Come now

It’s hard to listen to Isaiah. It’s hard to listen to the words he has given to his vision, to what the Lord has spoken. Calling on heaven and earth as witnesses, he pours out God’s indictment of God’s people, in a whirling blend of anger and disbelief, tenderness and disgust, accusations and commands. And we didn’t even hear the chapter’s opening verses as part of our reading where God calls God’s people a sinful nation, rebels, people laden with iniquity, offspring who do evil, estranged children who deal corruptly, a people who have forsaken the Lord and despised the Holy One of Israel. There is so much pain in those few lines, so much grief. We can almost see the prophet standing on the temple mount, looking across the land, as he paints with just a few strokes a scene of devastation:

Your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence aliens devour your land… And daughter Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard, like a shelter in a cucumber field (Isaiah 1:7-8).

Some in the city are listening and they say,

If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we would have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah (Isaiah 1:9).

The names of those cities are shorthand for violent sin and violent retribution. Some in the city are listening to the prophet and they are relieved, because the devastation isn’t complete. “It could have been worse,” they say to themselves. “If the Lord had not left us a few survivors,” they say, “we would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah.”

But now the prophet roars, “Would have been? Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!” and he’s not addressing cities that were destroyed in the ancient days of the patriarchs and matriarchs; he’s addressing them – their cities, their rulers, their people. And part of us wishes we could keep it that way – their cities, not ours; them, not us.

But we are part of the prophet’s audience. His words have been passed on, written down, and read, from generation to generation, because in them the character and will of the Holy One of Israel are revealed. We assume that our worship is pleasing to God, mostly because it is pleasing to us. “Of course the Lord does not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats,” we can almost hear ourselves say, mostly because the mere thought of it makes us squeamish. “Perhaps that was proper worship in less enlightened days,” we are tempted to say, forgetting that every detail of temple worship, every sacrifice, every instruction for the proper slaughtering of the animals and what goes in the fire and what doesn’t - everything is rooted in God’s commandments. Our brothers and sisters with an anti-Catholic or an anti-high-church bias will gladly hear and affirm that “incense is an abomination to [the Lord]” – because we’ll do anything to let these hard words be meant for any other community, just not us.

It’s hard to listen to Isaiah. It’s hard to listen to the prophets; their words can make us dismissive and defensive. But perhaps we listen with just enough interest and attention to understand two things that are indeed one:

God doesn’t obsess about proper worship nearly as much as we do; and we aren’t concerned about justice and righteousness nearly as much as God is.

“I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity,” says the Lord while we, well, we make do. We like solemn assemblies and we like happy assemblies, we like our assemblies with praise choruses or chanted prayers, with fog machines and big screens, or with hefty hymnals and fancy robes, but we like our assemblies, we need them.

“Our tragedy begins with the segregation of God,” said Abraham Heschel, “our tragedy begins with the bifurcation of the secular and sacred. We worry more about the purity of dogma than about the integrity of love.” Our tragedy begins with the segregation of God, the separation of worship and what we like to call real life. We like our assemblies and we worry about them while our God, with great passion and patience continues to call us to make worship the heart of our life, and not just a part of it.

Isaiah, in this opening chapter, looks around the temple area and he sees how much attention is given to the proper handling of the sacrificial blood of bulls and lambs and goats, and he cries out, giving voice to the passion and pathos of God, “But your hands are full of blood. Your hands are stained with the blood shed daily on your streets. Your hands are defiled by violence and abuse. When you stretch out your hands in prayer, I turn away; I don’t listen. I don’t know whom or what you think you are worshiping, but it’s not me.”

We may think of worship as the things we do in the sanctuary at the appointed times, but our God desires to be worshiped in all that we do. The prophet cries out for the desegregation of the everyday.

In a speech in 1963, Abraham Heschel said,

The major activity of the prophets was interference, remonstrating about wrongs inflicted on other people, meddling in affairs which were seemingly neither their concern nor their responsibility. A prudent man is he who minds his own business, staying away from questions which do not involve his own interests, particularly when not authorized to step in – and prophets were given no mandate by the widows and orphans to plead their cause.

No, the mandate doesn’t come from the widows and orphans, or the strangers and the imprisoned, the mandate comes from the God who made them and loves them. The prophet is a person who cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity, because God cannot. And so Isaiah directs his urgent plea to every member of the community:

Seek justice. Rescue the oppressed. Establish justice for the orphan. Plead for the widow.

Heschel said, “There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. … The prophets’ great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference [and] all prophecy is one great exclamation: God is not indifferent to evil! [God] is always concerned, [God] is personally affected by what [one human being] does to [another].”[1]

I read about a conversation Will Willimon had with a man about his father. It sheds some more light on the necessity of overcoming the common segregation of God from the everyday and vice versa. His father, the man told Willimon, was a remarkable man. He did not have a huge amount of education, but by staying up late nearly every night, he self-educated himself in certain aspects of the law. During the Great Depression, a bank in his native Anson County (North Carolina) hired him to receive and to dispose of the many farms that the bank was foreclosing on, as a result of the bad times. His father had always been deeply concerned about the plight of African American farmers in his community, most of whom were sharecroppers. Their situation was little better than slavery. They lived and worked on land that wasn’t theirs. During the winter, they had to borrow from the landowner to buy food and fuel; loaned at high interest. In the summer, when the crops came in, the first money, taken off the top, went to pay back those debts with interest. And there was never enough money. Each year these sharecroppers sank deeper and deeper into debt. His father would meet with these sharecroppers, and together they learned to advance their farming methods and keep careful records of their crops and negotiate a good price for their work. By the time he died, in that community, 200 black farmers and their families, who had never owned land or home, were landowners, eating the good of the land, their land and enjoying the fruit of their labor.

But the story doesn’t end there. They had his father’s funeral at home, the man said, rather than at their church. They knew that most of the folk at the funeral would be black and would know that they were not welcome at the white church. “My dad almost never attended church,” the son said. “Couldn’t stand to sit there and watch ushers pass the offering plates on Sunday, knowing how those scoundrels conducted their businesses during the week, knowing the way they treated people when they weren’t all dressed up and playing church.”

Solemn assemblies with iniquity. Now we could of course sit here, shaking our heads and wagging our fingers, feeling good about ourselves, but we’re not playing church. We remember that the prophet’s severe indictment is not the last word. The tone changes dramatically as the vision moves from accusation to invitation:

“Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”

It sounds almost like certainty, this possibility of forgiveness, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow.” The “maybe” sounds almost like “this is how it’s going to be.” Perhaps the promise, the possibility of forgiveness, has the firmness of certainty, because the One making the promise is essentially gracious and merciful, not wrathful and vindictive. The final word is the invitation to enter God’s salvation through repentance. Yes, our injustice and our indifference have and will have destructive consequences, but God’s will is not simply to get even or to punish. God wills to set things right: Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. All these imperatives invite transformation and culminate in the last word, “Come now, let’s settle this.”

God’s arms are wide open. “Come now, let’s set things right.”

[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, Religion and Race, January 14, 1963

Whose life are you living?

When you’re little, you don’t get to choose what you wear. There’s no debate. As long as somebody else is dressing you, you don’t have a say, typically. They wrap you in blanket like a light blue spring roll or gently fold your little limbs into a yellow onesie – it’s their call. You wear whatever they decide. You cooperate, until one day you figure out how to say “no” and that’s when a transition period of daily struggle begins. Eventually you agree to their terms: you choose from one of three outfits one of your adult clothing partners has laid out for you on top of your dresser, or you get to pick items yourself straight from the drawer, and said adults reserve the right to veto your choices when you walk into the kitchen. You want to wear what you want to wear, clothes are very personal, and it’s hard for you to see why wearing your superhero outfit for three weeks straight, day and night, could possibly be a problem or why you can’t wear your undies on top of your jeans so everybody can see the cool print on the front.

The clothes we wear are the result of complex negotiations between self-expression and the need to fit it, between taste and functionality, between following rules and pushing against them. For ages, clothes have provided warmth and protection, but they also reflected gender, age, cultural identity, and class differences, visually distinguishing the ruling, powerful, and wealthy from everyone else. We call people white-collar or blue-collar, we call them suits or smarty pants or stuffed shirts. We used to say, perhaps some of us still do, “She’s all fur coat and no knickers” or, “He’s all hat and no cattle.” Our clothes reflect who we are or aspire to be as well as where we belong, whether we like it or not. We use clothing to express ourselves, but we also wear layer upon layer of other people’s expectations and dreams or lack thereof. I have met men and women of all ages who feel like they’re living somebody else’s life. I’ll come back to that.

Our friend Jerry Seinfeld tells us,

I hate clothes, okay? I hate buying them. I hate picking them out of my closet. I can’t stand every day trying to come up with little outfits for myself. I think eventually fashion won’t even exist. It won’t. I think eventually we’ll all be wearing the same thing. ‘Cause anytime I see a movie or a TV show where there’s people from the future of another planet, they’re all wearing the same thing. Somehow they decided “This is going to be our outfit. One-piece silver jumpsuit, V-stripe, and boots. That’s it.” We should come up with an outfit for earth. An earth outfit. We should vote on it. Candidates propose different outfits, no speeches. They walk out, twirl, walk off. We just sit in the audience and go, “That was nice. I could wear that.”

We see Jerry at the clothing store, and he’s tired of looking; the salesman tells him, “Well, I might have something in the back.” He returns with a jacket. Elaine says, “Try it on.” She touches it. “Wow, this is soft suede.” He tries it on.

“This may be the most perfect jacket I have ever put on.” And he buys it.

Next we see him sitting on his couch wearing his pajamas and his new jacket. He gets up to look at himself in the mirror. Kramer enters.

“Hey. New jacket?”

“What do you think?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Is it me?”

And Kramer says, “That’s definitely you.”

“Really?” Jerry asks.

“That’s more you than you’ve ever been.”

Later Jerry proudly models his new jacket in front of George and says, “This jacket has completely changed my life. When I leave the house in this, it’s with a whole different confidence. Like tonight, I might’ve been a little nervous. But, inside this jacket, I am composed, grounded, secure that I can meet any social challenge.”[1]

Jerry has found his superhero outfit. It’s completely changed his life. In Kramer’s words, “That’s more you than you’ve ever been.”

Every line of dialogue in those scenes, of course, oozes irony. But they still speak to a deep longing inside you and me and to a deep fear: we long to be seen by others for who we are and be loved for who we are. And at the same time we are afraid to be truly seen by others, because we can’t believe they could accept us if they truly saw us instead of the person we work so hard to project. I said earlier, I have met men and women of all ages who feel like they’re living somebody else’s life. They feel like they’ve been given a role in somebody else’s drama, and they’ve never tasted the freedom of adding their own words to the script. They’ve never known the freedom of wearing feathers of joy, ponchos of comfort, or long, light shirts of no worries, because they’ve been dressed from a very young age in layers of pain and shame and guilt. And those layers fit so tightly, we wear them like skin or have almost forgotten there’s actual skin underneath. And we add more layers, layers of armor and invisibility cloaks. We choose with great care what we wear, but often with little hope.

The question is, can we hear what Paul has to say? He tells us to set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. He’s not telling us to stick our heads in the clouds and block from view mountains and oceans, rivers, forests, fields and meadows, all things bright and beautiful, God’s creatures great and small – no, he’s telling us to set our minds on the reality of Christ’s resurrection, and he says “above” because our words fail us when we seek to speak about God’s reign that is in the world, but not part of the world. Christ is risen from the dead – he is beyond the reach of sin and death and any power that diminishes and distorts God’s gift of life. He is alive, fully alive, completely alive. But that is not the whole story. The resurrection is not just something fantastic that happened to Jesus, but the beginning of a whole new order of things, the beginning of a new creation. The resurrection is the beginning of life’s liberation from the house of bondage. The resurrection is the beginning of the end of sin’s oppressive rule and it is already the end of sin’s oppressive rule.

And because Christ has made us his own in love’s radical solidarity with us, we are not what the world has made of us or prevented us from becoming – no, we are who we were meant to be from the beginning, God’s beloved. Christ died in radical solidarity with us, but he is alive, completely alive in God, and this fullness of life is his gift to us. Because we belong to Christ, death is already a past reality for us, and our life is hidden with Christ in God. Hidden, but already present, waiting to be revealed. Hidden, but already transforming us. In Christ, we are becoming who we already are. The more fully we know ourselves and one another as God’s beloved, the less we will seek to serve the idols of money, sex, and control. We set our minds on Christ, we set our minds on things that are above, and when others go low in malice, slander, and abusive language, we go high.

The context of difficult transformation in our personal and communal life is being addressed in today’s reading with the language of stripping and clothing. The apostle writes,

You have stripped off the old humanity with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new humanity, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.

This refers to our embracing of Christ as our life, and so active verbs prevail: you have stripped off, you have clothed yourselves. But the other side of our embrace of Christ, and the initial movement, is Christ’s embrace of us. And in his embrace we are being gently undressed. He sees who we are underneath all those layers. He takes off our armor. He peels away the guilt and shame, every layer, and he touches the pain. He knows. He takes off the old humanity with its practices, and he clothes us with the new humanity, that is, humanity in the image of its Creator rather than its many idols.

In Christ’s embrace, all that keeps us from being one humanity is being erased, and not so we can all be dressed in one-piece silver jumpsuits that hide the rich diversity of our humanity. God has designed an earth outfit for humankind; it has the color, texture, and radiance of glory: All of us alive, fully alive, completely alive with Christ. Living with Christ, embracing Christ as our life, we’re not living somebody else’s life. We’re finally living the one life there is, and nothing else.

[1] http://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheJacket.htm

Trying times

“Praying for peace and healing love,” has been, for the past couple of weeks, the message on the sign by the road. We want to tell the people who drive by what we are about, and praying seems to be the first thing that comes to mind these days. It doesn’t mean we’re not working or protesting or seeking better answers than the quick and loud ones we are hearing day in and day out; it means that we turn to God with our questions, our fears, our rage, our broken hearts, our despair and our hope.

My own prayers over the past weeks have largely been shaped by news alerts: story after story of violence, terror, and ugliness washed over me, with just enough air between them, it seems, to whisper, “Lord have mercy.” It’s been one long litany of lament.

The gospel reading given to us for this day begins with Jesus finishing his prayers, when one of the disciples asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Jesus prayed often, and perhaps the disciples sensed a connection between the kind of person he was and his habit of prayer. They may have had questions very similar to the ones we bring: When and how often should we pray? Where should we pray and why? Are we to keep our eyes open or close them? Are we to stand up, sit down, or kneel? Do we stretch out our hands like the branches of a tree or fold them? Jesus’ response is remarkably short.

When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.

The words sound familiar; the prayer we know as the Lord’s Prayer comes from the gospel of Matthew and from the long tradition of use in the worship and instruction of the church. At Vine Street we say the prayer in the King’s English with “thy” and “thine,” thoroughly in love with the premodern pronouns that elevate these words from ordinary speech and infuse them with the aura of things that have been handled and used by many generations before us. The words in Luke are bare in comparison: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. There is no ornament, no flourish, there are no filler words – just simple imperatives: give us and forgive us, and don’t bring us to the time of trial. Jesus teaches us to pray with few words and clear focus. He teaches us to speak of God’s holy name and kingdom right next to our need for bread and forgiveness. This is how closely they belong together. Jesus teaches us to speak of God’s eternal purposes and our daily need almost in the same breath. He teaches us to ask for the consummation of God’s creation in God’s glorious reign of peace and to follow that cosmic-scale request with the most everyday petition for something to eat. Nothing’s too big. Nothing’s too small. We are invited to turn to God in all things and to trust in God’s mercy. Do we pray for bread and forgiveness because we are worried that we might receive neither unless we ask for them daily? No, we pray daily because we need to remember daily that we are recipients of precious, life-giving gifts, given to us for sharing. We pray with these words because we hope that remembering God’s mercy to us will help us become merciful toward each other.

In the fifth and final petition of the prayer, Jesus teaches us to ask God, “Do not bring us to the time of trial.” We pray that the things and events that test our faith will never be stronger than our faith. And these are trying times for disciples of Jesus in this country. Some of us are tempted to trade in our trust in God’s promises and our hope in God’s future for some angry nostalgia for an America that never was. Some of us are angry that it’s taking white folk so long to grasp how deeply the sin of slavery has wounded our life together and that still the pain is being felt overwhelmingly by black bodies. Some of us are tempted to dismiss the hard work of truth-telling and reconciliation-seeking as whining and blaming. Some of us are to utterly disoriented and discouraged, we just can’t believe there’s much we could do to make a difference.

Do not bring us to the time of trial, Jesus teaches us to pray in trying times. Praying we hold on to the relationship God has established with us. Praying we hold on to the vision of life God has revealed in Christ. Praying we hold on to the promise of being clothed with power from on high.

Jesus prayed often, and his praying grounded and shaped his living and his teaching. “Do not set your minds on what you are to eat or drink; do not be anxious,” he taught generations of disciples. “These are all things that occupy the minds of the Gentiles, but your Father knows that you need them. No, set your minds on his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.” Many things occupy the minds of those who do not know themselves to be God’s beloved, but we are to set our minds on God’s kingdom. We are to let the promise of God’s coming reign give direction to our lives, how we think, speak, work, hope, vote and spend our money – everything; and all the things we tend to be anxious about when we forget that we are God’s beloved will be given to us as well. “Have no fear, little flock,” says Jesus, “for your Father has chosen to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:30-32).

In his teaching Jesus refers to God as “your Father,” reminding us that we belong to God’s household and that God wants what is good and life giving for all members of God’s household. When Jesus teaches us to pray, he invites us into the intimate relationship he has with the one he calls Father, and so we join him in prayer, we let his prayer become ours. Four times in Luke’s telling of the gospel, Jesus addresses the Holy One of Israel as Father. First here, teaching us to pray with him,

“Father, hallowed by your name. Your kingdom come.”

Then again in Gethsemane, praying through the night of trial,

“Father, if your are willing, remove this cup from me” (Luke 22:42).

And two more times on the cross, saying,

“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34)

and finally,

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

On the cross, God revealed the power of forgiveness to renew and restore what sin has destroyed. The path of divine justice revealed on the cross is love that embraces the enemy for the sake of reconciliation. Jesus proclaimed repentance and forgiveness as the door to the kingdom and God affirmed his servant life and his royal teaching by raising him from the dead.

These are trying times and while we cannot fully name the powers that threaten us, we can certainly sense their presence: they seek to convince us that we do not belong to God’s household, that we are neither God’s beloved nor each other’s brothers and sisters, and that loving our enemies is a ridiculous idea.

“Praying for peace and healing love,” the sign outside our sanctuary says, telling those who drive by that the people who gather here are holding on to God’s vision of life. We have so many questions about how and when and where and why to pray, and Jesus’ teaching gives focus to that flurry: remember whom you address in your prayers and with whom you are praying. Prayer is not about this and that and the other, and properly done this way or that way, prayer is about living attentively in the relationship God has established with us. In this relationship we are invited to bring and give voice to all our needs and wants, our hopes and fears, our frustrations and our pain, and to let God love us and reorient our lives toward the peace of God’s kingdom. We pray to be shaped by nothing but love.

One love

I wonder if you recently had that moment when you looked at the flag flying at half-staff and you didn’t know why it had been lowered: was it to honor the police officers who were shot and killed in Dallas or was it to honor the victims of the attack in Nice? Or had there been yet another terrible event that you hadn’t heard about? It seems the president could simply order the flag to be flown half-staff until further notice, since every day brings more stories of violent deaths abroad and here at home that weigh heavy on our hearts and minds. We hear the stories, we mourn and pray and ask, “What can we do? What must we do? What can anybody do?” Charleston, Ferguson, Paris, Orlando, Istanbul, South Sudan, Baton Rouge, Baghdad, Falcon Heights, Dallas, Nice – a torrent of stories of violent death touching countless lives deeply, and we boil it all down to the name of a city or a hashtag. This has become our way of bringing order to the chaos of our days. We hear a story and it breaks our hearts, and we feel the need to sit with it for a while to let it sink in and talk things through with friends and strangers, and we want to move from only reacting to terrifying events to proactively engaging with the issues in order to break bad patterns and prevent more of the same, but the world is relentless and the torrent won’t stop and tomorrow we will be flooded from every screen with by-the-minute updates of yet another incident, or at least so we have come to expect by now. For some of us, today’s news simply replaces yesterday’s and our attention quickly jumps from one thing to the next; for others, the stories pile up and we struggle to find a way to hold it all together and find an angle to respond in a meaningful way; and then there are those among us who tune out entirely and go shopping or watch the game, any game, anything to distract us from the claims the people in these stories make on us. What are we to do?

Luke tells us that a lawyer, an expert in Jewish law and scripture, asked Jesus, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And he already knew the answer. You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. You are to love God and neighbor. The lawyer knew the answer. But knowing the answer is not the point; living it is. Loving God and neighbor is the point.

Jesus told the story of the man who was beaten, stripped and robbed on the Jericho road to help us see that “neighbor” doesn’t define a particular group of people who are recipients of our love at the exclusion of others. We become neighbors when we show mercy to another. We become neighbors when we let another make a claim on our capacity to empathize and care. “Go and do likewise,” Jesus told the lawyer and us who have listened to the story.

After this, Luke opens for us the door to Martha’s house, where Jesus is a welcome guest. Martha is a woman who goes and gets things done, and she goes and does a lot, in fact, she keeps going and doing. Luke tells us she is distracted by much serving, and it’s not just housework, it’s everything she does in loving response to the needs of others. She’s being a neighbor to all who’ve come to her house. She lets them each make a claim on her capacity to care and she responds with kindness and grace. But between one thing and the next, she stops briefly and with resentment in her voice she tells Jesus to tell her sister to help her.

Mary, of course, has been sitting at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he says. In your imagination this may trigger images of a star-struck teenage girl sitting on the ground, gazing with dreamy eyes at Jesus who looks the part of the boy celebrity – if that is what you see, move on quickly and try to forget it.[1] Sitting at the feet of someone is an expression for being the disciple of a master.[2] Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus means she and Jesus are both acting against widespread gender expectations where women are the ones who always go and do while men sit at the feet of wise teachers drinking of their words.[3] Perhaps Martha is a little resentful because she too wants to sit and drink of that wisdom. Or does she think there’s nothing wrong with the traditional gender roles and that Mary should be doing women’s work? And aren’t both of them welcoming Jesus?

The little story is big enough to contain our wondering and it gives us room to explore various answers and implications. I am drawn to the word “distracted” that is used twice in this passage.[4] Luke portrays Martha as distracted by many things and Mary in contrast as centered in the Lord’s presence and word. Martha is drawn away by many things that demand her attention much like we are in the daily torrent of stories that demand that we dismantle racism, that we bind up the wounds of those who are hurting, that we hear those who cry out in pain and in anger, that we show our solidarity with victims of terror, that we go and do the things that neighbor love demands. Jesus tells Martha, “You are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” We know about being worried and distracted by many things, and Jesus tells us that there is need of only one thing.

The lawyer knows the right answer, but he has trouble living it. Martha knows how to go and do and her day is never long enough for the many things that need doing. What does Mary know? Mary knows the Lord; she has found the defining center of her life.

It’s tempting to read this story in the good sister/bad sister mold, but I don’t want to read it that way. To me it’s a story of belonging. The two belong together like loving God and loving neighbor belong together. The one thing necessary is not one or the other, but one love unfolding in countless ways. And so the one thing necessary doesn’t make the many things obsolete, but rather unifies them like many rivers that flow from a single source: one love flowing from the heart of God, awakening every act of compassion, inspiring every step toward justice, and driving out every fear. We still differentiate between love as the divine reality that faithfully holds us and love as human action, between seeking to find the face of God in the face of the other who is in need and seeking to see the face of God by studying God’s word, but there is only one love desiring to fill all things completely.

We live in the constant tension between focus and distraction, between being drawn in and being drawn away. The story of Mary and Martha captures a moment when the two sisters find themselves on the opposite poles of this tension; that doesn’t mean that this is who they are or where they always are. But it reminds us that the unity of love we seek to know and live is found in Christ and what he has done so we would inherit eternal life.

So what do we do when the world floods in on us and every day brings yet another story of violence and terror and fear and confusion without end? Mr. Rogers taught us to tell our children to always look for the helpers when something terrible has happened. Look for the helpers. Look for the men and women who follow love’s lead by acting with compassion. Look for the people whose actions tell a different story than the one fear wants to write. Look for the people whose lives are grounded in God’s love. Let your life be grounded in God’s love.

I invite you to sit in silence for a moment. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Relax your shoulders and let your hands rest. Be silent. Be still. Alone. Empty before your God. Say nothing. Ask nothing. Be silent. Be still. Let your God look upon you. That is all. God knows. God understands. God loves you with an enormous love, and only wants to look upon you with that love. Quiet. Still. Be. Let your God—love you.[5]

[1] There is a particularly fine example of a particularly bad illustration at https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/1c/8e/8a/1c8e8ab3000d36d9184868d8349df959.jpg

[2] See, e.g., Acts 22:3 (Paul at the feet of Gamaliel)

[3] See, e.g., the tractate Abot 1.4-5 of the Mishnah: “… Yossei the son of Yoezer of Tzreidah would say: Let your home be a meeting place for the wise; dust yourself in the soil of their feet, and drink thirstily of their words. Yossei the son of Yochanan of Jerusalem would say: Let your home be wide open, and let the poor be members of your household. And do not engage in excessive conversation with a woman. …”

[4] In the NRSV translation of v. 40 and v. 41; in the Greek text two different words are used.

[5] Edwina Gateley, In God’s Womb: A Spiritual Memoir (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2009), 59-60.

Will we let ourselves be loved?

It was a stormy night in Memphis, forty-eight years ago, much like some of the nights we had this past week with heavy rains and powerful thunderstorms. It was the night of April 3, 1968, the night before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers, and many wondered what a Nobel Peace Prize winner had to do with garbagemen – didn’t he have more important things to do? His closest aides reminded him that Memphis was not a strategic city, and sanitation workers would not attract the kind of broad sympathy on the national evening news the children of Birmingham or the victims of police brutality in Selma had created. What was King doing in Memphis?

There’s a back story. Local residents had objected to the sanitation workers’ practice of eating lunch outside the trucks—“picnicking” they called it. “Not in our neighborhood,” they said. And so the workers were instructed to eat in the truck, even though the cab of a truck did not accommodate a crew of four. One rainy afternoon, two of the workers crawled into the compactor on the back end of the truck to eat their sandwiches. Something was wrong with the wiring, the system engaged, and the two workers were crushed—compacted, like garbage. It’s no wonder that later, when their colleagues went on strike to demand better pay and better working conditions, many of them wore signs that read, “I am a man.”

That stormy night Dr. King asked the question, “Why Memphis?” and he answered it by telling the story of a man who was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell among thieves and was beaten, stripped, thrown in a ditch and left for dead. The man in the ditch, said King, is the sanitation worker. He tried to imagine why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop to help. Perhaps they had more important things to do. Perhaps they were already late for a meeting of the Jericho Improvement Association. Perhaps they were afraid; you stop on a road like that and you may well be the next victim. The whole thing could be a trap, who knows. Who knows what went through their minds when they saw the man in the ditch and passed him by on the other side. Even honorable people, King said in his speech, ask, “What will happen to me if I stop?” But the real question, according to King, is not, “What will happen to me if I do stop?” but, “What will happen to them if I don’t?”[1] Memphis was not a detour for Dr. King; it was a demand of neighborly love that he be there. The next morning, King was shot and killed just outside his motel room. The Jericho road is a dangerous place.

Jesus told the story in response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” asked by an expert in the law. The lawyer wanted to know who qualified as neighbor, how he could differentiate between neighbor and non-neighbor. Jesus told the story and he changed the question: Which of the three who came by the scene was a neighbor to the man in the ditch?

The one who showed him mercy, the lawyer responded. The one who was moved with compassion, who went to the man and bandaged his wounds, who then brought him to an inn and took care of him, and the next day paid the innkeeper to take care of the man and promised to repay him whatever more he spent upon his return. The one who showed him mercy, the lawyer responded. Some commentators say, he couldn’t bring himself to say the word Samaritan, so deep was the enmity between Jews and Samaritans. I’m not so sure; perhaps the lawyer had listened to Jesus’ story more carefully than we can imagine; perhaps he had learned to avoid labeling people with a quick reference to their ethnic background, their religious or political affiliation, or their socio-economic status.

Who was a neighbor to the man in the ditch? The one who showed him mercy. When love and mercy determine our actions, the labels begin to come off. In the story, the only character without a label is the man who was beaten, stripped, and robbed. No clothes to tell the passerby if he is rich or poor. Left for dead, he couldn’t speak and so there is no accent to betray if he’s a local or a foreigner. All there is to see for the passerby is a human being’s naked need. The man who stopped to help was still a man from Samaria, but in the lawyer’s mind, perhaps it was no longer the quick label that described the man, but his merciful actions.

Henri Nouwen wrote in the late 90’s,

We become neighbors when we are willing to cross the road for one another. There is so much separation and segregation: between black people and white people, between gay people and straight people, between young people and old people, between sick people and healthy people, between prisoners and free people, between Jews and Gentiles, Muslims and Christians, Protestants and Catholics, (…). As long as there is distance between us and we cannot look into one another’s eyes, all sorts of false ideas and images arise. We give them names, make jokes about them, cover them with our prejudices, and avoid direct contact. We think of them as enemies. We forget that they love as we love, care for their children as we care for ours, become sick and die as we do. (…) Only when we have the courage to cross the road and look in one another’s eyes can we see there that we are children of the same God and members of the same human family.[2]

When I heard the news that Alton Sterling and Philando Castile had been shot and killed by police, I was angry, I was sad. “Not again,” I said to myself, “not again.” I felt my soul draining through the bottom of my feet into the ground and I felt a deep helplessness.

There are powers at work among us that won’t surrender to our good intentions. We have collectively created systems of inequality and exclusion over generations, systems that we all participate in daily, whether we want to or not, systems whose power over us seems so much greater than our power over them. Michelle Alexander wrote on Facebook, “This nation was founded on the idea that some lives don't matter. Freedom and justice for some, not all. That’s the foundation. Yes, progress has been made in some respects, but it hasn’t come easy. There’s an unfinished revolution waiting to be won.”[3] The injustice, the violent exploitation and abuse of slavery and Jim Crow are not past, they are painfully present. Crossing the road, as Nouwen suggested, sounds simple enough, too simple perhaps; learning to see each other’s reality through each other’s experiences and stories rather than solely through our respective lenses takes a long walk, a long walk.

A national survey in 2015 by the Public Religion Research Institute showed a wide chasm separating black and white Americans’ attitudes toward the police. 64 percent of blacks vs. only 17 percent of whites identified police mistreatment as a major problem in their community. Similarly, 48 percent of blacks had a great deal or some confidence in the police, compared to 83 percent of whites who reported being confident in the law enforcement. 65 percent of whites said recent killings of African American men by police were isolated incidents, while only 15 percent of black Americans shared the same view. 81 percent of black Americans said recent police killings of African American men were part of a broader pattern of how police treat African Americans. Again, those are last year’s numbers, and I don’t expect much has changed for the better; it’s gonna be a long walk.

I was very comfortable looking at the scene in Jesus’ story from the perspective of the road, a very privileged perspective, as it turns out. It’s a privilege to see things through the eyes of the three men who travel the Jericho road with the freedom to choose if and when they cross it, whether they cross it to put greater distance between themselves and the man in the ditch or to come closer for mercy’s sake, close enough to look into his eyes and touch his bruised body with caring hands. Like I said, I was very comfortable looking at the scene in Jesus’ story from the perspective of one walking down the Jericho road, and then I heard the news Friday morning that eleven police officers had been shot in Dallas and five of them killed by sniper fire the night before.

I just sat there, I was terrified.

What is happening?

Is this what we’ve become?

Are we gonna take up arms and kill each other in helpless rage or calculated terror?

Fear crept in and numbness; it got cold.

What a mess we have made of the world.

We’re not on the road, we’re in the ditch.

Beaten, stripped, and robbed.

Helpless in our naked need.

Lord have mercy.

What a mess we have made of the world.

Will somebody come and bandage our wounds?

Will somebody come and pick us up and take us to a place of healing where our life is restored?

When we find ourselves in the ditch, the question changes. It’s no longer, “Will I cross the road and be a neighbor to the person in need?” Now the question is, “Will somebody see me and not pass by?” Now the question is, “Will I let one of them touch me?” Will I let one of them be Christ to me?

Jesus got himself crucified by the violent mess we have made of the world, but mercy prevailed. Will we let him bandage our wounds?

Will we let ourselves be touched, carried, and healed by the man who revealed on the cross the extent to which God is a neighbor to all human beings?

Will we let ourselves be loved by the divine Neighbor and become fearless in our work for justice with him?

Will we let ourselves be loved and create together with him the beloved community?

[1] See Richard Lischer https://www.faithandleadership.com/view-ditch

[2] Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith (New York: Harper-Collins, 1997), July 21-22.

[3] Facebook, Friday, July 8, 2016

Eat what is set before you

Miles packed his bags yesterday for a week of counseling 8er’s camp with Hope at Bethany Hills. He didn’t pack any socks, only shorts and t-shirts and bug spray. Add a Bible and your toothbrush and you’re pretty much good to go. It’s simple. Swimming trunks? Maybe. Shorts are fine for a quick dip in the pool, he said. It’s really simple.

When Jesus sends the seventy on ahead of him it isn’t for a trip to the lake or a week at camp. It is a different kind of trip. It’s not just a break from their daily routines, but rather the beginning of a whole new way of being in the world.

It started in the towns of Galilee where at some point Jesus called together the twelve and sent them out to do what he had been doing – proclaim the kingdom of God. Now he is on his way to Jerusalem and he appoints seventy others and sends them on ahead of him in pairs. Their job is, like John the Baptist’s, to pave the way for Jesus, to go, as Luke says, “to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” And where is that? Where is it that Jesus intends to go? Everywhere: Jesus intends to go everywhere, to every nation and every tribe. At the end of Luke the risen Christ announces, “Repentance and forgiveness is to be proclaimed ... to all nations” (24:47). There are seventy of these missionaries, and that’s not just a random number. In Genesis 10 seventy nations are listed to represent the entire world population. The seventy messengers represent Jesus’ intention to be present to all humanity, regardless of national borders, ethnicity or culture. In the kingdom of God, there is room for the full diversity of humanity, and the full diversity of humanity participates in the proclamation. What do you pack for a trip like that?

Tim O’Brien wrote a book drawing on his memories from his days as an infantry soldier in Vietnam. The story is titled “The Things They Carried,” and it is filled with descriptions of the things the soldiers packed in their gear as they marched and fought.

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending.

The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water.

They carried diaries, photographs, binoculars, socks, and foot powder. They carried fatigue jackets, radios, compasses, batteries, maps, and codebooks. They carried guns and ammo belts. They carried plastic explosives, grenades, and mines.

Taking turns, they carried the big PRC-77 scrambler radio, which weighed 30 pounds with its battery. They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak.

What they carried was partly what they thought they needed to survive, partly a function of rank and duty, and partly an expression of their combat mission. “They carried all they could bear,” writes O’Brien, “and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.”[1]

But what about disciples? What are the messengers of Jesus supposed to carry on our mission? “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals,” says Jesus. In fact, carry nothing, not even what prudent people would pack for a trip—no money, no extra pairs of shoes—nothing. He strips us down to little more than nothing. All we carry is his word of peace and his announcement that the kingdom of God has come near. For everything else his disciples depend on each other and the hospitality of strangers. The only equipment we need for his peace mission is ourselves and each other.

A couple of weeks ago, on our way back from the lake, Nancy, Miles and I stopped at Cracker Barrel for lunch. It’s become a family tradition. When we’re on the road, we stop at Cracker Barrel; Miles and I eat Momma’s Pancake Breakfast and Nancy gets the hashbrown casserole, no matter what time of day it is. And we gladly drive the extra miles to the next exit with the familiar sign to eat what is good and continue the tradition. I read about a preacher’s kid who said that the most challenging part of Jesus’ travel instructions to his messengers was this line, “Eat what is set before you.” His dad had been a pastor in rural South Dakota, in a poor area with lots of small farms. The family was often invited for lunch after church on Sunday, and the young man recalled how he and his siblings were admonished just about each time to eat whatever was served. And the problem wasn’t broccoli or stringy beans. Many of the farm families relied on whatever they could kill or catch nearby for food – occasionally it was chicken, sometimes it tasted like chicken, but on many a Sunday the preacher’s kid had no idea what he was eating.

Jesus sends his disciples to every nation on earth to proclaim the nearness of God’s reign; he tells us to depend on the hospitality of strangers and to receive their gifts with humility, respect, and gratitude. Nowhere in his little send-off speech does he tell us to pack enough food to feed the hungry, or extra outfits to clothe the naked, or a spare blanket for the homeless. When we think about mission, locally or globally, we think about sharing our resources to alleviate suffering as a witness to the compassion of God. We think about works of mercy and justice, we think about giving. But in this episode from the road to Jerusalem, Jesus sends us to proclaim the kingdom of God not with the things we bring, but with his peace on our lips and our need for the gifts of others. His peace is made manifest in how we receive and eat the food of strangers. For the first Jewish missionaries that may have meant eating not only with Gentiles, in their homes, but eating their food.

The story of Jesus is built around shared meals—again and again he is either on his way to eat or eating with others or just leaving the table. He eats and drinks with all kinds of people in all kinds of settings, but there’s not a single story of him giving a dinner party. He is always a guest. When he says, “This is my body, which is broken for you,” he’s breaking somebody else’s bread. He takes whatever we bring, our best and our worst, and makes peace from it. That is the peace he sends us to carry to every house we enter. He empowers us to let go of the control that comes with having and giving. He encourages us to let go of the power that comes with determining who gets what, when, and why. He sends us to discover how the word of peace we carry in our hearts and on our lips becomes manifest when we enter the world of others—their home, their town, their country, their culture—and eat what is set before us, literally and metaphorically. He invites us to share in his mission by sharing in his vulnerability. “See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves,” says the Lamb of God. He is under no illusion that his mission is a safe one. He knows he’s on his way to Jerusalem. He knows what awaits him there. Yet he continues on the way because he trusts with every fiber of his being in the faithfulness of God whose kingdom is near. And so he says to the seventy and to every generation of disciples, “Go!” Begin where you are, not where you think you ought to be or wish you could be. Begin where you are, go. Whomever you encounter, whatever house you enter, first speak a word of peace. Eat whatever is set before you. When you enter the world of another, do so without imposing your assumptions. Meet them with the readiness to receive what they offer. In receiving their gifts you receive them.

I believe that’s what the preacher’s kid began to grasp at the Sunday tables in South Dakota. Every meal is a communion, or rather every meal is open to becoming recognizable as communion, as the sacrament of God’s hospitality and Christ’s gracious embrace of all. Eating what is set before us, we can stop pretending that our mission as followers of Jesus is solely a matter of giving others something we have and they need. Instead, we can discover the nearness of God’s reign in every encounter and know it together in that moment when Christ takes what we each bring, our best and our worst, and makes peace from it.

“Carry no wallet, no bag, no sandals,” says Jesus. Carry nothing but my peace and the good news of the kingdom. Sandals will wear out and wallets become empty and moths will eat your bags, but my peace will not wear out.

[1] Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried, 1-9.

Yearning to breathe free

What does it mean to be free? A majority of Britains just declared that leaving the European Union is an essential element of their freedom. In this country, we are apparently stuck in the assumption that unhindered access to any kind of fire arm is an essential element of our freedom.

What does it mean to be free? Epictetus, a first-century Stoic philosopher, taught, “He is free who lives as he wills, who is subject neither to compulsion, nor hindrance, nor force, whose choices are unhampered, whose desires attain their end, whose aversions do not fall into what they would avoid.”[1]

In 1883, Emma Lazarus penned the words that were soon inscribed on a bronze plaque in the base of the statue of liberty in the port of New York.

(…) Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand / A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame / Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name / Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand / Glows world-wide welcome; (…) / “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she / With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

What does it mean to be free? African slaves and their descendants sang and taught us to sing freedom songs of hope and determination. Starting in 1965, the Rolling Stones sang a different song of freedom, “I’m free to do what I want any old time…, I’m free to choose what I please any old time, … I’m free to please what I choose any old time, … I’m free to do what I want any old time…”

What does it mean to be free? The descendants of Jacob were slaves in Egypt when God sent Moses to Pharao to demand their freedom. When Jesus began his ministry in Galilee, he declared in his first public teaching that God had anointed him to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to let the oppressed go free. Freedom is God’s business. Freedom is God’s will for God’s people. Human beings yearn to breathe free because we are made in the image of God.

There are more than fifty references to freedom in the New Testament, each of them adding complexity and dimension to what Paul calls in his letter to the Romans, “the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). Things are not so glorious in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Galatia was a region in Asia Minor where Paul had founded several largely gentile congregations. When he left to continue his proclamation in other parts of the Roman empire, other missionaries arrived in those congregations, arguing that the gospel Paul had preached was incomplete and deficient. They taught that in order to truly belong to God’s people, gentile believers must adopt the Jewish practice of circumcision and obey Jewish law. Some gentile believers may have been receptive to that kind of teaching because in the daily struggles of living God-pleasing lives they longed for the structure that comes with having lists of do’s and don’ts.

But when Paul heard about these developments, we wrote the angriest of all his letters on record. His gospel was a proclamation of the boundless grace of God, who in the death and resurrection of Jesus had saved humanity, Jews and gentiles alike, from the power of sin and death. In Paul’s eyes, any effort to supplement God’s saving action in Christ with old or new sets of rules was a denial of the gospel. Christian life, Paul insisted, is life in Christ, life grounded solely in the death and resurrection of Jesus and shaped by the power of the Holy Spirit. “For freedom Christ has set us free,” he declared, adding, “Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

What does it mean to be free? Paul is not addressing freedom of speech or a people’s freedom to choose their government, nor is he referring to the absence of economic or political oppression. To him, something more fundamental is at stake.

Human beings are creatures, contingent beings who, in the words of Bob Dylan, “are gonna have to serve somebody.” As creatures we are either subject to the lordship of God the creator or to that of some other, unworthy lord. And again and again, we have chosen for ourselves other lords, idols not worthy of our submission and we find ourselves in bondage to them. To give you an example, the right to purchase and carry guns has become an idol when in response to mass shootings in schools and dance clubs all we allow ourselves to imagine is arming Kindergarten teachers and DJs.

Paul is not making a constitutional argument; he knows that something more fundamental is at stake. God in Christ has freed us from bondage to unworthy, oppressive lordships. We are made in the image of God. We were never meant to live as slaves, in bondage to any powers without or within, but as free children of God, in the realm of God’s lordship. And now that Christ is risen from the dead, we are free because Christ has made us his own. We are free, because we belong to him.

In verse 13, Paul urges his readers not to use our freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence. The sovereign self I may imagine myself to be outside of my relationship with God and my fellow-creatures is not sovereign at all, but only self-centered. It’s all about me, myself, and I – my freedom, my pleasure, my desires, my rights, my flourishing – I am completely turned in upon myself, not free at all, but a prisoner of my fears, my doubts, my wants and my worries.

What does it mean to be free? It means to trust that I am loved. It means to trust that what God has done matters more than what I have or have not done. It means to trust that I don’t have to earn my place among God’s people. I belong because I am loved. You belong because you are loved. And having been freed from fear and self-concern by the love and faithfulness of Jesus Christ, we live within that liberating love by participating in it. We learn to love as we are loved. Paul writes, in rather paradoxical language for an argument about freedom, “do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” We are free in our belonging to Christ. We are free to become slaves to each other—not masters and slaves!—but slaves to each other in complete mutuality. What a curious freedom that is. In chapter 6, Paul further illumines this mutuality writing, “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” The law is not abolished, but fulfilled by Christ, fulfilled in love that seeks to serve the well-being of others.

Some of you may know who Learned Hand was. He served as a federal judge for more than 50 years before retiring in 1961. Three times presidents considered nominating him for the Supreme Court. But each time they picked someone else. Many have considered Hand the greatest American judge to never sit on the Supreme Court. He was an early opponent of Hitler and a critic of antisemitism and as a judge, he defended freedom of expression and civil liberties. But Hand was also committed to judicial restraint and believed that the courts should avoid second-guessing the decisions of legislatures. In 1944, he gave a brief speech in New York’s Central Park, where 1.5 million people gathered for an event billed as “I Am an American Day.” I had never heard of Judge Hand until I read his speech last week, and I was moved by his words, moved, no doubt, because words like his are so seldom heard these days and so sorely needed. Hand aimed his remarks at 150,000 newly naturalized citizens:

(…) Some of us have chosen America as the land of our adoption; the rest have come from those who did the same. For this reason we have some right to consider ourselves a picked group, a group of those who had the courage to break from the past and brave the dangers and the loneliness of a strange land. What was the object that nerved us, or those who went before us, to this choice? We sought liberty; freedom from oppression, freedom from want, freedom to be ourselves. This we then sought; this we now believe that we are by way of winning. What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men [and women] recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow. What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest. (…).[2]

I pray that in these tumultuous times we may have to courage to live and grow in God’s liberating love.

[1] Epictetus, Discourse, 4.1.1.

[2] http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1199

The weight of sin by Rev. Thomas Kleinert

Sin is an old-fashioned word for a powerful reality. I did a word search online with a news filter to see how the word is used these days in our public discourse outside of church and synagogue. The results were slim, very slim; I wasn’t surprised. Sin is a powerful reality, but we’re losing the language that allows us to name it.

In Jesus’ day, people spoke confidently of sin. The story of the woman who crashed Simon’s party is a good example. She’s introduced to us as a woman in the city, who was a sinner – apparently that was all that needed to be said. She was a sinner – what had she done, we wonder. And what about the rest, the dinner guests who had been invited and the host? What were they, who were they? Sin is a powerful reality, but when we begin to identify and label sinners, we wander into dangerous territory. When we talk about sinners without including ourselves, we deceive ourselves. When we think of sin as other people’s problem, we see specks in everybody’s eye, blinded by the log in our own.

The prophet Isaiah knew about sin and spoke words of accusation, confession, and lament, saying,

We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes. We wait for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us. For our transgressions before you are many, and our sins testify against us. Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public square, and uprightness cannot enter.

Isaiah spoke of our sins as a thing-like reality that hides God’s face from us, a barrier between us and God.[1] In the Old Testament, sin is known as a weight the community and individuals must bear; it is a burden that cannot be thrown off or placed on another’s shoulder – unless the shoulder belongs to the scapegoat and the one who places the burden of the community’s sin on it is the highpriest who has been instructed in the demands of holiness and the proper cultic responses whenever those demands have been violated.[2]

In the Old Testament, sin is also known as a stain that must be wiped away or something emerging from the ground like a weed that must be trampled down, but by far the most common way to speak of sin is in words recognizing it’s oppressive weight.

Another metaphor for sin that emerged after the Babylonian exile was debt. When the community or an individual violates the demands of God’s holiness and God’s righteousness, we are withholding what we owe as creatures and covenant partners of God; and unless we repent and pay what we owe, our debt only grows. The debt metaphor came from the world of moneylending. After a dry year, a farmer may have had to use his seed corn to provide food for his family. Then he borrowed money to buy seed, hoping that the next harvest would be bountiful so he could feed his family and repay the debt. If he was unable to repay the loan, he and often his wife and children, were forced to work as debt-slaves for the creditor until the loan was paid off. Debt was suddenly not a simple matter of borrowing and following a payment plan, but once again an oppressive experience of being crushed.

Sin is a powerful reality; it is the name we give to that which disrupts the shalom of God’s creation. Sin weighs us down and keeps us from growing to the full stature of creatures made in the image of God. Sin keeps us from knowing ourselves and each other as God’s beloved.

The word “sin” didn’t make the news this week, but much of this week’s news reflected sin’s destructive reality. One night in January of last year, two Stanford students biking across campus saw a man thrusting his body on top of an unconscious, half-naked woman behind a dumpster. In March of this year, a jury found 20-year-old Brock Turner guilty of three counts of sexual assault. He faced a maximum of 14 years in prison. On Thursday, he was sentenced to six months in county jails and probation. The judge said he feared a longer sentence would have a “severe impact” on the former student and athlete. Do you feel the weight? Can you imagine the massive weight the young woman is bearing and the verdict’s “severe impact” on her? Can you imagine the weight young women on college campuses are bearing, the weight women everywhere are bearing?

Cory Batey is a former Vanderbilt student and athlete on a football scholarship; in April a jury here in Nashville found him guilty of aggravated rape in the assault of an unconscious woman in a Vanderbilt dorm room. His sentencing has been postponed until July; he’s facing 15-25 years in prison. Batey is black. Turner is white. Do you feel the weight?

The young California woman whom Turner assaulted, addressed him directly in court on Thursday. And she gave voice to the weight, but also to her rage and her hope that her words might wake us up. “You took away my worth,” she told Turner.

[You took away] my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today. (…) You made me a victim. In newspapers my name was “unconscious intoxicated woman”, ten syllables, and nothing more than that. For a while, I believed that that was all I was. I had to force myself to relearn my real name, my identity. To relearn that this is not all that I am. That I am not just a drunk victim at a frat party found behind a dumpster, while you are the All­ American swimmer at a top university, innocent until proven guilty, with so much at stake. I am a human being who has been irreversibly hurt, my life was put on hold for over a year, waiting to figure out if I was worth something.[3]

Sin weighs us down and keeps us from growing to the full stature of creatures made in the image of God. Sin keeps us from knowing ourselves and each other as God’s beloved. Sin disrupts the peace of God’s creation, in a single violent act as well as in patterns of violence hidden in school policies, court procedures, and everyday cultural assumptions. Sin is a powerful reality, but we’re losing the language that allows us to name it. We may be tempted to place the burden on the shoulders of the young man or worse, of the young woman or of the judge, but we can’t pretend that the weight isn’t ours to bear.

Vice President Biden responded to the young woman’s statement in an open letter.

I am in awe of your courage for speaking out—for so clearly naming the wrongs that were done to you and so passionately asserting your equal claim to human dignity. And I am filled with furious anger—both that this happened to you and that our culture is still so broken that you were ever put in the position of defending your own worth.

(…) I do not know your name—but I know that a lot of people failed you that terrible January night and in the months that followed. Anyone at that party who saw that you were incapacitated yet looked the other way and did not offer assistance. Anyone who dismissed what happened to you as “just another crazy night.” Anyone who asked “what did you expect would happen when you drank that much?” or thought you must have brought it on yourself. You were failed by a culture on our college campuses where one in five women is sexually assaulted—year after year after year. A culture that promotes passivity. That encourages young men and women on campuses to simply turn a blind eye.

(…) [You were failed by] a culture that continues to ask the wrong questions: What were you wearing? Why were you there? What did you say? How much did you drink? Instead of asking: Why did he think he had license to rape?[4]

We don’t know the young woman’s name. She remains anonymous to protect her identity, but she is not a nameless victim, she is not “unconscious intoxicated woman.” She is a human being made in the image of God. She is a person with a dignity far beyond any of the labels we slap on each other.

In Luke’s story we meet a Pharisee and we’re quick to think of him as a self-righteous man, obsessed with his own holiness and the impurity of others and who touches whom or what. We meet a woman, introduced as a woman in the city, who was a sinner – as though that was all that needed to be said and everybody already knew who she was. Jesus calls the man by name, Simon, but in our minds he’s still the nameless Pharisee, not really a person, but a stick figure just big enough to make our labels stick.

But then Jesus tells his story about a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed what a worker earns in about two years, the other the equivalent of two months’ wages. And when they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. What a crazy story. Who’s ever heard of a creditor forgiving a debt simply because the debtor wasn’t able to repay? Simon hasn’t, but the woman clearly has. She has heard of Jesus, the friend of sinners, and she has come to offer her love and gratitude in an outpouring of tears, kisses, and fragrant ointment. Confident that God has welcomed her in love, she trespasses boldly to enter the males-only gathering and claim her true name as a person made in the image of God and redeemed by God.

The final word of the story is peace. That is the promise here, that in the end she and Simon and the rest of us can go in peace. The gospel promise is that God looks at us not as keepers or breakers of the law, but as beloved creatures, carrying a heavy burden, stumbling under the weight of sin, unable to free ourselves. God in Christ brings peace to creation, because God’s compassion is the heartbeat of God’s justice.

What do you think became of Simon? How did his life change after that memorable night? What became of the woman who reclaimed her true name as a beloved child of God? And what will become of you now that you’ve seen the face of God in Jesus, the friend of sinners?

[1] See Isaiah 59:1-14

[2] See Leviticus 16:21-22

[3] https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.iwogKN0Rr#.utdw9zj0g

[4] Ibid.

The procession of life

A curious detail of the Elijah story we just heard is that we’re told what the name of the city was where it took place, but we don’t know the names of the widow and her son. The woman showed remarkable hospitality sharing her last morsel of food with the prophet, but we only know her as the widow of Zarephath. And her son we only know as the son of the widow of Zarephath. It appears that to the people who first told the story, the name of the city was a crucial detail because it was outside of Israel. The prophet had left the kingdom. Elijah and King Ahab of Israel made each other’s blood boil because one maintained that a king’s power was a king’s power and the other insisted that even the king had to submit to the justice of God. Now the prophet had left the kingdom and with him God’s power to bless and heal: while a severe drought dried up the land and destroyed the harvest on the fields, miracles of hospitality and of life restored happened not in Israel, but on foreign soil, in Zarephath of Sidon. A widow from north of the border recognized what the king of Israel couldn’t or wouldn’t see. Ahab and Jezebel may have their names written in the royal chronicles of Israel, but it turned out that a nameless widow who didn’t even belong to God’s covenant people knew more about the power of Israel’s God to bring forth life than Israel’s king and queen.

Luke tells us a Jesus story that taps deeply into this prophetic tradition and presents Jesus as one greater than a prophet. Again the widow and her son remain unnamed, but we’re told that the town’s name was Naïn. The town isn’t mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, only in this story. Naïn is about 5 miles south of Nazareth, and that’s all we know about the town. Luke tells us that Jesus, the disciples and a large crowd were coming from Capernaum, that’s about 25 miles. But why tell us the name of the town and not the name of the man who walked home from his own funeral? Don’t you think everybody in Naïn knew who he was?

I have heard or read these yoked stories many times and listened for the word of God in them. This time I was drawn to the curious detail that central characters in both stories remain anonymous. And I thought about how often namelessness is part of the stories we hear day in and day out, stories that are more like statistics: so many boating accidents after a summer weekend; so many missing passengers presumed dead after an airplane crash in the Mediterranean; so many people killed after spring floods and tornadoes; so many girls obducted from schools in Nigeria and still missing. We hear nameless statistics that hide the real stories of lives changed forever, the lives of men, women, and children, the lives of sisters and boyfriends, grandfathers and neighbors, wives and sons and classmates, the real stories in which we’re each part of a web of relationships that have made us uniquely and irreplaceably who we are, relationships that we in turn have made and shaped.

I was thinking about these things when I heard a news story about a city in Syria called Daraya. I knew less about Daraya than about Naïn, but learned that on Wednesday the first Red Cross convoy had entered that town, in the first such delivery since a government-imposed siege began in 2012. People in Daraya have no access to essential services, such as running water and electricity, and systematic bombing by Syrian government forces has destroyed most buildings. Only about 8,000 people remain in Daraya, which had a population of about 80,000 before the war. What little food can be grown amid the ruins is not enough. The convoy on Wednesday carried some medical supplies, vaccines, and baby formula, but no food.

I listened to Ailsa Chang on the radio:

Humanitarian aid has finally reached the battered Syrian city of Daraya, not far from Damascus. It was taken over four years ago by Syrian rebel forces. And after that, Syrian government forces blocked off the city, bombing it regularly. Residents have been waiting four years for help. Yesterday’s convoy made it in after Russia helped broker a two-day window of calm.

Chang interviewed one of the aid workers who made it into Daraya, Pawel Krzysiek with the International Committee of the Red Cross, asking him how people reacted when they first arrived in Daraya.

KRZYSIEK: So contrary to what we expected, coming with a very limited humanitarian aid to Daraya, the people greeted us very positively. They were smiling. You could see on their faces they were happy to see us. I mean, maybe because we were one of the very first humanitarian workers reaching this town, everyone was very positive, but had only one request to us.

CHANG: What was that request?

KRZYSIEK: Please come back with food actually because we didn’t have food on this very convoy.

“Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that,” Chang interjected. “I understood that you were able to bring medicine and baby milk but no food. Why couldn’t you bring food this time?”

KRZYSIEK: The humanitarian aid allowed in was sort of a confidence-building measure. I mean, we are aware that what we brought into Daraya yesterday is definitely not what the people need.

Then Chang asked him if he was struck by any of the stories people told him as they were handing out supplies, stories of how they had been surviving these past four years.

KRZYSIEK: You know, one thing that struck me a lot yesterday was when I was talking to a woman just before we [headed] out, her child, you know, just pulled her hand and asked, did they bring bread? (…) And she said, yeah, bread is definitely something that we are all dreaming about. But, no, habibi – which means honey, basically, in Arabic – no, they didn’t bring bread yet. We hope that they will bring it very, very soon. And, you know, I hope that, too.

The Red Cross worker talked about hope; hope for a mother and her child dreaming about bread in a city besieged by death; hope that a convoy of life would get through to the city very, very soon.

“Can you tell me, Pawel,” Chang asked, “I don’t understand why is it more complicated to bring bread than medicine or baby milk?”

And he responded, “I don’t know,” and again, after a long sigh, “I don’t know.”

“Well, I’m just – I’m trying to understand,” Chang said with great tenderness, and he responded, “I mean, I wish – I’m trying to understand. (…) But I’m looking for answers. And I don’t know.”

I was struck by the tenderness and the helplessness these two gave voice to on the radio. How has death become so dominant in what we have made of life? We are trying to understand. We are looking for answers. And we don’t know.

I couldn’t help but hear the stories together, the story of the nameless mother and her child in Daraya and the story of the nameless widow and her dead son in Naïn. I believe they belong together. They are tied together by the similarities of life in the grip of death, but beyond that, by the compassionate response of Christ.

Jesus approached Naïn just when a funeral procession was making its way through the city gate. A large crowd, probably the whole town, followed the stretcher with the body of a man on it. His mother had already lost her husband, and now her son, her only son. Without a husband or a son to take care of her, her future looked grim.  Widows often had to depend on the kindness of their husband’s family to survive, and many ended up sitting by the gate together with the blind and the crippled, begging neighbors and travelers for a little mercy.

The widow’s situation helps us to see that death is more than just a biological reality; it is a social reality, a moral and a spiritual reality. When we are left speechless by the fact that it is easier to drop bombs on a city than to bring bread to its hungry survivors, we have come face to face with death invading life and making it smaller, meaner, and poorer than it is meant to be.

The widow in Naïn is on her way to the cemetery for the funeral of her son, her only son, and we wonder if with him she is also going to bury her own future, her own life. Her heart is heavy with the pain of loss, but she also bears the burden of great uncertainty of what will become of her. And she is not alone. Traveling with her are the many nameless widows who only yesterday gathered sticks for one last fire to prepare one last meal for their children and themselves. Traveling with her are the mothers who tell their little ones, “no, habibi, they didn’t bring bread yet; we hope that they will bring it very, very soon.” Traveling with her are all who are trying to understand how we can be so cruel to each other in our desire for power or whatever it is we desire when we wage war against each other. Traveling with her are all who are finding it more difficult today than yesterday to sustain hope. Traveling with her are all who have seen and felt how death invades life and sucks it dry. The procession passes through the gate, and there, outside of town, coming toward them, is another procession. The two columns meet, and the Lord sees the widow, and moved with deep compassion he says to her and to all in the procession of death, “Do not weep.” And to the body on the stretcher he says, “Rise!”

This is where the procession of death stops, and not just for the time being, this is where the procession of death ends. This is where the Creator of life says “No!” to all that makes life smaller, meaner, and poorer than the fullness of God’s love desires life to be. This is where with great compassion God embraces us in the depth of our hopelessness and teaches our weary hearts to trust and to walk with Christ in the procession of life.

May all who long for fullness of life encounter the living Christ.

Only speak the word

Do you remember the story of Naaman? He was a general for the king of Aram, Israel’s neighbor and enemy in the days of the prophet Elisha. Naaman was a great man, highly regarded by his master, and he was a mighty warrior, but he had a skin disease that could end his career and cut him off from his community. Once an Aramean raiding party had gone out and captured a young girl from Israel; she served Naaman’s wife, and she said to her mistress, “I wish that my master could come before the prophet who lives in Samaria. He would cure him of his disease.” Naaman told the king of Aram what the slave girl had said, and the king responded, “Go ahead. I will send a letter to Israel’s king.”

The general’s skin trouble was about to become a diplomatic affair of the highest order. Naaman brought the letter to Israel’s king. It read, “Along with this letter I’m sending you my servant Naaman so you can cure him of his skin disease.” The king of Israel ripped his clothes and cried out, “What is this? Am I God to hand out death and life? But this king writes me, asking me to cure someone! He wants to start a fight with me.” That’s when Elisha sent word to the king, “Let the man come to me. Then he’ll know that there’s a prophet in Israel.”

Soon Naaman arrived with his horses and chariots at Elisha’s house, but the great man who spoke face to face with kings was left waiting at the door. Elisha sent out a messenger who said, “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan River. Then your skin will be restored and become clean.” Naaman was furious. “I thought for sure that he’d come out, stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the bad spot, and cure the skin disease. Aren’t the rivers in Aram better than all Israel’s waters? Couldn’t I wash in them and get clean?”

Do you remember what happened next? Naaman’s servants came up to him and said, “If the prophet had told you to do something difficult, wouldn’t you have done it? All he said to you was, ‘Wash and become clean.’” So Naaman went down and bathed in the Jordan seven times, just as the man of God had said. And his skin was restored like that of a young boy, and he became clean. He returned with his entourage and stood before Elisha, saying, “Now I know for certain that there’s no God anywhere on earth except in Israel.”

Great story. It portrays how fragile human power really is. The great general is ill, and it is the compassion of a slave, the wisdom of servants, and the simple instructions of a rather rude prophet that lead to his healing.

There are echoes of this ancient story in the gospel. In Luke, Jesus himself points to it in his first public teaching at home in Nazareth. He has read from the prophet Isaiah, beautiful words, powerful words announcing release to the captives, new sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor. He has declared the fulfillment of all these things in the congregation’s hearing, and they love his sermon until he opens the horizon of God’s redemption beyond Israel’s boundaries. “There were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha,” he says, “and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 4:27; see Luke 4:14-30). Suddenly the very people who only moments ago were amazed at his gracious words are ready to kill him by hurling him off the cliff outside of town. We recognize a powerful dynamic at work here, a kind of jealousy: humans celebrate mercy for us and our own as a blessing, and we are ready to call it a curse when mercy touches those who keep us out or whom we want to keep out. We get furious when God shows no respect for the boundaries we have drawn around one another.

Today’s gospel reading also contains echoes of that ancient story. A Roman centurion is no general, but he is a gentile and he represents the enemy. He himself is not ill, but a slave whom he values highly is near to death, and he turns to Jesus for help. The political context has changed. The land of Israel is now part of the Roman Empire and Rome maintains a sizable military presence there.

The first-century historian Josephus writes about the daily routine of Roman soldiers:

Nothing is done without a word of command. At daybreak the rank and file report themselves to their respective centurions, the centurions go to salute the tribunes, the tribunes with all the officers then wait on the commander-in-chief, and he gives them, according to custom, the watchword and other orders to be communicated to the lower ranks [Josephus, Jewish War, 3.98.].

Centurions were mid-level officers who were in command over about eighty soldiers.  Folks in Capernaum would have known this one to be the man in charge, not just over the soldiers under his command, but over the whole town. This is how a Roman historian describes the preferred qualities:

A centurion is chosen for great strength and tall stature, as a man who hurls spears and javelins skillfully and strongly, has expert knowledge how to fight with the sword and rotate the shield, and has learned the whole art of armature. He is alert, sober, and agile, and more ready to do the things ordered of him than speak, keeps his soldiers in training, makes them practice their arms, and sees that they are well clothed and shod, and that the arms are burnished and bright [Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science].

The centurion in our story is used to a life of receiving and giving orders. But surprisingly, he doesn’t command a couple of soldiers to go and order Jesus to come to his house. He sends some of the Jewish elders, asking Jesus to come and heal his slave. He recognizes in Jesus an authority like his own, but different. His world is the military, and he is confident that Jesus is in command of healing forces just like he himself is part of a chain of command. And so he addresses Jesus like he would petition a superior officer. It’s a remarkable scene; we’re looking at an officer of the Roman Empire petitioning a Galilean peasant! Something has been flipped here; something’s upside down; something has opened up.

The centurion becomes visible as a human being. He is a man whose heart is heavy and close to breaking because a loved one is sick, and he is helpless: he has no authority over the forces of healing. We may suspect that some kind of quid-pro-quo is still part of the picture, since the elders tell Jesus that this man loves their people and has built the synagogue. Certainly such a generous man is worthy of a favorable reply! But the centurion himself responds to that suspicion, sending word through a group of friends, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.”

Only speak the word – the centurion’s world is defined by the chain of command, and he imagines divine authority to be organized in similar fashion, with Jesus as a commanding officer who speaks and makes things happen. Only speak the word – Jesus is astounded to encounter such faith in a gentile.

We have a tendency to perceive the world in simple dualities like Jew and gentile, neighbor and enemy, believer and non-believer, documented and undocumented, red and blue – but these categories we use to define ourselves and others become much less rigid and they begin to lose their defining power in the presence of love and suffering. The story of the centurion shows us the possibility and the reality of looking beyond the simple dualities: This Gentile has built a synagogue for the Jews, and the comfortable construct of gentiles as hopeless idolaters begins to crumble. These Jewish elders speak well of a Roman officer and they speak kindly to Jesus, and the comfortable constructs of Roman oppressors and Jewish opponents begin to crumble. This soldier of the empire is caring and kind, and our comfortable assumption that systems of domination leave no room for such gifts begins to crumble. Love and suffering can soften our rigid constructions of reality and make room for healing, and I mean healing in the full sense of the word, the restoring of conditions in which life flourishes.

“Only speak the word, and let my servant be healed,” the centurion asked Jesus via his friends who served as intermediaries. Jesus didn’t go to the centurion’s house. For all we know the two never met in person. Jesus didn’t meet the servant, either, let alone talk to him or touch him. The friends returned to the house and found the slave in good health. Apparently Jesus did speak the word, but Luke doesn’t tell us what he said or when he said it. I wonder if this is Luke’s way of saying that it isn’t a particular word or command that brings healing to our broken lives; that it is rather Jesus’ presence with us and our encounter with him in faith that makes our lives whole. In Jesus’ own love and suffering we recognize the boundless love and compassion of God. His whole life is the word that continues to speak healing into the world.