a love so powerful and creative, it frees us to let ourselves be built into a community shaped entirely in its image: life in fullness for all. Praise be to God who raised Jesus from the dead.

[1] https://www.adn.com/politics/2025/04/14/we-are-all-afraid-speaking-to-alaska-nonprofit-leaders-murkowski-gets-candid-on-upheaval-in-federal-government/

[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/04/presidential-message-on-holy-week-2025/

[3] https://www.whitetoolong.net/p/god-hasnt-forgotten-about-you-an

[4] John 12:1-7

[5] John 19:38-42

[6] Jonathan Walton, Connections, Year B, Volume 2, 192.

[7] John 1:2-5

[8] John 16:16-20

[9] John 1:38-39

The Foolishness of Jesus

Margie Quinn

Today is Palm Sunday. I’ve heard this story, as many of you have, countless times. We’ve heard about the triumphal entry of Jesus, who rode into the city of Jerusalem as we threw down our cloaks and our palm branches in glory and praise of Him. 

But this week, I actually learned that Palm Sunday is actually a story not of one but two triumphal entries, or parades as I like to call them. While there is no scriptural record of this second parade, many historians have pointed out that the Romans were undoubtedly holding their own imperial parade around the same time. You see, this is around the time of the major Jewish festival of Passover, when the Jewish people celebrate their liberation from Egypt, their escape from enslavement. What a beautiful Jewish ritual and celebration it was—and is—that they were able to say, "We escaped and left the clutches of empire and oppression and followed someone who showed us a different way of life and a different kind of freedom."

As they gathered around the table and broke bread together, the powers of Rome, who were so threatened and intimidated by that kind of joy and love, decided to host a parade around to remind the people that they shouldn’t expect liberation again, not from Rome.

To emphasize this point, this parade was to announce the raw political and military power of the Roman government. So Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, would ride in from the west to Jerusalem. He would appear on his warhorse with cavalry and foot soldiers following him. And people would gather on the side of the road to watch these big, strong horses and these foot soldiers, and the leather armor and the helmets and the weapons and the banners and the golden eagles mounted on poles. This was Pilate’s parade.

As Pastor Shannon Kershner notes, as they heard the marching of feet and the cracking of leather, the clinking of bridles and the beating of drums, they would grow increasingly more intimidated of this reminder: Caesar, not God, had control over their lives and over their deaths. 

I imagine that, intimidated into silence, the people watching this parade would cower in fear, or nervously shuffle their feet as these men marched by. 

But there was another parade going on at the same time. This one was led not by a man coming from the west in all of his imperial glory. This was a man coming from the east toward the city of Jerusalem. Jesus didn’t plan the timing of this parade by accident. No, he knew about Rome’s imperial parade, about the intimidation and fear tactics, about this desire to threaten and overpower the people, to keep them in their place, to keep that shoe on their neck. And so Jesus, ever the wily man that he was, said, “I’m going to have something different happen during that time.”

Some scholars refer to it as street theater—Jesus planning his own provocative performance for the sake of the Gospel; Jesus being willing to look a little foolish for the sake of the Good News. He crafted his own kind of theater to directly contrast Pilate’s parade. 

Now, let’s look at these two parades: 

In Pilate’s parade: War horses.
In Jesus’s parade: A donkey.

Imagine it: on Pilate’s horse, an expensive saddle. On Jesus’ donkey, a couple of dirty cloaks thrown over its back. Can you visualize the foolishness of this scene? 

In Pilate’s parade, he rode at the front of this intimidating, powerful group of men.
In Jesus’s parade, he rode with a small group of uneducated fishermen and despised tax collectors. He rode with a really unorganized bunch of men and women—some of whom were walking behind him, some walking alongside him, some who might’ve scurried in front of him a little bit. 

In Pilate’s parade: military gear.
In Jesus’s parade: sandals and worn clothes.

In Pilate’s parade: a display of domination.
In Jesus’s parade: a display of devotion.
In Pilate’s parade: a scared silence.
In Jesus’s parade: shouts of joy and praise.

Can you hear it, church? 

The peasants cried out when they saw him. “Hosanna!” they shouted, which literally means “Save now!”  These peasants and people were so comfortable addressing Jesus, begging for his mercy that they were willing to cry out, “Save now, Jesus! Save now!
Liberate us from this oppressive hold that Caesar has on us! Save now, Jesus! Deliver us from this looming cloud that hangs over us, telling us that we are small, that we are helpless, that no body of people who organize together to fight against the systems of power are ever going to be able to make change or do enough. Save now! Save us from the fear that swallows us and suffocates us every day.
Hosanna, Jesus! Hosanna!”

Do you hear both the praise and the desperation in their voices as they see the King of Kings? Not a warlord—a different kind of king. A king willing to hop on a donkey and ride through a town as people put palms and cloaks down out of respect and admiration for this man who was willing to look foolish for the sake of the Gospel.

In a world of winners,  he was willing to look like a loser.
In a word of powerful, intimidating leaders, he was willing to look vulnerable and weak, riding not in front of his followers, but alongside them. If that isn’t good news, church, I don’t know what is.

So the peasants and the people spread their cloaks and clothes on the ground and said, “Blessed is the king who comes not in the name of Caesar or Rome, but who comes in the name of the Lord. “Peace in heaven,” (not worldly power on earth); peace in the highest heaven, and glory!”  

And yet, amidst the laughter and praise and this palpable joy, we can hear the Pharisees begin to grumble. They say, “Jesus, order your disciples to stop! It’s a little bit too much. Things are getting a weee bit too wild.” And Jesus responds: “Even if they stopped—even if they silenced their shouting and their praise—my creation, God’s beautiful creation, would still cry out. Even the stones would cry out!”

I’m struck this morning by these two contrasting parades. I read the story this week with new eyes, recognizing these little details that Jesus intentionally placed in his parade, in his riding into the city of Jerusalem, in his triumphal entry—set apart from Pilate’s.

How could anything good come out of Nazareth, they ask? Yet, here he comes. 

I am in awe of Jesus’s constant ability to risk looking foolish for the sake of the Gospel—and the ability of those around Him to risk the same.

Y’all remember that paralyzed man who really wanted to be healed by Jesus, but the crowd was too large in the house for him to approach him? So, his friends cut a hole in the roof and lowered this man down into the room? Surely, that would have looked foolish to those people. 

Y’all remember the woman who was bleeding for 12 years and, in desperation, pushed her way through a crowd and grabbed Jesus’s cloak, saying, “Heal me”? Y’all don’t think people cried, “Foolish woman!” 

Y’all remember Zacchaeus, who climbed up in a sycamore tree just to get a look at his Savior? Imagine how foolish it was to see a grown man shimmy up a tree, peering down in between branches. Foolish followers. 

They risked humiliation and embarrassment to follow a man whose healing and way of being was so compelling that they could not resist being near him. That’s how magnetic his love was.

Do you remember Jesus Himself, perhaps the biggest fool of all?

He said, “When you’re slapped on the cheek, turn the other.” He spit on the ground and made a little mud, and took that mud and put it over   a blind man’s eyes, healing him. He spit into his hands and stuck his fingers in a deaf man’s ear to heal him. Y’all don’t think people thought all of that looked a little foolish? 

And as we enter this Holy Week, as we walk toward the cross, we remember Maundy Thursday, when Jesus knelt down before the calloused, dirty feet, the broken toe nails of his disciples and in a moment of true foolishness, of flipping the script, he washed their feet; even when they asked him not to, even when they felt a little uncomfortable or embarrassed by the act.

Jesus said: I don’t care. I don’t care how I’m seen. I care about showing you a vulnerable kind of love that is in direct opposition to the powers that you see. And yeah, it’s going to make you a little squirmy. But, I’m willing to look foolish for you.

Church, our Savior is willing to look foolish in order to heal us and liberate us and save us. He doesn’t care about social norms. He doesn’t care about showing off his power and grandstanding his might. 

He cares about you. He cares about me. He cares about the people shouting “Hosanna! Save now!” and he cares about the ones who will soon shout, “Crucify Him!” Imagine that. His love extends to our praise of him and our persecution: both the faithful followers and the fair-weather fans. Foolishness—all for the sake of us.

The fool who, as we heard in Philippians, did not view his divinity as something to lord over others, but emptied himself for the sake of being with us, among us, beside us and for us. The fool who washes our feet, even when we squirm. The fool who is willing to be arrested and humiliated and mocked and laughed at as he lays on the cross, all out of his love for us. The fool whose triumphal entry was not a display of dominance but of devotion. 

Grab your donkey.
Throw down a cloak.
Follow the fool who risks it all for our sake.

Amen.

New creation

Thomas Kleinert

I had never heard of Bill Arlow until I read about him last week, and I suspect most of you aren’t familiar with him either. Bill Arlow was born in 1926 in County Down, in Northern Ireland, as a Protestant Ulsterman. In his late teens and early twenties he became an active church worker, helping to organize the first visit of Billy Graham to Northern Ireland in 1949. After a stint with Youth for Christ, he went to seminary in Edinburgh and was ordained a priest in the Church of Ireland. In 1970, as the Troubles were taking hold, he became rector of a parish in East Belfast, where he witnessed the impact of sectarian violence. One of his early experiences there was to minister to a youth shot in the head by a paramilitary, cradling the young man’s head as he breathed his last.

Arlow began to form relationships with paramilitaries on both sides. Eventually, he convened meetings between protestant clerics and lower-ranking leaders of the Irish Republican Army, and his efforts attracted considerable criticism from the protestant community. He received hate mail and death threats, and he and his family had to move house and live under police protection for some time; more civil critics dismissed him as naïve. And yet, the outcome of his efforts was a unilateral IRA ceasefire over Christmas 1974 and a bilateral truce that lasted until September ‘75.

Then the Troubles resumed, and Arlow continued to meet with the paramilitaries as well as with the families of their victims, who were dismayed by any talk of reconciliation. In radio programs Arlow insisted that it was not enough for his Christian listeners to pride themselves on not participating in political violence, but that it was their religious duty to work actively to end it. “It is better to fail,” he told them, “in a cause that will finally succeed, than to succeed in a cause that will finally fail.” And he said this many years before the Good Friday Agreement was finally signed in 1998, marking the end of the violent conflict.[1]

It is better to fail in a cause that will finally succeed, than to succeed in a cause that will finally fail. I may not remember Bill Arlow’s name for very long – I’ve long been bad with names, and it’s not getting any better – but I hope we’ll all remember these words, or carry them deep in our bones: It is better to fail in a cause that will finally succeed, than to succeed in a cause that will finally fail. Everything depends, of course, on what we know or believe or hope the final outcome to be.

Paul once thought of Jesus as a violator of law and tradition. All he could see was a blasphemer and messianic pretender, rejected by God in his shameful death by crucifixion. But one day something big happened to Paul on the road to Damascus, a profound crisis triggered by a vision of the risen, living Christ, a crisis that slowly deflated several of Paul’s most closely held certainties. Now Jesus’ crucifixion was no longer proof of God’s rejection of the Galilean’s messianic claims and his teachings. Now the church’s proclamation of a crucified Messiah was no longer a foolish contradiction to God’s purpose, but the fullest expression of God’s love for sinners, Paul himself included.[2] Now he could no longer understand himself apart from Christ, but only as one whom Christ, in boundless love, had made his own. The compelling love of Christ had claimed him, laid hold of him, and sent him to proclaim the good news as an ambassador for Christ.

Some would say, “Wow, did you hear about Saul? Who would have thought, he really changed his mind, didn’t he?” Others would respond, “No, it’s bigger than that. He sees himself and the entire world in a whole new light – bathed in grace!” And Paul himself, what does he say? He writes, “If anyone is in Christ – new creation! Everything old has passed away; look, everything new has come into being!” To Paul himself, the transformation is not just a change of mind or a sudden sensibility to a new light in the old world – no, it’s a new creation! To him, the ancient promise declared by Isaiah has begun to take shape among him and his contemporaries and around them:[3]

I am about to create new heavens and a new earth, says the Lord; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime. They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat. They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord – and their descendants as well.

Paul finds himself and all people caught up in the renewal and consummation of all things through God’s redeeming act in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Paul knows, of course, that in countless ways “all is definitely not wondrously new.” And yet Paul proclaims that “in some vital way all things are new.”[4] The full depth of God’s love has been revealed in the cross of Christ, and Christ, the firstfruits, has been raised from the dead. Now all things will unfold from that moment. Christ’s death and resurrection brought the end of a world under the dominion of sin and the advent of another: a new creation, new heavens and a new earth where righteousness is at home.[5]

What the Corinthian believers must decide, according to Paul, and we along with them, is whether to orient our lives to the present that is on the way out, or the future that is already illuminating the present like the first rays of sunrise. And once we have decided, assuming we have decided to lean into the light of that dawn, we practice living no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and was raised for us,[6] and according to the pattern of his life.

Holly Hearon points out that the relationship between Paul and the Corinthian church was “tense … at the time of this correspondence.” The apostle apparently felt that a number of believers there regarded him from a point of view that was on the way out, from a human perspective that was out of sync with the newness of life in Christ. These Corinthians were disappointed because he didn’t have the powerful presence and demeanor that they expected in an apostle. And they were frustrated because he said he would come and visit, and then he didn’t show.

Paul, on the other hand, was pained that they were drawn to apostles other than him, and that may well be why he writes so emphatically about reconciliation in this passage of the letter – five times in three verses.

Hearon suspects that Paul recognized “that what goes on in human communities, how we relate to one another, has implications for how we relate to God” and vice versa.

It is not just about us; nor is it just about God. It is about how we understand ourselves to be in relationship with God and with one another, all in the same moment. The two are inextricably linked.[7]

Once we begin to grasp that God “in Christ” is reaching out to us, reconciling us, reconciling the world to God-self, not counting our trespasses against us – once we begin to grasp that God “in Christ” is re-establishing righteousness in our most fundamental relationship, once we begin to grasp that, and to the degree that we grasp that, we also begin to embrace the new-creation challenge to reach across the barriers and divisions that separate us, individually and as groups, whether due to old, ingrained injustice, or to the common daily missteps, misunderstandings, and misconceptions that get between us. We embrace the challenge and we practice. We practice reaching across in unsentimental love, seeking the healing of relationships fractured by our loveless ways.

“Were Paul and the Corinthians reconciled?” Hearon asks. “We do not know.”[8] We don’t have a Third Letter to the Corinthians telling us how things went after Paul’s urgent plea. His efforts may have failed – but better to fail in a cause that will finally succeed, than to succeed in a cause that will finally fail, as Bill Arlow reminded himself and his listeners.

Many of us wonder every day how to practice the kind of reconciliation that is not afraid to face the truth about ourselves. Many of us struggle with what to do when greed, retribution and chaos dim the horizon like heavy, gray clouds. What do we do? We practice – better to fail in a cause that will finally succeed, than to succeed in a cause that will finally fail.

For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus is the hinge on which God’s whole purpose not only for God’s people but for all of God’s creation turns.[9] And while we may turn every which way, forgetful as we are, self-absorbed, status-obsessed, and loveless as we can be, God’s mercy doesn’t swing back and forth, or turn like some mad whirligig.

The sun’s still rising. God has turned all things toward life’s fulfillment in justice and in peace. And that’s where we orient our lives.

[1] See Samuel Wells, Christian Century March 2025, 34 and https://www.dib.ie/biography/arlow-william-james-bill-a9451

[2] See James Dunn, Christianity in the Making, 577.

[3] See Isaiah 65:17ff.

[4] William Greenway, Connections, Year C, Volume 2, 84.

[5] 2 Peter 3:13

[6] See 2 Corinthians 5:15

[7] Holly Hearon https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-in-lent-3/commentary-on-2-corinthians-516-21-2

[8] Holly Hearon; see note above

[9] See James Dunn, Christianity in the Making, 578.

Tend the Soil

Margie Quinn

The Owner of the Vineyard has planted a fig tree. Every so often, he comes around to see if the tree has any fruit on it. He’s checked on it many times, and has been disappointed many times. “How come this thing won’t produce fruit for me?” he asks.  

He finds the Gardener, the guy working the vineyard, who is actually spending the most time with this tree, and complains. “For three years I’ve come looking for fruit on this dang tree and I haven’t found any. Go ahead and cut it down! It’s just sitting here wasting soil.” 

Sitting here wasting soil. I don’t know about you, but that’s how I feel these days. I’m on email lists for countless petitions that need signing, organizations that need funding, community events that need attending. There is a palpable sense of expectation that I, that we, should be doing something, doing more. But in the midst of so much need, in the face of so much suffering, I find myself unable to engage in meaningful ways, avoiding the headlines, retreating into the comfort of ignorance, until I feel like I’m just sitting here. I’m not able to produce enough compassion at the rate it is expected of me. I’m wasting soil.

Maybe you feel that way, too. Your bodies are wearing down, preventing you from moving in the ways that you used to, preventing you from going at the pace you’d like to. “I used to be thinner in frame, sharper in mind, and I can’t figure out how to get back to that person,” you may lament.  Wasting soil. 

You aren’t making the best grades at school, aren’t excelling enough at the sports you play. 

You see your colleagues getting promotions at work when you feel ashamed that you can’t produce enough results, earn enough money or work hard enough to get that raise. Wasting soil.

Church, what I’m hearing these days is a lot of shame about our inability to produce fruit at the speed or volume that others expect. We aren’t a good enough activist, or academic or athlete or colleague or parent or partner or Christian. In our lowest moments, we may feel that we are a waste of space and a waste of time and a waste of soil. 

The owner certainly thinks so. He checks in on the tree time and time again, waiting for it to bear fruit when he wants it to. Yet it remains bare, unable to give him what he wants when he wants it. 

In my own life, I subconsciously assume that God is the owner in this story, disappointed time and time again by a tree that is unable to produce enough. God is ashamed of my lack of action or compassion or productivity. This “Owner God” in my life expects immediate results from me, to have something to show for my hard work. This “Owner God” whispers to me that rest is selfish, that I shouldn’t take a nap or take a sick day. This “Owner God” instills a sense of fear in me, a fear of what He will find the next time He comes around when I still haven’t done enough for Him. And I rarely think that I have done enough for Him. 

Work harder, move faster, be more productive. You should have responded to that email weeks ago. Why didn’t you exercise today? That pastor has been down at the capitol every day, fighting for human rights, where have you been? 

That’s where this story ends, right? “And the tree felt the pressure from the owner, and with a lot of great effort and concentration and diligence, grew a bunch of figs for the owner to consume.” Right? 

But this is the gospel, which literally means “good news.” This is the freeing word for all of us this morning: Our God does not own us, doesn’t have any interest in it. Our God doesn’t operate at a distance, only coming in every once and a while to ask for our progress report before leaving again, disappointed by what He finds. That’s not how our God works. 

So, upon seeing the owner’s disappointment, the gardener says, “Give it one more year. Let me dig around it and put manure on it. Let me tend to it. If it bears fruit next year, then woohoo but if not, you can cut it down.”  

Let me tend to it, dig around it, put manure on it. Our God, like the gardener, loves playing in the dirt. Remember in the beginning of creation? She has Her hands in the dirt. Our God created humankind out of dirt, adamah, and called it good. She didn’t sit off at a distance, checking on Adam and Eve every once in a while. No, She walked around the garden, instructing them to till the earth and keep it, without any sense of urgency. 

Our God understands that soil is never wasted, never stagnant, never useless. Soil is not a “thing” but a web of relationships and processes where so many elements and creatures come together to create diverse conditions in which life may flourish. As Hans Jenny, one of the greatest soil scientists of the 20th century, professed at the end of a long and distinguished career, it is almost impossible to give a precise definition of soil because of the grandness and mystery of what it is. Down below, this fig tree isn’t just gathering strength, it’s building relationships. 

Our God lives into this mystery, tending to a network of life that is beneath us, yes, but also within us, believing that no act of care or compassion or small gesture could be fruitless. She doesn’t expect immediate results from us, though we hear those whispers or even shouts around us these days. 

Church, you may think that your efforts in this world, in this country lately, are a waste of soil. 

But our “Gardener God” invites you to think differently this morning. Our Gardener God calls out to us with a patience and encouragement that only She can offer and reminds us: 

Though you may never see the fruits of your labor or pluck a fig, tend the soil.

Though that petition you signed online yesterday may never make a dent in the legislation, tend the soil.

Though your kindness toward an enemy may never be reciprocated, tend the soil.

Though the person living on the street may use your money in ways you don’t agree with, tend the soil.

Though you may never get a “thank you” for fighting racism, sexism, homophobia, tend the soil.

Though your parents may never listen when you try to educate them on social issues, tend the soil.

Though it is annoying to recycle all of the church bulletins every week, tend the soil.

Though your donation of $5 a month seems inconsequential, tend the soil.

Though you may never witness the justice and mercy we work toward as a church, tend the soil.

We don’t turn the manure and care for the tree because we expect it to produce figs for our consumption. We do it to bear witness anyway, to stand with our arms out to this world and profess a different way of being, a different kind of hope that doesn’t place itself in instant gratification or immediate results but places itself in a Loving, Living, Moving God who shows up not as an bitter owner but as a persistent gardener, seeing us for all of who we are, whether we believe ourselves to be a waste of soil, unable to produce, or not, and loves us anyway. Deals with our crap, literally turning it over and over with a grace only God could have, trusting our growth, believing in a future where figs blossom. 

When Mary goes looking for Jesus after the crucifixion, she does not find him in the tomb or in the temple. She finds him in the garden. His hands are in the dirt. He is digging around, turning the manure, reminding us that our God is not far away but as close as our own breath, inviting us to get our hands dirty, get to work and tend the soil. 

May it be so.

Press on

Thomas Kleinert

Philippi was a Macedonian city in north-eastern Greece that became a Roman colony under Octavian, on his rise to becoming Emperor Augustus. Philippi was also the first city in Europe where followers of Jesus gathered to worship God and break bread in remembrance of the risen Lord. Paul and his missionary team played a significant role in the initial formation of the community of believers, and the brothers and sisters in Philippi held a special place in the Apostle’s heart.

“I thank my God every time I remember you,” he writes in the opening of his letter, “constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.”[1] Joy and gratitude infuse his writing from beginning to end. In the brief passage we heard this morning, he tells them how he longs for them, calling them beloved twice, in addition to referring to them as my joy and my crown—and all in a single sentence. That’s remarkable, and even more so when you consider that Paul was in prison when he wrote the letter.

Joy and gratitude and love—clearly Paul won’t let circumstances drive his mental and emotional state. He may not be able to see past the prison walls, but his vision extends far beyond them, far beyond any circumstance: Paul has his eyes on Jesus, wants to be found in him, seeks the righteousness that comes through faith in him, desires to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings—Not that I have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

Paul has his eyes on the finish line, the ultimate horizon beyond every horizon: “Beloved,” he writes, “I do not consider that I have made it my own; but … I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”[2]

Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, he sings from his prison cell. Press on, don’t let circumstances distract you from the heavenly call. Oh I know, beloved, the world can be a cold and hostile place, but press on. And I know, sometimes, beloved, your rage and your fear feel like they’re at least twice the size of your faith and hope, but press on. Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.

Things were difficult in Philippi for followers of Jesus, as they’re bound to be whenever and wherever the church stays true to our heavenly call. And while we don’t know what pressures exactly the church in Philippi was facing, Paul’s teaching points beyond the circumstances anyway: “Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, in no way intimidated by your opponents.”[3] Press on.

Paul tells his readers, “join in imitating me”—and at first that didn’t sound right to me: Is he presenting himself as a model of discipleship here, or perhaps even the model? Does he want to see a community built on the pattern of Paul? I don’t think so, and part of my reaction may be due to the rise of personality cults around the globe, and my deep aversion to their disturbing popularity.

Paul, I believe, has something else altogether on his mind. He invites his readers to take a good look at him and notice where his life and ministry rhyme with the life and ministry of Christ. Those rhymes are not mere illustrations, but manifestations, of the power of the gospel to transform lives. And lives renewed and fulfilled in Christlikeness are the sole point of anything Paul says, writes, does, or suffers. Christ is the pattern. Paul wants his readers to imitate him imitating Christ and press on, so they too begin living lives that rhyme with the life of Christ.

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” Paul urges—and it’s not just a matter of a new set of ideas, it’s a matter of lived life, new commitments, new priorities, new habits. All of it inspired and empowered by the way of Christ who did not cling to divine privilege, however we might define that, but humbled himself, choosing a life in service to the kingdom of God. Anything we might consider divine privilege disappeared in the public humiliation of his crucifixion, when divine presence could only be perceived as utter absence, and the body of the Messiah became indistinguishable from any human body destroyed in the name of proper power, proper religion, proper order, you name it. Over generations, our deep rejection of God’s reign of love has found countless expressions, many of them brutal and violent, culminating in the crucifixion of the Son of God, but that didn’t stop God from raising Jesus from the dead and highly exalting him and giving him the name that is above every name.[4] Chasing privilege, chasing advantage, chasing supremacy and domination are all too common, but God went the other way. God chose the way of the cross. God chose the way of Jesus. God chose the humble, obedient, compassionate, wounded life of Jesus.

Philippi was a Roman colony and many of its residents were citizens of Rome. I imagine that Paul’s little church included at least some of them, men and women proud of their connection to the most powerful dominion in the known world. No doubt, the church in Philippi also included men and women with no status whatsoever, enslaved persons whose names had been taken away by their human masters who owned and controlled their bodies. And now Paul tells them, all of them, writes it down in his joy-infused letter from prison, because kingdom work got him in trouble yet again: Our citizenship is in heaven.

Our citizenship—that explosive, yet inclusive, little pronoun speaks volumes of the power of belonging to the reign of one greater than Caesar. Our citizenship is elsewhere. We are a colony of heaven, he tells us, and so we’re not surprised when at times we feel like resident aliens in a very foreign land. We are here to proclaim with our whole lives that love is stronger than sin and death, and certainly stronger than fear. We are here to affirm that we are each and all made in the image of God, and while that innate dignity can be denied and violated, it cannot be taken. Christ has made us his own. Everyone belongs.

Screenshot from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html#

I read about a group of journalists who combed through government memos and other documents providing guidance to federal agencies, and created a list of hundreds of flagged words and terms that were to be limited or avoided. In some cases, federal agency managers advised caution in the terms’ usage without instituting an outright ban, but many of the phrases were removed from public-facing websites. Additionally, the presence of some terms was used to automatically flag for review some grant proposals and contracts that could conflict with [recent] executive orders.[5] Not surprisingly, the list contains diversity, equity, and inclusion, racial justice, climate science, and transsexual. I read through the whole list, trying to imagine its human impact, but I couldn’t—it’s too much, too terrifying, painful and ridiculous. The word women is listed, the word men is not, except for men who have sex with men. I found myself returning several times to word #18 in the first column, between barriers and bias: belong.

Belong. That may well be the keyword for the entire project. The compilers in charge of this list of unmentionables don’t just want to be able to say, “We belong. They don’t.” The new inquisitors want to use the power of government to decree by super-size marker signature who belongs—and who needs to be subsumed, deported, declared non-existent, or otherwise disappeared. It’s terrifying and it’s painful and, yes, it’s too much, from all directions, all at once.

But I can hear Paul singing from prison: Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on. Our citizenship is in heaven. Christ has made us his own, and as he shared with us the body of our humiliation under sin’s dominion, he will also conform us to the body of his glory. Trust the promise of God. Trust the humble way of Jesus. Trust the power of empathy and compassion, and the streams of kindness poured daily into the world by ordinary people waiting and working for God’s reign to come in fullness.

I don’t know if Paul knew the old adage, “They’re so heavenly minded, they’re no earthly good.” He probably didn’t know it, but I’m certain he would push back emphatically if he heard it, and insist that we must indeed be heavenly minded if we are to be any earthly good at all.[6] We are citizens of heaven. Christ has made us his own and sent us as ambassadors in service to God’s reign, with humility and courage. Therefore, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

[1] Philippians 1:3-5

[2] See Philippians 3:7-16

[3] Philippians 1:27-28

[4] See Philippians 2:6-11

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html#

[6] With thanks to Elizabeth Shively https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-in-lent-3/commentary-on-philippians-317-41

Led by the Spirit

Thomas Kleinert

We use ash to mark the beginning of Lent. Ash has long been used as a symbol of grief and repentance. Ash is all that is left when the fire has burned out. The ash we use on Ash Wednesday is what is left of the palm fronds we spread on the ground or waved with joy when we welcomed Jesus and his reign to the city. That bonfire of glad expectation burned out fast, and it’s humbling to realize how short-lived our commitments can be.

We use ash to leave a visible mark on our skin, but the words we hear during the ritual remind us that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. We let ourselves be reminded that we are earthlings—creatures of God, made in the image of God, made from dust. “Being human means acknowledging that we’re made from the earth and will return to the earth,” wrote Richard Rohr. “We are earth that has come to consciousness. … And then we return to where we started—in the heart of God. Everything in between is a school of love.”[1] It is fitting that the words human, humus, and humble all come from the same Latin root, meaning soil. In the second creation account in Genesis, God forms the human being, adam in Hebrew, from adamah—dust of the ground, dirt, soil—and breathes into the earthling’s nostrils the breath of life. We belong to God and to the ground from which God has made us. We belong to creation and to the Creator, and we are to live in ways that honor our deep belongingness to both. With ashes on our foreheads, we humbly remember our humanity. When we forget our deep belongingness to God and to creation, the opposites of humble emerge: we become arrogant, haughty, imperious, pretentious.

According to the story in Genesis, God planted a garden in Eden, and put us in it to keep it. God said, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” Our story doesn’t begin with ashes; it begins with a garden and the human vocation to work and keep this marvel of lush life. One tree God has declared off limits.

You know there’s another voice in the garden, the serpent, more crafty than any other wild animal that God had made. And the crafty serpent doesn’t say much, it only asks a question, “Did God say, you shall not eat from any tree in the garden?” It’s not what God said, but like some crafty podcaster, the serpent is “just asking questions,” sowing seeds of suspicion: “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” God did not tell the whole truth, the voice insinuates, and the relationship between humans and God begins to unravel. We’re meant to be gardeners in Eden, but we wonder if perhaps the other voice has a point… and we eat. When questioned by God, the man blames the woman, the woman blames the serpent, and the serpent is silent. Guilt and fear, shame and blame have entered the scene, and jealousy and violence soon follow. We look around, and nothing, it seems, is the way it’s supposed to be.

There’s that arrogant little man with his dreams of empire who invaded a neighboring country, shelling its cities and killing its citizens, sending hundreds of thousands to die for the dream of greatness. He’s a violent little man, ruling over a house of greed and lies, in alliance with violent little men in Pyongyang and Teheran, and greatly admired by the pretentious little man with the red hat—yes, they are dangerous, but they’re just little men who can think of power only in terms of domination, because they have forgotten that life is a school of love.

The story of the earthling in the garden invites us to consider that the most consequential crack in our very fractured world is the rift in our relationship with God. And with that, we’re also invited to consider that the wholeness of life we all long for begins with the healing of that rift. Haughty little men with dreams of empire will continue to rise, their souls, their imaginations, and their actions utterly out of tune with the humility that goes with being human—they will continue to rise, and perhaps we can learn to recognize them sooner, before they convince so many of us that their violent pomposity is strength.

But the greater task for us is to remember our deep belongingness. We must know and strengthen what connects us. We must nurture what helps us work together. We must seek to live with the courage to love God with our whole and broken selves.

Our faith teaches us to say, “We have sinned. We have not trusted you. Guilt and fear have built their walls around us, and shame has locked the door. Forgive us. Set us free. Take us home.” We learn to say, “I have sinned.” We learn to trust God’s word, “You are forgiven.” And we begin again to live out our belonging to God, to each other, and to creation.

When Jesus was baptized, a voice came from heaven, “You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” In the next scene, Jesus is led by the Spirit in the wilderness. Jesus is alone, and he is not. He is filled with the Spirit. And he knows who he is. The voice he heard by the river didn’t mumble. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Jesus enters the wilderness to fast and pray. Forty days of sleeping in caves during the heat of the day. Forty nights of praying under a blanket of stars—just he and his questions and the spirit-companion. Until the hunger pangs come upon him with ferocious need. That’s when he hears that other voice—a friendly voice, concerned, almost caring. “Why are you doing this to yourself? You are the Son of God, why are you sitting on your hands?” This is not the voice from the river. Who or what then is this?

“How about one small miracle for yourself?” the voice whispers. “Come on, help yourself to some bread. Nobody’s watching. It’s just you and me here. Touch that stone and turn it into bread, and eat.” But Jesus doesn’t. He is famished, weak, and vulnerable, but he won’t act in self-serving ways.

He has a vision. He sees all the kingdoms of the world, east and west, north and south, great and small, rich and poor, the ones with just rulers and the ones with self-serving kleptocrats in charge. And he hears that voice again. “I can give all this to anyone I please. Take it. Think of all the good you could do as ruler of the world: end hunger and war, or whatever it is you want. You’ll be in charge. Just show me a little respect.” But Jesus continues to be led by the Spirit.

Then he finds himself in Jerusalem, way up on top of the temple, and there’s that voice again. “You are the son of God, are you not? Show them. Show Jerusalem and the world who you are. Just throw yourself down. It is written, is it not, ‘God will command the angels concerning you to protect you… On their hands they will bear you up so that you won’t dash your foot against a stone…’ Go ahead, jump and let them see you glide down on angels’ wings.”

But Jesus says no. He won’t serve his own interests first. He won’t take advantage of any opportunity to rise to the top by any means. And we won’t manipulate people with publicity stunts. Instead, he chooses to love God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind. He chooses to honor his deep belongingness to God and to us.

The most consequential crack in our very fractured world is the rift in our relationship with God, and in Jesus’ life the rift has been healed. The final clash of God’s reign and the demonic dominion of the power whisperer happened on the cross. Again Jesus heard the voice suggesting that he use his power for himself. “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one,” some scoffed. Others said, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” And one kept deriding him, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”[2] He didn’t save himself. He trusted in the faithfulness of God. And raising him from the dead, God affirmed his friendship with sinners, his subversive eating habits, and all his teachings.

The story of Jesus is the story of humanity and God. It is a retelling of our story that begins in Eden, and its healing. Jesus heard the whispers of the other voice as we all do, but he didn’t allow it to sow its seeds of suspicion. He humbly lived out our deep belongingness to God, to each other, and to the earth. In the power of the Spirit, he followed the path of love and obedience, and he bore the full weight of sin: the betrayals, the lies, the torture, the arrogance of the empire builders—all of it. He bore it and trusted God to forgive, redeem, and heal—all of it. Jesus didn’t turn stones into bread, but in the end his entire life was bread—blessed, broken, and shared for the life of the world.

[1] Douglas Kindschi https://www.gvsu.edu/cms4/asset/843249C9-B1E5-BD47-A25EDBC68363B726/grandrapidspress_2017-sep_14_from_the_earth_-_humus_humanity_humility.pdf

[2] Luke 23:35, 37, 39

At the Base of the Mountain

Margie Quinn

Back in my early twenties, I quit my job in Seattle and planned a road trip that I called the “Pilgrimarge.” I spent four months sitting at the feet of pastors, farmers, writers and prophets, asking them how they became who they are, and what holiness means to them. I was in search of Holy People, but I was also in search of Holy Places. I started in Seattle, making my way down the coast of California. I marveled at the holiness of the giant Redwoods tree in Sequoia National Park. I gasped at the gaping majesty of the Grand Canyon. I stood in awe surveying the other-wordly landscape of Badlands National Park. I took in the glory of Niagara Falls in Canada. I ended my trip at Holden Village, a Lutheran Retreat Center in the North Cascades National Park in Washington. Holden is a remote mountain community. In order to get there, you have to drive to a dock at Lucerne, take a boat across Lake Chelan, get on a school bus and drive 11 miles up 9 switchbacks until you start to see chalets dotting a snowy valley. It is about as remote as it gets: no cars, no phones, no noise. 

I got to Holden in February, when the dazzling mountains were capped with snow. I had never seen anything like it. I was supposed to stay for three months, but I ended up extending my time in the village, staying for six months. I loved living in an intentional community, attending nightly chapel, backpacking on the weekends and working as a staff member in the village during the week. That time in my life was, quite literally, a mountaintop experience. I wanted to stay even longer, to defer my acceptance to Duke Divinity and live in the mountains as long as I could get away with, away from the noise. But, a friend sat me down about five months into my time there and told me this: “Margie, there is a phrase we say around here—Holden is a place you leave.” No villager is allowed to live there longer than two years. You can’t stay there, tucked away in the majestic wilderness. Eventually, you have to ride the school bus back down the mountain and enter the real world again. 

I thought about Holden a lot this week as I read our passage, the transfiguration of Jesus. In this story, Jesus heads up the mountain to pray with three of his most trusted disciples, his “inner circle,” if you will. These are the same three disciples who had been with him when he healed the bleeding woman and the daughter of Jairus: Peter, John and James. While Jesus is praying, the appearance of his face changes, just like Moses on Mt. Sinai, and his clothes start to dazzle. Imagine being Peter, James or John, who we find out are really sleepy, weary from all of the travel and ministry they’ve been up to, who look up and see Jesus, an ordinary person who has transfigured into angelic glory. I wonder if they were terrified. 

Jesus meets them in their sleepiness and dazzles them in his glory. Not only does Jesus start dazzling, but two prophets, Moses and Elijah, appear “in glory,” talking to Jesus. The text says that even though the disciples were “weighed down with sleep,” they stayed awake and got to witness this mountaintop experience. 

Of course, Moses and Elijah weren’t planning to stay on the mountaintop with Jesus for very long. They knew that the mountaintop is a place you leave. But while they talked, their subject matter wasn’t of dazzling glory, it was about Jesus’ departure, his crucifixion, as he would soon go down the mountain and start his journey toward Jerusalem. 

Just as Moses and Elijah are leaving, Peter, like many of us probably would, tries to find a way to stay in this moment, to capture the holiness of it. “Hey, wait a minute,” he says, “I packed some tents…what if I go ahead and pitch those and you all stay?” “It’s good for us to be here!” Peter says. “Jesus, no one is grabbing your cloak for healing or begging for food. Our boat isn’t being rocked by a storm, you’re not crawling in tombs to exorcise demons from outcasts, no one is trying to kill you up here, we’re far away from the suffering of the world. Please, Jesus, it is good for us to be here.” 

While Peter proposes his plan, a cloud comes and overshadows them. And, of course, the disciples are terrified as they enter this cloud. Relatable. Then, they hear a voice, “This is my son, my Chosen, (or Beloved), listen to him!” The same voice that speaks during Jesus’ baptism, that calls him beloved at the beginning of his ministry still calls him beloved as he braces himself to come down the mountain and walk toward the cross. “Listen to him,” our God says. That’s the last part of this awe-filled, hard-to-believe, near- to-God, mountaintop experience that we get. Then the cloud passes, the prophets are gone, and Jesus is found alone. In the blink of an eye, we go from dazzling prophets and the booming voice of God to a man standing alone, preparing for the arduous walk to the cross. 

Most people think that this is the end of the transfiguration story. A lot of sermons will stop here this morning. But, this story loses its power if it does not include the moment when Jesus and the three disciples come down from the mountain. This story loses its power if we do not understand the way in which the glory of the mountain is connected to the grit of the valley. As Heidi Neumark writes, “...living high up in the rarified air isn’t the point of transfiguration…It was never meant as a private experience of spirituality removed from the public square. It was a vision to carry us down, a glimpse of unimagined possibility at ground level.” In other words, our God is not one whose glory is reserved for mountaintops and grand canyons and sweeping views and unreachable places. Our God is one who comes down the mountain and gets back to business. 

Back at ground level, Jesus meets a man in a crowd whose only son is sick from an unclean spirit. His son is foaming at the mouth, shrieking and convulsing. “Please, look at him,” the father begs. “Your disciples couldn’t heal him.” Jesus responds, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?” Pretty harsh words from Jesus. Not so shiny anymore. But, his frustration makes sense to me. He gave his disciples the power to heal the helpless and they failed. Maybe they were too uncomfortable by the state of the boy to heal him. There’s a reason we look away from the sick, the homeless, the ones shrieking and convulsing. That magnitude of suffering can overwhelm us. But Jesus doesn’t look away. He heals the boy. 

And then, (did you catch this?), “All were astounded at the greatness of God.” 

All were astounded at the greatness of God. 

Not because Jesus was shiny and shimmering, no. What’s astounding is that the glory of God’s presence and the pain of a broken world cannot be separated. Grit and glory go hand in hand. God’s greatness didn’t remain on the mountaintop. It wasn’t reserved for just a few men. No, God’s holiness known in Jesus walks down the mountain again and again to be with us in the midst of our suffering, to hold our hand and say, “You are not alone. I will not stay up there forever. I see your pain and I will push through the crowd and remind you that I will never leave you.” 

Church, God reminds us that wonder doesn’t just happen at Niagara Falls or in the North Cascades. Wonder, the greatness of God, can happen in the muck and mire at the base of the mountain, too. We just have to be open to seeing it, to trusting that it’s there. We need no longer climb up to some grand mountain to achieve holiness –it is too busy already reaching into the troubled dirt of our humanity to find us. 

I have been dreaming about Holden Village a lot lately. Wouldn’t it be so nice to escape to the mountains at a time like this, when our marginalized siblings face deportation, joblessness, abandonment from places that swore to protect diversity, equity and inclusion? When my weariness at this broken world threatens to consume me? When nothing feels particularly dazzling or glorious down here in the gray, cold of winter? But, in this season, God reminds me to listen to the one who meets us in our pain and stands in glory. Listen to his hurried footsteps as he heads back down the mountain to meet us where we are. Listen, as he calls us out for turning away from those most in need of healing and presence. 

We worship a God of dazzling glory, yes, and we worship a God who brings that glory to us, meeting us in our suffering and pain, and doesn’t look away. Our God is ready to roll up his sleeves in the dusty valleys of our lives and fulfill the words of the prophet Isaiah: 

Every valley shall be lifted up,

 and every mountain and hill be made low;
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,    

and all people shall see it together

Amen. 

Mercy now

Thomas Kleinert

Mary sings a tender song with a rough voice.

My father could use a little mercy now
The fruits of his labor fall and rot slowly on the ground
His work is almost over, it won’t be long, he won’t be around
I love my father, he could use some mercy now

Mercy Now, written by Mary Gauthier, was released twenty years ago, almost to the day. “[The song] came to me as a prayer in a time when loved ones and the world around me were sinking into darkness,” she wrote in her autobiography.

My brother could use a little mercy now
He’s a stranger to freedom, he’s shackled to his fear and his doubt
The pain that he lives in, it’s almost more than living will allow
I love my brother, he could use some mercy now

My church and my country could use a little mercy now
As they sink into a poisoned pit, it’s going to take forever to climb out
They carry the weight of the faithful who follow them down
I love my church and country, they could use some mercy now

She sings of people in power who’ll do anything to keep their crown, and I’ve been listening to her a lot through these twenty years. “The song brought catharsis,” she wrote, “and then, unexpectedly, it brought something else. The desperation I’d felt, laced with anger and fear, began to give way to a new calm. I began to feel connected.” She sings, “Every little thing could use a little mercy now, …and life itself could use a little mercy now, …yea, we all could use a little mercy now—I know we don’t deserve it, but we need it anyhow… And every single one of us could use some mercy now.”[1]

In her book, she recalls how ten years ago, Rolling Stone called Mercy Now one of the “Top 20 saddest songs of all time.”

I’m honored to have one of my songs in a Rolling Stone top-twenty-of-all-time poll, but “Mercy Now” is not sad, it’s real. People sometimes cry when they hear it, but if tears come, I think they are tears of resonance; the words provide listeners a witness to their struggle. “Mercy Now” started as a personal song, then it deepened. It became universal.[2]

Tears of resonance. Something utterly real touches your real self, and for a moment you’re no longer shackled to fear, doubt, pain, anger, and desperation—and you get a full taste of sweet mercy and release.

I know many of you are struggling these days. It’s like you’re living inside this surreal fever dream that loudly insists on being all kinds of great and very smart, when all you can see are emotionally and morally stunted men moving fast and breaking things—commitments, norms, laws, and entire institutions, without a care in the world.

Breathe. Pray. Look up. Know who you are. Know whose promise you trust. Know whose life and whose vision for the life of all you want to live. Breathe. Pray. Hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.[3]

In the midst of this chaotic moment we hear Jesus say, “Love your enemies.” He says it twice in today’s passage. And because he knows that we immediately ask, most of us quietly, “What do you mean… LOVE our enemies?”, he adds three more brief statements to help us unwrap the meaning: Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. Keep in mind that “you” in today’s passage, in just about every instance, is plural. Y’all do good to those who hate y’all. These are commands for the whole community of disciples to put into practice, and not just various individuals at the receiving end of hate, violence and abuse. The point is not to create more accommodating victims—meek, silent, and conveniently invisible—but to create a community that cultivates kindness and stands up against hate, violence and abuse with the relentless power of mercy.

When Jesus says, “Do good to those who hate you” he’s not addressing individual black and brown people, queer folk and trans people to figure out  ways to do good to those who hate them—he’s addressing the whole community of believers. He’s telling us to stand together against the reign of hate, and to remind one another that we belong to each other. And then we can talk and strategize about how to remind the haters that they too are beloved.

When Jesus says, “Pray for those who abuse or mistreat you,” he’s not telling individual survivors of sexual abuse or domestic violence to pray for those who have shown no regard for their dignity as persons—he’s addressing the whole community believers. He’s telling us to stand together against lovelessness and against any disrespect for each person’s dignity and sanctity. He’s telling us to be in prayer about how best to protect each other from the trauma of abuse.

Pray for those who abuse you. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. The sayings are short and memorable, and they easily take on a life of their own. They float around in the mind and in the culture, and without the ballast of Jesus’ proclamation of good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom for the oppressed—without that critical ballast, these sayings turn into destructive pills that only perpetuate piously white-washed systems of domination.

Listen to your mother. Brush your teeth. Wash your hands. Love your enemies. They sound deceptively similar, but the last one doesn’t pretend to be just another bit of parental wisdom. Love your enemies isn’t a bit of memorable advice, passed down from parents to their children, for how to deal with bullies, batterers, and abusers.

Also, cruel advice hardly qualifies as good news. And telling the bullied, the battered, and the abused, “Love your enemy,” that is cruel advice. Saying it may well be the least merciful act imaginable.

Love your enemies. The only one who can say that is the One who did say it. The rest of us need to listen. The only one who can say, Love your enemies, is the One who’s done it. The One who embodied God’s compassion and mercy like no other.  The One who revealed the unfathomable depth of God’s mercy in his whole life and in his death by execution. As Paul reminds us, “Christ died for the ungodly… While we still were sinners Christ died for us… While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God.”[4] Love your enemies is not some pithy adage, short, memorable, made for sharing. Love your enemies is the life of Jesus in three words. It is the revelation of the heart of God.

Miroslav Volf is a theologian from Croatia who has lived and taught in the U.S. for much of his life. In his book, Exclusion and Embrace, he recounts an experience from the winter of 1993. It was at the height of the fighting between Serbians and Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, and Volf delivered a lecture arguing that disciples of Jesus ought to embrace our enemies just as Christ embraced us. After the lecture, a member of the audience asked him if he could embrace a četnik. Četniks were notoriously wicked Serbian fighters infamous for destroying Croatian cities, and rounding up, murdering and raping civilians. For Volf, a četnik stood as the epitome of a real and concrete enemy. Could he embrace a četnik?

“No, I cannot,” he answered after some hesitation, “but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to.”[5]

“I think I should be able to” describes the direction of his life and his life’s work—toward that impossible embrace. Volf struggles, and how could he not, to fully imagine and live what Jesus and the first Christian witnesses teach: Like me, my enemy is the recipient of God’s love and stands with me at the cross of Christ, both of us together in the embrace of the love that will not let us go.

Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you.  Pray for those who abuse you. These words were not spoken for easy repetition, to be passed on as pious personal advice. The place to hear and ponder them is in the embrace of God’s love. That may be the only place to hear and ponder them. And it is only there that we can even begin to think about living them.

The world says, do to others as they do to you. Jesus teaches, do to others as you would have them do to you. And then he points to the reality in which we already live, in the embrace of God’s love, and he says, do as God does to you: be merciful. And heaven knows, there’s no dearth of realities needing our best, most thoughtful mercy now.[6] Breathe. Pray. Practice mercy.

[1] https://www.marygauthier.com/mercy-now-lyrics

[2] Mary Gauthier, Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting, United States: St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2021.

[3] Hebrews 10:23

[4] Romans 5:6-10

[5] Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 9.

[6] Thanks to Sarah Henrich for this lovely phrase; https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/seventh-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-luke-627-38-2

The Blessings and the Woes

Margie Quinn

I was in seminary when my parents got divorced. Soon after, my sister got divorced, too. And as it happens, it was around this time that I got in a bike accident and suffered a bad concussion. Sometimes, when it rains, it pours. It was just one of those “seasons of suck,” as I call it. 

At that same time, my best friend's life felt like it was receiving blessing after blessing. She got engaged to her high school sweetheart, trained for and ran a marathon, and got a promotion at work. 

When she called me, it felt like she kept sharing blessings with me. When I called her, it was mostly tearful woes. 

To borrow a metaphor from Episcopal Priest Barbara Brown Taylor, it felt like I was at the bottom of the ferris wheel, with the candy wrappers and the sawdust, and she was at the top, swaying with the wind in her hair and all the world’s light at her feet, feeling close enough to touch the stars. 

As the hits kept coming in my own life, I grew increasingly more resentful and jealous of her. Why did she receive so many blessings while I was experiencing the woes and lows of life? How could she possibly show up for me and understand what I was going through when she had never experienced a season of profound suffering? I would never intentionally want her to experience pain, but it felt unfair that she never had. 

I was reminded of this as I read about Jesus giving the “Sermon on the Plain.” That’s what this passage is called. Jesus has just done some miraculous healing, climbed up a mountain to pray, chosen his twelve disciples and in our passage this morning, he comes down the mountain to a plain or, as scriptures puts it, to “a level place” to do some teaching. Most of the people who gathered there wanted to be healed of their diseases, or cured of their mental illness. They were there to touch him and receive relief. They didn’t really come to hear him talk. 

But, Jesus has something to say. He stands on this “level place” with the disciples and the multitude, not on a mountain above them, and speaks plainly. His words are directed at the disciples, but we can imagine that everyone was eavesdropping. 

“Blessed are you who are poor,” he begins, “for yours is the kingdom of God.” “Blessed are you who are hungry, who weep, who are hated and excluded–you will be filled, you will laugh, you will leap for joy.” 

It’s difficult to convey just how radical these words were for the disciples and the crowd. This would leave people stunned, most of whom had never received a divine blessing or any attention at all. 

This is the first chat Jesus gives his crew after he picks them. He introduces them to what life looks like in the kingdom of God. They may have grown up in a world where the hungry and the hated never feel blessed. But Jesus isn’t of that world. He’s a part of a new way of life that flips the world upside down; a way of life where those on the bottom of the ferris wheel don’t stay there, but will experience the wind in their hair at some point. 

The chat doesn’t end there, though. Jesus is a truth-teller and doesn’t shy away from the hard hitting stuff, too. In the same breath that he comforts those on the bottom, he climbs in the seat next to those of us on the top and levels with us:

Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full, for you will be hungry. If you’re laughing now, you will weep. Woe to you when people speak well of you, for that’s what they said about false prophets, too.

Again, I can’t overstate how shocking his words would have been for these people. They would have expected him to offer a blessing to the rich, the well-fed, the higher ups, and woes to the poor, the hated, the hungry. But this is who our God is. Someone unafraid to offer hard truths to those in power. 

One theologian interprets these woes as more of a “yikes” or “be careful!” For those of you at the top of the ride, be careful, a life following me means you don’t stay up there. 

A life with me means you get both: the blessings and the woes. 

In God’s kingdom, there is equity of blessedness and hardship, abundance and suffering; which is honestly freeing to me. It means that in the midst of hurt, when all we can do is weep, Jesus assures us that there will come that day when, perhaps unexpectedly, something will make us laugh. And for those of us who feel an abundance of joy, he promises that we will know pain, too, pain that allows us to embody compassion for others, pain that invites us to experience the full range of human emotion. Maybe that’s why Jesus picked an even number for his disciples: for every man who felt hated one day, there was a man to speak kind words to him. 

There are those of us who hear this passage and don’t trust it. We look around and see more and more people living in poverty, who don’t seem to be getting full. We see more and more of the rich, who don’t take heed of the woes and hoard their wealth. But, “if we take these beatitudes seriously,” Howard Gregory writes, “we go against the grain of the world, and ride against the tide.” When we do our best to trust Jesus’ words, there is a life of gospel freedom waiting for us in which we take care of each other and share what blessings we have. We don’t give into total despair, and we don’t leave our siblings behind who desperately want to be fed. 

Knowing that we will receive both the blessing and the woe doesn’t mean that we get to develop a complacency in our respective seats on the ferris wheel. It means that we do our best to remember that in God’s kingdom, the call to discipleship means taking care of each other. We reach out from our seats and yell from the top, “I have wept, too. I have hungered, too. I have been excluded, too. Let me climb down there and sit with you in the sawdust.” And for those near ground level with our feet stuck in gum, we can look up, remembering that the kingdom promises seasons in our life and the life to come where we will leap for joy. 

My best friend was let go from her job last year. Then, she suffered a miscarriage. She is still dealing with infertility complications and she probably will not carry a baby again. She is at the bottom of the ferris wheel. Someone hit the button on the ferris wheel and we’ve switched places. While she grieves what her life could have been, I celebrate what my life has become. 

So, it can be tempting when I see her in so much pain to reframe her situation, offer empty advice or ignore a phone call because I don’t want to hear her hurt. Then I remember: I worship a God who doesn’t leave anyone behind, but takes the time to meet us in a level place and speak plainly. God rides the ferris wheel with us, in all of our blessings and woes, sawdust and stars. May we do the same for each other. 

Amen.