God-breathed marvel

Open House for Butterflies is a book for children and the people who love them; it was written by Ruth Krauss, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak, and first published in 1960. Open House for Butterflies has been reprinted again and again, and I keep a copy near my desk, for smiles. The little book is full of words of wisdom, the kind that blossom and flourish in places where young children share their observations of the world. Several times over these past weeks and months I turned to the opening page, with plenty of white space framing a little drawing and a single line of text: A screaming song is good to know in case you need to scream.[1]

Nobody expected this presidential campaign to be a pleasant experience, but who would have thought that so much of our public discourse would be so utterly indistinguishable from the worst of so-called reality tv? A screaming song is good to know in case you need to scream. I don’t know any screaming songs, do you? I’ve screamed Rocky Top at Neyland Stadium as though my blood ran orange, but that’s not a screaming song. And I don’t think there is one in the hymnal, do you? I imagine a screaming song would be a fine opportunity to cuss like a sailor without the bad language; people could shout the song together and yell out all the rage, the wrath, the anger, the pain, the fear and frustration, and it would clear the atmosphere like thunder and lightning at the end of a day of thick heat. And then we would sit there with our soar throats, exhausted, and perhaps we would begin to find the words the other could hear, and perhaps we would begin to listen.

A few pages into Open House for Butterflies is one of my favorite morsels of wisdom. There’s a drawing of a little boy, sitting on a hill, with his eyes closed, next to a little stream. And again, just one line of text: Everybody should be quiet near a little stream and listen.[2] I imagine the boy is listening to the water running over the rocks, the insects rustling in the grass, the wind playing with the leaves in the trees, and the faint sound the air makes when it becomes breath in his nostrils. He’s listening to all there is in this particular moment. I love this little scene, the words and the drawing, because I love being quiet near water – near a little stream or on the lake or on the beach when the waves roll in – and I believe everybody should be there and listen, and not just once a year.

I also love this little scene because when I turn it, it reminds me that you and I and everybody else are all little streams in the mighty river of life, and how very good it is when every now and then somebody is quiet near us and listens. And when I turn the image one more time, it brings to mind how the Bible is like a stream, a mighty stream – deep and wide and full of wonders; ancient and yet new and different every time we listen. “Continue in what you have learned,” we heard in today’s reading from 2 Timothy, “knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”[3] This knowledge begins with our relationships with those who have been quiet by that mighty stream and listened and told us what they heard; this knowledge evolves into our own familiarity with those sacred writings, a familiarity not just with words, but with voices; with centuries upon centuries of struggle for understanding and discernment; a familiarity with this vast river of wonderings and insights regarding God’s presence and work in the world. We hear stories and philosophical musings, prayers and love poetry, proverbs and moral teachings, long lists of names, building instructions, prophetic indictments, riddles and parables. And for generations, people have turned to those sacred writings for all kinds of reasons: to find answers to pressing questions, prove a point, or win an argument, to formulate dogma or reconstruct ancient history, to get rich, to induce shame, to justify oppression and promote violence. But still, Paul of 2 Timothy gently insists, these writings, despite their questionable uses and outright abuses, are able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. They can make us wise by cultivating in us a sense of wonder about God, the world, others, and ourselves.[4]

Fred Craddock once told a congregation,

I read something recently—I knew this, but I had forgotten about it—that years ago our ancestors used to go out walking, usually on a Sunday afternoon—sometimes alone, sometimes couples, sometimes the whole family—and they called it “going marveling.” Marveling. They would look for unusual rocks, unusual wild flowers, shells, four-leafed clovers, marvelous things. They would collect them, bring them back to the house, and show off the marvelous things they had found. Isn’t that a delightful thing, to go marveling?[5]

Craddock told them that when he read that and was reminded of that, he went marveling himself. I’ll tell you later what he found. I want us to stay a little longer with that lovely phrase, going marveling. It reminds me very much of the little boy, sitting quietly by the little stream, listening, hearing things he hadn’t noticed before, marvelous things he’d take back to the house and share. When we listen to the Scriptures in wonder, says William Brown, “not only does the text fall open to the reader, the reader falls open to the text.” There is a solitude at the heart of that encounter between Scripture and listener, but it doesn’t happen in isolation. It takes place in communion with others, in which fresh insights are shared and new relationships are formed. Reading with wonder, listening with wonder broadens and deepens the community of listeners and readers.[6]

In the passage from 2 Timothy we heard this morning there is a word that is incredibly rare; it’s used only once in the entire Bible. It’s a little word that has had to carry a lot of weight in debates about the Scriptures and how they are the Word of God. In the translation we heard, v. 16 says, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” The reference is to the Jewish sacred writings that were considered authoritative at the time, long before the apostolic writings were collected and became what we know as the New Testament. 2 Timothy was part of a push against tendencies among some Christian teachers to dismiss the books of Moses, the prophets, and other sacred texts as inferior or outdated. These writings, the apostle insists, are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, they are useful for teaching and all manner of other things, and they are inspired by God. Some hear inspired and think of heavenly dictation, others think of writers using their own words to communicate what they heard God say, and again others think of some moment akin to being kissed by a muse that gives a writer something to write about. The NIV translates more literally and less traditionally, “all Scripture is God-breathed.” It’s a fine translation that frees us to listen again in wonder and to go marveling. All Scripture is God-breathed… When you sit with this image of God breathing, what comes to mind?

I think of the moment, you can read about it in Genesis 2, when the Lord God formed the human from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the human became a living being. I wonder if the apostle is saying the sacred writings are alive with the breath of God just as humans are—and wouldn’t that mean that we have to let them breathe? We sit quietly by the wide stream of Scripture, listening, waiting expectantly as the Spirit of God moves among us, marveling at the new connections we discover in the sacred writings and among us, connections that reflect a wisdom beyond flat information, and more than wisdom, our salvation in Christ. And wouldn’t you agree that we need new connections alive with the breath of God more than anything in our time?

Yes, a screaming song is good to know in case you need to scream. But better yet to find a place beside the stream and listen.

So Fred Craddock told the congregation how he went marveling himself. “You know I live about a mile from here,” he told them.

If you walk down the railroad, it’s about a mile. So I left the house and went marveling. About a mile away I came upon a pavilion, and inside I saw a lot of people singing, praying, and reading scripture, and sharing their love for each other. They were vowing that they would—they promised to each other, and they promised to God—make every effort, God help them, to reproduce the life of Jesus in this place. And I marveled, how I marveled. And I said to myself, Look what I have found, right here, in this little building.[7]

For us, all the words of Scripture point ultimately to Jesus, the eternal Word of God, perfectly embodied in human life. So let us live to let his life be ours.

[1] Ruth Krauss, Open House for Butterflies, 1960

[2] Ibid.

[3] 2 Timothy 3:14-15

[4] See William P. Brown, Sacred Sense, p. 2

[5] Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories, p. 65

[6] See Brown, Sacred Sense, p. 12

[7] Craddock Stories, p. 65

The wide embrace

Have it your way. Have it your way was a tagline introduced in 1974 by Burger King. Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce. Special orders don’t upset us. Have it your way. Years passed, burgers were sold, tag lines changed. Burger King reintroduced Have it your way in 2004. The four simple words still tapped into the deep current of individualism in America; in addition, the thirty-year-old slogan had a vintage feel, and vintage was hip. Have you ever read what’s printed on the bag they hand you with your burger and fries at the drive-through? Listen to this:

Have it your way. You have the right to have what you want, exactly when you want it. Because on the menu of life, you are “Today’s Special”. And tomorrow’s. And the day after that. And… well, you get the drift. Yes, that’s right. We may be the King, but you my friend, are the almighty ruler.

Yeah, it’s a little over the top. But only a little. Henri Nouwen, while traveling in Latin America in the early 80’s, saw something, noticed something important.

We people of the first world emphasize our rights. We claim our right to food, health, shelter, and education. [We] relate to the goods of life as possessions that are ours and [that] need to be conquered ... and defended. Although the poor in the third world do not deny that they have basic human rights, their emphasis is on the giftedness of life ... The goods that come to them are experienced as free gifts of God ... gifts to be grateful for and to celebrate.

Nouwen paints with a broad brush and he may be dangerously close to romanticizing poverty, but he has noticed something worth pondering: Some members of the human family live in a world where we’re being taught that on the menu of life we are “today’s special” and the almighty ruler. Others live in a world where life is gift after gift after gift.

Peter Marty comments, “Gratitude becomes completely superfluous when life is viewed as entitlement instead of gift.”[1]  We gather here Sunday after Sunday for a variety of reasons, but one of them is our hope that the vintage jingles we sing in worship, we call them doxologies, shape our perception of the world and how we live in it.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow… gift after gift after gift, flowing from the heart of God… Praise God all creatures here below… all that has life and breath… Praise God above ye heavenly host… earth and heaven joined in praise… Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost… praise God who is the giver and the gift and the giving in the perfect mutuality of love.

We worship God because there’s something about life that calls for it. We worship God because we have seen something, noticed something that makes us want to say thank you, sing thank you, live thank you. And we worship so we learn to see even more fully until all that we are becomes one gift of praise to God. John Burkhart reminds us that,

“What matters … is not whether God can be God without our worship. What is crucial is whether humans can survive as humans without worshiping. To withhold acknowledgment, to avoid celebration, to stifle gratitude, may prove as unnatural as holding one’s breath.”[2]

Martin Luther was once asked to describe the nature of true worship. His answer: the tenth leper turning back.

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem when he was approached by ten men with leprosy. Luke writes he was traveling between Samaria and Galilee, only there wasn’t any land between the two, there was, however, a line. There was no border, no border control, no fence or wall, but there was a line, a sharp line drawn between two groups of people who hadn’t been friendly with each other for generations, Jews and Samaritans. The enmity between them was entrenched and old. They disagreed about things that mattered most to them: how to honor God, where to worship, what set of scrolls to accept as sacred scripture. The line between them wasn’t so much on the land as it was in the heart, the mind, and the imagination. They did what they could to avoid contact with each other.

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, traveling between Samaria and Galilee, when he was approached by ten men with leprosy. Leprosy was more than a name for skin blemishes that looked suspicious and triggered fear of contagion. Leprosy was a sentence to exile. These men had been banished from their homes and villages; who knows how long they had not felt the loving touch of spouses, children, parents, friends. It didn’t matter any more which side of the line they once claimed as home, which community they claimed as theirs. It didn’t matter any more who they used to be or dreamed of being, now they were lepers. Whoever saw them didn’t see them as persons, but as no-longer-persons, untouchables pushed out and left to beg and wander in the invisible land between Samaria and Galilee. “They shall live alone; their dwelling shall be outside the camp,” the law of Moses, which was the law of Jews and Samaritans, declared.[3]

These ten no-longer-persons who had been dwelling outside the camp for who knows how long approached Jesus, begging for mercy, and Jesus saw these invisible ones. “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” he responded to their plea. The priests, of course, were very much “inside the camp,” they were the ones responsible for determining if a rash was leprous or not. The priests were the ones who would examine the skin and decide if a man or woman could return from their exile after the blemish had faded. “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” Jesus said to the ten, as though it was time for their return to life. And as they went, they were made clean.

Unclean meant not belonging. Made clean meant they belonged again. Made clean meant they could return to all that makes us persons – family, community, intimacy. Made clean meant they could touch and be touched, embrace and be embraced, hold the baby, kiss the children, hug their wives, do their work, eat and drink with their friends.

The ten had encountered Jesus in the land of not-belonging and they were not just cured, but healed, restored to wholeness. One of them, though, when he saw that he was healed, didn’t continue on his journey to see the priests. One of them turned back, praising God with a loud voice, and he thanked Jesus. One of them, when he saw that he was healed, saw something the others didn’t. Nine of the ten got their old lives back. One found new life. And he was a Samaritan.

Again it was a Samaritan who saw what others didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t see. At the beginning of his journey to Jerusalem, Jesus told a story about a man who fell into the hands of robbers on the Jericho Road. You know the story. A priest happened to come down that road, and when he saw the victim, he passed by on the other side. Next a Levite came to the place and saw the man, and he passed by on the other side. And then a third man came near, and when he saw the man, he was moved with pity. And he was a Samaritan.

On the dangerous Jericho Road and in the no-man’s-land between groups tangled and trapped in enmity it’s an outsider who sees what others don’t. It’s an outsider whose actions reveal what being a neighbor is about. It’s an outsider who sees that in Jesus the kingdom of God is present.

Ten cried out for mercy. Ten were made clean. Nine went home and lived happily ever after; nothing suggests that their healing was revoked. One, however, turned back and gave praise to God at Jesus’ feet.

In Jesus, the kingdom of God has broken into the invisible land between Samaria and Galilee, the land of non-belonging where the exiles dwell, longing for redemption and crying out for mercy. Leprosy is a way to name all modes of non-belonging and being cut-off from life. For some of us, complete isolation may be difficult to imagine, but to the degree that we are not at one with the world, not at one with each other and with ourselves, we all know what it means to wander the roads outside the camp, longing for life that is nothing but life.

The Samaritan saw that with Jesus the kingdom of God had entered the world. He saw an embrace so wide, it wouldn’t create yet one more camp in our broken, divided world, but one redeemed humanity, healed and saved in the arms of God’s mercy and at home. He saw grace so deep, his whole life became gratitude and praise.

Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, on the way to the cross, and we know that his journey was more than a long walk across a piece of Middle Eastern geography. He traveled through the vast, invisible land between, his feet tracing the many lines that divide us, his hands stretched out to either side in the most vulnerable gesture of reconciliation; he went all the way to the cross, erected outside the city gates, outside the camp, any camp – and there the deep divide between us and God was revealed, the violent pride of God’s human creatures presuming to be the almighty rulers. And there God’s faithfulness prevailed.

Can you see how wide an embrace this is? So, yes, make a joyful noise, all the earth; sing the glory of God’s name.

[1] The Christian Century, August 17, 2016, p. 3.

[2] John Burkhart, quoted in A Sourcebook about Liturgy, ed. by Gabe Huck (Chicago: LTP, 1994), 148.

[3] Leviticus 13:46

How long?

The wicked surround the righteous—and many fear that the wicked are winning. The wicked are the ones who hold the power: they have the money;  they have the bombs, the guns, the muscle; they have the ruthless ideologies, the single-minded tenacity, the murderous certainty. The wicked call the shots.

Habakkuk sees it and he cries out; he complains in bold language reminiscent of the psalms. He doesn’t just groan, he laments and insists, and with his questions he holds God responsible: How long shall I cry for help, and you, Lord, will not listen? How long shall I cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble, destruction and violence, strife and contention? Where is your justice when the wicked pervert justice? Where is your justice when the righteous are surrounded?

You listen to Habakkuk and you hear echoes from the psalms:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever? How long, Lord, shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked exult?[1]

Habakkuk doesn’t just groan under the weight of wrongdoing, trouble, violence, destruction, and perverted justice pressing down on God’s people—he names the wrongs, points them out, and he insists on a response from the Lord who is known as a lover of righteousness. Habakkuk gives voice to those among God’s people who see the wicked surrounding the righteous, twisting justice, and getting away with it – day after day, year after year, generation after generation. Habakkuk insists on a response on behalf of all who struggle to hold onto the belief that real justice is possible in this world.

On June 17 last year, 21-year-old Dylan Roof killed nine men and women at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. One of the victims was Ethel Lance; she was the sexton and she was 70 years old when she was murdered at the Wednesday Bible study. At a bond hearing in a Charleston courtroom later that summer, family members of the victims were invited to give statements. Ethel Lance’s daughter, Nadine Collier got up and made her way to the podium. What she said, looking at Dylan Roof on closed-circuit tv and choking back sobs, came out like this:

“I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never get to talk to her ever again—but I forgive you, and have mercy on your soul … You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. If God forgives you, I forgive you.”

Her words took everybody in the courtroom by surprise. Her own family wasn’t prepared for them. “When she said that, I was just shocked,” says her sister, Sharon Risher. “I was like, Who in the hell is she talking for? Because she’s not talking for me.” Risher looks back a year later and says, “The flag went down, yes. This little boy is in jail, yes. But all of this has just caused too much.” It is too soon to talk about healing when the wounds are still being torn open every day. For Risher, the murder of her mother is not an isolated event. “Every night somebody else gets killed in this country, and I have to relive that pain,” she says, “because I know what these people are going through.”[2]

How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall I cry for help, and you, Lord, will not listen? How long?

What does real justice look like? Dylan Roof’s trial will begin in January; he’s facing federal hate crime charges in addition to having been indicted with nine counts of murder. He may get sentenced to death, and that may satisfy the state’s justice – but what about the festering wound of racism that will not heal? My friend Latisha has no words left for her pain and her anger after hundreds of years of violence against blacks and the relentless news over recent months and weeks of questionable police shootings of black men and boys. There’s no end to it. Latisha is tired of shouting, How long? She has no tears left. She has changed both her cover photo and her profile picture on Facebook to solid black rectangles that swallow up all light – it’s her speechless lament, a silent cry of mourning and rage.

On September 18, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a eulogy in Birmingham. It was the funeral for three of the four girls killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church three days earlier. He said, “These children—unoffending, innocent, and beautiful—were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity. … They have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. … They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.”[3]

Dr. King reminds us that we must be concerned not merely about the perpetrators, but about the vision of life that produced and continues to produce them. And we must substitute courage for caution, because the vision of life that leaves no room for the other or insists on assigning the other his or her place in what we presume to be our world, that vision is much more common among us than we care to consider, let alone admit. It feels good when we can identify with the righteous whom the wicked surround, but it takes courage to face our own complicity in wicked systems that keep righteousness from flourishing among us.

“How long shall I cry for help, and you, Lord, will not listen?” said Habakkuk. “I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what the Lord will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.”

The Lord answered the prophet and made a promise: “There is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.”

There is still a vision of life where the end is not violent exclusion but courageous embrace. There is still a vision of life where all lives do indeed matter. There is still a vision of life where wickedness has been redeemed by love and righteousness is at home throughout the world. There is still a vision; it will surely come. We affirm that this vision is Christ’s proclamation of the kingdom. We affirm that the vision has become tangible in the life he lived and the just reign he inaugurated. We are still waiting, but what we await is not unknown; it is the fullness of the life we see when we look at Jesus. What we await is the consummation of creation in the loving communion of God and God’s creatures.

When we gather around the table of Christ, we do it in remembrance of him. And as often as we eat the bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. It is as though we lean forward into the fulfillment, into the future that is already present when welcoming each other as forgiven sinners in Christ’s name and recognizing each other as brothers and sisters in Christ we celebrate the feast of life.

I don’t know where the courage to look at ourselves with honesty would come from, if not from that vision. I don’t know where the courage to open up to one another across all that divides us would come from, if not from that vision. Habakkuk calls us in God’s name to trust that promise – to trust it more than our cynicism, more than our own complicity in wickedness, and more than our anger and our grief.

Habakkuk concludes his prophecy with beautiful words of tenacious faith, inviting us to trust and wait and work with him:

Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines;

though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food;

though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will exult in the God of my salvation.[4]

[1] Psalms 13:1-2; 74:10; 94:3

[2] See http://time.com/time-magazine-charleston-shooting-cover-story/

[3] See http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_eulogy_for_the_martyred_children/

[4] Habakkuk 3:17-18

Tell me your story

An unprecedented 65.3 million people around the world have been forced from home (that’s approximately the population of Great Britain). Among them are nearly 21.3 million refugees who have fled their countries. Over half of the refugees are under the age of 18. More than 10 million children in the world are refugees. We live in a world where nearly 34,000 people are forcibly displaced every day as a result of conflict or persecution.[1]

The numbers are hard to imagine. But they are people; they are families; they are men, women, children, not a bowl of Skittles. They have lives and dreams they left behind. They have stories to tell. They have names. The question is not, “Can you imagine 21.3 million refugees?” The question is, “Can you imagine being one of them?” Can you imagine being forced to leave your home with little more than the clothes on your back ? Can you imagine, for a moment, for mercy’s sake, being the mother who lifts her child into a rubber dinghy to cross the ocean? Can you imagine having lost everything and everyone? Can you imagine being the poor man at the gate?

In Jesus’ story, the world is very small and very divided. There’s a rich man in the house and a poor man at the gate. And the rich man is dressed in purple and the finest linen, while the poor man is covered in sores that only the dogs show any interest in. And the rich man feasts sumptuously every day, while the poor man hungers and longs to eat the crumbs that fall off the rich man’s table. It’s a world sharply divided into rich and poor, a world separated by a gate. And surprisingly, as though to remind us that the poor are not merely statistics in the rich man’s world but people, Jesus tells us the poor man’s name, Lazarus. Jesus paints a world with just a few strokes.

In the next frame, Lazarus dies. Did he starve? Did one of his sores get infected? Or was it one of those nights when temperatures dropped into the 20’s? Apparently those are details that don’t matter in Jesus’ story, but he’s careful to tell us that when Lazarus died the angels came to carry him away to rest at the bosom of Abraham.

The rich man also died and was buried. Somebody else might have told us how long the funeral procession was and how exquisitly carved the headstone. Jesus tells us that the rich man was buried. Period. No angels came. Just a few simple strokes and we can see that death doesn’t discriminate between rich and poor.

In the next frame, we see again a very divided world. Only now it’s the rich man who is in agony and Lazarus is the child at home, the guest of honor feasting at Abraham’s banquet.

Let’s pause here for a moment. The prophet Amos, in the days of King Jeroboam, composed a song of sorrow and grief:

Woe to those who are at ease in Zion ... Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the stall; who drink wine straight from the bowl, and anoint themselves with the finest oils—but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! [2]

One scholar has called the prophecy “a lament over people who can see nothing about which to lament.”[3] Is that what had happened in the rich man’s world? Had he not seen Lazarus in his agony? Had he only had eyes for life this side of the gate? Now he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.  And now he responded, calling out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.” You have to wonder how long he had known that name – Lazarus – and had he ever spoken it before? And the cry, “Have mercy on me!” – had he heard it before? Had he heard it or had it remained unheard, part of the white noise occasionally wafting in from beyond the gate?

The man in agony didn’t ask for much, a drop of water, not a seat at the banquet, and Abraham heard him. And he said, “Between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” It had been a small world, divided by a gate, only now the great divide was permanent. The time to reach across with kindness and generosity was over. Opportunities to see and hear and respond once had abounded, but now it was too late – for the rich man, that is, not his siblings.

“Send Lazarus to my father’s house to warn them,” the man asked, and Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” Yes, we should, but our track record is not very impressive, and the man in Hades knows it and he intercedes one more time, not for himself, but for us, telling Abraham, “If someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” He has great confidence that we will change the way we live once we are told of the great reversal where the Mighty One has brought down the powerful and lifted up the lowly, has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty (Luke 1:52-53). Abraham is a lot less confident. Will we listen to Moses and the prophets and to Jesus whom God raised from the dead?

We live in a vast and complex world, a world that awes us with its beauty and terrifies us. Only we don’t really live in a vast and complex world, but in small worlds, divided worlds, and beyond the gate, in each of our little worlds, are the things and people we’d rather not see, because we don’t know what will happen to us when we do. Jesus invites us to imagine ourselves, for a moment, for mercy’s sake, on the other side of that gate and to let the view from the other side of the great divide shape our actions. We might decide to open the gate. We might decide to jump the fence. We might begin to take down the wall.

Jesus’ story is rather blunt in pointing out that our time to reach out across all that divides us – and God knows there’s a lot – our time to reach across the great abyss is limited. We only have a lifetime to practice compassion and mercy. But we do have a lifetime to practice compassion and mercy, to cross from here to there; countless opportunities to let love and courage lead the way. I’m reminded of words written in a letter from jail by one of America’s saints, “I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham,” wrote Dr. King. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”[4] I cannot sit idly by on this side of the gate and not be concerned about what happens on the other side. I cannot sit idly by in Tennessee and not be concerned about what happens in Syria, Turkey, Afghanistan, Somalia, and South Sudan. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And because we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, every step of courageous love any one of us takes toward another moves us all one step forward.

Last week, President Obama addressed the Leaders Summit on Refugees at the UN. At the end of his remarks he said,

We can learn from a young boy named Alex, who lives not far from here in Scarsdale, New York.  Last month, like all of us, Alex saw that heartbreaking image – five-year-old Omran Daqneesh in Aleppo, Syria, sitting in that ambulance, silent and in shock, trying to wipe the blood from his hands.

Alex, who is just six years old, saw that picture, sat down and wrote a letter to the president. And in his letter he said, he wanted Omran to come and live with him and his family. “Since he won’t bring toys,” he wrote, “I will share my bike and I will teach him how to ride it. I will teach him addition and subtraction. My little sister will be collecting butterflies and fireflies for him… We can all play together. We will give him a family and he will be our brother.”

We are moved by this little boy’s words and actions; we recognize an impulse we too have felt – before we learned to be cynical, or suspicious, or fearful of people from the other side of the gate. We see compassion that opens the door and invites the stranger in. We see the love that draws us all into the beloved community. The President said,

Imagine the suffering we could ease, and the lives we could save, and what our world would look like if, seeing a child who’s hurting anywhere in the world, we say, “We will give him a family and he will be our brother.”[5]

Imagine the rich man getting up one morning, opening the gate, and saying to Lazarus, “Come on in. Tell me your story.”

[1] http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html

[2] See Amos 6:1, 4-6

[3] Donald Gowan, NIB, 398.

[4] Martin L. King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf

[5] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/20/remarks-president-obama-leaders-summit-refugees

Shrewd like that

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you” (Luke 6:37-38). Jesus can be very clear. We know he can. But Jesus loves to tell stories. And some of them leave us scratching our heads. What’s that all about, we wonder.

There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property.

That’s all we’re told. We don’t know if the manager was incompetent or corrupt. We also don’t know if the charges had any base in reality or were merely slander. We’re given very few details.

The rich man responded by summoning the manager, telling him he was fired, and demanding a final accounting. “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me?” the manager said to himself. He had to think and act fast. A demotion to digging ditches was not an option; he didn’t have the back for that kind of physical labor. And begging was out of the question. But he was a quick thinker and moved fast to make sure people would welcome him into their homes after his dismissal became final. One by one, he summoned his master’s debtors, and together they rewrote the paper work.

We don’t know if they were looking at land lease agreements or loan documents. We do notice, though, that the amounts involved were fairly substantial.

“How much do you owe my master?”

“A hundred jugs of olive oil.”

Those weren’t the small jugs you keep in your kitchen cabinet, the ones you can easily lift with one hand. Each of those jugs held about ninety gallons. These two were looking at a 900 gallon olive oil contract.

And the manager said, “Make it fifty.” Cut it in half.  He asked another, “And how much do you owe?”

“A thousand bushels of wheat.”

“Take your bill and make it eight hundred.” 20% off, that’s nice, isn’t it? We can safely assume there were other happy debtors, because nobody needs a manager only to handle two accounts. But we don’t know if this very nice debt reduction program reflected the fees and other add-ons the manager had inserted into the original contract or if he was working with payments owed only to his master. We don’t know if he was giving away what was his to give or if he was defrauding his soon-to-be former boss. Whatever it was, he did it with a clear purpose: Tomorrow he would be out of a job, so he took care of himself by endearing himself to his master’s debtors. He made sure there would be some open doors when the one to his office closed behind him for good.

At this point of the story, most folks in Jesus’ audience are slapping their knees and laughing. That little crook, he sure knew how to make the best of a critical situation! Yes, he was a rascal, but such a clever one. The property owners in the audience who depend on the honesty of their stewards and managers aren’t laughing. They are waiting for a memorable moral at the end that will teach people to be honorable and upright, something like this: And when his master found out what the manager had done, he had him thrown in jail until he had payed back every penny he owed. Those in the audience who like to think that the rich man was probably a bigger crook than the manager anyway are waiting for a punch line that will bring down the house, something like this: And the rich man in the city never knew that the books had been cooked. Instead, the next line reads: And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.

Now just about everybody is scratching their heads, wondering, What kind of story is that? What kind of master would commend a dishonest manager? And it gets even more confusing. Luke is telling us about a story Jesus was telling and there are no quotation marks in the text; that means it can be difficult to tell where Jesus’ story ends and Luke picks up the narrative thread again. That line about the dishonest manager being commended? It can also be translated, And the Lord commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. So is it the master in Jesus’ story who’s praising the scoundrel or is it the Lord himself, the master who is telling the disciples that the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light? And why would Jesus praise a man like that?

The way I read the story, the manager is not being presented as a role model for ethical business administration, but as an example of quick, creative and determined action in a critical situation. For the manager, the world as he has known it is quickly coming to an end, he knows there will be a reckoning, and that emerging future determines everything he does in the present. And Jesus wants his disciples to live and act as shrewdly, creatively, and resolutely in the light of God’s coming reign. But if that is what Jesus wants, why doesn’t he just say so? Because he loves stories and because he wants us to wrestle with the details of how to live faithfully in expectation of God’s coming kingdom. The story of the manager doesn’t have a clear ending, it transitions into a discussion of what its implications might be for followers of Jesus. It’s like the early church and Luke added other teachings of Jesus and comments from congregations to that difficult story so they would help shape the conversations of future generations.

Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

“Making friends by means of dishonest wealth” sounds a little bit like using the funds you’ve embezzled to bribe others – not a very attractive model of kingdom living, if you ask me. “Dishonest wealth” sounds too much like money made by cheating as opposed to money made by honest work. And that’s not the contrast underlying the story of the manager or of Jesus’ mission. The real contrast is between the world as we know it that is coming to an end and a new world that is dawning. Jesus isn’t talking about dishonest as opposed to honest wealth, but about the currency of the world as opposed to the currency of the kingdom. The proclamation of the gospel puts us on the threshold between this world where people hunger for righteousness and the world to come where righteousness is at home. The manager in Jesus’ story has just been shown the door, he is standing on the threshold, realizing that the world as he has known it is quickly coming to an end, and he jumps into action. He uses the tools his master has put at his disposal to make friends among the master’s debtors. He invests himself and all his recources in the world to come. Shrewd like that is how Jesus would like us to be. Creative like that. Determined like that. Focused like that.

The final teaching appended to the story is utterly clear.

No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

The choice is not if you will serve, but whom. Bob Dylan sings, you gotta serve somebody.

You may be a business man or some high-degree thief
They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody.[1]

Martin Luther wrote in his explanation of the first commandment, “Many a one thinks that he has God and everything in abundance when he has money and possessions; he trusts in them and boasts of them with such firmness and assurance as to care for no one. Lo, such a man also has a god, Mammon by name, i.e., money and possessions, on which he sets all his heart, and which is also the most common idol on earth.”[2]

The contrast underlying Jesus’ story and mission is between a world in which Mammon reigns and God is thought of as a means to an end

and the world in which God reigns and wealth is used for the purposes of God. Jesus can be very clear. You cannot serve God and wealth.

The early church was intrigued with the role of the manager, the role of the steward. In 1 Peter the apostle picks up the theme and develops it beautifully, and I want to close with these words:

Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 4:10-11)

[1] http://bobdylan.com/songs/gotta-serve-somebody/ italics added

[2] Large Catechism, Explanation of the First Commandment at http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/catechism/web/cat-03.html

Holy foolishness

It’s nobody’s business whom you invite over for dinner. You send out your invitations, you turn on the front porch light, you open the door, and when the last guests have arrived you close it, and soon everybody gathers in the dining room. Chances are, nobody cares whom you invite to dinner, unless, of course, they expected to be on your guest list and never got an invitation. They drive by your house at night and see all the cars parked along the curb on both sides of the street and they see silhouettes of people in every window, and they turn to each other wondering, why weren’t we invited? Or they drive by and see all the cars and notice two vehicles belonging to people they would never want to be seen with, and now they’re relieved they weren’t invited and they make a mental note never to invite you to their house again since you’re hanging out with those people.

Now imagine a house where every time you drive by a banquet is in full swing, the lights are on and the door is open, and whoever wants to come in is welcome. What do you do? Do you just park the car and join the party? Or do you notice the cars belonging to people you don’t’ approve of? This is the house where Jesus is the host. And people who are used to standing outside most circles are welcome at table with Jesus. People who have been labeled as outsiders for so long, they almost forgot what it means to belong, are flocking to him. They eat and drink with him, and they listen with their hearts wide open. “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him,” says Luke. Not just a few, but all, he says. They were coming because Jesus told and continues to tell a story about God’s reign in God’s world where they are counted in. They were coming because in Jesus’ story God’s mercy and God’s desire to redeem illumine everything. And they continue to come near to listen because at Jesus’ table they can sit down and not feel out of place. Some are driving by the house and grumble, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” A friend of tax collectors and sinners (Luke 7:34) they call him, and they don’t think that’s a good thing. What do you think? Your answer will depend on where you see yourself on the righteousness scale, if there is a scale like that. Is there?

Jesus tells us a story. Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?

Do any of you own even a single sheep? None? That’s what I thought. So let me tell you about Sammie. Sammie has his picture on yard signs and utility poles up and down Woodlawn. Sammie is a cute Jack Russel whose proverbial energy you can feel just from looking at the photo and you don’t even have to stop and take a closer look. Sammie is lost, and his picture is posted all over the neighborhood because Sammie is loved. Somewhere between West End and Woodmont there’s a home that’s not complete without Sammie.

You wouldn’t expect a home with a hundred little dogs, though, whose owner noticed recently that one of them was missing, would you? And she left the ninety-nine at the dog park and went after the one that was lost, stopping by Kinko’s on the way to have the posters printed? Jesus’ story isn’t quite as fantastic, but it stretches the imagination already with the opening question:

Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?

It sounds like he’s asking a rhetorical question, like it’s so obvious that anybody would do that.I don’t know. I hear somebody whisper, “Nobody in his right mind who has  one hundred sheep and loses one, leaves the ninety-nine to the wolves, the thieves, and the coyotes, and goes combing the hills for the missing one. You cut your losses and go on with the ninety-nine.” That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? And I can see that Sammie’s owner would call together her friends and neighbors to celebrate the day she got the call that Sammie had been found, but “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost” sounds a little over the top for a sheep owner who was able to track down a missing sheep, a little over the top – unless that particular one was special.

In one of the early Christian texts that were not included in the collection of apostolic writings of the New Testament, this story is told differently. According to the Gospel of Thomas, “Jesus said: The kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep; one of them, the biggest, went astray; he left the ninety-nine and sought after the one until he found it. After he had labored, he said to the sheep: I love you more than the ninety-nine” [107]. That’s a very different story than the one Jesus told according to Luke. In Luke’s version, there’s no room for favoritism, only for love and joy, fantastic, exuberant joy.

What woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?

Most women I know (and the one I know best) would not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search all day for a coin; they have other things to do.

The sun’s barely up, and the school bus will stop at the corner in about seven minutes. One of the kids yells, “Mom, where are my shoes?” And she shouts back, “Wherever you took ‘em off, Sweetie! Do you have your homework folder?” There’s no response from upstairs. “Hurry up, the bus will be here any minute now; at least drink your orange juice and take a cereal bar.” He finally shows up, she asks him to stand still while she tries to comb his hair. “No, you can’t go to Josh’s house after school. You have piano and you need to get your homework done.” She glances out the window. Darnit. All the neighbors have their trash cans out, but her handsome husband forgot to push theirs to the curb, again. “Honey, can you take the trash out before you leave?” There’s no response from upstairs. “Mom, did you sign my form for the field trip?” The dog is barking because the bus is coming. “Didn’t I send that back to school with you two days ago?”  “Gottago, mom. Bye, dad! Love ya! Bye, mom!” “Love ya!” A a coin is missing? Well, that’s just too bad. It’ll turn up eventually, probably in the washer.

That’s our missing coin story, but in Jesus’ story, the woman drops everything, she calls the office to tell them she’d have to take a personal day; then she gets the flashlight and the broom, and she sweeps the house, every floor from the attic to the basement, and she searches carefully – until she finds this one coin. And that’s not the end of the story. She gets on the phone, calls her friends and neighbors saying, “Come on over, let’s celebrate; I found my lost coin.”

These stories barely touch our lived experience and then they erupt in fantastic, exuberant joy. What the man and the woman are doing borders on foolishness, because they will not stop searching until what is lost has been found, and what is incomplete has been made whole, and until all their friends and neighbors rejoice with them. That is how God looks at people. That is how God looks at you. That is how committed God is to finding every last one of us. Every single one counts. Creation isn’t complete until you’re at home in God’s house.

Jesus’ offensive table manners are performances of God’s desire to redeem us and restore us to wholeness. The other side of Jesus’ calling us to repent is his proclamation of a God determined to find us and bring us home. Jesus sits at table with sinners, happy to be called a friend of sinners, and he tells those of us who have a problem with that to rejoice, because the angels in heaven are rejoicing as God is finding lost ones left and right; and why wouldn’t we who have been touched by his friendship and his commitment to finding us, why wouldn’t we forget whatever scales of righteousness we carry around with us, why wouldn’t we begin to see ourselves and each other as equally dependent on God’s unrelenting mercy? Why wouldn’t we begin to seek for what is lost in our relationships with even just a dusting of that holy foolishness that is love’s deep wisdom?

There’s a Sufi story that illumines that divine determination:

Once upon a time a Sufi stopped by a flooding riverbed to rest. The rising waters licked the low-hanging branches of trees that lined the creek. And there, on one of them, a scorpion struggled to avoid the rising stream. Aware that the scorpion would drown soon if not brought to dry land, the Sufi stretched along the branch and reached out his hand time after time to touch the stranded scorpion that stung him over and over again. But still the scorpion kept its grip on the branch. “Sufi,” said a passerby, “Don’t you realize that if you touch that scorpion it will sting you?” And the Sufi replied as he reached out for the scorpion one more time, “Ah, so it is, my friend. But just because it is the scorpion’s nature to sting does not mean that I should abandon my nature to save."

I see in the Sufi’s actions a reflection of God’s love for all that God has made, a love that reaches out to every last one of us with relentless persistence, even to the point of great suffering. And our true nature – our true nature – is not to sting, but to let ourselves be found by the love that will not let us go.

Three tweets #discipleship

I’ve been seeing a lot of orange, black and gold at the stores these past few weeks. Yes, some of the stuff are pumpkins, bats, witches, and other Halloween paraphernalia, but this is also the season when we become quite serious about cultivating our tribal roots. Summer is over, and we are proudly displaying our colors, for we are Commodores and Gamecocks, Volunteers and Mountaineers, Titans and Seahawks, and forgive me if I didn’t mention your tribe. Our allegiances are many, and many a Sunday I will once again consider wearing a pink tie with light blue polka dots just because those may be the only colors left that have not been claimed by some school or team.

And our tribal allegiances aren’t limited to schools and sports. We are Yazoo and Bud Light, Chevy and Ford, Mac and PC, Republican and Democrat, Coke and Pepsi, Lululemon and Under Armour, Hershey and Olive & Sinclair, and forgive me if I failed again to mention your particular tribe. We wear carefully chosen colors, styles and logos, and everything from our footwear to our hair product and our water bottle projects who we are or how we want to be seen. Every purchase we make is an identity statement, and who we are, it seems, is a carefully created composite of our consumer choices. None of this is terribly new, except that it is, historically speaking.

For much of recorded human history, a person’s identity, in addition to their status as men and women, children and adults, was defined by their birth into a particular family, clan, or tribe. You were somebody’s son or daughter. You were born on this side of the mountain or the other. You were a Capulet or a Montague, a Hatfield or a McCoy, or, less dramatic, a Smith, a Miller, or a Rodriguez, and the best you could do with your life was to bring honor rather than shame to your family name. Some people called Jesus Mary’s boy, and most of them knew it wasn’t a kind thing to say. Others called him Joseph’s son, and to them that meant he would learn a building trade, get married and have children, and eventually take over the family business; that was the right and honorable thing to do. Only Jesus had the kingdom of God on his heart. And speaking in today’s terms, Jesus had the potential to become a very successful brand. People wanted to be close to him, see and hear him in person, touch him. Healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and telling kingdom stories was a phenomenal combination that attracted large crowds and met real needs.

But apparently Jesus hadn’t talked to a single marketing expert or social media consultant. On the way to Jerusalem, he turned to the crowd, and with fewer than 160 characters, just the right length for a tweet, he sent a most disturbing message, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” Hashtag #discipleship. Not exactly what you would call a rousing summons to the masses to join the movement, is it? And he follows that with two more tweets, short and memorable. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Imagine the marketing experts and the personal brand consultants. Can you see them scratching their heads? “This kingdom mission was such a promising start-up. But what is this? Is he trying to alienate people and push them away?” Hate your family, carry the cross, and give up your stuff.  If this is what it takes to be a disciple – who would ever want to be one?

You are asking yourself very similar questions, aren’t you? When he speaks of ‘hating father and mother’ – does he mean to suggest that the teenager who storms off to her room shouting, “I hate you, Mom!” and slams the door, does he mean to suggest that she is the ideal candidate for discipleship? And when he speaks of ‘hating wife and children’ – is he seriously looking for deadbeat dads to assist him in proclaiming a message of compassion andreconciliation? He also mentions ‘hating brothers and sisters’ – well, yes, sometimes, I remember a couple of moments like that, but really? Hate? That is very strong language. Is this the same Jesus who challenges us to love even our enemies?

The scholars remind us that in this context “hating” is not the emotionally charged expression it is in English. Its meaning, they say, is closer to “turning away from” or to “forsaking” as in our wedding vows when we promise to be faithful only to her or him, “forsaking all others.” Following Jesus isn’t like following him on Twitter. Following Jesus is exclusive and it’s a life commitment, not something we do when we have nothing else to do or stop doing when we have other plans. Jesus compares the claim and cost of discipleship with our most deeply held allegiances to our parents, our siblings, our spouses and children, and ourselves. Following him doesn’t necessarily mean that we walk away from our other commitments, but that we live them in light of his kingdom mission. Our identities have been shaped by our families and the cultures in which we grew up, but when we begin to follow Jesus, our kingdom identity as citizens of heaven and members of God’s household begins to reshape us. We don’t cut the bonds of love and commitment that connect us with those closest to us, but we turn away from their exclusive hold on how we know and understand ourselves and the world. We learn to say, “I am a child of God. Jesus is my brother. I want to love as he loves.” That sounds perfectly lovely and harmless, only it isn’t.

That new identity and purpose has divided families and will continue to do so, three against two and two against three, father against son, and daughter against mother (see Luke 12:51-53). When we follow Jesus, we must be ready to be changed deeply.  We must be ready to have our other allegiances, loyalties, and belongings relativized. We must be ready to have our lives completely reoriented by divine love and toward divine love, and that kind of reorientation causes division.

In my own experience, this has meant being ready to have my male privileges pointed out to me and being committed to being part of dismantling them for the sake of women’s flourishing. After immigrating to the U.S. it has meant learning to see what it means to be white and how much the grand narratives of this nation have depended on excluding the lives and the stories of Native Americans and African Americans;  it has meant looking at European history and thought no longer as one epic tale of progress, but as human constructs in need of God’s gracious redemption, for the sake of life’s flourishing.

We must be ready to let him change our name. Our culture teaches us to see ourselves as the carefully created composites of our consumer choices. In sharp contrast, Jesus calls us to carry the cross. He calls us to follow him on the way that weaves our lives into his and his life into ours. He calls us to a life that reveals the shape of God’s unsentimental and passionate love for the world. Carrying the cross is not about looking for some heavy and painful burden. It is about seeking the pattern and finding the rhythm of a life that has Jesus Christ at the center. Alan Culpepper comments (NIB, 293),

The language of cross bearing has been corrupted by overuse. Bearing a cross has nothing to do with chronic illness, painful physical conditions, or trying family relationships. It is instead what we do voluntarily as a consequence of our commitment to Jesus Christ.

To carry the cross is to have our daily life shaped by our commitment to the Crucified One – wherever we are and whatever we do.

Now to the third of Jesus’ very difficult teachings. None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. We live in a culture where who we are is largely defined by what we have. The things we own allow us to project how we want to be seen. Possessions give us security, comfort, and status, and Jesus asks, “Who would you be without all those things? Who would you be if you depended completely on God’s love for you and the world?”

None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. Giving away everything I own doesn’t make me more of a child of God than I already am. But seeking life’s fulfillment in God does help me sort out the things that possess me and keep me and others from living more fully in God’s reign. Jesus invites you and me to be attentive to his call and to walk away with him from all things that keep us from living with God at the center of our life. The decision to respond to his call is not just a one-time action. It is the decision to live each day in response to Jesus’ call to the kingdom. It is the decision to open every layer and dimension of our life to God’s redemptive love.

Wedding etiquette

When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down in the maid of honor’s seat unless you are the maid of honor. And stay away from the best man’s chair unless you’re the best man.

Jesus speaks about being invited to a wedding banquet, but I get a feeling he’s avoiding the most difficult part. You know that at a wedding reception the guests can’t just wander in and choose a seat, whether it’s at the head table or in the corner with their back to the sweetheart table, the cake, the dance floor, and everything else. Somebody has to decide which guest will just have to sit on that chair in the corner that nobody would choose to sit in. Somebody has to come up with the seating chart.

Heather Lee at brides.com suggests, “Begin by grouping guests according to how you know them: family members and friends from different aspects of life (childhood, high school, college, work, etc.). Seat younger guests closer to the dance floor and older guests a little further away. Use your seating plan to introduce people with similar interests and backgrounds. Try to make everyone feel comfortable by offering a mix of familiar and new faces at each table. Be tactful: Avoid seating people together who have a history they wish they could forget."

Be tactful. That sounds doable, but the folks at theknot.com seem a bit more willing to tackle the real challenge: “Your cousins have been feuding since the ‘80s, your last single girlfriend is hypersensitive to being seated at the ‘wrong’ table, and you have one couple coming from out of the country who only know you and your fiancé. What to do?” In the end it again boils down to being tactful: “With a little tact, diplomacy and common sense, you can create a seating plan that will make, well, almost everyone happy.” Almost. Don’t they know that word can hide a world of hurt?

Elizabeth Clayton tells it like it is at apracticalwedding.com:

For many of my clients, the wedding seating chart is one of the most stressful parts of planning—I’ve seen clients both cry and fight with each other (and their families) over them. Just recently a client of mine posted something on Facebook about their wedding seating chart, and one of the responses summed it up perfectly as being, “Like Tetris, but with emotions.”

Elizabeth is the practical one in the wedding consulting business. “Just remember,” she writes at the end of her column, “your guests are adults (or have an adult with them); they love you and are happy to be there, and will hopefully be gracious about whatever table they end up being placed at. If not—just remember that a well-stocked bar can go a long way towards soothing things."

Jesus has been invited to the house of a leader of the Pharisees for dinner. The other guests are watching him closely; they are not all friends there. But Jesus is paying close attention as well to what the other guests are doing. He notices how they go for the best seats, and he starts to comment; he sounds like somebody who writes a column for weddingguest.com or receptionetiquette.net: “Do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host.” That would be so embarrassing. He sounds very practical, like somebody whose mission is to teach the masses the difference between the salad fork and the dessert fork. But Jesus didn’t come to offer reception advice, and he didn’t get crucified for teaching people how to be nice.

Is he really talking about the best strategy to get to the best seats without embarrassing oneself? How to lay low and hold back until the moment is right? His words sound very similar to the wisdom of king Solomon recorded in Proverbs, “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great; for it is better to be told ‘Come up here’ than to be put lower in the presence of the prince” (Proverbs 25:6-7). Is he telling us to choose the lowest place and to linger outside the lime light, waiting to be noticed, and when the moment has arrived, to step into the light, the envy of all the other contestants? I don’t know, that sounds a lot like humility as the ultimate technique of self-promotion; it just doesn’t sync with who Jesus is and with his other teachings.

Let’s look at it from a different angle. Why do the guests desire the places of honor? Why are we so eager to identify and occupy the good seats?

We have an image to cultivate. We have a position to maintain. We have a status to preserve. And you don’t just sit in the place of honor once you’ve arrived there. You worry and you never stop wondering: Am I projecting the kind of persona my social position requires? Am I being shown the kind of respect I deserve? Am I getting noticed by the people who matter? Will I remember to invite the guy three seats down to my next dinner party? Knowing him and being seen with him could be useful.

You don’t just sit in the place of honor, you constantly monitor your performance and your place on the big seating chart we constantly create and rearrange together in our minds, in the social pages and on social media.

Jesus isn’t talking about seating strategies. He is talking about how we see ourselves. We want to know where we stand, how we are doing, how we measure up – always in comparison to others. We find our place in the world by competing for a better place on the grand seating chart. There are, after all, only so many seats at the head table, only so many seats in the front row, only so many positions at the top, and so we learn to live with constant comparison and unending competition, anxiously worrying about our place.

In the ancient world, a dinner party was much more than an occasion for family and friends to hang out. A dinner party gave wealthy, influential families and individuals an opportunity to display and maintain their elite status. Every dining room was a hall of fame, and while the many worried about survival, the few worried about power and fame.

You invite me, and I invite you. You honor me, and I honor you. Quid pro quo.You introduce me to the people who can help me with my projects, and I introduce you to the people who can help you with yours. You invite my friends, and I invite yours. It’s how things get done in this city.

That’s how it works, isn’t it?

Jesus challenges the rules of the game. Against the habits of upwardly mobile networking and conventional patterns of reciprocity he lives and teaches kingdom etiquette. He grabs the dinner table and flips it over.

When you give a luncheon or a dinner, don’t invite your friends and your rich neighbors. Invite those who can’t do anything for you. Invite those who never know where their next meal will come from. Lift up the lowly. Surprise the poor, the lame, and the blind. Open the door and invite Lazarus to sit at the head of the table.

Why would anybody do that?

The biggest dinner party of all is life itself and God is the host. And no one gets to sit at God’s table by out-competing the others. Anyone who gets to sit at God’s table does so solely because God delights in shouting, “Friend, come on in.”

When Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them, he performs the great wedding banquet of heaven. The invitation goes out to all, and there’s nothing we have to do or can do to get our names on the guest list. The occasion is the wedding of Christ and the bride, the blessed communion of heaven and earth, and God desires nothing more than for us to be part of the glorious joy. “Friend, come on in!” shouts the father of the bride.

We forget the seating charts because Jesus opens our eyes, our hearts and minds to the boundless love and hospitality of God. In his presence we know we belong to the household of God and we take our seat at the table where all belong. Here we learn how to let the kingdom shape our table manners. We lift up the lowly because God has lifted us up. We surprise the poor because God has surprised us. We open the door and invite Lazarus to dinner because God has opened the door for us.

The word invite rings out repeatedly in Jesus’ story of the great banquet and his words about dinners, luncheons, and receptions. The word invite rings out constantly in Jesus’ life because he embodies God’s invitation, “Friend, come on in.” Your dignity, your honor, your worth are not the result of anxious striving and self-monitoring and comparing and competing. You belong to God. Isn’t that why we’re here? To be reminded of God’s desire for communion with us? To hear that voice saying, “Friend, come on in!” and realize, “You are talking to me, you really are!” Isn’t that why we’re here? To forget ourselves for awhile and to remember that we are God’s own – chosen, invited, and honored? To forget ourselves for awhile and catch a glimpse of our true selves, all of us at home in God’s boundless hospitality? To practice living as God’s friends and learn to speak God’s word of friendship?

Sabbath for the bent and the bound

Many of us have watched the athletes. We saw Simone Biles jumping, flipping, landing, stretching and bending to accomplish great feats on the floor and up in the air. We saw Usain Bolt charging down the track like lightning, turning to the crowd with a beautiful smile, and then pointing up and bending back for his signature pose. We saw Ryan Lochte in the pool, gliding through the water like one who was born to swim, and then we witnessed him bending the truth into an embarrassing fabrication of lies. It wasn’t difficult these past few days to hear echoes of “bending” on the news, stories of bodies bending to accomplish greatness, stories of the truth being bent to escape accountability, stories of the rules not being bent for the sake of fairness. On Thursday the Department of Justice announced that the use of private prisons in the federal prison system would be phased out. I was surprised and very glad and I said to a friend, “If only the states would follow suit …,” and he responded, “the arc of the moral universe is long…,” inviting me to complete the sentence, “… but it bends towards justice.”[1]

I had the woman from Luke’s story on my mind, a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years; a woman who was bent over by powers that rendered her quite unable to stand up straight. “Bound by Satan,” Jesus called it, careful not to name her that way, but rather all the things and forces that kept her from being who she was, namely a daughter of Abraham, a member of the covenant community, a child of the promise, an heir of the kingdom. “Bound by Satan” may still bring up images of a horned fellow with a tail, but they are easy to dismiss as mythical, pre-rational attempts to explain evil in the world. To me the image is not meant to explain, but to give a name to those things and experiences that render us less alive in body, mind and soul than we are meant to be and want to be. When I think about these crippling forces, I continue to return to a room at a nice conference center, where many years ago we had gathered for a weekend workshop. We were colleagues – pastors, chaplains, counselors and therapists – sitting in a circle, all of us facing to the middle, where a young woman was sitting alone on a chair. The workshop leader had asked us to name the spirits that cripple human beings, to name the powers that bend human beings, to name the forces under whose oppressive weight we struggle to maintain a sense of agency and freedom and hope. And she challenged us not to list the big abstracts we’re all too familiar with, names like “poverty,” “racism,” or “sexism.” Instead, we were to recall words and phrases we had heard over the years, images we had seen, scenes we had observed or lived through; we were to recall the seemingly small, daily things that cast shadows on our identity as creatures made in the image of God. There were a couple of baskets with scarfs and shawls, and every time one of us recalled a scene and named a power that bends human beings, he or she placed a shawl over the young woman’s head. The shawls were light as gossamer, almost weightless, but there were many. Layer upon layer covered her head, her arms and shoulders, and soon she began to bend under the weight, unable to see, struggling to breathe. She disappeared. We could barely hear her voice from behind the thick veil. She was no longer present as a person, but merely as a barely visible body, bent by crippling spirits, bound by Satan.

The woman who appeared in the synagogue where Jesus taught on that Sabbath had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. We don’t know how old she was, if she was in her 20’s or 40’s. We don’t know if she was married or not, if she had children or not, if she came from a wealthy home or if she had to beg for food. All we know about her is that for eighteen years she was bent over and quite unable to stand up straight. She could not walk upright. She could only see so far; her horizon had narrowed. She could direct her gaze only to the ground below. I wonder if her neighbors had gotten used to her being bent; if they took notice of her or if she always stayed below their line of sight. I wonder what nicknames the children may have made up for her; did they tease her from across the street or whisper behind her back? I wonder if she was in constant pain. Eighteen years of this must have redefined normal for her, perhaps she could not even imagine anymore any other way of seeing or being in the world. But Jesus could and did.

When she appeared in the synagogue he saw her and called her over. I believe he called her to make sure everybody in the room took notice. It was customary for the teacher giving the sabbath talk to sit in a chair at the front. I believe he called her over instead of getting up and walking over to her because her appearance was not an interruption of his teaching; she was part of his sabbath proclamation and possibly the most important part of it. “Woman, you are set free from your ailment,” he said to her and laid his hands on her. That’s all he did, proclaim her freedom and touch her. And she rose, slowly, I imagine, like a leaf uncurling in the morning sun, until she stood upright with her head held high, words of wonder and praise pouring from her lips. What a joyous moment it was! Only joy had to wait.

The synagogue leader was indignant; he too was bent, contorted by questions and the complexities of wanting to live faithfully in a complicated world:

There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.

Couldn’t she wait till tomorrow? Isn’t healing on God’s holy sabbath blasphemy? The seventh day was set aside by God for rest, and keeping it holy meant refraining from work. For one day each week, God’s people were to live not by the work of their hands, but solely by the gifts of God. For one day each week, God’s people were to experience the freedom of complete dependence on God. This synagogue leader wasn’t just a joyless rule enforcer; he had the holiness of God’s word and the holiness of God’s people on his mind and in his heart. Healing on the sabbath was a difficult topic. The common understanding of the sabbath commandment was that medical emergencies could be and even had to be attended, but that chronic illnesses were a different matter. Non-emergencies could wait. In the leader’s mind, Jesus could have said, “Woman, come and see me tomorrow.” After eighteen years, what’s one more day?

But Jesus didn’t wait. Who wouldn’t untie their ox or donkey from the manger on the sabbath in order to lead them away to give them water? Untying farm animals and leading them to the water on the sabbath was common practice, and not only was it considered permissible but necessary for the animals’ well-being. If we can see the need to untie a thirsty animal, Jesus argued, how can we not see the need for a human being to be unbound and released to her full humanity?

Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?

At the beginning of his ministry, on a sabbath in his hometown synagogue, Jesus read from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And then he sat down to teach, and he said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:18-21). Today, he said. It was time for every child of Abraham to taste the sweetness of sabbath. It was time for every son and daughter of Abraham to be set free from bondage: releasing the captives didn’t compromise the holiness of the sabbath day – on the contrary, it finally brought the peace and joy of sabbath to the bent and the bound. Yes, the sabbath is a day of rest for the weary and a day of remembrance for the forgetful, but the sabbath is also a promise, a foretaste of that seventh day when humanity and all of creation are at peace with God and with each other.

And Jesus said, today, not someday. Today it begins, he said in his first sabbath sermon. Healing the bent woman was not a sabbath violation but its fulfillment for her, and for the rest of us, it is the announcement of what has begun: the redemption of creation, the liberation of humanity from all that cripples, binds, and diminishes us.

The way we see her stand erect today, the praise of God pouring from her lips like water from spring, all will stand and raise up their heads and sing. Yes, we still struggle, but we sing of hope. Yes, there’s much that weighs us down in this world bent by unbending ways, but we sing of courage and mercy. We sing of the One who bends towards us with great tenderness and the power to make whole. We sing of the One who is making all things new.

[1] Famously and appropriately attributed to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; the metaphor goes back to New England pastor and abolitionist, Theodore Parker (1810-1860), “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

Learning Christ

Today we lift up the ministry of Christian education, we will bless teachers and learners, and we celebrate all the ways we learn to live as God’s people. What comes to mind when you hear the words Christian education?

Some of you may think of Sunday school, others may remember a person whose faith shaped yours more than any curriculum, class or sermon. Perhaps you remember Bible drills and flanell boards, or a grandmother who taught you good questions were more important than good answers. Perhaps you remember late night conversations with friends or a book that helped you understand your faith in new ways.

I remember night time prayers with my mom. I remember old Mr. Schneider whose glasses were the thickest I had ever seen; he rode his bicycle everywhere he went, including children’s worship on Sunday mornings at 11, and he told us Bible stories like he had been there and everything had happened only yesterday. I remember religion teachers in school who were kind and full of knowledge and wisdom. I remember youth group leaders who lived and taught the faith like there was nothing more important in the world. I remember my grandfather whose formal schooling ended in 7th grade and one of my theology professors with a dual Ph.D., and I can’t tell you which of the two was more influential in shaping my faith. I remember older kids in youth group who let me sell fair trade coffee, tea, and chocolate with them at the Christmas market and talked with me about God and colonialism and global trade. I remember singing a particular hymn every year on Easter, early in the morning, and the tune as much as the words has come to capture for me the deep meaning of resurrection hope.

I believe the whole life of the church is educating people in their faith. People use words like instruction, teaching, nurturing and development when they reflect on what Christian education is about. They speak of transmitting the faith and encouraging critical thinking, of spiritual formation and developing godly habits, of catechesis and socialization, and the list goes on. I would say, Christian education is a curious blend of the intentional teaching in settings designed for that pupose and the wild and wonderful learning that happens in all kinds of life moments. I learned a lot about God and prayer lying on my back in a boat in the middle of a lake in Sweden in my late teens, but that doesn’t mean that everybody else would have a similarly transformative experience simply by getting into a boat and rowing out to the middle of a lake. Some parts of Christian education can be included in how a family structures their day together or how a church plans its curriculum, other parts simply happen when we’re open to God’s presence and work in us.

I love the reading from Deuteronomy we heard earlier.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

This is what it’s all about, life and faith and education, everything: to love God with every capacity we have been given to think, feel, desire, will, speak, act, and suffer. The passage continues with instructions on how to learn and maintain that love:

Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.

Keep these words at the center of who you are as a person. Let these words occupy the center of your being, let them determine who you are becoming day by day and year by year. Keep them, but don’t keep them to yourself.

Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.

Recite them to your children so the next generation of God’s people may learn to keep them in their heart. Let them be the last words on your lips when you go to bed and the first ones when you rise. Let them give rhythm to your days, let them shape how you listen, think, speak, and act; keep them and they will keep you. Bind them as a sign on your hand, so you remember to keep your actions in tune with God’s will. Fix them as an emblem on your forehead, so both your thoughts and your vision are shaped by God’s purposes. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so both your private and your public life are spaces defined by God’s love and justice.

In order to love God with every capacity of their being, God’s people are to open their inmost self to God’s words, talk about them amongst each other, and let them structure their experience of time and space. Their lives are to be centered and rooted in these words and dedicated to hearing and keeping them, reciting, debating, and living them. Ultimately, everything in this brief passage flows from faithfully hearing in the community of God’s people what God has spoken.

The focus in the apostolic witness of the New Testament is very similar, which isn’t surprising, since it is the same God who speaks. We Christians affirm that God has spoken in Christ, and that the life of Jesus, his death and resurrection, are the event through which we are to hear, keep, interpret, debate and live all that God has spoken. We affirm that the ultimate word of God is not a text, but a life. The ultimate word of God is a human being who embodied God’s compassion and mercy among us.

In Colossians, the apostle teaches and admonishes those who have received Christ Jesus as Lord that we live our lives rooted and centered in him. Christ doesn’t take the place of the words of Torah so beautifully affirmed in the passage from Deuteronomy, no, he lives them completely, he embodies them. And for us to faithfully hear what God has spoken is to live in Christ and to have Christ live in us. The apostle writes, “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,” and this is not just a new dress code. Because we live in Christ, his character becomes visible as our true nature. Our interactions become expressions of his compassion, his kindness, his humility, meekness, and patience. We bear with one another, because Christ bears with us. We forgive each other, because Christ has forgiven us. Because we live in Christ, his perfect love of God and neighbor, a love that doesn’t exclude the enemy, becomes the garment that fits us all perfectly: in him we are one humanity, redeemed from our idolatries and restored to our true status as creatures made in the image of God.

Perhaps you wonder if clothing ourselves with compassion is just a game of dressing up and pretending that we are God’s people, you know, chosen, holy and beloved. But it’s rather the other way round: Because we are God’s chosen people, holy and beloved, we are finally free to stop pretending that we are who others need us to be or have made us believe that we are. Clothed with the perfect love of Christ, we live the life we were always meant to live. It is the life of the renewed humanity where Christ is all and in all. In this redeemed life, our hearts are no longer ruled by enmity and strife, but by the peace of Christ. And in this redeemed life, everything we do, we do in the name of Christ.

And so I want to suggest that all Christian education is about one thing: learning Christ. It encompasses learning who God is, learning who we are, and learning to live the life God desires for us. And it encompasses learning with our minds, our hearts, our hands and feet, and all our senses.

The apostle writes in Colossians, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” “You” is plural here, as just about everywhere in the epistles; it’s a subtle reminder that learning Christ cannot be a solo adventure, but is inherently communal. The verse can be translated, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you and among you,” and we are reminded that Christ is at work both within us and among us, and that in order for the word of Christ to dwell in us we must learn to dwell in the word, individually and collectively.

I already mentioned that learning Christ is inherently communal, it is also inherently mutual. The apostle tells us to “teach and admonish one another in all wisdom.” Learning Christ happens through one-anothering, which isn’t a verb yet, but I want to suggest that we begin using it anyway. Learning Christ happens through one-anothering. Learning Christ doesn’t divide the body into some who teach and all the others who learn. Learning Christ brings us together in a community where all learners are teachers and all teachers are learners, all God’s people together, young and old.