Mary, Alice and Dot

John 12:1-8

Alice was good with numbers. She worked in the loan department of a bank, and she was proud of her work. It meant a lot to her that her calculations and attention to detail allowed local businesses to invest, create new jobs, and serve the community. It was a quiet kind of satisfaction, careful and sensible.

She felt different when she was involved in what she called her other job. She was one of many volunteer drivers who collected food from restaurants and stores — food that otherwise would have gone to the dump — and took it to a big kitchen which a local non-profit ran. There, all that left-over food was turned into meals for the homeless and the working poor. Think of it as a place where The Nashville Food Project meets Luke 14:12.

So, it was not unusual for Alice to stop by a doughnut shop early one Tuesday morning, before she had to be at the office. She picked up several boxes of doughnuts that hadn’t been sold the previous day; boxes of sweet deliciousness on the backseat of her Honda, two stacks of them, gently strapped in place with seatbelts, and another box on the passenger seat with her hand on it so a sudden step on the brake wouldn’t send things flying forward. At the kitchen where she was headed, one of the chefs would transform this portion of the daily harvest into a fluffy baked dessert, the most decadent of bread puddings, with a vanilla custard, and in just a few hours, volunteers would serve it as part of a tasty and beautifully presented lunch to folks in the city who often go hungry. Alice was happy to contribute to the daily feast.

On the way from the kitchen to the bank, she was humming. Circling down into the garage she had a smile on her face, and she was still smiling when she stepped on the elevator that would take her to the twelfth floor. Three more people got in the car when it stopped at the lobby, and one of them, briefcase in one hand, phone in the other, eyes on the screen, suddenly looked up, with big, happy eyes, and said, “It smells like doughnuts in here. I love doughnuts.”

There was a hint of a blush on Alice’s face when she told everybody on the way up about her other job and the joy of it. When she got off on the twelfth floor, she had recruited the doughnut lover to come along on her next food-gleaning round. There was a sweet fragrance that lingered in that car, and it wasn’t just the doughnuts; it was difficult to describe with words, but unforgettable.

John takes us to Bethany, a village just a couple of miles outside Jerusalem. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived there, and Jesus stayed with them for dinner the day before he entered Jerusalem for the last time. Just a few days earlier, Jesus had miraculously brought life to their house. You know the story. The sisters had sent him a message to let him know that Lazarus was very ill, and when he arrived, his friend had already been in the tomb for days. Martha told him, “Lord, there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Then Jesus stood outside the tomb, weeping, and he shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus came out, not like some Zombie, but Lazarus himself, restored to life.

Jesus came to Bethany six days before the Passover knowing full well that his opponents in the city were making plans to put him to death. He knew that his days were numbered and that this might well be his last meal with his good friends.

Martha served the food, Lazarus was one of those at table with him, and no one had noticed that Mary had gone until she came back, holding a small jar in her hands. She loosened her hair — in a room full of men — which raised plenty of eyebrows, but that was only the beginning. Without saying a word she knelt and poured the content of the jar on Jesus’ feet, a pound of perfume made of precious oils. We know that at least one person in the room was offended by the extravagance of her act — but a woman touching and rubbing a man’s feet in front of others, that just wasn’t done. How high can you raise your eyebrows at the dinner table before you get up and either say something or leave the room? And then she wiped his anointed feet with her hair. Her hair!

She knelt, she touched, she poured, she caressed his skin with her hair, but she didn’t speak. Mary Gordon calls it “the most purely sensual moment in the Gospels.”[1] And Debie Thomas notes that

what happens between Jesus and Mary in this narrative happens skin to skin. Mary doesn’t need to use words; her yearning, her worship, her gratitude, and her love are enacted wholly through her body. Just as Jesus later breaks bread with his disciples, Mary breaks open the jar in her hands, allowing its contents to pour freely over Jesus’s feet. …[And] Jesus, rather than shunning her intimate gesture, receives Mary’s gift into his own body with gratitude, tenderness, pleasure, and blessing.[2]

With this moment of great tenderness, Jesus’ body is brought into view, the body soon to be subjected to abuse and torture and a cruel execution. It’s as though Mary knew what lay ahead for him, that death was closing in; as though she knew that he would hold nothing back. And holding nothing back, unashamed, she poured out her love and gratitude for the man who embodied the extravagant love of God.

And Mary didn’t say a word. Judas, it appears, did all the talking. He objected, pointing out that the perfume could have been sold for a lot of money, enough to feed an entire family for a year. His words sounded like the voice of moral protest. They sounded like advocacy for the poor — but his protest smelled rotten, because it didn’t have love in it. It was just ugly noise.

Just a few days later, Jesus would spend the last evening with his disciples in the city. During supper, he would get up, take off his robe, tie a towel around himself, pour water into a basin, wash the disciples’ feet, wipe them with the towel, and he wouldn’t say a word until he got to Peter who protested.

“Do you know what I have done to you?” he would say to them. “I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet. You also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

Mary of Bethany lived that new commandment, even before it was given. Just outside the city where deathly plans were being plotted, Mary’s house became a house of prophetic witness to love and life. The stench of death was still a vivid memory there, but what lingered, what infused every room and corner of the house was the sweet fragrance of love’s extravagance. What lingered was the aroma of Mary’s folk coronation of a king who washes feet, of a man who inspires and commands those who follow him to love each other as he has loved them: with abandon.

Most of us don’t do that, most of the time. My friend Dot, every year, on a day that was special to them, used to put on her friend’s grave the most lavish flower arrangement. Each year, the flowers quickly wilted, and each year, some of Dot’s friends chided her for what they considered her misguided generosity. As a retired teacher, she didn’t have a lot of disposable income. Wouldn’t all that money be better spent if she made an annual contribution to a scholarship fund instead? One day, she sat across from me and asked, “What do you think I should do?”

“Don’t let them get to you,” I told her. “Nothing done for love is ever wasted.”

Mary loved with abandon, and most of us don’t do that, most of the time. We love in Jesus’ name, but carefully, with a strong sense for what’s practical and sensible and efficient. Most of the time, we don’t pour out our love like Mary, mirroring the outpouring of love she knew because of Jesus. Except, sometimes we do, like Dot.

Most of the time, we’re like Alice who knows how to calculate carefully before taking a loan proposal to the deal committee. Alice who knows the numbers, and the institutional demands, and the markets, and the margins. Alice who also drives across town with boxes of yesterday’s doughnuts stacked in the backseat and a big smile on her face, humming, because there’s such joy in being part of making life resemble the feast that it is.

There was and is nothing economical about Jesus’ death, just as there was and is nothing economical about his life. It was and is and will be the fullness of his life poured out for the life of the world. He is God’s extravagant generosity and compassion in the flesh. And because of him, sometimes we love daringly as we await the fullness of the new creation, when the whole world will smell like Mary’s house, an unending feast of love and life.

[1] Mary Gordon, Reading Jesus: A Writer’s Encounter with the Gospels (New York: Anchor Books, 2009), 36.

[2] Debie Thomas https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2153-while-you-still-have-me

A feast for siblings

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

There was a man who had two sons…,” the story begins. It’s a story nesting inside another, one that begins with muttered complaints about Jesus, grumbling voices, saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Yes, he does. Thank God, he does. Where would we be if he didn’t? This fellow is the love of God in human flesh. And inside his story all of our stories nest.

“There was a man who had two sons…,” the story begins. Most of us have heard it many times. We’ve identified with one brother, perhaps at some point with the other, perhaps with the father. Some of us have wondered about the mother who is conspicuously absent throughout. We don’t know why she’s not in the picture. Is it for reasons of narrative economy, to help us focus on just the one triangle of relationships? Or is it because of a cultural bias that sees no need for stories about a mother who had two sons or a father who had two daughters? There are lots of stories in the Bible about sibling relationships, but most of them by far are about brothers. Can you think of stories with sisters in them? There’s Mary and Martha, and there’s Leah and Rachel, but I can’t think of any stories that focus on a parent and two sisters.[1]

I grew up the younger of two sons and the brother of a younger sister. My brother, he was three when I was born, never tired of telling me how easy I had it compared to him. He was the pioneer who cleared a path through the thickets of parental insecurity all by himself. “I know, I know,” I used to tell him, “it’s hard to be the crown prince.”

When we grew up, parents took about as many pictures of their kids between birth and graduation as today’s parents take in a week, but there are photos of both my brother and I on the first day of first grade. We both look cautiously optimistic, and the Sunday coat that brother #1 wore on his first day of school was still good three years later for brother #2. My sister stood in the entrance of our Elementary School four years later, and chances are, had she been a boy, she would have donned that coat a third time.

Anyway, Carly Simon wrote a softly swinging song, My Older Sister, a song that captures snippets of a little girl’s thoughts and observations in lines like,

She rides in the front seat, she’s my older sister
She knows her power over me
She goes to bed an hour later than I do
When she turns the lights out
What does she think about?
And what does she do in the daylight
That makes her so great? …
She flies through the back door, she’s my older sister
She throws French phrases ‘round the room
She has ice skates and legs that fit right in…
She turns everybody’s heads
While I wear her last year’s threads
With patches and stitches and a turned-up hem
Oh, but to be … just once to be
My older sister

I did wear my brother’s last year’s threads a lot, but my song about us wouldn’t be softly swinging, it would be more like the shouted lyrics and pounding beat of you’re not the boss of me now by They Might Be Giants.[2]

One of the first stories in the Bible is about two brothers, Cain and Abel, and we know how that one ended for the younger of the two. The book of Genesis tells the stories of our deepest roots and our oldest wounds, and in every generation of Abraham’s children we encounter the pattern of the two brothers—there are Ishmael and Isaac, then there are Esau and Jacob, then there are the older sons of Jacob (who act like one) and their little brother Joseph—and in each generation, it’s the little brother whose story is remembered. It’s like there is a desire at work to rewrite the story of the first brothers, that painful story of rivalry and death.

“There was a man who had two sons…,” Jesus’ parable begins. At some point after the invention of the printing press, Bible publishers started adding section headings to the text. Stories were given titles, and titles suggest how to read. “The parable of the prodigal son” it was called and that’s how we’ve read it, leaving the older brother standing in the field as though he wasn’t really part of the story anyway. No one thought of calling it “the parable of the prodigal father” or “the parable of the lost boys.” What would you call it?

You take a look at the two sons, and you notice that neither is a particularly attractive character. The younger is disrespectful, self-absorbed and reckless, perhaps manipulative. The older comes across as heartless, resentful, and jealous. But whether we like it or not, we can identify, at least to a degree, with either. We wonder what it might be like to be so brave and leave home to explore life far beyond the horizon. Sure, he is reckless, but he follows his dream. Perhaps you were once just like him, or perhaps you wish you had been more like him, just a little.

Or do you find it easier to relate to the firstborn, the responsible one, the one who does what he says and shows up on time and takes care of the family farm? “Doesn’t he have a point?” you say to yourself. Perhaps you know all too well what it’s like to make sacrifices every day and no one seems to notice, let alone appreciate or celebrate what you do. Is it too much to ask to be treated fairly? The property had been divided, and each had been given his fair share, and the younger chose to cash it all in and squander it. It may be good and right to give somebody a second chance, sure, give him work to do and food to eat, give him a roof over his head—but a party? And this was no fried chicken and a sheet cake from Publix for dessert kind of party. They killed the fatted calf—enough BBQ to invite the whole town.

Then there’s the father who apparently doesn’t believe that children who are old enough to go away should also be ready to live with the consequences of their choices. When his son comes home—broke, humiliated, and hungry—dad is beside himself, acting like a fool. He runs down the road and throws his arms around the young man, shouting orders over his shoulder between hugs,

“The robe—the best one—quickly. The ring—bring me the ring. And sandals, bring sandals—And the calf, kill the calf! Invite the neighbors! It’s my son; he was dead and is alive again!”

Only Jesus could come up with a story like this. In our version of the story, the father would be waiting in the house, sitting in his chair, Dad’s chair, arms folded, with a stern look on his face. He would listen to what the young man had to say for himself, and then, perhaps, he would look at him and say,

“Well, I’m glad you’ve come to see the error of your ways; I hope you learned your lesson. Now go and help your brother in the field.” In our story, there probably wouldn’t be a party. But it’s not our story. It’s Jesus’ story for us.

Sinners felt at home in the company of Jesus; even notorious sinners who were shunned by everybody in town came near to listen to him, or just to be around him. He didn’t mind being seen with them; he even broke bread with them, openly. And of course, some who were witnessing his interactions were pulled back and forth between a genuine desire to understand and loudly demanding that he explain himself.

In response, Jesus told stories of a shepherd who searched the hills for one lost sheep until he found it, and of a woman who swept the house from the attic to the basement, searching diligently for one lost coin until she found it. What Jesus taught and lived, and continues to teach and live, is that every human being, every last one of us, is a beloved child of God. You belong, they belong. This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them—you, me, all of us. God’s love, Jesus teaches us with his whole life, God’s love is not the special reward for the good boys and girls. God’s love is the beginning and the end of all things, a love that frees us to be who we were created to be in the one household of God.

The younger son in the parable did everything he could not to think of himself as a child of his father or a sibling to his brother. But the father never stopped thinking of him as a beloved child. Never.

And the elder? We are at the end of the parable. The elder brother is standing outside the house; light, laughter and music are pouring through the windows, but he can’t move. Or is it that he doesn’t want to move? No one has asked him whether he wants to be reconciled with this good-for-nothing wastrel. No one has asked him how he feels about wearing the second-best robe, since the best one apparently had been given to the wanderer, the squanderer. He is standing outside, arms crossed, fists clenched, fury in the belly. He refuses to go inside. It feels good to know who’s in the right and who’s not.

But then the father comes outside and pleads with him to come in. The father doesn’t want this to end with one brother rejoicing and the other grumbling. The father wants this to end with a feast, a feast which fairness cannot host, but which love never tires to prepare.

The story, it turns out, is not about who is the golden boy and who is the other one. The story within the story, and indeed the whole story, is about God’s reckless extravagance in embracing us.

It doesn’t matter if we got lost wandering to a distant country or if we got lost never leaving at all. It doesn’t matter how we forgot that we are not solitary strangers or each other’s keepers, but siblings, members of the one household of God.

What matters is that God delights in looking for us and calling us, in finding and reminding us, in pleading with us, waiting with us, rejoicing with us. What matters is that in Jesus’ story life becomes the feast it was meant to be from the beginning. So let us turn to God, with gratitude and joy, and welcome one another as we have been welcomed.

[1] The daughters of Zelophehad successfully petitioned Moses for a change in inheritance law. They were five sisters, Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah (Numbers 27).

[2] The song became the opening theme song for Malcolm in the Middle.

The urgency of now

Luke 13:1-9

The mother sat in a gazebo outside the children’s hospital; her little daughter was inside having surgery.  Earlier in the week, the girl had been playing with a friend when her head began to hurt. By the time she found her mother, she could no longer see. At the hospital, a CAT scan confirmed that a large tumor was pressing on the girl’s optic nerve, and she was scheduled for surgery as soon as possible.

The mother sat in the gazebo beside an ashtray full of cigarette butts, and she smelled as if she had puffed every one of them. She just sat there, staring at the floor planks with a half-hypnotized look. A chaplain sat down beside her, and after some small talk the girl’s mother began to tell her just how awful she felt. She talked about the load of terror and sadness pressing down on her. And she talked about God.

“This is my punishment,” she said, “for smoking these damned cigarettes. God couldn’t get my attention any other way, so he made my baby sick.”

The chaplain wanted to tell her, “The God I know wouldn’t do such a thing,” but she also knew this wasn’t the moment for a debate about God. This mother needed to get a grip on the disaster of her daughter’s illness. She needed to control the chaos. She needed to know a cause, a reason. She needed it so badly, she was willing to be the reason.[1] Her parched soul thirsted for an answer, thirsted so badly, she was willing to drink from the dark well of her deepest fear, and she made a god in the image of her fear. This god made her baby sick to get her attention about a bad habit she hadn’t been able to quit.

When the late Rev. Bill Coffin was senior minister of Riverside Church in New York City, his son Alex was killed in a car accident. Alex was driving in a terrible storm; he lost control of his car and plunged into the waters of Boston Harbor. The following Sunday, Dr. Coffin stepped into the pulpit and preached a now famous sermon about his son’s death. He thanked the congregation for their messages of condolence, for food brought to their home, for an arm around his shoulder when no words would do. He was grateful, but he also was angry, very angry; he raged about one well-meaning friend who had hinted that Alex’s death was God's will. This is what he said:

Do you think it was God’s will that Alex never fixed that lousy windshield wiper? Do you think it was God’s will that he was probably driving too fast in such a storm, that he probably had a couple of 'frosties' too many? Do you think it was God's will that there are no street lights along that stretch of the road and no guard rail separating the road and Boston Harbor?

And after taking a couple of breaths he continued,

The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is, 'It is the will of God.' Never do we know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in knowing that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God's heart was the first of all our hearts to break.[2]

When tragedy strikes we search for reasons, answers, explanations, something to contain the chaos. Our souls thirst for meaning, thirst so badly, we are willing to drink from just about any well.

They came to Jesus waving the morning paper and quoting the front page headlines:

PILATE’S GUARDS SLAUGHTER GALILEANS IN TEMPLE

TOWER OF SILOAM COLLAPSES: EIGHTEEN KILLED

Tragedy strikes and we want reasons, explanations, answers. Was it the Galileans’ fault? Did they provoke the Roman guards with anti-Roman slogans? Galileans were known for that kind of thing. Or was it Pilate’s fault? Was the governor unable to control his own military, or was he himself behind this cruel act? He was known for that kind of thing. And where is God in all of this?

Jesus asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” Do you think they died in this way because somehow they deserved it? Do you think God’s justice rewards some people for their actions with frequent flyer miles they can cash in for the ultimate trip to heaven, while other people are judged and punished, seemingly randomly, to teach the rest of us? Is that how you imagine God’s justice?

“No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."

Jesus shows no interest in letting us drive by the tragedies of life like that, rubbernecking and speculating about the connection of sin and suffering and the justice of God. If God were the kind of tit-for-tat God you think God is, why, do you think, would you still be standing here explaining your way through the morning news of state-sponsored terror and collapsing buildings?

And then he tells us the story about a man who had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and came looking for fruit on it for three years and found none. Frustrated, he said to his gardener, “Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” Now that’s a story about God’s justice, isn’t it? Judgment for those who fail to produce the fruit of righteousness. You remember John the Baptist, how he called people to repentance with hard and unrelenting words, “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Plenty of warning since the days of Moses, but very little repentance, very little change, no fruit. Not a single fig, so the owner says, “Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?”

The story could end there. The story could end with the gardener going to the shed to get the ax, and some preacher saying, “You all shape up before he comes back or else …” But the gardener hasn’t left. Standing beside the barren tree he says, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good, but if not you can cut it down." Jesus tells us a story about the gift of time and the work of God.

The death of young golfers aboard a passenger van in Texas this past week is as tragic as the death of the eighteen buried under the tower of Siloam centuries ago.[3] And God’s hands weren’t on the wheel of the pickup that a young boy drove into the northbound lane of a Texas road, striking the passenger van head on, as they weren’t on the wheel of Alex’s car years ago in Boston. But, says Jesus, let their deaths remind you that life is fragile and threatened by chaos at every moment. And there are things that you cannot keep putting off until tomorrow or another day. Repentance is one of them. The moment to repent is now; not tomorrow, not sometime, not when you get to it – now. The moment to fully reorient your life toward God and God’s reign is now. Jesus wants us to understand that we are not spectators looking over the wall into a vineyard speculating about the fate of a barren tree. We are the tree, thirsty for lush, fruitful life, and perhaps never more than now, when humanity finally needs to come together to address our planet’s climate crisis in decisive ways, but our souls are pummeled daily with news from the war raging in Ukraine. With the psalmist we cry out, “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”[4] And we hear a voice from the book of the prophet Isaiah, calling us, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters!”[5]

There is water for the dry and weary land, water for the parched soul, for the barren tree. Soil can get so hard and packed down that even after a long spring rain the roots are still dry because all the water ran off on the surface. But a patient and dedicated gardener can break the hardened soil so that water and nutrients can reach the roots.

It takes only minutes to cut down a tree that appears to be dead and barren – but digging takes time. Judgement only takes a moment – but love takes time. The gardener in Jesus’ parable asks for time to do the life-nourishing work of love, one more round of seasons. We are reminded that we are not alone in our desire for fruitful living, and we are not alone in our efforts to help bring it about. God expects fruit, but God is also committed to caring attention and loving work. To ask God to do that work with us can be a first step to repentance.

The prophet warns us not to spend our labor for that which does not satisfy.[6] Not every well we turn to looking for life is a fount of blessing. Many have turned to nationalism in recent years, all over the world, as a source of meaning and identity. Carrie Frederick Frost, an American of Ukrainian descent, writes,

As much as I am sympathetic to the strengthening of Ukrainian identity in the wake of the invasion, I have reservations about the kind of national identity that trumps every other loyalty. As an Orthodox Christian, I try to remember where I store my treasure. When I am at my best, my ultimate allegiance is only to my Creator. This identity, as a beloved child of God, is my primary identity. My tribe is the human tribe, created in the image and likeness of God. … If we truly understood ourselves and one another as creatures formed in the image and likeness of God, war would not be possible.[7]

If we truly understood ourselves and one another as creatures formed in the image and likeness of God - but we don’t, which is why the prophets call us to repentance, and why Jesus never tires to invite us to trust the work of the caring gardener. God’s strong mercy breaks open the hardened soil so all of us thirsty ones may drink with joy from the wells of salvation.

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor tells this story from her own time as a hospital chaplain in “Life-Giving Fear,” The Christian Century, March 4, 1998, 229; I have modified the story only slightly.

[2] From the sermon, Alex’s death, delivered January 23, 1983. See Warren Goldstein, William Sloan Coffin, Jr.: A Holy Impatience (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 309-310.

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/sports/golf/golf-team-crash.html

[4] Psalm 63:1

[5] Isaiah 55:1

[6] Isaiah 55:2

[7] https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/christians-first?

Our belongingness

On Wednesday we received ash crosses on our foreheads. We use ash to mark the beginning of Lent, because our ancestors used to sit in sackcloth and ashes as a sign of repentance. Ashes are all that’s left when the fire has burned out. The ash we use on Ash Wednesday is what is left of the palm fronds we spread on the ground and waved with joy when we welcomed Jesus and his reign to the city. That bonfire of joy burned out fast, and it’s humbling to remember how short-lived our commitment to follow Jesus can be.

We let ourselves be marked with an ash cross, because the cross reminds us how, to his death, Jesus embraced us and God in love and faithfulness, with words of forgiveness on his lips. We remember that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. We remember that we are creatures of God, made in the image of God, made for communion with God, mortal, yet forever alive in the love that calls all things into being.

Ashes and dust remind us that we are earthlings. Our story begins with God who formed the human being, adam in Hebrew, from the dust of the ground, adamah, and breathed into the earthling’s nostrils the breath of life. We belong to God and we belong to the ground from which God has made us. We belong to creation and to the Creator, and we seek to live in ways that honor our belongingness.

God planted a garden in Eden, took the human being and put them in it to work it and keep it. In English, there’s another word that reminds us of our beginnings and our belonging. The word humble comes from the same latin root as humus, meaning soil. With ashes on our foreheads, we humbly remember our belongingness. With our hands in the dirt, and our bare feet touching the soil, we humbly remember our belongingness. When we forget our belongingness, the opposites of humble emerge: we become arrogant, haughty, imperious, pretentious.

In the garden, God said to the earthling, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” Our story begins with life in a flourishing garden and with a commandment, given to us humans who are to work and keep this marvel of lush life.

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

The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers; 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.[1]

Nothing is the way it’s supposed to be, our belongingness to God and creation and to each other is fractured—and that arrogant little man with dreams of empire who invades a neighboring country from north and south and east, shelling its cities and killing its citizens, making it a crime to call his war a war—that pretentious, violent little man, ruling over a house of greed and lies, he is dangerous, yes, but he’s just a little man lost in dreams of greatness.

The story of the earthling in the garden invites us to consider that the initial and most consequential crack in our fractured world is the rift in our relationship with God. And with that, we’re also invited to consider that the wholeness of life we all long for begins with the healing of that rift. It begins with our learning to trust in God who is merciful and kind. Many have been tempted to see the little tsar from St. Petersburg as the personification of evil, and that to rid the world of evil, he must be eliminated. But haughty little men with dreams of greatness will continue to rise. So we must strengthen what connects us. We must nurture what helps us cooperate. We must learn to humbly listen to each other and take each other’s needs as seriously as we take our own. We must  remember our belongingness.

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

When Jesus was baptized, a voice came from heaven, “You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And right there, Luke has inserted a long genealogy going back all the way not just to David or Abraham, but beyond, generation after generation, to “Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.” This genealogy is Luke’s way of telling us that Jesus is one of us, an earthling, and that the gospel of Jesus, the beloved son of God, is for all the children of Adam and Eve, for all God’s beloved sons and daughters.

In the next scene, Jesus, his hair still wet from his baptism in the Jordan, is led by the Spirit in the wilderness. Jesus is alone, and he is not. He is filled with the Spirit. He knows who he is; the voice he heard by the river didn’t mumble. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” He enters the wilderness in order to find out how to be Jesus, how to be true to the One who called him Beloved.

He enters the wilderness for forty days of walking during the cool hours of the morning and late evening, just he and the spirit-companion and the occasional animal he would encounter while getting a drink from a hidden spring. Forty days of sleeping in caves when the sun was high. Forty nights of praying under a blanket of stars, just he and his questions and worries and the spirit-companion. Until the hunger pangs come upon him with ferocious need. That’s when he hears that other voice—a friendly voice, concerned, almost caring. “Why are you doing this to yourself? You are the Son of God, why are you sitting on your hands?” This is not the river voice. Who then is this? “How about one small miracle for yourself?” the voice whispers. “Come on, help yourself to some bread. Nobody’s watching. It’s just you and me. Touch that stone and turn it into bread, and eat.” Jesus doesn’t, and he says, “It is written, a human being does not live by bread alone.” Jesus is famished, weak, and vulnerable, but he refuses to act in self-serving ways.

Suddenly he has a vision, seeing in an instant all the kingdoms of the world, east and west, north and south, great and small, rich and poor, the ones with just rulers and the others with self-serving tyrants. And he hears that voice again, the power whisperer. “Come on, take it. I can give it to anyone I please. Worship me, and it will all be yours. You’ll be in charge. Think of all the good you could do as ruler of the world. You could end hunger, injustice, and wars with a snap of your finger.” But Jesus continues to be led by the Spirit, not the power whisperer, and he responds, “It is written, worship the Lord your God, and serve God only.”

Suddenly Jesus finds himself in Jerusalem, way up on top of the temple, and there’s that voice again. “You are the son of God, are you not? Show them. Show Jerusalem and the world who you are. Just throw yourself down. It is written, isn’t it, ‘God will command the holy angels concerning you to protect you… On their hands they will bear you up so that you won’t dash your foot against a stone…’ Come on, jump and let them see you glide down on angels’ wings.” But Jesus says no. He won’t serve his own interests first, he won’t take advantage of any opportunity to rise to the top by any means in order to do good, and we won’t manipulate people with publicity stunts. Instead, he chooses to love God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind; and his neighbor as himself.[2] He chooses to honor his belongingness to God and to us and to all creation.

The initial and most consequential crack in our fractured world is the rift in our relationship with God, and in Jesus’ life of faithfulness the rift has been healed. The final clash of God’s reign and the empire of the whispering tempter happened on the cross. Again Jesus heard the voice suggesting that he use his power for himself. “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one,” some scoffed. Others said, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” And one kept deriding him, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”[3]

He didn’t save himself. He did not call on armies of angels. He did not use God for his own ends. He trusted in the faithfulness of God, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” And raising him from the dead, God vindicated him, saying yes to his teachings, his friendship with sinners, and his subversive eating habits.

The story of Jesus is the story of humanity and God, the retelling and healing of our story that begins in Eden. Jesus heard the whispers of the other voice, but he didn’t allow it to sow its seeds of suspicion and distrust. In boundless love, he humbly lived out our belongingness to God, to each other, and to the earth. And he lives so we may find life in fullness through him.

[1] Isaiah 24:4-5

[2] See Lk 10:27

[3] Luke 23:35,37,39

Transfiguration of the world

Luke 9:28-43

Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up the mountain to pray. In Kyiv, for days now, thousands of women, men, and children went down underground, seeking shelter from Russian mortar shells and rockets. Many of them, no doubt, praying for the attack to end, praying for courage for their defenders, praying for their leaders who refused to leave them, praying for the lives of their loved ones. We find ourselves somewhere between that mountaintop and the underground, praying for them, praying with them. Amid the turmoil of our anxiety, fear, sadness, anger, grief, and rage, we pray. May there be a swift and peaceful end to the conflict. May hardened hearts be softened. May the brave citizens of Russia who speak up and stand up against Putin’s war find their resolve strengthened. May refugees be greeted with love and welcome. May our own hearts be cleansed of fantasies of imperial dominance. May we all learn that cooperation is a better path than domination and control. And divided as we are in this country and in other countries, may we stand united for democratic values, democratic institutions, human rights, and an international order based on the rule of law. The Council of Bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA invited us to pray with them, “Send your heavenly legions, O Lord, commanded by the patron of Kyiv, Archangel Michael, to crush”— and this is where we’re easily tempted to fill in  words like ‘the enemy,’ or ‘the invaders,’ or simply ‘them’ but the prayer asks God to crush “the desires of the aggressor whose desire is to eradicate our people.”[1] Crush the desires of the aggressor. Three days from today we will observe Ash Wednesday, and once again we will pray with words from Psalm 51, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”[2] As much as we pray for a change of heart for others, we pray that our own desires and the actions flowing from them may be just and kind, steeped in God’s deep compassion.

In one of Brian Doyle’s many marvelous essays, he takes us back to a dining-room scene at home, many years ago.

I was sitting at the dining-room table. My dad and my mom and my sister were sitting there also. I believe it was lunch. My brothers were elsewhere committing misdemeanor. I believe it was summertime. The room was lined with books from floor to ceiling. I believe the meal was finished, and my mother and sister were having tea and cigarettes. My father mentioned casually that our cousins were coming for dinner next Sunday or something like that. … I shoved my chair back and whined and snarled and complained. I believe this had something to do with some vague plans of my own that I had of course not shared with anyone else as yet, probably because they were half-hatched or mostly imaginary. My father said something calm and reasonable, as still is his wont. I said something rude. My mother remonstrated quietly but sharply, as still is her wont. I said something breathtakingly selfish. My sister said something gently and kind, as still is her wont. I said something cutting and sneering and angry. My mother slowly put down her tea. Odd that I would remember that detail, her cigarette in her left hand and her teacup in her right and the cup descending slowly to the table. The table had a blue cloth, and just outside the window the yew hedge was the most brilliant vibrant green. As I remember it was just as my mother was putting her teacup on the table, just as the smoke from the cigarettes was rising thin and blue and unbroken …, just as my father put his big hands on the table and prepared to stand up and say something calm and blunt to me and cut the moment before it spun out of control, that I realized I was being a fool. It wasn’t an epiphany or a trumpet blast or anything epic. It was an almost infinitesimal wriggle of something for which I don’t have good words even now. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed, though I was embarrassed, later. It was more like for a second I saw who I actually was rather than who I thought I was, or wanted to be, or wanted other people to think I was. I understood, dimly, for an instant—I believe for the first time in my life—that I was being a fool.[3]

I’ve had a few moments like that over the years, and I thank God for them. Brian Doyle called his biographical story, A Fool’s Awakening, and blessed is the fool who needs to awaken only once. I’m not one of them, and I’m grateful for each moment when I got to see who I actually was rather than who I thought I was, or wanted to be, or wanted other people to think I was. I believe that’s what I’m getting, moments of awakening, when I ask God to create in me a clean heart and put a new and right spirit within me. And I hope God will give Mr. Putin one of those moments very soon, if he hasn’t had one already, for it seems to me, he’s been awfully wrapped up in who he thought he was, or wanted to be, or wanted other people to think he was.

Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. I imagine that their feet were sore, and their legs, weary. They had been all over Galilee, following Jesus who proclaimed the good news of God’s reign. Once on the mountaintop, Jesus must have been doing all the praying; the other three could hardly keep their eyes open. But before sleep could overcome them, they were startled: Jesus, who must have reached the summit just as sweaty and dirty as they did, shone with the very light of heaven. They were tired, very tired, but they saw Jesus, their master and friend, talking with Moses and Elijah, the great prophets who themselves had encountered God on the mountain, and here they were speaking with Jesus about his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. They were talking about his death on that hill outside of Jerusalem, but they did not use the word death. And they did not speak of it as something that would happen to him, but something he would accomplish. The word translated as departure is exodos, and with Moses right there, in heavenly glory, perhaps the pieces were beginning to come together for the three:

He had told them, “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”[4] Jesus would go to Jerusalem, and through his death and resurrection he would lead God’s people from bondage to freedom. In this exodos the great opponent wouldn’t be Pharaoh, but all the powers that keep humans in captivity, all that keeps us and all of creation from being fully alive. Jesus’ suffering, rejection, and death would look for all the world like defeat, but it would be an exodos, with Jesus laying down his own body to part the waters, and rising on the other side, the firstborn from the dead.

The three saw the glory of God shining forth from Jesus. They were witnesses as the great prophets appeared in glory and affirmed the way of Jesus as the way of redemption. The moment was awesome and holy, and they wanted it to last; everything was beautiful and clear, bathed in the light of heaven.

“Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” Don’t let this end. Let us mark this moment and make it last. Don’t let this fullness, this glorious beauty, slip away.

The weary disciples were given a glimpse of Easter, a glimpse of life redeemed from the power of sin, a glimpse of creation shining with the glory of God. But then a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified. In that darkness nothing dazzled, nothing shone. Whereas before everything had been exceedingly clear, now they were completely in the dark without any sense of place or direction. They were terrified. And in the darkness they heard the voice: This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him.

Just one commandment: Listen to him. Listen for dear life. Listen to words of forgiveness and mercy, promises of paradise, words from the cross. Listen without ceasing, on the edge of glory and on the brink of death.[5] Listen to him, all that he has said and all that he will say. He will say all that is needed. Listen for dear life.

The three didn’t say a word about what they had seen. They followed Jesus down from the mountain, down to the plains and the valleys of life, down to where a great crowd was waiting. And there the silence was broken by a father who cried out, “Teacher, I beg you, look at my son; he is my only child.”

The father’s cry was like an echo of the voice they had heard on the mountain, only here it was filled with pain and helplessness. And how many times is this parent’s anguish being echoed in Afghanistan and in Yemen and in Kyiv, in the underground, and on train stations all over Ukraine where mothers and fathers have to turn around because there’s no more room on the train to Romania, no more room on the train to Hungary, the train to Poland. This is where we long for transfiguration: in the lightless plains where life is threatened, violated, wounded; down here where dreams of freedom are crushed under the boots of soldiers in Ukraine and Myanmar, in Hongkong, and lest we forget, in El Salvador and Guatemala and in Chile; down here where a little man with dreams of greatness and an arsenal of lies and other weapons has furbished a nation’s fear of foreign invasion into the rationale to invade another nation with a long history of invasion and foreign control—what a perverse, deadly dance. This is where we long for transfiguration, down here where for many hope is hard to come by. Down here is where we encounter God’s Chosen One, calling us to follow him on a journey that doesn’t take us out of the world into realms of lofty, spiritual splendor, but deeper into the world. He takes us with him, and we stumble along behind him, because we trust him. Because Peter, James and John trusted him, and Mary, Martha, and Susanna and all the others trusted him, and those first followers have told us how, with the wondrous light of the resurrection shining in their hearts, their eyes were opened to see themselves truly and fully, and to see every person and recognize them for who they actually are, made in the image of God, beloved, chosen. We stumble along in the company of Jesus because his journey is about our transfiguration and the transfiguration of the world.

[1] https://uocofusa.org/news_220124_1

[2] Psalm 51:10

[3] Brian Doyle, “A Fool’s Awakening,” Christian Century, February 19, 2014,  12.

[4] Luke 9:22

[5] Heidi Neumark, “Altitude Adjustment,” The Christian Century 124, no. 3 (February 6, 2007), 16.

And he prayed for him

Luke 6:27-38

I’ve known Lenny for about a year now. He used to live in one of the camps over on Charlotte, out near Lowes and Walmart. One day he came by the church, an older man with a cane, with bad arthritis in his hands and knees, and asked for some groceries and a bus pass. I had run out of gift cards for the grocery store, so we went there together. In the car, he told me a little about himself and the hardships of life on the streets, especially for an older guy like himself. He asked me to pray for his lady friend up in Massachusetts — twice he told me her name was Edna, to make sure I wouldn’t forget — he asked me to pray for her because she had heart problems and she was afraid of Covid. Lenny gets about $600 Social Security a month, and every month he sends some of it to Edna, so she can stay in her small apartment. After we were done shopping, I dropped him off at the bus stop, and before he shut the door, he bent in one last time to thank me, and asked me again to pray for Edna, because her heart is not well and she’s so afraid of the Covid.[1]

Lenny came by the church a few more times after that, to get a bus pass or a grocery card, or just to chat. I hadn’t seen him for a few weeks, when on my way back from Edwin Warner Park yesterday, I saw a man with a cane at the intersection, holding up a cardboard sign, Thank you for your kindness. That looks like Lenny, I said to myself, but there were several cars in front of me, and then the light changed. So instead of crossing Hwy 70, I turned right, pulled into the parking lot, took some cash out of my wallet, and walked over to him.

“Hi, is that you, Lenny?” I had to ask because I had never seen him without a mask, but his eyes and bowed legs looked very familiar.

“Yes,” he said, looking a little puzzled at first, but then it clicked, and he laughed.

“I thought that looked like you,” I told him, “so I stopped to see how you’re doing.”

He was doing well, he said. “God has really blessed me. I have a little place where I’m staying, and they gave me a bus card that’s good for a year. I even had a job for over a week, but then I got Covid, so that was that.”

We continued to chat, and he told me about a guy he invited to stay at his place one night a couple of weeks ago when it was really cold. He didn’t know him, but he wanted him to be safe. So he went to Kroger and bought some chicken, prepared a nice supper, and they ate. Lenny, you will know by now, is a very generous man. The next morning, Lenny woke up, and his guest had already left – but not without taking Lenny’s money and his phone.

“Oh no, that’s the thanks you got?” There were a few more choice words in my heart; I knew how much he needed that phone, and how much it meant to him to be be able to call or text Edna.

I didn’t say any of those choice words, because Lenny responded, “Yes, I prayed for him.”

“You prayed for him?”

“Yes, isn’t that what Jesus taught us to do, Do good and pray for those who treat you bad?” He didn’t remember the exact words, but he remembered them well. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. Lenny held a cardboard sign, Thank you for your kindness, and he himself lived a kindness which Jesus attributed to the children of the Most High who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. I’m grateful I ran into him. He told me he’d come by sometime to chat, and again he asked me to pray for Edna, Edna in Massachusetts, he repeated.

Jesus says, “Do good to those who hate you.” I’m not aware of anyone who might hate me, but I try to imagine what these words do to people who are the target of organized hate – Jewish people, black and brown people, queer folk. Jesus says, “Pray for those who abuse you,” and I try to imagine what these words do to the victims of clergy sexual abuse who are waiting for accountability, for some acknowledgement of complicity from the hierarchy, and for real reform and transformation, and not just in the Roman Catholic Church. And I think about those of you who have been abused by family members, partners, spouses, supervisors – and I wonder what hearing these words does to you. Pray for those who abuse you. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. The sayings are so short, and dangerously memorable. I say dangerously memorable, because these pithy sayings easily take on a life of their own. They float around in the mind and the culture, and without the ballast of Jesus’ proclamation of good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom for the oppressed — without that critical ballast these pithy sayings turn into destructive, little pills perpetuating religiously white-washed oppression and abuse.

Love your enemies. Listen to your mother. Brush your teeth. The three sound deceptively similar, but the first one doesn’t pretend to be folk wisdom. The first one isn’t time-tested advice, passed down from generation to generation, for how to deal with the bully, the batterer, the abuser. Cruel advice is hardly good news. And telling the bullied, the battered, the abused, “Love your enemy” is cruel advice. Saying it may well be the least merciful act imaginable.

Love your enemies. Jesus says it twice in this brief passage from Luke. But let’s not forget, never forget, that everything Jesus says, everything he does, is good news for the poor, healing news, liberating news.

Love your enemies. The only one who can say that is the One who did say it. The only one who can say, Love your enemies, is the One who’s done it. The One who embodied God’s compassion and mercy like no other. The One who revealed the unfathomable depth of God’s mercy in his whole life and in his death by execution. As Paul reminds us, “Christ died for the ungodly… While we still were sinners Christ died for us… While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God.”[2] Love your enemies is not some pithy adage, short, memorable, made for meme, for instagram, for the scroll-by tweet. Love your enemies is the life of Jesus in three words. It is the revelation of the heart of God.

Miroslav Volf is a theologian from Croatia who has lived and taught in the U.S. for much of his life. In the preface of his fine book, Exclusion and Embrace, he recounts an experience from the winter of 1993. It was at the height of the fighting between Serbians and Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, and Volf delivered a lecture arguing that disciples of Jesus ought to embrace our enemies just as Christ embraced us. After the lecture, a member of the audience asked him if he could embrace a četnik. Četniks were notoriously wicked Serbian fighters infamous for destroying Croatian cities, and rounding up, murdering and raping civilians. For Volf, a četnik stood as the epitome of a real and concrete enemy. Could he embrace a četnik? “No, I cannot,” he answered after some hesitation, “but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to.”[3] “I think I should” describes the direction of his life and his life’s work — toward that impossible embrace. Volf struggles to fully imagine and live, what Jesus and the first Christian witnesses teach: Like me, my enemy is the recipient of God’s love and stands with me beneath the cross of Christ, both of us together in the embrace of the love that will not let us go.

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

The world says, do to others as they do to you. Jesus teaches, do to others as you would have them do to you. And then he points to the reality in which, as recipients of God’s unfathomable love, we already live, and says, do as God does to you: be merciful. And heaven knows, there’s no shortage of realities needing our best, most thoughtful mercy now.[4] I keep thinking about Lenny and his kindness, mirroring the love of the Most High who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

[1] I’m not using their actual names.

[2] Romans 5:6-10

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

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

Barns filled with plenty

Jeremiah 17:5-10; Luke 6:17-26

Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals.
Blessed are those who trust in the Lord.

It’s a clear choice, blessing or curse, echoing the words of Moses in the land of Moab, beyond the Jordan, before the people of Israel crossed over into the promised land:

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, … then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. … I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.[1]

Like Moses, Jeremiah presents a stark contrast, but it’s not the same as the familiar either/or that divides our world into us and them, red and blue, in and out, modes of speech and thought that provide clarity only at the cost of ignoring the many colors, perspectives, and traditions that actually constitute the world. Jeremiah and Jesus don’t peddle simplistic world portrayals. They speak with urgency about deep orientations that ultimately are either life-giving or not: life will either be characterized by lush fruitfulness, or it will represent an arid wasteland.

“Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make their flesh their strength,” Jeremiah warns his audience. Hearts turned away from God have turned away from the fountain of life and blessing, and are relying on human strength alone – whether that is economic power, political influence, military might, or technological skill – hearts turned away from God result in shrublike existence in parched places; and if that brings up pictures of drought-stricken landscapes and raging wildfires, your imagination may be on the right track.

But hearts turned toward God, hearts trusting in God, hearts open and receptive and obedient to God’s will and purposes lead to life’s flourishing and fruitfulness. Those whose hearts are turned toward God are like trees planted by streams of water. Even during a dry season, their thirsty roots find moisture and nourishment. They are not anxious when drought comes.

Now who on earth would choose a path that leads away from the source of life? Ask Jeremiah, and he’ll cry for an hour. So much depends on where the heart turns. And the heart, that part of our inner life where our intentions hatch and our decisions are made, the heart turns quite a bit. The heart is fickle, devious above all else, perverse, according to Jeremiah. “Who can understand it?” he asks, implying that no one can. The heart turns this way and that way, we don’t know how.

Most U.S. Americans would agree that every person is free to live the way they want as long as it doesn’t interfere with the freedom of others. We admire mavericks, creative entrepreneurs, and fearless explorers who boldly go where no one has gone before. We value freedom and autonomy, and we don’t want to live lives controlled by others. We follow our hearts. We create our own paths, directed by our own will and our own goals, pulled by our own dreams, energized by our own desires, in pursuit of our own accomplishments, with as little or as much concern for our neighbors as we see fit. We make our own respective self the measure of our lives. And the heart turns this way and that way, we don’t know how.

In contrast, the understanding of reality presented to us in scripture is thoroughly God-centered. Where we think of the good life in terms of self-fulfillment, the biblical witnesses speak of the purposes of God for us and for all of creation. Where in our culture prosperity has become a matter of getting as much of what you want as fast as you can, Jeremiah and other witnesses in scripture tell us of prosperity as the fruitfulness of life rooted in God. They see being autonomous as being disconnected, as being alienated not only from God, but from other people and from the non-human creation. From this perspective on life, our hearts need to turn, not like a whirligig, but like a hiker who realizes she’s on the wrong trail; we need to turn and reorient ourselves to God, and through God to each other and our fellow creatures.

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord,” says Jeremiah, but he’s no preacher of a prosperity gospel. There are voices that promise personal fortune, such as this one from the book of Proverbs,

Honor the Lord with your wealth
and with the first of all your crops.
Then your barns will be filled with plenty,
and your vats will burst with wine. [2]

But there’s also the counter-testimony by voices such as this one from Psalm 10, “The wicked boast of the desires of their heart, those greedy for gain curse and renounce the Lord. … Their ways prosper at all times.”[3] There is plenty of evidence in every generation that the ways of the wicked prosper and those who trust in God suffer.

When Jesus taught at the synagogue in Nazareth, he read from the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor”— and he declared the words fulfilled in his own mission.[4] The next time we hear Jesus teach in Luke, he has just come down from the mountain where he prayed and appointed the twelve, and now he addresses the disciples, and a multitude of people overhear his teaching, and the first words out of his mouth are, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” He doesn’t say that poverty is a blessing. He says to the poor disciples, You are blessed, for the reign of God is not a distant dream but already a present reality, and you are a part of it. You are blessed, because the brutal logic of the world is not divine law. You are blessed, because the reign of God is not a reflection of the world, but its transformation in glory, and you are witnessing the beginnings of it.

“God has a preferential love for the poor,” wrote theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, “not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will.”[5] The world pushes the poor to the margins and leaves them out of the conversations about the future, but they are at the center of God’s attention and of Jesus’ mission. The good news proclaimed to the poor is the assurance that God is for them. In a world governed far too often by the rules of the wicked, the poor and the hungry are overlooked and forgotten, but God sees and remembers them. The good news proclaimed to the poor is that the kingdom belongs to them, and not to those who always act as if they owned the world. The good news proclaimed to the poor is the community of Christ, a God-centered, Spirit-empowered community where compassion, love, and justice are living realities.

Justo Gonzalez calls this a “hard-hitting gospel” because God’s good news to the poor is also challenging news for those who are not poor.[6] “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” Jesus doesn’t say that the rich are cursed. But he does say, Woe. Because wealth becomes a curse when it cuts us off from the needs of others, from the community of life, and from God. Wealth becomes a curse when we sit back and say to ourselves, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry!”[7] Wealth becomes a curse when the rich man leaves his house and doesn’t even see Lazarus sitting hunched over by the door, let alone offer him something to eat, a bed, or medical attention.[8]

Jesus proclaimes good news to the poor, but it isn’t inevitably bad news for the rich. It’s the good news of God’s reign: the good news of a community where compassion, justice and love are living realities. For God’s reign to be good news for the well-fed, rich, laughing, and admired, they will have to wake up and change their ways, writes Sarah Henrich.[9]

The way of proud self-reliance is cursed, and it ends in an uninhabitable wasteland. But the way of trust in God is blessed. So much depends on where the heart turns. And the heart is fickle, devious above all else, perverse, according to Jeremiah. “Who can understand it?” he asks, implying that no one can. The heart turns this way or that way, we don’t know how.

But God searches the heart; to God all hearts are open, all desires known, and from God no secrets are hid, we confess in our prayers. God comes to us, again and again; God is close to us, searching and knowing, challenging and affirming, calling us back, again and again, to the way of blessing, the way of Christ.

The real challenge, then, is to trust the One who searches and knows the heart. To trust, and not to fear, the One present among us and within us. To trust the One whose desire for all of creation is to be a communion of love.

[1] Deuteronomy 30:15-20

[2] Proverbs 3:9-10 CEB

[3] Psalm 10:3-5

[4] Luke 4:16-21

[5] Quoted in Culpepper, Luke (NIB)

[6] Justo Gonzalez,  Luke (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 93; quoted by Sarah Henrich https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-luke-617-26-2

[7] Luke 12:19

[8] Luke 16:19-31

[9] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-luke-617-26-2

Caught up in new life

Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11

Allison and Jared welcomed Julian, their second child, on December 17. Caitie and Doug welcomed their first child, Grace, on October 11. Abi and Quentin are expecting their first child—and “expecting” is an interesting way to speak of awaiting the birth of a little person, of witnessing a baby’s hidden growth and first movements, of swinging wildly from kinda knowing what to expect to feeling utterly clueless. And “expecting” only hints at the marvel of it all—the joy, the wonder, and the worries.

“Can we do this?” is one big question the parents ask one another. Can we be for him what he needs? Can we prepare her for the life that awaits her? What’s the world going to be like when they get older? What will become of our country? What will become of the oceans and the forests? What will become of us? Jesus teaches us,

Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.[1]

I hear you, Jesus, I really do, but I wonder if you know what it’s like to hold an infant in your arms, when suddenly the realization washes over you like a long wave that from now on this little person is your responsibility. It’s hard not to worry when you love. When things get difficult, or when we imagine them getting difficult one day, it’s not ourselves so much that we’re worried about, it’s the ones we have let ourselves be bound to in love—but you know that, of course… you know exactly what it’s like to bind yourself in love to all of us.

Simon and his partners, James and John, worried a little every time they pulled away from the shore in their boats, “Will we catch enough?” Enough to feed our families and take some of the catch to market? Enough to make boat payments and replace worn out nets? Enough to cover Rome’s fishery tax that will be due whether we catch anything or not? For them, every day, the big question was, “Will there be enough?” And that one we all know, don’t we? Will there be enough to pay the bills? Enough to stay in school? Enough to pay back the loan? It’s easy to see ourselves in one of those boats, pulling away from shore, gazing across the water, some of us wondering, others worrying, “Will there be enough?” And it’s not hard at all to see ourselves in that same boat, rowing back to shore after a long night of working and hoping, with little or nothing to show for it. We drop the little sail, we pull the boat up on the beach, and we begin cleaning the nets. And how’s that for a sad joke: we didn’t catch a single fish all night, but plenty of trash. You almost want to laugh, but you’re playing the scene in your mind of you coming home and telling your spouse and your kids that last night’s work wouldn’t put any food on the table. You hope that tomorrow will be better—and if it won’t, how will you make ends meet?

Luke tells us that Jesus was there, teaching the crowd, and that they were pressing in on him to hear the word of God. They were drawn to Jesus because he brought good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed. They were drawn to him because wherever he went, life began to shine when he spoke and when he touched the sick and healed them. Jesus got into Simon’s boat, asked him to put out a little way from the shore, and then he sat down and taught. And while Luke doesn’t tell us a single word of what Jesus taught that day by the lake, he makes sure we know exactly what he told Simon, just one sentence: “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”

Now you and I, we’ve been in that boat. We’ve tossed out the net and pulled it in empty, again and again, and again. We’ve rowed out on the lake with expectation and after a long night rowed back to shore with nothing but wet nets and sore arms. Frankly, we don’t know where Simon finds the grace to respond, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”

We don’t know where Simon Peter found the grace in that moment to respond with such trust and obedience, but he and those with him did let down the nets and pulled in the biggest catch ever, more fish than the nets and the boats could possibly hold. Now we can see why Luke didn’t write down a single word of Jesus’ teaching from the boat: because this is the message; this net-breaking, boat sinking catch, this abundance is the good news of great joy for all the people.

Peter falls down at Jesus’ knees, knowing that he is in the presence of God, fearful that the fire of holiness might consume him. “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man,” he says. And the Lord replies, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” There is no explicit call like, “Come, and follow me;” there’s only this assurance and Simon Peter’s trust in Jesus, his simple obedience to Jesus, and a wondrous eruption of fullness.

“Will there be enough?” is no longer the big question. There is more than enough. What, then, is the big question? You may say to yourself, “Wow, that’s a lot of fish,” and your first question is, “Should I can it or freeze it?” Maybe I should get a bigger boat and some stronger nets, expand the business, you know? Perhaps a partnership? Simon & Jesus—Deep Water Fishing has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

We all know that’s not it. The gospel isn’t about inviting Jesus into your boat and enjoying a life of net-breaking and boat-sinking fishing trips. The gospel is about Jesus pulling us into his boat and taking us to vocational school for kingdom workers. The real catch that day wasn’t fish. Jesus speaks of “catching people” and that image is troubling; it smacks of entrapment. But in Luke’s story it’s the fishermen who are the ones being caught, and not in cleverly set traps or in cunningly designed nets. They get caught up in the vision of life that Jesus embodies. In the very waters we have fished all night without catching anything, waters we thought we knew like the back of our hands, there, right under the surface, in the deep, is a fullness we can barely imagine—and Jesus has the power to bring it out, to bring it up.

The crowds came to the lakeshore to hear the word of God, and hear it they did, but then they got to taste the Jesus vision of life at the all-you-can-eat grilled-fish picnic on the beach. So many people, and all of them ate, and not one of them worried if there would be enough.

Not all of them left everything and followed Jesus. But Peter, James and John did, and soon Mary, Joanna, and Susanna did, and soon many more. For them, the big question was, “How do we live fearlessly into the nearness of God’s reign? How do we live the life we have found in the presence of Jesus?”

It is easy for us to see ourselves in that boat, worrying about tomorrow after working all night without catching anything. But then there is that moment when Jesus is done teaching and he challenges us to lower our nets one more time. That moment when Peter decides, we don’t know how, in circumstances far from promising, to simply do what Jesus said.

The only reason we know this story and continue to tell it, is that those first followers trusted Jesus and found something more powerful than their fear or their worries, something more powerful than their failures and betrayals. They found life. They caught the vision of life Jesus embodied, and they lived it in the power of the Spirit.

I still worry sometimes—every day, to be honest. I wonder what life will be like when my kids will be grandparents, and it worries me how long it’s taking us to stop heating the planet. I wonder what will become of our democratic institutions and democracy itself in this age of social media, big data, and big lies, and it worries me that a so many people in this country—the children and grandchildren of the generation that fought fascism in the name of democracy and freedom—that so many of them are busy flirting with white nationalism and autocratic leadership. I wonder what will become of us, and I do worry.

But I believe in Jesus. I’m caught up in the vision of life he embodies—a life of deep compassion, faithful prayer, forgiveness, attention given to the ones habitually overlooked, simplicity and generosity, and in all things, the pulse of divine love.

Jesus has made us his own. He has bound himself to us in love. We belong to him, and through him to each other. We forget it all the time, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t so. We belong to him and to each other, and Luke’s story of the miraculous catch invites us to do what the first disciples did: do what Jesus says, even in the face of unpromising circumstances, and let ourselves be awesomely surprised.

[1] Luke 12:22-23

The traveling mindset

20220130 E4C - Jeremiah 1:4-10; Luke 4:21-30 - The traveling mindset

“Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor,” wrote Abraham Heschel.

God is raging in the prophet’s words. In speaking, the prophet reveals God. This is the marvel of a prophet’s work: in his words, the invisible God becomes audible. Divine power bursts in his words. The authority of the prophet is in the Presence his words reveal.[1]

The prophets, all of them, it seems, aren’t eager to take the call, they resist the divine Presence that takes over their voice, their life. “Who am I that I should go to Pharao?” said Moses. “I have never been eloquent… I am slow of speech and slow of tongue… please send someone else,” he begged.[2] “Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy,” we hear Jeremiah protest, no doubt with trembling in his voice. And the Lord replies, “Do not be afraid of them,” confirming without any subtlety that there would be “they” to be afraid of, and promising, “I am with you to deliver you.”[3]

No prophet wants to be a prophet. The mission is God’s initiative, and the call is inescapable. Jeremiah groans, “If I say, ‘I will not mention [the Lord], or speak any more in [God’s] 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.”[4]Silence becomes fire in the bones and speaking means giving voice to what few are eager to hear and what some clearly do not want to be audible at all. Jeremiah would speak in the name of God, and after a few episodes he would be prohibited from entering the temple, and he would tell his friend Baruch to write his words on a scroll and read them to the people coming to the temple, and a group of officials would confiscate the scroll and take it to King Jehoiakim, and the king would have the scroll read to him, and pen knife in hand, he would cut the scroll column by column and toss it into the fire.[5] Enough of that nonsense.

The invisible God who wants to become audible can count on the prophet’s dogged determination, but not on hearts even half as willing to listen as the prophet is willing to speak. Heschel wrote,

The prophet faces a coalition of callousness and established authority and undertakes to stop a mighty stream with mere words.[6]

Now let’s turn to Nazareth. Jesus had returned from the wilderness to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit, and he began to teach. He was praised by everyone, we read in Luke. His were words people wanted to hear. His were words people ate up like bread. His were words in which the invisible God became audible; his proclamation, some would soon begin to say, made the invisible God visible and tangible. His authority wasn’t based on credentials, it came from the Presence he revealed.

Jesus came to Nazareth, and on the Sabbath day he went to the synagogue and taught. He read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, beautiful words about being anointed and sent to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind and the year of the Lord’s favor—and Jesus let the Lord’s favor be the last word: he didn’t read the conclusion of the passage that announces the day of God’s vengeance. And for those with ears to hear, what he didn’t say was just as important as what he said. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And that was all he could say for a while, because the people in the synagogue were busy talking with each other about the gracious words that came from his mouth.

“Today,” he said, “fulfilled.” The good people of Nazareth loved Jesus’ proclamation of good news to the poor because they were poor, and they had waited so long for redemption and release—and there he sat, Joseph’s boy, speaking of fulfillment, announcing an end to their captivity and oppression. What a happy Sabbath it was in Nazareth! Not for long, though. With every additional word that came from his mouth, Jesus antagonized his audience. “Doubtless you will quote to me…” He talked about the proverbial doctor and their expectation that he do in his hometown the things they had heard he’d done in Capernaum. Those things, healings presumably, and perhaps even greater things since this was his home after all, they were his people, weren’t they?

But he was no doctor, he was the prophet who proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor. He briefly mentioned a couple of stories they knew, stories about two of the great prophets of old.

There were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.

There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.

That was all he said, but it stung. The stories of God’s prophets bringing bread and hope to a widow across the border, and, in the case of Naaman, healing and new life to an enemy general—the stories didn’t stir up joy, but resentment and rage. The good people of Nazareth thought that when he spoke of fulfillment “today” it meant that “their day” had finally come, and they couldn’t bear the thought that on this day of fulfillment, their town wasn’t God’s hometown any more than the rest of the world. Filled with amazement when Jesus began his sermon, they were filled with rage when they violently ended his teaching, driving him out of the town, ready to kill him. But Jesus passed through the midst of them and went on his way, Luke tells us.

Jesus didn’t go on his way because the people of Nazareth rejected him—it was rather the other way round: they rejected him because he refused to let himself be defined by their expectations; they rejected him because he insisted on his way of fulfillment. In a way the scene foreshadows the entirety of Jesus’ proclamation of God’s gracious reign. One moment we are amazed at the gracious words he speaks, and then we’re ready to silence him, whatever it may take, because we can’t handle the freedom of his sovereign grace and the wide expanse of his boundless mercy. We’re no less tempted than the good people of Nazareth to think of ourselves as God’s own hometown. Peter Marty writes in the Christian Century,

I’m troubled by the sharp rise of White grievance and resentment in America. It doesn’t take much to spot the politicians and pundits who use coded language, dog whistles, and conspiratorial tweets to fuel this resentment.

And for far too many, grievance and resentment have shifted to “a fear-based panic that typically involves some form of rage.” Marty writes,

It’s no easy task to propose a change of mind to aggrieved White folks. What seem to me like obvious Christian impulses for inspiring a more gracious embrace of human diversity end up having little impact on resentment-filled White people.

Sitting with that helplessness, Marty remembered a conversation he had with travel host Rick Steves. “Travel is a way to broaden perspective,” Steves said with his usual cheerfulness. “It makes us more tolerant. It challenges our ethnocentricity. It inspires us to celebrate diversity.” And then he dug a little deeper into the crisis of people scared by growing diversity and other demographic changes in our society, saying,

Fear, to me, is for people who don’t get out very much. If you take the most frightened people we know in our communities, I bet they’re the people who travel the least. They’re not interested in enlarging their understanding of others. They don’t know what it means to be surrounded by other people who look and think differently.

Steves didn’t quote Mark Twain then, but it would have been a perfect fit. Twain famously wrote in Innocents Abroad,

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of [people] and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

Talking with Marty, Steves acknowledged that, “not everybody can travel, of course. But,” he added, “there are a thousand ways to have a traveling mindset.”[7]

We aren’t so different from the good people of Nazareth. We have a deep-seated desire for Jesus to come to our hometown and do here the things we heard he has done elsewhere, but he comes to us, again and again, to invite us to be on the way with him—to bless us with the traveling mindset of those who follow him.

“Let there be a grain of prophet in everyone!” wrote Heschel. “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” cried Moses on the long journey to the land of promise.[8] And according to the prophet Joel, God declared,

I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.[9]

Jesus’ Spirit-driven proclamation of God’s gracious reign continues with those on whom God has poured out the power from on high; it continues with the multi-ethnic, polyglot, and cross-cultural traveling assembly we know as the church. Inspired to dream and empowered to serve, we are called to be on the way with Jesus.

________________

[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel: Essential Writings; quote from a review by John Dear at http://ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/abraham-heschels-prophetic-judaism

[2] Exodus 3:11; 4:10,13

[3] Jeremiah 1:6, 8

[4] Jeremiah 20:9

[5] Jeremiah 36

[6] Heschel; see note above.

[7] Peter W. Marty, “White Fear,” The Christian Century, January 26, 2022; online at https://www.christiancentury.org/article/editorpublisher/there-antidote-white-grievance

[8] Numbers 11:29

[9] Joel 2:28-29

Anointed and sent

In the gospel of Luke, the Spirit of God drives the plot. The story begins with the births of John and Jesus. John, we’re told, would be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother’s womb (1:15). Jesus’ mom would give birth to a holy child, because the Holy Spirit would come upon her (1:35). When the two mothers meet, John leaps in his mother’s womb and she is filled with the Holy Spirit (1:41). Then his father is filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesies (1:67). Then we meet old Simeon to whom the Holy Spirit had revealed that he would see the Lord’s Anointed before his death; and guided by the Spirit he comes to the temple when Mary and Joseph bring their child (2:25-27). Soon Jesus comes to the Jordan to be baptized by John and the Holy Spirit descends upon him, and led by the Spirit, Jesus enters the wilderness where he is tempted by the devil (3:22; 4:1). Then, as we heard again this morning, Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, where he began to teach in the synagogues and was praised by everyone (4:14-15). Women and men, the old and the young, entrust themselves to God’s presence and direction through the Spirit, and that is how the good news unfolds—scene by scene, generation by generation.

Jesus has returned to Nazareth where they’ve known him all his life and where they’ve heard stories, bits and pieces, about his teachings and other wondrous things he’s done down in Capernaum and other places near the lake.It’s the  Sabbath, and he’s in the synagogue, and handing him the scroll of Isaiah, they invite him to do the second reading and teach. He opens the scroll. He finds the passage he wants to read. It’s like all the movement in the opening chapters— the back and forth from Nazareth to Bethlehem, back to Nazareth and down to Jerusalem, to the Jordan and into the wilderness and back to Galilee— it’s like all the movement slows down to this moment: Jesus reads from Isaiah.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Jesus reads the ancient words of promise and hope, and then he sits down to teach. The eyes of all in the synagogue are fixed on him, Luke tells us; he wants us to notice the expectation in the room. Everybody wants to know what Jesus has to say. They are hungry for a teaching, for a word to assure them that the ancient promise is still theirs and firm, a word of encouragement not to give up hope that the day of release would come; that captivity and oppression would come to an end one blessed day, and God’s people would live in freedom.

When Jesus speaks, the first word out of his mouth is “today”— not some day or some day soon, but today. He identifies himself with this Spirit-bearer, anointed and sent to bring good news to the poor, to the captives, the blind, and the oppressed. Jesus wasn’t merely reading, it turns out, he was giving his inaugural address. This is who I am. This is what I’m about. This is my mission: Good news for the poor. Release for the captives. Sight for the blind. Freedom for the oppressed.

His Sabbath talk is short because his whole life is the teaching, because all he is and says and does and suffers is the embodiment of who God is for us, and who we are, who we are made to be as creatures made in the image and likeness of God, for a life of unending communion with God and all that God has made.

In the gospel according to Luke, the Spirit drives the plot, and in the second part of Luke’s work, the book of Acts, the Spirit is poured out, continuing to inspire and empower people from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, for God’s mission. Baptized into Christ, immersed into his death and resurrection, and filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, the church is called, anointed and sent to be the proclamation of good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed — the church is called, anointed and sent to embody the life of Christ.

Good news for the poor — that is as simple as Room in the Inn, as simple as making a bed in fellowship hall, so a veteran who can’t escape the ghosts of war can escape the cold and find rest for a night. Good news for the poor is as simple as the Little Pantry That Could, as simple as pushing back against the harsh logic of the marketplace with the bold witness to the abundance received and shared in the household of God. Good news for the poor is as simple as a little store where the lady behind the counter tells you to take what you need. Good news for the poor is as simple as food for the hungry, shelter for the unhoused, and a couple of nights at the inn for the man who was beaten and left for dead by the side of the Jericho road. But it doesn’t end there; it can’t end there, because the Spirit of the Lord who is driving the plot, is the Spirit of life that is nothing but life, fullness of life, for all.

When Jesus said, “Today” he meant that very day, and when we hear him say, “Today” he still means today. He’s addressing our captivity, our impaired vision, our entanglement in oppression, and he invites us to let him break our chains, open our eyes, and lead us out. Jesus invites us to let his life of profound trust in God and deep compassion for others be our life, to find fullness of life in his company.

Commenting on Psalm 19, April Berends writes,

Creation bears witness to God’s glory by living out its created goodness, each element giving praise by being what God made it to be. So it is with God’s people. Living according to God’s [torah] enables us to live as God made us to live, taking our place in the created order with eyes opened to God’s glory.[1]

The heavens are telling the glory of God, and so are we when we let the life of Christ be our life. I remember a cold fall morning, a few years ago, when the sky hung low like a grey blanket. We were driving to Chattanooga, on to Cleveland, and up the Hiwassee, all the way waiting for the sun to rise. Eventually we put in our kayaks, pulled away from the bank, and started paddling down the river— and with every paddle stroke, it was as though the clouds were thinning a little more, until suddenly the sky was bluer than anything anyone could ever dream up or find words to describe, and the light awakened the colors all around us: specks of yellow and red in the trees on the banks, hues of silver and copper on ancient rock faces, bright green meadows of eelgrass in the water just below us, and on a small patch of dry, rocky ground in the middle of the rapid flow, the bravest, brightest little flower blooming impossibly red. The rising sun had kissed the world awake and everything was singing. We were paddling down the river surrounded by an anthem of praise— but there was no speech, no words, only the lovely sound life makes when it is very good.

Kathleen Norris taught creative writing for a while at an elementary school in Dakota. She met a little girl who had recently moved there from Louisiana, and who wrote what Norris says is “the best description I know of the Dakota sky”: The sky is full of blue / and full of the mind of God.[2]

The psalmist knows what it is like when we see more than we can say, when we marvel at one glorious moment and wait for words to rise to give voice to our wonder. In the psalm we heard, the sun rises like a groom coming out of his honeymoon suite, and it runs its course like a champion, shining its light on all things under heaven. And from that lovely scene the psalmist pivots to praise with equal exuberance the perfection of God’s word which gives life, makes wise, gladdens the heart, and enlightens. God’s word instructs us to perceive the wisdom in which all parts of creation are knit together in mutual belonging. Wendell Berry writes,

We are holy creatures living among other holy creatures in a world that is holy. Some people know this, and some do not. Nobody, of course, knows it all the time.[3]

We are forgetful, easily distracted, fickle, and notoriously bad at distinguishing the living God from more convenient idols. But Jesus isn’t—forgetful, easily distracted, fickle, and prone to idolatrous confusion. And so it doesn’t end with amnesia, blindness, captivity, and oppression, because the Spirit of the risen Lord who is driving the plot, is the Spirit of life that is nothing but life, fullness of life, for all.

And so we gather again and again to listen for the word of God in the words of the witnesses. And we let the word do its work in our stubborn hearts, and we entrust ourselves to the Spirit’s guidance until with all of creation we declare the glory of God, with all that we are and all that we do.

[1] April Berends, Feasting, Year C, 275.

[2] Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), 21.

[3] Wendell Berry, “Christianity and The Survival of Creation,” Cross Currents, 1993, Vol. 43, Issue 2.