Love. Unhypocritical.

• Take out the trash.

• Empty the dishwasher.

• Change the airfilters.

• Get the mail.

• Walk the dog.

Do you keep a chore list on the fridge, with the days of the week and the names of each family member?

• Make the bed.

• Do the laundry.

• Clean the fridge.

• Rake the leaves.

• Feed the dog.

Do you have a to-do-list on your phone, perhaps with daily, weekly, and monthly deadlines?

• Grade the papers.

• Register to vote.

• Order pizza.

• Wash the dog.

Do you think Paul was a listmaker? The portion of his letter to the Romans we read today certainly sounds like it.

Let love be genuine.

Hold fast to what is good.

Serve the Lord. Rejoice. Persevere. Contribute. Bless. Weep. Feed. Overcome. I count thirty-one imperatives in that short passage. That’s quite a list; but it’s not a to-do-list of recurring chores. It doesn’t come with a box for each item we can check off and move on to the next. It’s something like a to-become-habitual-list. And everything on it is about how to extend to each other, in small and ever widening circles, the love of God who embraces us all. It’s about becoming a community entirely transformed and renewed by the love of God, a community whose life together in the world shines with the likeness of Christ.

“Let love be genuine” it begins — and everything that follows unfolds layer after layer of that initial statement and its radical implications. In Greek, that opening declaration consists of just two words, two drumbeats, the heart of hearts of our life with Christ: Love – unhypocritical! That’s it. The heart of hearts of the beloved community. No pretending or play acting. No counterfeit niceness. No honey on your lips and acid in your soul. Love without pretense. Love as tangible and true as Jesus having dinner with sinners. Love as real and vulnerable as divine mercy’s embrace of every last one of us.

That’s huge, and so Paul unfolds it for us: “Love one another with mutual affection.” The word he uses is philadelphia: love one another like family, like brothers and sisters. You come from very different parts of town, different parts of the world even, and your daily lives may rarely overlap — love one another like family. Yes, all of you. Jews and Gentiles. Rich ladies and day laborers. Free citizens and slaves. Love one another like family, because Christ has made you kin. He has made them his sibling, and so they are yours. He has made her his sister, and so she is yours. Love one another like family, and your life together will proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ better than your best rhetoric. You will become a living, breathing argument for the dynamic of reconciliation God has set in motion in Jesus Christ.[1]

I have long wondered how they read Paul’s letters in those small house churches in Rome, capital of the Empire, and in cities around the Aegean Sea, from Ephesus to Corinth. Small congregations, meeting at the end of a long work day, folks from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and religious traditions,  some more familiar with Israel’s scriptures than others, all of them touched by the Spirit of Christ.

Did they read the whole letter in one sitting? How much time did they have to perhaps make a copy before they had to send the letter to the congregation meeting in another part of the city? Was making a copy even an option for a congregation of some thirty or forty people, most of whom couldn’t read or afford to pay a copyist? Did they read the letter one verse at a time, allowing time for the person giving voice to the words to further comment what the Apostle had written? How did they discuss the implications of what they had just heard?

Love between Gentiles and Jews, slaves and free, poor and wealthy must have been at least as difficult to imagine, let alone live, as love between Fox viewers and fans of MSNBC. “Love one another with mutual affection.” I imagine them saying to each other, “We need to talk about these things. Don’t you think? One line tonight. Then let’s talk about the next one next Sunday. We can’t just let these words wash over us and nod, and sing another hymn and go home. These words make demands. We need to let them sink in so they can transform our doing and thinking.”

I wonder if perhaps the first Christians in Rome learned these words by heart. One phrase each. And every time they gathered to break bread, sing and pray together, just before the closing benediction, just before they all went home, one would shout, “Love – unhypocritical!” And from the other end of the room a voice would respond, “Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.” And yet another voice would add, “Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.”

I wonder how they wove those encouragements and demands into the fabric of their life together in order to become what Christ had made them: a community of love. How did they, how do we, remind each other to persevere in prayer without just telling each other what to do? How do we encourage each other to serve the Lord in all that we do instead of compartmentalizing and adding more and more things to do to our days? How do we know, not just in our minds, but in our bones, that unhypocritical love is a whole new state of being, and not just a demanding way of doing?

I’m convinced it has a lot to do with reading scripture slowly and persevering in prayer, because in prayer we open ourselves to the Spirit of Christ, we visualize our being bathed in grace and light, and we let ourselves be grounded anew in the deep memory and hope of God’s people.

But loving one another with mutual affection is not about turning our focus inward in some kind of warm, fuzzy huddle. It’s about our capacity to be part of God’s church in our neighborhood, our city, our world. It’s about modeling, in any circumstance, community that is fully rooted in the boundary-crossing love of God.

Perhaps you noticed how Paul unfolds the encouragements and demands of love in a circle that extends further and further outward to include not only strangers, but even enemies. The small house churches that gathered in cities across the Roman Empire and in the city of Rome itself, were often viewed with suspicion by neighbors or openly attacked, as well as closely observed by government informants.

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them,” Paul writes, and we’re reminded of Jesus’ own words, "Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”[2] “Do not repay anyone evil for evil,” writes Paul, and “never avenge yourselves.” Why not? He’s certainly not talking about staying in an abusive relationship.

Earlier in his letter, Paul wrote, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us; … while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son.”[3] And because God embraced us in great mercy “while we were enemies,” we are to align our actions with that reconciling love by not only not repaying evil for evil, but offering food to our enemies when they are hungry. Because we have been embraced in radical welcome by the love of God in Christ, we are to leave any thought of vengeance to God who did not repay evil for evil but overcame it with good.

Barbara Brown Taylor once wrote that “the only way to conquer evil is to absorb it. Take it into yourself and disarm it. Neutralize its acids. Serve as a charcoal filter for its smog. Suck it up, put a straitjacket on it and turn it over to God, so that when you breathe out again the air is pure.”[4] I count seven imperatives in that short paragraph. She sounds quite confident that you can do all that — take it into yourself, disarm it, neutralize it — all of it between breathing in and breathing out.

Paul’s take is similar, but different. He reminds us that it’s the love of God that conquers evil by absorbing it. It is Jesus who in boundless love takes evil into God-self and disarms it. Outside of that love we can do nothing, but fully rooted in that love, we simply live it, our lives are a participation in it.

Paul doesn’t tell us to do stuff. He calls us to give ourselves to the love that has found us in Christ. He urges us to let this love unfold between us. And he reminds us that neither death, nor life, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from this love.

Thanks be to God.

[1] With thanks to Sally Brown, Connections, Year A, Vol. 3, 273.

[2] Luke 6:28; see also Matthew 5:44.

[3] Romans 5:8, 10

[4] https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1999/january11/9t1074.html

And yet

A new king arose over Egypt. A king who did not know Joseph, son of Jacob. A new king with a short memory who did not remember how well Joseph had served Pharao, and how he had risen from slave and prisoner to the king’s right-hand man. A new king who didn’t remember that it was Pharao who had said to Joseph, “Settle your father and your brothers and their families in the best part of the land,” and they settled in Goshen, in the Nile delta. There they prospered; they were fruitful and prolific, and the land was filled with them.

The new king looked at those Hebrews, those resident aliens with their large families with growing suspicion. In his mind, fruitfulness and flourishing among the Hebrews represented a growing threat to Egypt. “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we.” He was afraid, and his fear shaped Egyptian policy; all his efforts had a single goal: to keep the Israelites in their place and the leading Egyptian families in power. The words in the first part of the story signal little more than fear and oppression: powerful, war, enemies, fight, taskmasters, oppress, forced labor, dread, ruthless, bitter... All it took for the favoured family of Jacob to sink from prosperity and privilege into slavery was one king who didn’t remember.

And yet, despite severe oppression, the Hebrews continued to multiply and fill the land. The king was a man of considerable power, but another power was present in and among and through the people he feared: life—irrepressible, uncontrollable life. The power of blessing pushed back against Pharaoh’s vision of the world.

Slave labor wasn’t enough to break the Hebrews, and so the king ratcheted up the oppressive measures. Summoning the midwives and giving them the obscene command to kill all newborn Hebrew boys, he more fully embraced the way of death.

“Have mercy! Lord, have mercy on my poor soul!” These are the first words in Zora Neale Hurston’s book, Moses, Man of the Mountain, published in 1939, the year that Hitler unleashed Word War II.

“Have mercy! Lord, have mercy on my poor soul!” Women gave birth and whispered cries like this in caves and out-of-the-way places that humans didn’t usually use for birthplaces. Moses hadn’t come yet, and these were the years when Israel first made tears. Pharaoh had entered the bedrooms of Israel. The birthing beds of Hebrews were matters of state. The Hebrew womb had fallen under the heel of Pharaoh. A ruler great in his newness and new in his greatness had arisen in Egypt and he had said, “This is law. Hebrew boys shall not be born. All offenders against this law shall suffer death by drowning.” So women in the pains of labor hid in caves and rocks. They must cry, but they could not cry out loud. They pressed their teeth together. A night might force upon them a thousand years of feelings. Men learned to beat upon their breasts with clenched fists and breathe out their agony without sound. A great force of suffering accumulated between the basement of heaven and the roof of hell. The shadow of Pharaoh squatted in the dark corners of every birthing place in Goshen. Hebrew women shuddered with terror at the indifference of their wombs to the Egyptian law. The province of Goshen was living under the New Egypt and the New Egyptian and they were made to know it in many ways. The sign of the new order towered over places of preference. It shadowed over work, and fear was given body and wings. The Hebrews had already been driven out of their well-built homes and shoved further back in Goshen. Then came more decrees:

1)   Israel, you are slaves from now on. Pharaoh assumes no responsibility for the fact that some of you got old before he came to power. Old as well as young must work in his brickyards and road camps.

a)    No sleeping after dawn. Fifty lashes for being late to work.

b)   Fifty lashes for working slow.

c)    One hundred lashes for being absent.

d)   One hundred lashes for sassing the bossman.

e)    Death for hitting a foreman.

2)   Babies take notice: Positively no more boy babies allowed among Hebrews. Infants defying this law shall be drowned in the Nile.

Hebrews … found out that they were aliens, and from one new decree to the next they sank lower and lower. So they had no comfort left but to beat their breasts to crush the agony inside. Israel had learned to weep.[1]

And yet, in the deadly chaos of genocidal cruelty, two women served the flourishing of life with courage and grace. Shiphrah and Puah were midwives, and not even mighty Pharaoh with his regime of terror could turn them into servants of death. The first time God is mentioned in the great story of the Exodus is when these two women are introduced. They knew a thing or two about new life that wants to be born. They knew a lot about helping new life to emerge and thrive. And they knew everything about the shadow of Pharaoh squatting in the dark corners of every birthing place in Goshen.

But the midwives, it says in verse 17, feared God; and the fear of God gave them the courage to resist. In the first act of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance they refused to obey Pharaoh’s deathly command. And they lied to the authorities, breaking the law for the sake of justice and life.

When the king summoned them again, demanding an explanation for all the births of Hebrew boys, they said, “Those Hebrew women, you know how they are. They give birth so quickly, they’re done long before we get there.” We can almost see them wink, and we cheer at their lively defiance, but Pharaoh’s madness still had room to grow.

He commanded all his people to throw every boy born to the Hebrews into the Nile. Lord have mercy. The rule of death distorts everything. It turns work into slave labor; it turns neighbors into lynching mobs, and the great river, the source of prosperity, it turns into a mass grave.

And yet, amid the chaos of the king’s deathly decrees, life continued to break through defiantly; and it was good. A man and a woman got married and they had baby boy. His mother hid him, and when she could no longer hide him, she made a basket, put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the water’s edge. Like Noah building the ark, Moses’ mother carefully built a tiny basket boat for her infant son, so he would not drown in the deadly waters.[2] It may appear as though nothing could escape the reign of terror and death, but the floating cradle tells a different story.

Pharaoh’s daughter comes to the river, finds the basket and opens it and sees the little boy who is crying and she picks him up. “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she says. She recognizes that he is a child from the slave community, a child under death sentence from her father – and yet she doesn’t toss him into the river. She too obeys a different law than her father’s, she too is part of the conspiracy of grace that resists Pharaoh’s paranoid obsessions.

Now the boy’s sister steps forward, and smart as a whip she asks, with all innocence, if perhaps her royal majesty would like her to go and get her a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for her? And before you know it, the little boy is back in his mother’s arms—and she even gets paid for taking care of him on behalf of the royal daughter!

Amy Merrill Willis writes,

While the midwives are motivated by their fear of the Lord, and the mother by her attachment to the beautiful baby, the actions of Pharaoh’s daughter emerge from her pity. But whatever their motivations, the actions of the women align with God’s own life-giving work.[3]

What can one person do against the empire of fear and cruelty? We often feel so very helpless against the death-dealing forces that surround us — the systems, the powers and principalities, the Pharaohs and Führers who make worlds with the shrewd use of the whole dictionary of manipulation, with words like powerful, war, enemies, fight, taskmasters, oppress, forced-labor, dread, ruthless, bitter…

But look a little closer and you see two midwives who fear God. They’re not afraid of God, that’s something else all together. God is not the ultimate Pharaoh or Führer, obsessed with clinging to power at any cost. Fear of God is reverence – reverence for life and the giver of life. It is hunger for righteousness, the desire to align with God’s holy purpose.

In the second part of the story, after Pharaoh’s paranoia has commanded the Egyptian people to serve as genocidal executioners, words like man, woman, conceived, bore, child, hid, sister, daughter, bathe, pity, nurse, and mother tell of a world where relationships across generations and between social and ethnic groups are built with love and compassion. It’s a world of persistent rebellion against Pharaoh’s obsessions, and it emerges around the courageously and cunningly orchestrated care of an infant.

None of the women could foresee the child’s future. None of them had seen visions of angels telling them that this little one would grow up to lead the Israelites out of the house of slavery Pharaoh had built. With reverence for life and the giver of life, with love and compassion, knowingly and unknowingly, they undermined the mighty walls of power by caring for a little one. Or as Paul put it, they presented their bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God.

[1] Zora Neale Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939, chapter 1.

[2] The same word תֵּבָה tebah is translated ‘ark’ in Genesis 6:14 and ‘basket’ in Exodus 2:3.

[3] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=972

Joyful reunion

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

I have long loved these lines from Psalm 85. I love the way they paint a scene of a reunion, like friends getting together—finally—after a long time of separation, falling into each other’s arms, hugging each other’s necks and kissing. There’s joy dancing between the lines and bright hope glows, and it takes no effort at all to pick up the laughter and the tears, the sense of “yes, now this is how it’s supposed to be.”

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

I love saying these lines and sitting with them, gazing at the happy reunion. The friends’ names are righteousness and peace, names that capture the deepest longings of our hearts for our life together, for fullness and wholeness and justice. In the first line, their names are steadfast love and faithfulness, names that declare the character of God as generations of God’s covenant people have come to know God. With just two lines, the psalmist paints a picture of the world where all is well, and where God and humanity are at home. A kiss seals the coming together of heaven and earth in God’s redeemed creation.

Psalm 85 was written, many scholars believe, during hard times. Inspired by the message of Isaiah, who saw a highway in the wilderness on which the glory of God would return to Zion, people from Jerusalem and Judah had begun to return from exile in Babylon. But the homecoming was rather disappointing. The prophet Haggai said,

You have sown much, and harvested little.
You eat, but you never have enough.
You drink, but you never have your fill.
You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm;
and you that earn wages
earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.
You have looked for much, and it came to little.[1]

The circumstances were dire and painful, but circumstances are never the whole story. The poet who composed this psalm—or perhaps there were several who co-wrote it—may have sat in a corner of the temple ruins, and added line to line, verse to verse. Memory gets to sing first:

Lord, you were favorable to your land;
you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
You forgave, … you pardoned, … you turned.

The second verse moves from memory to plea:

Restore us again, O God of our salvation;
put away you indignation toward us.
Revive us again, … show us your steadfast love, … grant us your salvation.

After the second verse, the bridge; it’s a powerful confession of expectant faith for a solo voice:

I will listen, O Lord God, to what you say,
for you speak peace to your faithful people,
to those who turn their hearts to you.

And in the third verse this God-spoken peace erupts like a Hallelujah chorus:

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.
You will give what is good, Lord God,
and our land will yield its increase.

We shall build houses and inhabit them.
We shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
We shall sow and harvest abundance.
We shall not labor in vain.
We shall eat and drink, and all shall have their fill.[2]

Circumstances are not the whole story, because the creator and redeemer of life speaks peace; because wholeness and fullness are not conditional gifts for some, but the goal to which the Holy One is moving all things. Faithfulness will sprout up from the ground like the freshest green in spring, and faithfulness will describe—finally—not only the character of God, but of all creation, particularly God’s human creation. Righteousness will look down from the sky and see its reflection in how we relate to each other.

Circumstances are not the whole story. And that is never more important to remember than when circumstances seem ready to swallow up everything. We are living through a global health crisis that is on the verge of turning into a paralyzing economic crisis. During the pandemic, old wounds and patterns of injustice in our society have been exposed, and we struggle with how to treat those wounds and change those patterns—finally—while social media algorithms are driving us deeper and deeper into polarized echo chambers.

I hear Psalm 85 as an invitation to us to stand in the place from where it sings: We’re invited to look back on the path that brought us here with as much honesty as we can muster, remembering the faithfulness of God who never left us without prophets and showed us the power of repentance and forgiveness.

We’re invited to stand before God with our frustration and helplessness, our anger, our questions, our fears, our numbness, all of it—and to practice listening to what God is saying,

I will listen, O Lord God, to what you say,
for you speak peace to your faithful people,
to those who turn their hearts to you.

We’re invited to turn our hearts to God whose mighty acts have stretched the horizon of our hope beyond the reach of sin and death. We’re invited to let our hearts be taught by God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.[3] We’re invited to trust that God is no absentee landlord, but always present and always moving to redeem and sustain the good creation.

We’re invited, all of us, to trust that the path before us is one Jesus walked for us and with us, and what awaits us on the way and at the final turn is life that is nothing but life.

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

“Faith,” wrote Martin Luther, “is a work of God in us,” and we’re invited to entrust ourselves, regardless of circumstances, to this working God. “Faith,” Luther continued, “changes us and brings us to birth anew from God,” and we’re invited to entrust ourselves to this God in labor.

[Faith] makes us completely different people in heart, mind, senses, and all our powers, and brings the Holy Spirit with it. … Faith is a living, unshakeable confidence in God’s grace; it is so certain, that someone would die a thousand times for it. This kind of trust in and knowledge of God’s grace makes a person joyful, confident, and happy with regard to God and all creatures. This is what the Holy Spirit does by faith. Through faith, a person will do good to everyone without coercion, willingly and happily; he [or she] will serve everyone, suffer everything for the love and praise of God, who has shown [them] such grace.[4]

Circumstances are not the whole story because God is speaking, and the Spirit is moving, and Christ is risen. And so we journey through this long Lenten season to the joyful reunion envisioned in an ancient song.

[1] Haggai 1:6ff.

[2] Lines drawn from Isaiah 65:21-23, indicating a reversal of Haggai’s grim observations.

[3] Exodus 34:6 with multiple echoes in Numbers 14:18; Nehemiah 9:17; Jonah 4:2; Psalm 86:15; 103:8; 145:8.

[4] Martin Luther, Preface to Romans https://www.ccel.org/l/luther/romans/pref_romans.html

Come to the banquet of life

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.[1]

We don’t know what it was Jesus heard and where he was when he withdrew from there in a boat. The reading drops us into the flow of the story, and we may feel a little disoriented, like people who walk into a movie ten minutes late. “What did I miss?” we want to ask—and somebody fills us in, whispering a  condensed plot description: “John, you know, the Baptist, was beheaded by Herod, you know, the king. At that party, you know, with the dancer.”

The disciples of John the Baptist had just buried the body of their master. He had been beheaded by Herod. That’s what Jesus heard.

It was Herod’s birthday, and the ruler had invited dignitaries, government officials, members of the chamber of commerce, and other important guests to a banquet at the palace. There was plenty of food and drink, only the best.

The guests sang Happy Birthday, dear Herod, and they took turns giving toasts, praising the greatness and power and wisdom and honor of their host—the usual flattery. Food and drink, song and … — the only thing missing, Herod thought, was a little dance.

So he asked the daughter of Herodias to dance before his company. Herodias was his wife, and she used to be his brother’s wife, and John, the man who had been preaching and baptizing out by the river, John had been telling him, “It is against the law for you to marry her.” Herod wanted him silenced, but he feared the crowd: recent polls showed that large segments of the population revered John as a prophet. So execution was not an option; better not to stir things up. So Herod had John locked up in prison.

Back to the birthday party. The young woman danced for Herod and his guests, and she pleased him so much that he promised on oath to grant her whatever she might ask. He may have had a few drinks too many, or perhaps he wanted to impress his guests with his largesse. What could the girl possibly ask for — a new dress, jewelry, perhaps a trip to Rome?

But prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a plate.” She said it out loud, in front of everybody. It was too late for Herod to take back the foolish promise — he couldn’t afford to go back on his word and lose face in front of his guests; half of them were just waiting for him to show signs of weakness.

So he sent and had the prophet beheaded. He had to do what he had to do, or at least so he tried to tell himself, I imagine. Who knows if the music ended when they brought in the prophet’s head on a platter, or if the party went on all night. . .

John’s disciples came and took the body and buried it; then they went and told Jesus. Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.[2]

You can think of a couple of reasons, at least, why he wanted to withdraw. He may have wanted to be alone to mourn the death of the wilderness prophet. Perhaps he crossed the lake to get away from Herod, at least for a while, to pray and reconsider his own ministry: like John, Jesus proclaimed a kingdom that wasn’t Herod’s or Caesar’s, and he had just heard what can happen to those who serve God rather than the ruler of this world.

So he got in a boat and sailed away, all by himself. But as he made his way across the lake, the crowd followed him on foot along the shore. They were the people who lived under Herod’s rule, the people whom he taxed and polled and feared, himself always ready to do what needed to be done in order to please the Emperor and maintain what Rome called ‘peace’ and — first and foremost — to secure his own position and privilege.

Jesus saw the crowd, and he didn’t stay in the boat, out on the water, in solitude and silence, no, he came ashore; he had compassion for them. They had Herod, and yet, they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.[3]

At Herod’s party, worldly power was unmasked; the deadly game of competition and control, of flattering and fear was in plain view. Eating, drinking, singing and dancing made it all look like a joyous feast, but the bloody truth of that banquet was the prophet’s head on a tray.

On the shore of the lake, Jesus hosted a very different kind of banquet, and Matthew makes sure we don’t miss the contrast between the kingdoms of the world and their power and God’s covenant of compassion.

Herod[4], like his father, Herod the Great who, at the time of Jesus’ birth, killed the little boys in Bethlehem in order to secure his throne, Herod looks a lot like Pharaoh. And like Pharao’s violent resistance against the walk-out of his Hebrew slaves, the murder of John was not an unfortunate, isolated incident of poor judgment on the part of a weak or evil individual. The murder revealed with brutal clarity the demands of power and the lengths to which those who serve power are willing to go in order to maintain it: kill the boys, behead the prophet, kidnap the girls who dare to go to school, bomb the hospital, gas the protesters, disappear the opposition leaders. Power at any cost.

But there is a better banquet for us who hunger and thirst for life in fullness. There is a banquet in the wilderness where bread is shared like manna from heaven, where the poor receive good news and the oppressed go free, where in the company of Jesus, love and justice become tangible. Jesus is God’s urgent and gracious invitation to us to walk away from Herod’s party and go where Jesus is headed and find fulfillment there — with him, through him.

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;

and you that have no money, come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread

and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,

and delight yourselves in rich food.

Incline your ear, and come to me;

listen, so that you may live.[5]

I hear the voice of Jesus in these lines from Isaiah. I hear his invitation to all who hunger and thirst for life to come to him. He calls the poor to buy wine and milk without money, and those who have money he asks, “Why do you spend [it] for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” Why indeed? Why do we spend money for things that promise to fill us, but leave us empty? Why do we labor for things that only leave us wanting more? Why do we listen to voices that tell us we must earn and consume our way to fulfillment?

Meanwhile, Jesus is at the shore, God’s compassion in the flesh, calling the poor and the rich to come, and healing them. It’s getting late, and some of the disciples are beginning to worry about this enormous gathering of thousands of women, men and children and their hunger. “Send them away so that they may go and buy food for themselves,” they say. There are markets and stores in the villages. Send them away, we say, so that they may go and buy food for themselves. And Jesus says, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

And we look at what we have to offer, and it doesn’t look like much, and we tell him, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” It really isn’t much to look at against the backdrop of human hunger and need, but Jesus says, “Bring them here to me.” And then he does what we remember and proclaim every time we gather at his table, he takes the bread we bring and gives thanks for it, breaks it, gives it back to us, and we pass it around. And all eat and all are filled and there are twelve baskets of food left, enough to feed the whole people of God.

It doesn’t matter how much or how little we have, but what we do with what we have been given. In Herod’s palace, gifts are a part of the game. They are bribes, quid-pro-quos, hush money, a little padding to make a deal more palatable, one hand washes the other. But in Jesus we encounter a power that is utterly different from what we admire or fear when we look through the windows of Herod’s palace for a glimpse of the party. Jesus reveals to us a life where trust in the faithfulness of God and compassion reign, where the gifts of God are freely given and received, and shared for the life of all.

Later this week, some 70 gallons of bottled water will be delivered to Open Table Nashville, so their outreach workers can distribute them to our neighbors who live in tents, under bridges and overpasses. I am confident that we will soon be able to place another order for 100 gallons or more, and that by the end of the month we will have raised enough money to help build a water kiosk for hundreds of women, men and children in a community in Kenya.

What’s a $1,000 water project in a city where thousands experience homelessness, and in a world where millions lack access to healthy water? A drop in the bucket, we like to call it. But we place our small gifts in the hands of Jesus, in whom the kingdom of God has come to us. And with him, all that we are and all that we have becomes the banquet of life.

[1] Matthew 14:13

[2] Matthew 14:12-13

[3] Matthew 9:36

[4] Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1-23)

[5] Isaiah 55:1-3

To see the beauty of God's cause

One day, the disciples asked Jesus, “Why do you use parables when you speak to the crowds?” And he replied, “Because they haven’t received the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but you have. Although they see, they don’t really see; and although they hear, they don’t really hear or understand. What Isaiah prophesied has become completely true for them,

You will hear, to be sure, but never understand; and you will certainly see but never recognize what you are seeing. For this people’s senses have become calloused, and they’ve become hard of hearing, and they’ve shut their eyes so that they won’t see with their eyes or hear with their ears or understand with their minds, and change their hearts and lives that I may heal them.”[1]

Jesus tells parables to get through to people whose senses have become calloused. They may be people who have heard too many lies, too many promises that evaporated into thin air, too many speeches that only add heat and little light. They may be people who have seen too much of the heart-breaking stuff, and now their vision is clouded with the cataracts of cynicism and despair, and they can’t see the things that heal.

Jesus tells parables to make us wonder, to make us ponder things that are worthy to receive not only our full attention, but the devotion of our lives. Jesus tells parables to heal our calloused senses so that we too might perceive the secrets of God’s reign.

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make their nests in its branches.

Now you can call a mustard plant a shrub or a bush, but you wouldn’t call it a tree. It grows about five feet tall, maybe six in a good year, or even nine, but even at nine feet tall, mustard is still only a scrawny, twiggy thing. If you want a tree, you don’t start with mustard seed.

The prophet Ezekiel compared Assyria, Israel’s powerful neighbor to the north, to

a cedar of Lebanon, with fair branches and forest shade, and of great height, its top among the clouds. The waters nourished it, the deep made it grow tall, making its rivers flow around the place it was planted, sending forth its streams to all the trees of the field. So it towered high above all the trees ... All the birds of the air made their nests in its boughs; under its branches all the animals of the field gave birth to their young; and in its shade all great nations lived.[2]

In Israel’s imagination, big, towering trees represented the great empires of Assyria, Egypt, Babylonia, and Rome, and in Jesus’ day, many hoped that God’s coming kingdom would be the mightiest, most magnificent tree of all: it would be the very tree of life, with the nations of the world finding peace and security in its shade, together with the birds of the air and the animals of the field.

When we hear the story of the mustard seed and the tree with birds nesting in its branches, we may notice at first the contrast of small beginnings and wondrous endings, but it is about more. Perhaps farmers in Jesus’ day actually did grow mustard to eat the greens or use the seeds as medicine. Perhaps they knew about mustard as a rotation crop that helps improve the soil. If so, they also knew they had to get it plowed under before the plants seeded—otherwise their fields would produce very little the following spring except a bumper crop of mustard. Mustard behaves like a weed—it’s invasive, fast-growing, drought-resistant, and impossible to control. It begins with a seed only slightly bigger than a pin head, and before you know it, it’s taken over your field and garden.

Jesus tells a parable with mustard in it. Yes, the mighty tree of God’s reign on earth begins with the tiniest of seeds, but this is about more than small things growing tall. Mustard is a necessary ingredient here, and there’s nothing mighty or majestic about mustard. It grows anywhere, not just on the heights of Lebanon or by the great rivers of Egypt or Babylon. It doesn’t just grow in the places where power tends to be at home, no, it grows like a weed wherever the tiny seeds get dropped. It is invasive, fast-growing, drought-resistant, impossible to control, and common as thistles.

I hear in this kingdom parable a powerful affirmation of ordinary things and people. The planting of the Lord, the oaks of righteousness don’t sprout from acorns, genetically engineered in an agro lab and pampered in beds of privilege in the greenhouses of power. No, the great tree of God’s reign on earth begins with ordinary seed, common as mustard and just as invasive. Ordinary people, inspired and reminded by Jesus to live as citizens of God’s reign, together transform the world until it shines with the glory of God in all things. Common people, committed to small acts of love and compassion, are the ones who continue to sow the tiny seeds. Every unsung moment of forgiveness a seed. Every word of encouragement a seed. Every small step of great courage a seed. God’s reign is like a weed that finds the tiniest crack in the concrete and it grows and nothing can stop it until the birds of the air make nests in its shade.

In the second parable, Jesus takes us from the field to the kitchen. “The kingdom of heaven,” he says, “is like yeast that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

If you’ve never baked with yeast or sourdough, you need to try it. Popping a can of cinnamon rolls makes nice enough rolls in the morning, but it’s only a parable of convenience and sameness. To know leaven, you must smell it, watch it, better yet, touch it and work it. You know what I mean if you’ve got your hands in it, perhaps you’re among the many who have made their own sourdough starter from wild yeast during the pandemic.[3] But if you don’t have starter in your kitchen, yeast will do. All you need is flour, water, yeast, and a little salt. You make the dough and knead it and place it in a bowl. It looks OK, feels a little heavy, and it doesn’t smell much like anything. Now you cover the bowl with a dish towel, and then you go and take a nap or walk the dog. Just give it time.

An hour later you come back to the kitchen, and it smells lovely: fresh and tangy, like somebody squirted a little vinegar in the air. Then you notice the kitchen towel: it doesn’t just hang over the bowl, no, it rests on a perfectly rounded mound of dough that is light and springy, and touching it reminds me every time of touching baby skin.

The parable points to this beautiful process of slow, barely noticeable and powerful transformation, and it doesn’t begin in any of the great centers of power, it begins in a woman’s kitchen. She hides the leaven in three measures of flower — that’s about nine gallons — enough to make bread for the whole neighborhood. The kingdom is like that, says Jesus, and it’s like treasure hidden in a field — again, hidden, not seen with a quick, casual glance.

“There are people who stumble over the reign of God purely by chance,” writes Gerhard Lohfink. “They were preoccupied with something completely different, but then, one day, they are confronted with the treasure. Others, like the rich merchant, have sought and looked everywhere, and finally they find what they have long dreamed of.” Both finders in Jesus’ parables, as different as their paths have been, once they see, immediately jump into action. With great joy, they give what they have in order to acquire the thing found.

How do God’s purposes find fulfillment in the world? “Only through people and their freedom,” writes Lohfink.

It happens only through the fact that people are drawn and moved by that which they can desire with their whole hearts and with their whole might. But apparently it is only possible for them to desire in freedom what God also desires if they see, vividly, the beauty of God’s cause, so that they experience joy and even passionate desire for the thing that God wills to do in the world, and this passion for God and God’s cause is greater than all human self-centeredness.[4]

The most moving thing I heard on the radio this past week, was a recording of John Lewis’s acceptance speech at the National Book Awards in November 2016.[5] He and his two co-authors received the award in Young People’s literature for the third and final installment of the graphic memoir, March.

“This is unreal. This is unbelievable,” he said, and he talked about growing up in a very poor household in rural Alabama. Books were hard to come by.

“I had a wonderful teacher in elementary school who told me: ‘Read, my child, read’, and I tried to read everything. I love books,” said Lewis. “And I remember in 1956, when I was 16 years old, some of my brothers and sisters and cousins going down to the public library, trying to get library cards,” Lewis said, clutching his award. “And we were told that the library was for whites only and not for coloreds.”

“To come here, receive this award, this honor — it’s too much,” he said, his voice trembling.

It was a long and painful road he walked, and he walked it with immense courage and unwavering hope, encouraging countless others along the way. Clearly he had seen, vividly, the beauty God’s cause and, with passionate desire for the thing that God wills to do in the world, he gave his life to the cause that is us, all of us.

He had found the pearl of great price, the one thing worthy of giving his whole life to acquire it. And he’s still marching with us.

[1] Matthew 13:10-15 (CEB) quoting Isaiah 6:9

[2] See Ezekiel 31:2-9; see also Daniel 4:10-12

[3] The woman in Jesus’ story didn’t use rapid rise dry yeast, that wasn’t known until World War II when Fleischmann’s laboratories developed it for the U.S. military. See https://www.bakerybits.co.uk/resources/a-look-at-the-history-of-yeast/

[4] Gerhard Lohfink, Does God Need the Church? Toward a Theology of the People of God, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 47.

[5] https://youtu.be/uqmYNOPVyO4

Deep solidarity

Wearing a mask has been suggested, it has been encouraged and recommended, and it has been mandated, resisted and refused.

From the moment of our birth, we breathe in — and we breathe out. Rarely ever do we pay attention to this basic rhythm and reality of life: we breathe in — and we breathe out. Like the tide on the beach, with every breath an ocean of air flows into our lungs and into every cell in our body — and it flows out. And as all the water on Earth is one — one stream cycling through rivers, oceans, clouds, glaciers, and layers of soil and sand and rock — so is the air we breathe one — one Earth, with just one atmosphere, shared by all living things that breathe.

The global pandemic has reminded us with great urgency that we do indeed breathe the same air. For some of us, the mandate to wear a mask over our mouth and nose in public is blatant government overreach, and not wearing it is a defiant statement of liberty. For others, the mandate reflects well-informed and prudent judgment by public officials, and so they obey and do their part, be it happily or grumpily, sporadically or consistently.

And there are those, few in number, who never needed a mandate, and they wear the mask because it reduces the number of viruses that might return to the air on their breath — to them it is a simple and powerful way to love  their neighbor. It wouldn’t occur to them to think of this simple act as an imposition — on the contrary, they might see it as an expression of their freedom to act in love, unconstrained by proud self-assertion.

He who believes that to be free is to be led by no one but himself, may not understand them. He who believes that being led by another can only amount to bondage and servitude, may shake his head when they tell him that to be free, to them, is to be led by the Spirit of Christ.

“You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters,” Paul wrote to the churches in Galatia. “Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.”[1] Freedom, according to the men and women whose witness we receive in the Scriptures, is not absolute autonomy, but the building of relationships that are free of manipulation, relationships of mutuality and care.

“Because God is a God of life and blessing, God will do redemptive work, should those gifts be endangered,” writes Terence Fretheim. “The objective of God’s work in redemption is to free people to be what they were created to be. It is a deliverance, not from the world, but to true life in the world.”[2] True freedom, true life, for all people, all things, is to be what they were created to be.

We read a passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans this morning, where he declares, “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”[3] It’s not just human beings who long to be who we really are, who we are meant to be as creatures made in the image of God: the whole creation is waiting, because its freedom, its true life, is tied to ours.

I talked about the single ocean of air that envelops Earth and the single stream of water that cycles through air and land and sea, and through every living thing. In Genesis 2, humanity is made from the moistened dust of the ground, and the name we are given in Hebrew is intimately connected with the stuff from which we are formed: we are adam, made from adamah, earthlings made from earth.[4]

In Genesis 3, in a poetic reflection on what happens when humanity fails to live in right relationship with the creator of all things, adam, now differentiated as Adam and Eve, man and woman, experiences life as exile, and the breach in the relationship between humanity and God ripples through all of creation, landing as a curse on adamah, the very ground from which we come and on which we live.[5]

“There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land,” the prophet Hosea laments.

Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing.[6]

And Isaiah cries, “The heavens languish together with the earth. The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth.”[7]

A curse devours the earth because humankind, made for relationship with God, assumed it could achieve a more satisfying relation with the world if it freed itself from its relation with God. We prefer proud self-assertion over trust and interdependence.

Bill McKibben, one of the leaders of the global struggle against catastrophic climate change, wrote earlier this month,

The battle is not just to swap out coal for sun; it’s to swap out a poisoned and unfair world for one that works for everyone, now and in the future. Of course, no matter what we do now, we’ve waited too long to prevent truly massive trauma. Already we see firestorms without precedent, storms stronger than any on record, Arctic melt that’s occurring decades ahead of schedule. We’re losing whole ecosystems like coral reefs; we have heat waves so horrible that in places they take us to the limits of human survival. Given the momentum of climate change, even if we do everything right from this point on those effects will get much worse in the years ahead, and of course their impacts will be concentrated on those who have done the least to cause them, and are most vulnerable. That means there is another area we need to be working hard: building the kind of world that not only limits the rise in temperature, but also cushions the blow from that which is no longer avoidable. … we’re going to need human solidarity on an unparalleled level, and right now that seems a long ways away.[8]

A curse devours the earth because we prefer proud self-assertion over trust and solidarity.

We know, says Paul, we know that the whole creation has been groaning until now. He couldn’t imagine the groans we’re hearing. But he knew in his bones that God is a God of life and blessing, a God who does redemptive work, when those gifts are endangered. Paul knew that God made a way for Israel out of bondage in Egypt: They groaned under the yoke of slavery, and cried out, and God heard their groaning.[9] And Paul knew that God made a way for humankind out of our bondage to sin and death in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

No groan goes unheard. We know, says Paul, that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for … the redemption or our bodies.[10] To him, the two groanings are of a piece. All of creation is caught up in the same process of salvation, the same process of being “set free from the bondage to decay” to share “the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”[11] So God’s people are being saved not from creation but with creation: the gift of the Spirit does not distance us from the world but increases our solidarity with creation.[12] And solidarity is just another way of saying loyal love or building relationships that are free of manipulation.

As people of God, we trust the One who abides with us in the profound solidarity of love, who suffers with us,  who groans and endures with us, and who inspires in us a longing for wholeness that gets us through the night. Paul calls the gift of the Spirit to the church “the first fruits,” which sounds like the beginning of the harvest season — the first basket of grain, the first cluster of grapes, first fruits waiting to become loafs of bread and cups of wine for the great banquet of the redeemed.

The gift of the Spirit poured out on all flesh is the first fruits, the first taste, the first glance of the redeemed creation. The gift of God’s Spirit kindles in us a fire of holy restlessness that cannot put up with the world as it is.

First fruits — we know there’s more where that came from, and we lean into that promise. That’s what our hope is, a leaning forward into the promise of resurrection for all of creation. And it is no easy hope. Audrey West writes, “This is hope as a woman in labor hopes: breathing through the pain, holding tight to a companion, looking ahead to what cannot yet be seen, trusting that a time will come when this pain is but a memory.”[13]

Many of us struggle to hope like that when dealing with broken relationships, devastating illness, or simply the daily avalanche of soul-draining news. We often find ourselves closer to groaning than to singing.

Paul tells us, You are not alone. The groans that rise up from the depth of your heavy heart are God’s own as much as they are yours. The Spirit is praying with you and for you, with sighs too deep for words. In the profound solidarity of love, God abides with you, suffering with you, groaning with you, enduring with you, inspiring in you a longing for wholeness, and kindling in you a fire of holy restlessness. God will not put up with what the world has become. And why would you?

[1] Galatians 5:13

[2] Terence Fretheim, “The Reclamation of Creation: Redemption and Law in Exodus,” Interpretation 45, 359; my italics.

[3] Romans 8:18-21

[4] Genesis 2:5-9

[5] Genesis 3:17-19

[6] Hosea 4:1-3

[7] Isaiah 24:4-6

[8] https://350.org/bill-mckibbens-letter/

[9] Exodus 2:23-24; 6:5

[10] Romans 8:22-23

[11] Romans 8:21

[12] See James Dunn in Soderlund, Sven K. and N. T. Wright, eds., Romans and the People of God (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans, 1999), 87-88.

[13] Audrey West http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1306

Take my yoke

The time was … when we loved the king and the people of Great Britain with an affection truly filial; we felt ourselves interested in their glory; we shared in their joys and sorrows; we cheerfully poured the fruit of all our labours into the lap of our mother country, and without reluctance expended our blood and our treasure in their cause.

So declared the residents of the town of Malden, Massachusetts, unanimously, after having met in town meeting on May 27, 1776. They responded to a request from the Massachusetts House of Representatives that all towns in the province declare their views on independence. “These were our sentiments toward Great Britain while she continued to act the part of a parent state,” their statement continued.

We felt ourselves happy in our connection with her, nor wished it to be dissolved; but our sentiments are altered, it is now the ardent wish of our soul that America may become a free and independent state. … We long entertained hope that the spirit of the British nation would once more induce them to assert their own and our rights, and bring to condign punishment the elevated villains who have trampled upon the sacred rights of men and affronted the majesty of the people. We hoped in vain; they have lost their spirit of just resentment; we therefore renounce with disdain our connexion with a kingdom of slaves; we bid a final adieu to Britain.[1]

A few weeks later, the Declaration of Independence was signed by representatives of the thirteen colonies and publicly proclaimed, and that historic moment became a milestone, not only in the history of this nation, but in the world’s long struggle for freedom, justice, and the rule of law. Those “who trample upon the sacred rights of [humans] and affront the majesty of the people” can no longer sleep comfortably in their penthouses and palaces, dreaming dreams of autocratic rule, because in the summer of 1776 a bell was rung whose sound no tyranny can muffle for long.

This year, the celebration was much quieter, and not just because many fireworks and parades were canceled due to the pandemic. The celebration was quieter, perhaps a little more introspective than usual, because we feel with renewed urgency that the promise of these bold, founding declarations is yet to be fulfilled.

On July 5,1852, Frederick Douglas was invited to address the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, and several minutes into his speech, he asked,

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful.[2]

We celebrate, not because we have arrived, but because we hope. We celebrate because the vision of human rights and democratic governance is always greater than the political realities of any given time. The greater vision is the one that aroused the imagination and courage of the townspeople of Malden, Massachusetts, and their fellow revolutionaries, as well as of Frederick Douglas and the many who are marching with him on the long road to freedom. It is a vision rooted in divine promise, and proclaimed by the prophets in dark times:

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?[3]

Not every yoke, though.

“I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be their slaves no more; I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect,” we read in Leviticus 26:13. This yoke God has broken. “With a yoke on our necks we are hard driven; we are weary, we are given no rest,” we read in Lamentations 5:5. That yoke must be broken.

But Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you.” It was common Jewish practice to speak of the “yoke of Torah” or the “yoke of the commandments,” and always with praise.[4] To accept the yoke of Torah meant to serve no master but God alone. To accept the yoke of Torah meant true freedom as servants of God. When Jesus said, “Take my yoke,” he didn’t mean to suggest that he had something less demanding than Torah to offer. He was pushing back hard against religious authorities of his time whose interpretations fell way short when it came to walking erect and rest for the weary:[5]

The scribes and the Pharisees … do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.[6]

Jesus’ own proclamation focused on these weightier matters, and the response he received was divided. “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,” he prayed, “because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”[7] He was joyfully received by those who were hungry for justice, those thirsting for tangible mercy, those longing to belong. The little ones who knew nothing about the fine points of the law and the details of the rituals, those who were burdened, those who were known sinners – they were the ones who got the message. They welcomed and embraced the friend of sinners as their friend.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”[8] Jesus calls all who are weary and burdened to become his disciples. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.” When he says, “learn from me,” he means it quite literally: he invites you stay very close to him, shoulder to shoulder, to listen to what he says, to observe what he does, to notice the things he pays attention to. Take my yoke, learn from me.

Here’s a way to look at this: Carol Borland is a pastor in Vermont, and she and her husband also run a maple sugaring operation. They use a team of horses to pull a large sled when they harvest the sap from the maples in the last days of winter. The horses are yoked together – not with a yoke, but through harnesses and their hitch to the sap sled. Together the two can pull incredible loads.

One of the horses, Tony, is much stronger than the other – both physically and in his own will, commonly known as stubbornness. The other, Jerry, is calmer, more reliable, and willing to listen to commands. So when the Borlands decided to train a younger team by hitching them one at a time with one of the older horses, they used Jerry because he would listen to the commands and do as he was instructed. The younger horse pulling beside Jerry soon learned the commands. The few times they tried using Tony, the younger horse learned how to be stubborn.

There seems to be a relationship between learning to obey and sharing that yoke. And maybe not only with horses. The yoke Jesus calls us to take upon us is one he already wears. It’s like he’s saying to us, “Become my yoke mate, and learn how to pull the load by working beside me and watching how I do it.”[9] Together we can pull incredible loads.

The burden is light because we’re pulling with him and we’re pulling in the right direction. With him, we’re on the road to the kingdom. Side by side we walk, we pull, watching and doing as Jesus does, like young horses in training. Side by side with him we learn the way of gentle humility, and discover the freedom that comes with aligning our path with his. Side by side with him we become who we’re meant to be, and do work that is real and worth doing.

This is a poem by Marge Piercy, titled, To be of use.[10]

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

Take my yoke, says Jesus. The work is real and it is worth doing. Together we can pull incredible loads.

[1] Instructions from the Town of Malden, Massachusetts, for a Declaration of Independence http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=238

[2] “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/

[3] Isaiah 58:6

[4] Aboth 3:5

[5] Lev 26:13 and Lam 5:5

[6] Matthew 23:2, 4, 23

[7] Matthew 11:25f.

[8] Matthew 11:28-30

[9] Hare, Matthew, 129.

[10] Marge Piercy, “To be of use”

 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57673/to-be-of-use

Hospitality of mind and imagination

All of chapter 10 in Matthew is a send-off speech Jesus gave to the twelve disciples. At the end of chapter 9, Matthew shows us Jesus as looking at the crowds, and having compassion for them because they were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

“The harvest is plentiful,” Jesus said to the disciples, and that they should “ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” And before they could ask, he sent them out — gave them “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness,” and sent them out. “Proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” He sent the disciples to act as his envoys — servants of the kingdom, traveling light — no money in their belts, no bag, no extra clothing, entirely dependent on the hospitality of others for shelter and food.

He also prepared them for rejection. They would not be welcomed everywhere, and they should be prepared to expect some hostility since he was sending them out “like sheep into the midst of wolves.” They would also have to face the possibility of painful division within their own families; that their closest and most important relationships might be ruptured because of their loyalty to Jesus and the kingdom of God.

Today’s three verses from Matthew are the final paragraph of Jesus’ send-off speech. Something is different in these closing lines. There’s a shift in focus from the trials of those who are sent to the rewards for those who receive them. There’s a shift from high demand to promise. “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” In these closing verses it becomes clear that Jesus is not just addressing the twelve who are about to go on the road. He’s talking to all disciples, the ones who venture out for the sake of the gospel, and the ones who welcome them.

By the time the gospel of Matthew was composed, congregations of Christians already existed in many cities and towns around the Mediterranean. Itinerant Christian apostles, prophets and teachers were not unusual at all; on the contrary, early Christian writings suggest that at times they may have become a burden to the small communities. Not only did they need a place to stay and something to eat, they also sometimes disagreed with each other. Paul wrote in his first letter to the Thessalonians, “We appeal to you, brothers and sisters, to respect those who labor among you, and have charge of you in the Lord and admonish you; esteem them very highly in love because of their work … Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good.”[1] Hear them out. Test everything. Keep the good stuff.

In a Christian teaching document from around the turn to the second century, churches are admonished to

welcome every apostle on arriving, as if he were the Lord. But he must not stay beyond one day. In case of necessity, however, the next day too. If he stays three days, he is a false prophet. On departing, an apostle must not accept anything save sufficient food to carry him till his next lodging. If he asks for money, he is a false prophet … If someone says in the Spirit, “Give me money, or something else,” you must not heed him. However, if he tells you to give for others in need, no one must condemn him.[2]

In his writing, Matthew not merely recalled Jesus’ instructions to the first disciples; he also addressed contemporary communities of disciples to whom he was connected, telling them that there was still need to send out prophets and teachers, and that those sent ones depended on communities of believers to welcome them. “Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.”

Congregational life in Matthew’s day was very different from ours, we know that. But I imagine that life was also very similar. No community is too eager to welcome a prophet, either because things are going just fine or because things are unsettled already; and whether you’re comfortable with the way things are or quite uncomfortable, you don’t necessarily want some outsider coming in and stirring up trouble. I hear Jesus addressing both sides here. To the prophets he says, “Don’t be afraid. Speak without fear the word you have been given. Proclaim the gospel.” And to the settled disciples he says, “Welcome without fear anyone who speaks in my name, whether you agree with them or not. Receive the fullness of the gospel.”

There aren’t a lot of itinerant prophets around anymore, but there’s plenty of settled Christianity in our city and beyond. And there are Christian voices and accents among us that come to us like those of strangers who are passing through. Do we welcome them? “Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.” What’s a prophet’s reward? We won’t know unless we welcome the prophet.

We live far from the the early days of itinerant prophets and house churches, but to be sent and to receive are aspects of being church together that never become a thing of the past. You and I are no less part of Jesus’ mission than Simon, Andrew, James and the rest of the twelve were. In our proclamation and ministry, in our everyday witness to the reign of God, Jesus himself is present, and wherever our witness is received with welcome, the One who sent him is received.

Jesus calls us to be fearless when we venture out with the word we have been given, and equally fearless in receiving the word of life when it comes to us – to listen, to test, and to hold fast to what is good. Our situation as Christian witnesses is vastly different from the initial context for Matthew’s proclamation. What hasn’t changed is that we are sent to proclaim the gospel of Jesus in word and deed, and that we are also called to receive the proclamation of others – regardless of their accents, whether they be accents of speech, culture, or theology.

Both being sent in the name of Jesus and receiving others in the name of Jesus involve a level of vulnerability and fearlessness few of us are simply born with. And our growth in vulnerability and fearlessness is part of our formation as disciples. Few of us may venture out and go far without money or extra clothing or firm plans for lodging, but some of us do venture out far to explore and declare new dimensions of the gospel for our time, and they are as dependent on the hospitality of others as the first apostles were — and the hospitality of mind and imagination may be even more demanding than the hospitality of room and board.

I believe Jesus calls us to such vulnerability and fearlessness in our attempts to live and proclaim the good news of the kingdom. Not even the smallest gesture of welcoming another is too small. “Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because they are my disciples—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” This word of promise points ahead to the final judgment where the heavenly judge says to the righteous, “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.” There is no act of welcome more basic and beautiful than giving somebody a cup of cold water, and in the story of the great judgment, Jesus tells us that he is the thirsty one.

And the reward? There’s the joy of being able to do what the Lord has taught us and to serve him in the stranger, the prophet, the littlest ones. And there’s the joy of being welcomed by Christ in our need, in our hunger and thirst for righteousness,  and in our desire to know the will of God.

Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward.” Who are the righteous and what is their reward? Again, the word points ahead to the final judgment when the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”[3] To welcome one another is to receive Jesus himself, and to welcome Jesus is to receive the one who sent him, and to become heirs to all that God has to give — life abundant, true justice, and love without end.

On Wednesday afternoon, I was out by the street, changing the name on the sign to Riah Milton. A man walked up to me, an itinerant you may say, and he didn’t carry any money in his belt, nor did he have a change of clothes, and the ones he was wearing hadn’t been washed in a long time. He didn’t have a second pair of sandals either, and the ones he had on his feet were not made for walking.

I don’t know if he was a prophet; he told me he was a little drunk.

Could I give him some money for food? I told him I couldn’t, that I didn’t have any cash on me and the church was closed.

Could I get him something to eat from the kitchen? I told him I couldn’t, that much of the building was under construction, including the kitchen and all offices.

Could he help, do some work? Not likely, I told him; it wouldn’t be safe.

Could he use the bathroom? They’re all gone, I told him with a big can-you-believe-it sigh, because I didn’t remember the lone toilet left in the entire building, over in the office wing.

“Here’s what I can do. I’ll take this stuff inside and then I meet you at my car and take you to get something to eat.”

He didn’t wear a mask; I doubt he had one, and I didn’t have a spare with me. Anyway, we got in the car and drove to Taco Bell, and after a long, slow trip down the drive-through lane during which he continued to tell me about his life and his demons, he ordered some tacos and a Sprite.

It wasn’t a cup of cold water, and I didn’t invite him to come home with me, take a shower, and spend the night in our guest room. But after I dropped him off at a bench in the shade, I knew that I had heard a true word about life in our community. And I was grateful.

[1] 1Thessalonians 5:12-13, 20-21

[2] Didache 11:4-5, 12

[3] Matthew 25:34

Do not be afraid

In 1998, Nancy, Sarahbeth, Miles and I moved to Hampton, VA, where I had been called to First Christian Church. Soon, everybody but me went to school. Miles went to pre-school in the neighborhood. Nancy started her Master’s program at Hampton University, and Sarahbeth attended Forrest Elementary.

Forrest Elementary — it took me a while to notice that Forrest was spelled with two r’s, and that it wasn’t referring to the wonderful place where all kinds of small things flourish and grow under the canopy of mature trees. Forrest was somebody’s last name. I still remember the moment when driving by the school one day I said to myself, “No, wait… There’s no way they would name a school after a leader of the KKK,” but I wasn’t sure. I looked it up, and was relieved to learn that the school was named after Alfred S. Forrest. Perhaps he was a local leader, who knows, perhaps a teacher—I don’t remember if I found out who Mr. Forrest was. The school board’s governing documents stated, “Elementary and middle schools will be named in honor of persons who have rendered outstanding service to mankind in their community, state, and/or country.”[1]

A couple of years later, Sarahbeth graduated and went to middle school, Jefferson Davis Middle School. In a letter to the principal and the school board I asked what “outstanding service to mankind” Mr. Davis had rendered. I thought it was a curious way to teach young people the meaning of citizenship by having them recite, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands…” in a school named after the former president of the Confederate States. I never got a response. However, when doing a little research this week, I was glad to read that in 2018, in the aftermath of the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA, the school was renamed Cesar Tarrant Middle School after a Hampton slave and Revolutionary War hero.[2]

Here in Tennessee, in 2018, the City of Memphis sold two parks to a non-profit, just to be able to remove statues of Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest. In response, the state legislature not only changed the law to explicitly prohibit such sales, but also cut a $250,000 appropriation to the city for its bicentennial celebrations.[3]

I wasn’t born here. I wasn’t raised here. I’m a resident alien still trying  to sort out where I am and how to proclaim the kingdom of God in a state that has more dedicated historical markers linked to Nathan Bedford Forrest—a slave trader, war criminal, and Klan leader—than to all three former U.S. Presidents associated with Tennessee combined: Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson.[4] To honor such a man is not merely unwise or unfortunate, it is idolatrous. To elevate such a man, to literally put him on a pedestal in public places across the state, is to idolize his dehumanizing violence. To do so also declares emphatically that the lives of those so violated, and the lives of their descendants do not matter.

State law currently instructs the governor to issue proclamations for six separate days of special observation, three of which pertain to the Confederacy: Forrest Day on July 13; Robert E. Lee Day on January 19; and Confederate Decoration Day on June 3, otherwise known as Confederate Memorial Day and the birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.[5] Forrest Day is still on the calendar, but the General Assembly voted this year that the Governor no longer has to make the annual proclamation.[6] And that’s as far as Tennessee elected officials are willing to move even now—inches, when we have miles to go.

Some of them are afraid their constituents might torch their vehicles if they voted to remove the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Capitol building.

Tell me, what do you find more distressing: the fact that apparently such terrorist threats are being made, or the fact that some Tennessee legislators bury empathy, reason, and conscience for fear of losing their vehicle or the next election?

On Thursday, a bill was before the legislature that asked for $3,500 to move the bust from the state Capitol to the Tennessee museum. The bill was voted down. That’s when woman wearing a clerical collar stood up and raised her arms and said loudly, “I bring good news! I am Rev. Neelley Hicks and I have good news that we have the $3,500 needed to move the statue.” She didn’t remember what else she said when I talked with her on Friday morning, but she vividly recalled how she and Rev. Ingrid McIntyre and several others began praying, “Our Father, who art in heaven…”

They were gavelled down and asked to be quiet, but they continued to pray. State troopers were ordered to remove them. After Amen, they were faced with armed troopers asking them to leave. Neelley got up, and on her way out she said to the troopers, “This is sinful. This is wrong. God came to earth in a brown body. Forrest killed brown and black men. Your mama taught you better. Shame.”[7] She said it to the troopers, but she said it loud enough for the people on the floor to hear her, the ones who really needed to hear her, “Your mama taught you better. Shame.” Some of them had gotten up during the Lord’s prayer and bowed their heads during the holy interruption, suddenly aware that this was a moment not just for political calculus and fear, but for reverence in the presence of God.

“Prophets … are intent on making us see the truth about ourselves, which can result in our feeling humiliated and shamed,” writes Megan McKenna. Prophets aren’t concerned about coming across as judgy. What God sees, looking at their society, the prophets must tell, and they cannot not tell. Jeremiah said,

Whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, “Violence and destruction!” For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long. If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.

Reproach and derision all day long, but the prophet cannot not tell. The prophets, writes Megan McKenna,

never let up until we change, or until we make a choice, or until we attack back, or until what they say comes to pass, or until they disappear or die. … They go after everyone indiscriminately, but especially governments, the economy, the military, leaders, other prophets … They turn on us as a people and on us as individuals … They lay our lives bare, down to the bone, marrow, and soul. They break through our well-planned worlds to say that we are the problem.[8]

“Your mama taught you better. Shame,” Neelley declared on her way out of the assembly, trusting that her words would find a way to break through layers of complacency and fear, and touch the soul of one or two.

“You shall go to all to whom I send you,” God said to Jeremiah, “and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.”[9]

Do not be afraid, for I am with you, has got to be one of the most beautiful commandments in all of scripture.

The power of a life drenched in God’s love threatens the powers and principalities of this world, but do not be afraid of them: they will not prevail.

Centuries-old entanglements of dehumanizing brutality and smug justifications may take generations to dismantle, but do not be afraid: the justice of God will prevail.

“It is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher” and we all have a long way to go when it comes to that likeness, but do not be afraid to do the next right thing, for the kingdom of God is near.

Jesus didn’t come to bring easy peace, comfortable and convenient, but a sword that cuts through lesser loyalties than those to God and God’s reign. But do not be afraid, for nothing is greater in all of history and eternity than God’s loyalty to you and your neighbor and all creation.

To be a disciple is to be a learner, not a teacher. “It is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher” — which doesn’t mean holy and perfect, but growing in holiness and fearlessness. Kingdom work and witness can be dangerous because it messes with demons and idols and powerful interests, but do not be afraid: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account,” says Jesus. “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”[10]

John Lewis wanted to be a preacher when he was a little boy in Troy, Alabama, and he famously practiced preaching by offering words of comfort and challenge to the chickens in the yard. When he was a young man, his mama told him not to get in trouble, and he loved his mama, but she had also taught him to love the Lord. And so he did get in trouble: good trouble, necessary trouble, kingdom trouble. He got in trouble right here in Nashville where he went to college and where he met James Lawson and Diane Nash.

The civil rights leader and U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 5th congressional district for more than thirty years, turned 80 in February. Cynthia Tucker writes,

It’s at once remarkable and tragic that Lewis’ legacy — his lifetime of patient, optimistic and non-violent resistance to systemic racism — remains so relevant. He has given 60 years to the work of trying to build the “beloved community” only to arrive at a moment when that work may seem naive, that community farfetched, the dream a child’s fantasy. … His undying hope for America lies not in any sense of its imminent perfection but rather in his conviction that the “beloved community” will one day come to fruition only if those who are committed to justice and equality keep on keeping on, one step at a time, … no matter how brutal the forces on the other side.[11]

“It is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher” — and we all have a long way to go when it comes to that likeness, but do not be afraid to do the next right thing, for the kingdom of God is near.

[1] https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/hampton/Board.nsf/Public#

[2] https://www.dailypress.com/news/education/dp-nws-hampton-school-board-davis-0124-story.html

[3] https://patch.com/tennessee/memphis/tennessee-house-punishes-memphis-confederate-statue-removal

[4] Loewen, James W. , Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 237.

[5] https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2020/01/17/tennessee-nathan-bedford-forrest-day-rep-files-bill-end-observation/4499963002/

[6] https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2020/06/10/bill-lee-no-longer-proclaim-nathan-bedford-forrest-day-tennessee/5336437002/

[7] https://www.facebook.com/neelleyhicks/posts/10222196742096398

[8] Megan McKenna, quoted in Feasting, Year A, Vol. 3, 149; my emphasis.

[9] Jeremiah 1:7-8

[10] Matthew 5:11-12

[11] https://bittersoutherner.com/2020/the-way-of-john-lewis-cynthia-tucker-black-lives-matter

Intolerable trouble

“Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time,” was the opening line of “A Talk to Teachers” James Baldwin gave in October, 1963.

That year, Medgar Evers, a leading civil-rights figure and N.A.A.C.P. state field director, was murdered in his driveway by a white supremacist in Jackson, Mississippi. It wasn’t the first time shots had been fired at his house. A few years ago, I stood in the hallway of what used to be his family’s home, looking into the children’s bedroom: the mattresses were on the floor—not because they didn’t have beds, but because white men would drive by the house at night and shoot through the windows, and having the children sleep closer to the floor reduced their risk of getting shot, the docent explained.

That year, 1963, four young girls—Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley—were killed when Klansmen bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, in Birmingham, Alabama.

That year, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in his motorcade through downtown Dallas.

“Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time,” James Baldwin told a group of educators in October 1963.[1]

Black [people] were brought here as a source of cheap labor. They were indispensable to the economy. In order to justify the fact that [black people] were treated as though they were animals, the white republic had to brainwash itself into believing that they were, indeed, animals and deserved to be treated like animals. . . . This is why America has spent such a long time keeping [black people in their] place. What I am trying to suggest to you is that it was not an accident, it was not an act of God, it was not done by well-meaning people muddling into something which they didn’t understand. It was a deliberate policy hammered into place in order to make money from black flesh.  And now, in 1963, because we have never faced this fact, we are in intolerable trouble.”[2]

Intolerable trouble. That was the year I turned three, and it reads like it could have been written last week.

Five days after President Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a Joint Session of Congress, saying, “No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long.”[3] The bill passed the House in February of ’64, but in the Senate it was debated for two months, including seven Saturdays with several attempts to filibuster the bill. It still is the longest Senate debate in U.S. history. On June 19, the Senate adopted an amended bill and on July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed the bill into law.

A month later, on August 4, the FBI found the bodies of three missing civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Earl Chaney had disappeared on June 21 while volunteering for the voter registration drive in Mississippi. They had been shot and buried. During the investigation it emerged that members of the KKK, the Neshoba County Sheriff’s Office, and the Philadelphia Police Department were involved in the incident.[4]

That was the year I turned four. Somebody will say with a knowing smile, Well, that was Mississippi, that was Alabama, that was over fifty years ago. George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis on May 25, that was three weeks ago.

I know, I’m not preaching; this is my lament. I look back and weep, and I don’t know whether to give in to the urge to scream or fall silent altogether. “[Lament] takes many forms,” says Brad Braxton.

Guttural groans, copious tears, long stretches of silence, fits of rage, quiet questioning, bittersweet remembering, tension-riddled tossing and turning. We lament because people matter to us, because values such as dignity and the presumption of safety matter to us. We do it because there remains somewhere in us a faint hope that today’s pain will not completely swallow tomorrow’s possibilities.[5]

Sitting with the Gospel reading for today, my hope was fed with the milk and honey of Jesus attention and compassion:

Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Sitting with these words, I was reminded that God is the healer of our every ill. Jesus is teaching in our churches, I trust, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom—and he will not make our trouble a little less intolerable or tolerable enough. The God we worship will not rest until the promise of creation is fulfilled in peace.

Jesus sent the disciples to join him in the work of teaching, proclaiming, and healing. Say, ‘The kingdom of God has come near,’ he told them. Cure the sick. Raise the dead. Cleanse the lepers. Cast out demons.

There’s a whole new world that begins to shine through and take shape in the presence of Jesus, a world where everything that gets in the way of life’s flourishing in fullness is overcome.

Raise the dead, he said, and I assume he meant it.

Are we to go to Birmingham and tell death to return Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley to their families? Are we to go to Jackson and tell death to let go of Medgar Evers? Are we to go to Neshoba County, and Ferguson, and Minneapolis, and Glynn County, Georgia and raise the dead? I don’t suppose Jesus meant to instill in us illusions of divine grandeur, when he told us, “Raise the dead.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his Christmas letter in 1942, sent from a Nazi prison,

We are not Christ, but if we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s large-heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes and showing real compassion that springs, not from fear, but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. Christians are called to compassion and action, not in the first place by their own sufferings, but by the sufferings of their brothers and sisters for whose sake Christ suffered.[6]

What I hear in Jesus’ commandment, “Raise the dead,” is “Do not let their names sink in dust and ashes along with their bodies.” What I hear is a commandment to speak their names and hear their stories and honor their lives by building the kind of communities where they would be at home.

On May 8, one of our neighbors posted on Facebook,

I am a Black man who jogs.

Given the tragic ending to the life of Ahmaud Arbery, yesterday’s run felt different. As I was preparing for my normal pre-run ritual, I added a new step; I kissed my wife and kids before heading out. . . . As soon as I left our apartment to start the run, I burst into tears. I had a moment of fear in thinking about Ahmaud. I wondered if that would [be] the last time, I saw my family. I almost gave in to that fear and went back inside.

. . .  As I broke the border of campus to set out, I placed my playlist on shuffle and the first song to come on was “How Great is Our God.” That song and the circumstances surrounding Ahmaud’s untimely ending took something that I do almost every day and turned [it] into a therapy run, not just for me, but for our country. I didn’t stop crying until mile 3.

. . . I slowed down when I approached another Black man on a corner selling copies of “The Contributor” . . . I slowed down because as I approached him, he started yelling and cheering. It took me completely by surprise. Because of the distance between us and the music in my ears, initially, I could barely decipher what he was saying.

. . . I have never heard more encouraging words yelled at me as I ran. In that strange moment when our eyes connected, he yells, “do it for Ahmaud” and proceeded to give me the raised Black Power fist with his right hand. That set me off emotionally and physically to a place where I felt like I left my body and this run had become so much bigger than just another run. . . .

I am a Black man who jogs.

However, to others, I’m their deepest fear and can become the object of their hate. . . . The senseless end of Brother Ahmaud’s life is a tragic and triggering reminder to my people that your status, titles, degrees, wealth, etc. can’t shield you from the physical and psychological effects of racism. I’m a 44-year-old, married, Black male with two beautiful kids. My wife is a neonatologist; my daughter Jordan loves to randomly ask me to dance with her; and my son Rosevelt, thinks his dad hung the moon.

I have a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University, where I have been a professor for the past 18 years. . . . I love photography, DIY projects, data analytics, and spending time with my family. I’m a very active person. In addition to being a member at Title Boxing Club, Orange Theory Fitness, and the Vanderbilt Rec Center,

I am a Black man who jogs.

Before yesterday, my “bio” was something I never thought about during a run. But yesterday I had to; while I may see myself as all those things, to someone with ill will in their heart, none of those things matter. Just as Brother Ahmaud’s bio didn’t matter. . . .

Today, I will run again in Ahmaud’s memory. And like yesterday, and every day moving forward, before I leave our apartment to start my run, I will kiss my wife and kids because

I am a Black man who jogs.[7]

I didn’t know about that post until Thursday, when we got an email from the man who wrote it:

To Whom It May Concern:

I am a Black man who jogs and I wanted to say thank you for recognizing Ahmaud Arbery on the sign outside your church. Mr. Arbery’s death had a profound impact on me. At the height of my frustration, anger, and confusion about his murder, I wrote the attached post. Because of how he died, I stopped running around the streets of Nashville. Instead I started running on Greenways and Trails, such as Shelby Bottoms or the Harpeth River Trail, because I felt safer in these environments. After a month long hiatus from running on the streets, I decided to return today. My run this morning took me in front of your church. When I looked up and saw, “Ahmaud Arbery” on your sign, I said to myself, “How great is our God.” Thank you for raising awareness about the unjust ending of his life and for restoring my faith in running the streets of Nashville. I pray for God’s continued mercy, favor, and grace for you and your congregation.    

Sincerely,

Rosevelt Noble

Intolerable trouble James Baldwin called it with prophetic clarity of eye and voice. I pray that each of you and all of us together will continue to stand and march with those committed to cast out the demons of slavery and topple every false idol. God raised our brother Jesus from the dead, and therefore we stand firm in the hope that the pain of centuries will not completely swallow tomorrow’s possibilities.

[1] Delivered on October 16, 1963, as “The Negro Child – His Self-Image”; published in The Saturday Review, December 21, 1963, reprinted in The Price of the Ticket, Collected Non-Fiction 1948-1985, Saint Martins 1985.

[2] https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/baldwin-talk-to-teachers

[3] http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25988&st=&st1

[4] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedomsummer-murder/

[5] Brad Braxton https://www.christiancentury.org/article/reflection/james-baldwin-reminds-us-not-be-surprised

[6] Letters and Papers from Prison, as quoted in Kelly, Geffrey B. and F. Burton Nelson. The Cost of Moral Leadership: the spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publ., 2003, 46.

[7] https://www.facebook.com/rosevelt.noble/posts/10102746323527478