Love lights a better path

“We know that you are sincere,” they said to Jesus. “We know that you teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.” How nice of them to say that. That’s quite an endorsement. Had Matthew not warned us at the beginning that we were about to witness a plot designed to entrap Jesus, we would have read those sweet words and innocently assumed that the speakers meant what they said.

Pharisees and Herodians make strange bedfellows, but stranger things have happened in politics. Judea was a province of the Roman Empire, and the population was heavily taxed to finance the army and administration of the occupying power. The name Herodians is shorthand for supporters of the political status quo, people who saw nothing wrong with Roman rule and very likely benefited handsomely from it.

The Pharisees, on the other hand, were not openly opposed to Roman rule, but certainly not in favor of it. They were pious men from Main Street Galilee and Judea who aspired to holiness — they sought to follow God’s law in all aspects of daily life. The Roman occupation of Jewish land may not have been their primary concern, but it definitely was not part of their vision for Israel.

What brings the two groups together in this scene is Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God which, for different reasons, makes both of them nervous. For a moment, they put aside their significant differences and set up a clever trap. They use a little flattery to butter him up and then drop a question that seemingly leaves no way out: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

If Jesus says yes, he exposes himself as a collaborator with the occupation, and his poll numbers take a dive. And that takes care of the Pharisees’ nervousness about his public support. If he says no, he will immediately be arrested by the authorities for inciting sedition. And that takes care of the Herodians’ nervousness about his teachings.

It’s a brilliant set-up, only Jesus doesn’t play their game. “Show me the coin used for the tax,” he says, and his opponents have no trouble finding a denarius. Clearly they are much better connected to the imperial economy than Jesus whose pockets are empty. Can you imagine the tweets?

“Guess who brought blasphemous coins into the holy temple?” #shamelessherodians #whathappenedtothepharisees #freeIsrael

“Caesar’s currency isn’t kingdom currency!” #jesusmessiah #blessedarethepoor

Jesus doesn’t tweet. He doesn’t laugh or gloat or self-promote. With a nod of the head toward the coin he asks, “Whose image is this, and whose title?”

“The emperor’s,” they say.

Most likely the coin bore the image of the emperor Tiberius who ruled Rome during those years.  And the title inscribed on it was more than a title. It was a declaration of Roman supremacy embodied in the person of the emperor. To most Jewish eyes and ears the inscription alone was blatant blasphemy: Emperor Tiberius, august son of the divine Augustus, high priest.[1] This brief debate between Jesus and his questioners isn’t about paying taxes, it’s about idolatry.

“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” says Jesus. It’s not much of an answer to their question, if a simple yes or no is what you’re looking for. It’s a response that only raises more questions: Is Jesus implying that the faithful thing to do is not pay the tax since all things belong to God? Or is he implying that God has a legitimate claim on some things and Caesar on others? One way to read his statement is, “Since the coin bears Caesar’s image, let him have it; give it back to him, it’s his anyway. But remember that to be human is to be made in the image of God. Remember that all of you bear the image of God. So give to God what is God’s — your life, your breath, yourself.” Marcus Borg wrote,

This text offers little or no guidance for tax season. It neither claims taxation is legitimate nor gives aid to anti-tax activists. It neither counsels universal acceptance of political authority nor its reverse. But it does raise the provocative … question: What belongs to God, and what belongs to Caesar? And what if Caesar is Hitler, or apartheid, or communism, or global capitalism?[2]

How do we live as God’s people when the economic and political systems we have created become invasive and oppressive? How do we live faithfully when the systems we inhabit make us complicit in the abuse of others who, like us and with us, bear the image of God?

We cannot serve two masters. We cannot neatly divide our loyalties between God’s realm and the realms of other lords. And we must not confuse our loyalties to other lords with our loyalty to God.

Much more than a coin is at stake here. We bear the image of God, but when we look at each other, or in the mirror, we also see the inscriptions that our interactions with the world have left on us. You are what you wear, is a common script. You are what you do, what you earn. Or: You are nobody. Your life doesn’t matter. You don’t count. We are made in the image of God, but other scripts and images continually overwrite our identity as God’s own with layers of falsehood.

James Kelly wrote,

We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us. Each of us tends to be, not a single self, but a whole committee of selves. There is the civic self, the parental self, the financial self, the religious self, the society self, the professional self ... And each of our selves is in turn a rank individualist, not co-operative but shouting out his vote loudly for himself when the voting time comes. … We are not integrated. We are distraught. We feel honestly the pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all. And we are unhappy, uneasy, strained, oppressed, and fearful we shall be shallow. … Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power.[3]

Give to God the things that are God’s is not an invitation to draw a line through the world and our lives where things on one side belong to God and things on the other to other lords and other claims. Give to God the things that are God’s is not a call to fragmentation. Jesus doesn’t suggest a split between a political self that answers to Caesar and a religious self that answers to God. Jesus didn’t come to carve out separate realms with separate loyalties: he proclaimed and inaugurated the kingdom of God.

Give to God the things that are God’s puts all other demands made on us in proper perspective. “We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us,” wrote James Kelly. The Life that integrates our conflicting selves and frees us to be who we are as creatures made in the image of God, is the life of Christ. “We have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence,” wrote James Kelly. That way of life is what Christ embodied, “a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power,” a life fully at home in the love of God.

As part of every baptism, just after the person has emerged from below the surface of the water, we make the sign of the cross on their forehead and say, calling them by name, “Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” In baptism, the life of Christ becomes ours, and through him we give to God the things that are God’s — our life, our breath, our days and nights, our whole and broken selves. With him we live, and learn to live, continually learn to live, as citizens of the kingdom, as people who know that we are not our own, nor anyone else’s, but God’s.

Markus Borg asked, “what if Caesar is Hitler, or apartheid, or communism, or global capitalism?” When Caesar was Hitler, the small Confessing Church in Germany declared,

As Jesus Christ is God’s assurance of the forgiveness of all our sins, so, in the same way and with the same seriousness he is also God’s mighty claim upon our whole life. Through him befalls us a joyful deliverance from the godless fetters of this world for a free, grateful service to his creatures. We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords — areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.[4]

The Confessing Church was persecuted and driven underground, its pastors were arrested and sent to concentration camps, but, though small in numbers, the church that counts Bonhoeffer among its martyrs refused to give the things that are God’s to anyone but God. They were ordinary men and women, no superheroes with special powers. Their gift to us, though, is extraordinary in its simplicity and power. They show us that a life fully at home in the love of God is a life of fearless clarity. Even amid the waves of terror and anxiety which the empires of the world so skillfully create and manipulate, love lights a better path.

[1] TIBERIUS CAESAR DIVI AUGUSTI FILIUS AUGUSTUS PONTIFEX MAXIMUS

[2] “What Belongs to God?” http://www.beliefnet.com/story/20/story_2000_1.html

[3] James Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, 1941, chapter 5.

[4] http://www.ekd.de/english/barmen_theological_declaration.html

Anxiously waiting

“Rejoice in the Lord always,” Paul writes. “Do not worry about anything,” he says, which is a lot easier to hear when you have nothing to worry about. But I do worry, and I know many of you do as well, and for very good reasons. And the only reason I don’t immediately dismiss Paul as Pollyanna is that he too has plenty to worry about and he doesn’t. “Don’t be anxious,” is his advice, written from prison, “but in everything make your requests known to God in prayer and petition with thanksgiving. Then the peace of God, which is beyond all understanding, will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.”[1]

The peace of God, and the joy it brings, the Apostle tells us, is solely determined by our relationship with God amid all kinds of circumstances, but not by those circumstances. He urges his readers to ground ourselves in prayer so we don’t drown under wave after wave of grief, anger, disbelief, and discouragement. Don’t be anxious. You’re not alone. The Lord is near. Pour out your heart before God. Practice gratitude. Trust the promise of Christ risen from the dead.

The story from Exodus is a powerful reminder what can happen when anxiety does take hold. Moses was gone. Moses who had told the Hebrew slaves that God would bring them out of the misery of Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey.[2] Moses who had been with them all this time, through sea and wilderness, through hunger and thirst, through fear and wonder. Moses who had told them all the words of the Lord, beginning with the first, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”[3] And when Moses had finished reading the book of the covenant in their hearing, they said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will obey.”[4]

But then Moses went back up on the mountain and he was gone. They didn’t know when he would be back. They didn’t know Moses was receiving instructions about the tabernacle, and the ark, and the mercy seat, the lampstand, the curtain, the vestments, the altar, the ordination of priests, and the sabbath. They didn’t know Moses was having a worship committee meeting with the Lord on the mountain.

“We will do and we will obey” was the last we heard the people say before Moses left. Then there are pages of detailed worship notes, considering every fiber in the priestly vestments and every measure of spice to be added to the anointing oil; the next time we hear the people speak, after the narrative camera cuts from Moses and the Lord on the top of the mountain to the camp at its foot, we see them gathered around Aaron, saying, “Come, make a god for us who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”[5]

“This Moses,” they said, in tones of distance and disaffection, “we do not know what has become of him.” So make us something we can see. Make us something that will lead us forward, and we will follow it.

And Aaron, without a moment’s hesitation, obliged them. The story leaves it to our imagination whether he was glad, perhaps even eager, to satisfy the people’s religious needs, or if he was coerced. It all happened when Moses was gone, and that absence, in a way, was like a dress rehearsal for what was to come: they would have to learn to live as God’s people without Moses, without their living link to the living God; they would have to learn to live with the written word of God, the liturgies and instructions for worship, and the priests.

Well, the dress rehearsal, or perhaps we should say, the first opportunity to live as God’s people in Moses’ absence, was a complete failure. The very first thing they did after giving their full-throated commitment to doing and obeying the commandments of God was an assault on the first one that is at the heart of all of them, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”

Moses, up on the mountain, had no idea what was going on, but God told him, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside form the way that I commanded for them.”

Did you notice how often this line pops up in the story, and how confused things are about who’s the one who brought them out of Egypt? The people point to Moses, “the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt.” Aaron points to the calf, “This is your god.” And even the Lord who at first said, “I brought you out” now points to Moses, telling him, “Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt … have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and said, ‘This is your god who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’”

The Lord is furious. “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” This clearly isn’t working. Let’s start over, you and I together, Moses.

But Moses doesn’t step out of the way and into the possibilities of being the new Abraham or the new Israel; he talks back. “Why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power?” It wasn’t my mighty hand that led them out, nor Aaron’s, nor Miriam’s — this is your people, your doing, your promise, this is your reputation at stake. So turn; change your mind; remember.

Terence Fretheim says that in this story, we learn that “God is not the only one who has something important to say.”[6] This covenant between God and God’s people isn’t solely defined by divine declaration and human obedience, but by a relationship that invites human understanding and speech. It is Moses’ prayer, Moses’ voice against God’s wrath that moves this moment from firey peril to new possibilities of fulfilment. The closing line of today’s passage declares, And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

“Human prayer,” writes Fretheim, “is honored by God as a contribution to a conversation that has the capacity to change the future directions for God, people, and world.

God may well adjust modes and directions (though not ultimate goals) in view of such human responsiveness. This means that there is genuine openness to the future on God’s part, fundamentally in order that God’s salvific will for all might be realized as fully as possible. It is this openness to change that reveals what it is about God that is unchangeable: God’s steadfastness has to do with God’s love; God’s faithfulness has to do with God’s promises; God’s will is for the salvation of all. God will always act, even make changes, in order to be true to these unchangeable ways and to accomplish these unchangeable goals.[7]

Making the calf was an act of idolatry because the God who brought Israel out of Egypt cannot be produced by the whim of the people who get anxious in the absence of the prophet. God is sovereign and free, never an object of artful manipulation, whether carved in stone, cast in gold, or rendered in words. This story opens our eyes to the great sin of substituting the manufactured god, the available god, the domesticated god for the One who made heaven and earth, who brought Israel out of the house of slavery, and who raised Jesus from the dead.

Moses was Israel’s living link to the elusive presence of the living God, and Moses’ absence led to anxiety and the manufacture of a god of manageable proportion — visible, tangible, portable. “Calf-making” is more than an episode in Israel’s history, it is a perennial temptation for all who seek to live as people of God, in the wilderness of freedom, on the way to the promised land. “It is easy to mistake our own creations for our God,” writes Anathea Portier-Young.

It is tempting to shape … an image that pleases our senses, mollifies our anxiety, and invites admiration from our neighbors. But that thing we have made from Egypt’s gold is not our god. That thing may symbolize strength and power. It may personify virility, or femininity, or aspects of both or neither; it may embody rebellion or conformity, generosity or greed. But as close as we draw to it, as much as we celebrate it and place it at the center of our lives, it did not lead us to freedom and will not lead us to our promised inheritance. … It will moor us in the impatience of our ignorance and fear. We may dance with it for a day, but soon find that it has led us to our death.[8]

Idolatry has terrible consequences, and our days are filled with the news of them, but these consequences will not include the final rupture of the relationship between God and God’s people, between God and God’s creation, because God is true to God’s promises, even to the point of bearing the full, crushing weight of our sins.

And there is joy in heaven over every human being who, amid the waves of anxiety and fear, clings to the promises of God and draws courage from the Holy One who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.[9]

[1] Philippians 4:6-7 REB

[2] Exodus 3:16-17

[3] Exodus 20:1-3

[4] Exodus 24:7

[5] Exodus 32:1

[6] Terence Fretheim, Exodus (Interpretation; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1991), 285.

[7] Fretheim, Exodus, 287.

[8] Anathea Portier-Young http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3442

[9] Exodus 34:6

Touching the table

We come together to worship on this Lord’s Day, and our hearts long to do so in person. We come together to glorify God who created heaven and earth and continues to sustain all things. We come together to praise God who raised Jesus from the dead, and we celebrate that congregations around the world, in cathedrals and store fronts, in living rooms and tents, gathered around the table of Christ, sing and pray in more languages and dialects than any of us can imagine. We celebrate that in the bread we break and the cup we share we encounter our crucified and risen savior who makes us one. Separated from each other in more ways than we have the heart to name, we touch the table where Christ is the host, and each of us, a welcome guest, and we cling to its promise and vision and manners like never before.

I can feel the edge of his table in my hands and I can see all of you, and I can see multitudes from East and West, South and North, singing, laughing, gathering together in the beautiful place God has freed us to enter. We celebrate our liberation: the burden of sin removed from our shoulders, the drain of fear driven from our hearts. We are free, for we are no longer slaves to the powers that oppress us, but covenant partners of God.

Today we celebrate the covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai. They had left behind Pharaoh’s clay pits and the bosses who enforced the daily brick quotas. They had crossed the sea on dry foot. They had eaten the bread of angels and drunk water from the rock. It had been a long, slow journey through the wilderness. They had marveled and argued and complained, and through it all, they had begun to discover the holy stick-to-it-iveness of God.

Now they were at the mountain, and all of them heard God speak. All of them heard these words, the big ten, the divine utterances that from that day forward would be for them a constitution of freedom as God’s people.

How long has it been since you heard the Ten Commandments read out loud? It’s probably been quite a long time.

In some old churches on the East coast, worshipers and tourists can still find the words written on the sanctuary walls. Early Anglican tradition in the colonies, long before the American Revolution began, required that the Ten Commandments were to be “set up on the East end of every Church and Chapel, where the people may best see and read the same.” In those days, the East end was the front of the sanctuary. Before and during the service, you could sit in the pew and meditate on the writing on the wall and reflect on your life.

Today, more Americans insist quite emphatically on the importance of the Ten Commandments than can name more than four when asked. A news poll in 2018 found that more than 90 percent of Americans agree that the commandments regarding murder, stealing and lying remain fundamental standards of societal behavior. Other commandments that enjoy strong majority support include those about not coveting, not committing adultery and honoring parents. The numbers are considerably weaker when it comes to making idols or making wrongful use of the name of the Lord. And only 49% of Americans say that remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy is still important — the lowest level of support for any commandment.[1]

Several years ago, Tom Long pointed out that

in the popular religious consciousness, the Ten Commandments have somehow become burdens, weights and heavy obligations. For many, the commandments are encumbrances placed on personal behavior. Most people cannot name all ten, but they are persuaded that at the center of each one is a finger-wagging ‘thou shalt not.’ For others, the commandments are heavy yokes to be publicly placed on the necks of a rebellious society.[2]

It’s easy to forget that the Ten Commandments are not prefaced by a directive: “Everybody listen. Here are the rules, ten of them. Obey them!” That may have been how the taskmasters in Egypt laid down the law. But these words are about an entirely different vision. They open with an announcement of freedom: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” The ten commandments are affirmations of life after liberation: “Because the Lord is your God, you are free from the tyranny of lifeless idols. You are free to rest on the seventh day. You are free from coveting, lying and stealing as ways to secure your life.”[3]

Martin Luther was convinced that knowing the Ten Commandments was tantamount to knowing the entire Bible. “This much is certain,” he wrote, “those who know the Ten Commandments perfectly know the entire Scriptures and in all affairs and circumstances are able to counsel, help, comfort, judge and make decisions in both spiritual and temporal matters.”[4] He knew, of course, that knowing the ten perfectly doesn’t end with being able to recite them — but it certainly begins there. There are ten of them, which is very good because we can use our fingers to help us learn and remember. They are, for the most part, brief and simple, so we can take them to heart and be guided by them in our living – and living them is the key to knowing them perfectly.

Perhaps all this talk of perfection makes you nervous. Isn’t perfection just another yoke? Doesn't talk of perfection only create hypocrisy and self-righteousness or despair? That question is raised in another text from the Reformation period. The Heidelberg Catechism also contains a long exposition of the Ten Commandments. Question 114 asks, “But can those who are converted to God keep these commandments perfectly?” The response is refreshing in its frankness, “No, for even the holiest of them make only a small beginning in obedience in this life.” Only a small beginning in obedience — but it’s a beginning in the direction of God’s will and promise; it’s a beginning in the direction of life’s flourishing.

I’m still thinking about that news poll and that remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy received the lowest level of support for any commandment. When we don’t remember the Sabbath day, chances are we won’t remember long that it is God who has set us free. And once we forget whose we are, we open the doors to lesser gods and friendly looking idols to teach us their ways.

Stanley Wiersma grew up in the 30’s in a Dutch Reformed community in Iowa. One of his poems begins with a question:

Were my parents right or wrong
Not to mow the ripe oats that Sunday morning
with the rainstorm threatening?

I reminded them that the Sabbath was made for man
and of the ox fallen into the pit.
Without an oats crop, I argued,
the cattle would need to survive on town-bought oats
and then it wouldn’t pay to keep them.
Isn’t selling cattle at a loss like an ox in a pit?

My parents did not argue.
We went to Church. 
We sang the usual psalms louder than usual -
we, and the others whose harvests were at stake:

“Jerusalem, where blessing waits,
Our feet are standing in thy gates.”

“God, be merciful to me;
On thy grace I rest my plea.”

[As the storm rolled in we sang,]

“He rides on the clouds, the wings of the storm;
The lightning and wind his missions perform.”

[We heard little of the sermon]

for more floods came and more winds blew and beat
upon that House than we had figured on, even,
more lightning and thunder
and hail the size of pullet eggs.
Falling branches snapped the electric wires.
We sang the closing psalm without the organ and in the dark:

“Ye seed from Abraham descended,
God’s covenant love is never ended.”

Afterward we rode by our oats field,
Flattened.
“We still will mow it,” Dad said.
“Ten bushels to the acre, maybe, what would have been fifty
if I had mowed right after milking
and if the whole family had shocked.
We could have had it weatherproof before the storm.”

Later at dinner Dad said,
“God was testing us. I’m glad we went.”

“Those psalms never gave me such a lift as this morning,”
Mother said, “I wouldn’t have missed it.”

“Were my parents right or wrong?” Wiersma doesn’t answer the question, but he acknowledges that his parents’ sabbath observance was at the root of his own attempts at faithfulness.[5] I’m drawn to this poem because it questions my own initial response to the harvest challenge. I probably would have mowed that field and later thanked the Lord that we got it all in safely before the storm. I would have missed the worship service and the singing in the storm. And I would have missed the closing psalm’s affirmation in the dark,

“Ye seed from Abraham descended,
God’s covenant love is never ended.”

It is difficult for us to grasp that obedience to God is at the heart of freedom. The world we live in tells us that to be free is to be able to do what we want. Then it goes on to tell us what to want. Our economy grows on the assumption that greed is good and coveting drives demand.

The world we live in tells us that we are what we do; and so we do more in order to be more. And the more we do, the less we remember who we are. Without sabbath, amnesia sets in.

And so on this Lord’s day, when love of neighbor demands that we do not gather in person, we find other ways to keep the Sabbath day holy and hold fast to the promise that God’s covenant love is never ended. Separated from each other in so many ways, we touch the table where Christ is the host, and we cling to its promise and vision and manners like never before. I can feel the edge of his table in my hands and my parched soul drinks the words Jan Richardson found for us,

And the table

will be wide.

And the welcome

will be wide.

And the arms

will open wide

to gather us in.

And our hearts

will open wide

to receive.

And we will come

as children who trust

there is enough.

And we will come

unhindered and free.

And our aching

will be met

with bread.

And our sorrow

will be met

with wine.

And we will open our hands

to the feast

without shame.

And we will turn

toward each other

without fear.

And we will give up

our appetite

for despair.

And we will taste

and know

of delight.

And we will become bread

for a hungering world.

And we will become drink

for those who thirst.

And the blessed

will become the blessing.

And everywhere

will be the feast.[6]

[1] https://www.deseret.com/2018/3/28/20642391/poll-are-the-ten-commandments-still-relevant-today-americans-and-brits-differ-and-millennials-stand

[2] See Thomas G. Long, “Dancing the Decalogue.” Christian Century 123, no. 5 (March 7, 2006) 17. 

[3] Ibid.

[4] The Book of Concord: the confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, by Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, Charles P. Arand (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2000) 382.

[5] “Obedience,” by Sietze Buning (Stanley Wiersma’s pen name)

[6] https://paintedprayerbook.com/2012/09/30/and-the-table-will-be-wide/

Working in the vineyard

Try to put a table cloth on the ground for a picnic — it’s not easy. On a calm, windless day it’s just a matter of shaking it out so it spreads and settles down slowly. But if there’s a little wind, even just a breeze, it becomes near impossible: the fabric billows, the corners fly — you want the cloth to behave in a domesticated, dinner-table-trained manner, but it wants to be a banner, a kite, or a sail.

A good parable is like that. You expect somebody would know how to lay it out on the ground, nicely and orderly, but it just won’t lie still. It’s full of surprises; every time you hear it, new possibilities of interpretation rise up to challenge what you heard before.

Imagine you take this little gem of a story about a vineyard owner to the business round table downtown. Entrepreneurs, executives, managers, economists — they hear how this peculiar workday unfolds from first light to pay time, and they wonder what kind of business man the landowner is and how much he’d have to charge for a bottle of wine, or how long it would be before he’d have to sell that vineyard.

Or take the story to the union hall, if you can find one, and watch folks there trying to remain calm while they explain to you why you can’t pay some workers for one hour what others make, for the same job, in an entire day.

Now imagine you take this story to the corner of the parking lot at Home Depot where day laborers gather, waiting for someone to hire them. They smile as they listen because they know how hard it is to make a full day’s wage with low-paying, part-time labor. They know how hard it is to watch truck after truck drive by — and very few trucks come around after eight, let alone after noon.

When Jesus first told this parable, many farmers in Galilee had lost their land, and they had to make a living as day laborers. Mid-size and large farms, many of them owned by absentee landlords, were usually operated with day labor rather than slaves; it was much cheaper, and there was an abundance of landless peasants. Farmworkers in Galilee were poor, underemployed, and heavily taxed by the Roman authorities.

One denarius, a small Roman coin, appears to have been the going rate for a day of field labor, but a denarius wasn’t much. You could buy a dozen small loaves of pita bread for a denarius. For a lamb you had to pay 3-4 denarii; for a simple set of clothes, 30 denarii.[1]

The landowner in the story is a peculiar fellow. For starters, he goes out himself early in the morning to hire laborers, which was the usual time, but was the manager’s job. Then he comes back at 9 to hire more, and you say to yourself, “Well, he probably realized that he needed more hands to get the work done.” When he comes back at noon, you wonder if he knows what he’s doing or if he is one of those rich city slickers who bought himself a vineyard and a winery. Then he comes back in the middle of the afternoon, when everybody is dreaming about quitting time, and he keeps hiring — and you are running out of explanations that would make sense of his behavior. Perhaps he’s been in the sun too long? But that’s not the end of it. The shadows are long and the light is bathing the marketplace scene in hues of gold, when he returns again and hires every last worker he can find.

In Jesus’ story, the day begins in the familiar world of the tough Galilean rural economy, but it ends in a world that looks and feels very different.

Imagine you got up before dawn to go to the corner where they pick up day laborers. You know that if you get hired, you can get some bread on the way home and your family will eat dinner. But you don’t get picked in the first round. So you go to the other side, hoping to have better luck over there, but you don’t. The younger ones are hired first. The stronger ones are hired first. You cross the road again, hoping for better luck on that side of the intersection, but it’s noon already. You decide to go to one of the big farms just outside of town to see if perhaps they could us an extra pair of hands to finish a field or a vineyard, but no luck there. So you go back to the marketplace, and just when you decide to call it a day and go home, this landowner shows up and asks you, “Why are you standing here idle all day?”

It’s a tough economy, and you already feel like a left-over person, no longer needed, unnoticed, forgotten—and did this man just call you idle? He doesn’t know how long you have been on your feet. He doesn’t know how hard you have tried to find work. He doesn’t know how hungry you are and how much you dread coming home tonight with empty hands.

“We’re here because no one has hired us,” you and the others tell him. “You also go into the vineyard,” the landowner replies.

And you go; you don’t even ask how much he’s paying. You go because … who knows. Just so you don’t feel completely useless? Or perhaps you hope that the boss, having noticed what a good worker you are, would ask you to come back tomorrow. You go and work in the vineyard.

Soon the manager calls everybody to line up, starting with those hired last, starting with you. You barely got your hands dirty. How much could it be for an hour’s work? It doesn’t really matter. You know it won’t be enough to put bread on the table. It would be another dinner of foraged field greens for you and the family tonight.

Now the manager puts some cash in your hand. It’s a full day’s pay. You can’t believe it. You turn to the people behind you, “Look, guys — a full day’s wage!”

The news travels fast to the end of the line, where the ones hired first are waiting to be paid. Imagine you’re one of them. You’ve worked twelve long hours. You are dirty, sweaty, your clothes are sticking to your skin and your back is aching. Talk about eating your bread by the sweat of your brow! But you’ve heard the word from the front of the line and you’re looking forward to a little bonus, and your back is already starting to feel better.

Now the manager puts some cash in your hand. It’s a day’s pay. You can’t believe it. You turn to the people around you, and they are just as upset as you are. “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” You have wiped out our expectations of justice and fairness; you have wiped out differences that really matter to us. You have made them equal to us.

This story comes with more than just a breeze; the air is charged in this one, a thunderstorm is brewing. You expect somebody would know how to smooth it out on the ground, nice and square, but it just won’t lie still. This story will continue to confuse and challenge us, depending on how and where we enter it. It holds the pain and the hope of those in every generation who are treated like left-over people— be it in the economy where landownership and labor are negotiated, or in the economy where status and belonging are determined, where some are considered worthy of the full reward and others are not. In Jesus’ story, which is a story about the world where God’s vision of life is known and lived, everyone receives full recognition of their dignity and need as fellow workers, and every last one receives the full reward. All those in the company of sinners and tax collectors who are not pious enough to be considered righteous and worthy — Jesus welcomes them as citizens of the kingdom.

But this little story also holds the anger and resentment of those who worry that too much mercy for others will only breed further lack of effort on their part — they are the ones in the company of the upright who cannot imagine themselves as recipients of gifts they didn’t earn, but whom Jesus welcomes with equal compassion as he welcomes notorious sinners.

Whether we respond to this unruly story with joy or grumbling depends entirely on where we see ourselves at the end of its work day: Have I been working since the break of dawn in the vineyard of the Lord, that is, have I been about the things that really matter to God for as long as I can remember, or am I only just beginning to get my hands in the dirt? I like to think that I’ve been working for a very long time, but what if my busyness with all kinds of projects was only idleness in the eyes of the owner of this vineyard? What if, at age 60, I have barely begun the kind of work that really matters to God? This story just won’t lie still and square on the ground; it wants to be a banner, a kite, a sail — something to catch the movement of God’s Spirit and get me ready to move with it.

The God who meets us in Jesus is one who comes and seeks us, as if this day were not complete until each of us has done at least a little work in the vineyard. God comes and finds us, sometimes early, sometimes late, and will not cease to pursue us until each of us has contributed to the making of the wine that is grown here. And at the end of the day, at the end of our labors, the last are first and the first are last, and all receive what God so generously gives: fullness of life.

[1] Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (EKK 1/3), 146.

Life in the flow of jubilee

Every time we say the Lord’s prayer, we speak of forgiveness. Whether we learned to say our debts, our sins, or our trespasses, as we pray, saying the words the Lord taught us, we lift up our need to receive forgiveness and to give it. We pray “give us this day our daily bread” and in the same breath we pray for the one thing we need just as much as bread— forgiveness. The words we recite in prayer teach our hearts to know that just as bread sustains us physically, forgiveness sustains a community where bread— and therefore life— can truly be shared.

For most of us, however, it is easier to break bread with a stranger than to share forgiveness with a friend. “Thank you” and “I’m sorry” are among the first words we learn as children, but saying “I’m sorry” seems to get more complicated, more difficult as we get older.

Vengeance and retribution are easy, we can rely on our instincts and simply let the waves of our emotions carry us: Drive me into a corner and I’ll snarl like an animal. Threaten me and I’ll roar. Hurt me and I’ll hurt you back. Forgiveness is not an instinctive reaction; it’s more like a seawall against the storm surge of instinctive responses. In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote,

I said in a previous chapter that chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. But I am not sure I was right. I believe there is one even more unpopular. … Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.[1]

I don’t know what’s harder, to forgive a person who has wronged me or to acknowledge that I have offended or hurt another and ask for forgiveness. It’s easy for me to think of situations and relationships where there’s been a breach or where old hurts have festered, and you probably don’t find it hard to call those to mind either. Most of us know the heart’s yearning for resolution when a relationship is stuck in tension; most of us know the deep desire for a way to leave the hurt behind and move toward healing. We love the idea of forgiveness, but we don’t always find the courage to practice it.

We marvel at stories like that of the children of a State Trooper who was shot dead during a routine traffic stop. The killer was caught and brought to justice. While in jail awaiting the end of the trial, he was visited by the children of the victim. The young woman and her brother wanted to meet him. They wanted to look into his eyes. They wanted him to know how their father’s violent death had hurt them. And they wanted to tell him in person that they forgave him for killing their father. Months later, after the man had been sentenced to death, they wrote a letter to the governor petitioning him for clemency— they didn’t want to add more pain to a situation already steeped in pain.

Stories like theirs connect to depths of mercy that seem impossibly hard to reach. Had the two asked for front row seats on the day of his execution, I wouldn’t have been nearly as surprised. Stories like theirs— of people who have lived through depths of chaos and pain most of us will never have to face— such stories give forgiveness a glow of heroic exception, when in truth it is an unexceptional dimension of simply living with others, be it at home, at school, at church or at work. Henri Nouwen writes,

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly, and so we need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. Forgiveness is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.[2]

Forgiveness truly belongs with daily bread among the things we cannot be without. Little annoyances may seem trivial, but they can grow like kudzu and choke a relationship. How do we deal with that? What do we do with the small offenses, intentional or not, that quickly drain warmth from a relationship? Words spoken carelessly, promises broken, impulses poorly controlled, gifts unnoticed or unacknowledged— it’s so easy to come up with everyday examples. And in each case, it’s equally easy to recognize that forgiveness is critical to healing what is broken— easy, that is, as long as we ourselves are not involved. We are wise, caring observers, and our advise is solid, when it comes to others; recognizing the need to offer or receive forgiveness ourselves, and acting on it, is a different story, though.

I can’t tell you how often I don’t want to forgive, and I know it’s because few feelings are as perversely rewarding as righteous indignation. Let him take the first step— why does it always have to be me? If she wants to talk to me, she knows where to find me. He should know that that was just totally inappropriate; how can he not know that he crossed a line? I can talk to myself in my head like that for hours and days, trying to justify my own inaction, and I don’t let the fact that none of us are mind readers get in the way of enjoying those quiet moments of moral superiority. Forgiveness is a lovely idea, and my proud heart can do a lot to keep it that way.

Our brother Peter asks how often followers of Jesus ought to forgive. Seven times perhaps? In a world where second chances are hard to come by, seven seems quite generous. And the number itself, given its connection with the holiness of the Sabbath, carries connotations of completeness like a halo. But Jesus responds, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” Or perhaps the words should be translated seventy times seven times.

I don’t think Jesus is suggesting that we need to get even better at keeping score, way beyond the second chance or the third strike. Forgiveness, according to Jesus, isn’t something that can be counted like entries in a ledger. Saying “seventy-seven times” is like saying, “Stop counting.” Stop thinking of forgiveness as a series of holy acts, each adding another stripe to the sleeves of your heavenly robe. Think of forgiveness as a practice, a habit, a way of life. Think of it as responding, again and again, to a call to move out of stuckness, a call to a future not bound by the past.

Jesus tells the unsettling story of a king settling debts with his servants. One owed the monarch 10,000 talents. One talent of silver is equivalent to about 6,000 denarii, with a denarius being a typical day’s wage for a laborer. Thus, this servant owed about 60 million denarii or what one laborer would earn in about 150,000 years. Perhaps you want to do the math in your head: your annual income times 150,000. The debtor fell at the king’s feet and begged for more time, but instead of an extension or better terms he received a complete remission of his debts.

I don’t know how the man was able to get up from his knees after that announcement, but he did, and he left with a whole new life available to him. Soon it became apparent, though, that the king’s marvelous economy of jubilee had touched the man’s books, but not his heart. Approached by a fellow servant who owed him some money— think of it as about three times your monthly income— he harshly insisted on full payment without delay. The king’s extravagant forgiveness had opened to this man a whole new life, but he didn’t live it, he didn’t participate in it, he didn’t extend the king’s radical new terms to his own debtors. And so the king said, “If it’s the old life you want, there you have it.” It’s a disturbing story, but it reminds us that mercy wants to flow.

In Jesus, God became a human being, exposed to the human capacity to touch, caress, comfort, and hold, but also to betray, abuse, mock, and abandon one another. In Jesus, God, in human flesh, entered the space where our desire to control reigns— where sin destroys trust and friendship and all that is sacred between us— and ended up as the one judged, condemned, and executed. Everything ended there, in the darkness of Friday. Everything ended in that loveless, God-forsaken darkness, with the world stuck in the all-too-familiar ways of power politics in the governor’s palace, the temple, and the street. Everything ended but God’s mercy and faithfulness. And God made the first move by raising Jesus from the dead.

Forgiveness is not merely a lovely idea. It is the character of God. It is the word God speaks to remove the burden of our sin and renew all of creation. It is the healing river flowing freely from the heart of God into the barren deserts of our love-starved lives. Forgiveness is not our doing, but our living in that flow and our being transformed by it until we freely give what we have received. There’s nothing there that could be counted. There’s only the deep memory of God’s mercy and our trust in its power to carry us. And so when somebody has wronged us, or we have wronged them, we begin at the beginning, again and again: We take a step. We take a breath. We speak. We listen. And we let ourselves be renewed.

[1] Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins 2001), 115.

[2] Quoted at Debie Thomas https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2748-unpacking-forgiveness

Mostly questions

“You know what time it is,” the apostle writes with his usual confidence. You know “how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” Wouldn’t that be something, to wake up and to realize that what feels like a terrible nightmare actually was just a bad dream?

There’s so much fear. So much anger. So much posturing. So much violence. I don’t know what time it is, and what little I can see and say of this moment, has been filtered through the particular layers of my life and the formative experiences that shaped me. I’m really worried about certain things and developments, and not worried at all about others, just like you are, I presume. I don’t know what time it is, but when I talk about the things and developments that worry me, I want you to hear me, just as you want me to hear you, I presume, when you speak of your fears and hopes. When you show up carrying a deadly weapon, I’m done talking, and what I hear you say cradling your gun is that you prefer it when I keep my mouth shut. And it doesn’t matter if you identify as a Boogaloo Boi or an Antifa supporter. All I can hear you say is, “End of conversation. I got the gun.”

Paul is able to write with great confidence, because to him, the difference Jesus Christ has made in the world, is like night and day. Jesus’ shameful death on the cross marks the hour of deepest darkness of the night—and its end. Jesus was ready to die for the kingdom he lived and proclaimed, but he wouldn’t kill for it. And God raised him from the dead, breaking the silence the empire and the mob had imposed, and affirming Jesus’ way of boundary-crossing love and radical welcome as the way of God’s reign. Call it the triumph of grace over sin, the victory of humility over domination, the dawn of the new day.

An old Rabbi once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun.

“Could it be,” responded one of the students, “when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it’s a sheep or a dog?” — “No,” answered the rabbi.

Another suggested, “Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it’s a fig tree or an apple tree?” — “No,” said the rabbi.

“Then when is it?” the pupils asked.

“It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that it is your sister or brother. Because if you cannot see this, it is still night.”

We cannot wake ourselves from slumber, but we can let ourselves be awakened. We can look on the faces of the people on the other side, however we may perceive their otherness, and see Jesus’ kin, people who in Jesus’ eyes and heart are siblings, people he loves, brothers and sisters to die for. And once we see them as his kin, it won’t be long before we see them as ours.

“The night is far gone,” the apostle writes with great confidence, “the day is near.” Wake up, gear up, get ready. Put on the armor of light. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Put on humility and compassion and radical welcome. Our battle is not against people. Our fight is against the powers that divide us from each other. Our fight is against fear. Our fight is against a long history of injustice and mistrust. Our fight is for each other and for the beloved community.

“Owe no one anything, except to love one another,” Paul writes; “for the one who loves has fulfilled the law. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” The whole law is fulfilled by loving the neighbor as Jesus taught and modeled.

In 1861, the autobiography of Harriet Jacobs was published. Allow me to read a few paragraphs from this American story we still struggle to fully hear:

I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away… When I was six years old, my mother died; and then, for the first time, I learned, by the talk around me, that I was a slave.

My mother’s mistress was the daughter of my grandmother’s mistress. She was the foster sister of my mother; they were both nourished at my grandmother’s breast. In fact, my mother had been weaned at three months old, that the babe of the mistress might obtain sufficient food. …

On her deathbed her mistress promised that her children should never suffer for any thing; and during her lifetime she kept her word. … I was told that my home was now to be with her mistress; and I found it a happy one. No toilsome or disagreeable duties were imposed on me. My mistress was so kind to me that I was always glad to do her bidding, and proud to labor for her as much as my young years would permit. …

When I was nearly twelve years old, my kind mistress sickened and died. As I saw the cheek grow paler, and the eye more glassy, how earnestly I prayed in my heart that she might live! I loved her; for she had been almost like a mother to me. My prayers were not answered. …

I felt sure I should never find another mistress so kind as the one who was gone. She had promised my dying mother that her children should never suffer for any thing; and when I remembered that, and recalled her many proofs of attachment to me, I could not help having some hopes that she had left me free. My friends were almost certain it would be so. …

After a brief period of suspense, the will of my mistress was read, and we learned that she had bequeathed me to her sister’s daughter, a child of five years old. So vanished our hopes.

My mistress had taught me the precepts of God’s Word: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” … But I was her slave, and I suppose she did not recognize me as her neighbor.

I would give much to blot out from my memory that one great wrong. As a child, I loved my mistress; and, looking back on the happy days I spent with her, I try to think with less bitterness of this act of injustice. While I was with her, she taught me to read and spell; and for this privilege, which so rarely falls to the lot of a slave, I bless her memory. …

She possessed but few slaves; and at her death those were all distributed among her relatives. Five of them were my grandmother’s children, and had shared the same milk that nourished her mother’s children. Notwithstanding my grandmother’s long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block.

These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.[1]

God-breathing machines — I swallowed hard when I read of the mother who weaned her own infant at three months old so she could nurse the babe of her mistress. And I swallowed hard when I read the words, not one of her children escaped the auction block. But nothing compares to the cold truth and the holy protest in referring to these children, these brothers and sisters of Jesus, as God-breathing machines.

It was all legal—the import, the breeding, the trade, the possession, the use and abuse of God-breathing machines. The quality merchandise was advertised. The contracts were notarized. The purchases were registered. The will was properly prepared and signed by witnesses. It was all legal. And on Sunday the master and the mistress, the notary, the clerk, the attorney, and the auctioneer all went to church, and they all nodded when the preacher read from the letter to the Romans, “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.” They nodded, but they didn’t awake; they dreamed on; they didn’t rise from sleep.

The scene makes me wonder, What are we missing? What dream images are we clinging to, convinced of their reality? Harriet Jacobs points us to the place where the darkness lingers:

My mistress had taught me the precepts of God’s Word: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” … But I was her slave, and I suppose she did not recognize me as her neighbor.

Who are the ones you and I don’t recognize as neighbors? Who are the ones you and I so easily overlook or dismiss?

Neighbors are given to us to love, all of them. They can be delightful and annoying. They can be needy, grumpy, kind, and weird. They are given to us to love, not chosen by us to wear our labels and take their place in our dreams of life. Who are the ones you and I don’t recognize as members of God’s household? Who are the ones you and I don’t recognize as Jesus’ own kin and therefore our siblings? And if we don’t recognize them, where does that leave us?

We know what love demands when we see the devastations caused by hurricanes, floods, droughts, tornadoes, and wildfires — but what about the devastations caused by fear and the erosion of trust? What does love demand?

I’m really worried about certain things and developments, and not worried at all about others, just like you are, I presume. And when I talk about the things and developments that worry me, I want you to hear me, just as you want me to hear you, I presume, when you speak of your fears and hopes.

The darkness around us is thick, but I trust that the way of Christ — the way of boundary-crossing love and radical welcome — leads us toward morning. I will strive to follow him on the way, and I invite you to do the same.

[1] Harriet Ann Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself. Public Domain Books, 2009. Kindle edition. Location 50-102.

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