Clarity will come

Paul was in prison when he wrote his letter to the Philippians. But despite the most unpleasant circumstances, joy and gratitude infuse his writing from beginning to end. “I thank my God for every remembrance of you, always in every one of my prayers for all of you, praying with joy for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”[1]

When Luke later wrote in Acts about this partnership in the gospel from the first day, he lifted up one woman in particular. Her name was Lydia, and according to Luke, she was the first person on European soil to embrace the gospel with faith.

Paul and his missionary team had been traveling in what is today Turkey. They had been city-hopping, as it were, following the Roman roads that were major arteries for the exchange of goods and ideas, but it doesn’t appear that they had planned their route well in advance. Luke writes, “They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.” Forbidden by the Holy Spirit, Luke writes, without any further explanation what that might have looked like. “When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” It was the Spirit of Jesus, Luke insists, in case some of us readers might wonder if perhaps it was the spirit of censorship or the spirit of fear that did not allow them to take their proclamation to those regions. “So, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas.”[2]

“They stumble around the region, running into one barrier after another set up by God,” writes one commentator. “Barred by the Spirit from going south and west into Asia or from going north into Bythinia, Paul [and his team appear] backed into a coastal corner at Troas by God’s strange and repeated ‘no.’”[3] I mentioned last Sunday that the book of the Acts of the Apostles might as well be called the Acts of the Holy Spirit, because everything that unfolds in the wake of God’s pouring out God’s Spirit on all people is Spirit-infused, Spirit-guided, Spirit-driven. I wish Luke had written a little more about how they determined that their next stop wouldn’t be Bythinia, how they knew it wasn’t because they weren’t trying hard enough to get there, but because God had a different route in mind for them.

So now the team was on the coast in Troas, with no idea where to turn next. And there, during the night, a vision came to Paul: it was a man from Macedonia urging Paul, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” And now something marvelous happens in Luke’s story. Up to this point, it’s all “the disciples did this and the apostles did that, Peter did this and Cornelius did that, the circumcised believers did this and the Gentile believers did that.” But in Troas, in the morning, the narrator’s perspective shifts:

Immediately after Paul saw the vision, we prepared to leave for the province of Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.

As readers, we’re still following the carefully investigated and compiled account of a historically informed writer,[4] but now the story is no longer presented from an observer’s perspective, but from the perspective of a participant. The story is no longer just their adventure, it’s ours: Immediately after Paul saw the vision, we prepared to leave for the province of Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. Paul received the vision, but interpreting it wasn’t up to him alone. We discerned, writes Luke, that this was God’s call, and that the help which was needed was the preaching of the good news, and that the call was for immediate action.[5] Again, I wish Luke had written a little more about the process of discernment; clearly it wasn’t a matter of Paul coming down the stairs in the morning, pouring himself a cup of coffee, and telling the rest of the team who were sitting around the kitchen island, “I had a dream last night. Pack your things. We’re going to Macedonia.” The church, over the centuries, has been in Troas countless times, not certain where to go next, often wrestling with the nagging worry that perhaps God wanted it to go to Bythinia after all, that perhaps the last time it had attempted to go there, it just hadn’t prayed hard enough, planned hard enough, worked hard enough. Luke doesn’t go into the details of discernment, and I think he doesn’t because to him it’s not a matter of meticulously following a detailed process — the church forever doing just what the apostles did and how they did it. The way I understand Luke’s witness, the only thing that really matters, is for the church — every manifestation of the church, from the ministry team of two or three, to the congregation, to the conference of bishops, and the World Council of Churches — the only thing that matters, is for the church to entrust itself wholeheartedly to God’s movement in the world. With such trust in the Spirit of Jesus, clarity will come.

Paul and his team got into a boat to the island of Samothrace, then sailed on to Neapolis, a lovely seaside town in the northern Aegean, and once on land they didn’t linger on the beach, but walked eight miles inland to Philippi. No meandering here, no attempting to go this way or that way, just a straight journey from Troas to Philippi, a Roman colony, as Luke mentions. “[The city] was the heart of the Empire’s project in this corner of the world,” writes Brian Peterson, “a place that lived like an extended section of Rome itself, intended to be an example of what Rome offers to the world.”[6] And now this little missionary team showed up, this gospel avantgarde of the kingdom of God, a community of witness to a way of life that subverts systems of domination, a living testimony to what Jesus offers to the world.

Upon their arrival in the city, nothing much happens for a while. Luke isn’t very specific, only tells us that they were there for “some days.” The appeal in the vision was urgent. The team’s response to it was immediate. But then they were just there for some days, waiting for God to move.

Luke doesn’t mention a synagogue, and perhaps there wasn’t a large enough Jewish community in the city to sustain one. Synagogues were typically the first stop for Paul and his team, according to Luke. Philippi wasn’t typical. On the sabbath, they went outside the gate to the river, thinking they might find a group of worshippers there. And they did, and most of them, possibly all of them, were women. And one of them was Lydia. Paul’s vision was about a Macedonian man, but the first to receive the gospel of Jesus with faith in Philippi was a woman, and to add one more layer of holy unexpectedness, she wasn’t even Macedonian: Lydia was a business woman from Thyatira, a city in the Roman province of Asia, from the very area where the Spirit had forbidden the team to go. When you entrust yourselves to the movement of God in the world, apparently you better brace yourselves for some old rugs of expectation to be pulled from under your feet.

Paul talked and Lydia listened eagerly, but Luke doesn’t mention even a word of what Paul had to say, because it was God who opened her heart. The heart has ears no preacher can open, not even Paul — charm, eloquence, conviction, empathy and wisdom are wonderful gifts and skills, but at best they can lay words on a listener’s heart. Only God can open hearts to receive the Word. Only God can open eyes to recognize Christ in the stranger. Only God can open minds to let the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus, which is God’s way of subverting our proud dreams of supremacy, domination, and empire with the promise of God’s reign.[7]

Lydia was baptized along with her entire household, which makes me wonder if God opened all those other hearts as well, or if workers and children simply had to follow the head of household’s lead — I hope it was the former. Lydia was a business woman of substantial means, and entrusting herself to the movement of God in the world, she opened her home to become the first mission station in this Roman colony, making her the first leader of what may well have been the first house church in Europe. When Paul wrote his letter to the church in Philippi, thanking them for their partnership in the gospel, he didn’t mention Lydia — I hope this was only because there were too many local leaders to mention by name.

Luke tells us, that after Paul and Silas were released from jail in Philippi, and before they got on the road to Thessalonica, they went to Lydia’s home.[8] There they encouraged the brothers and sisters, and no doubt received encouragement for the long road ahead. Together they entrusted themselves to the movement of God in the world. May we go with them.

[1] Philippians 1:3-5

[2] Acts 16:6-8

[3] Brian Peterson https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-of-easter-3/commentary-on-acts-169-15

[4] See Luke 1:1-3

[5] See Brian Peterson https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-of-easter-3/commentary-on-acts-169-15

[6] Ibid.

[7] Compare the various divine openings that occur in Luke 24: 31,32,45; Philippians 2:5

[8] Acts 16:40

Conversions

The book of Acts is volume two to the Gospel that bears Luke’s name. It’s full name is The Acts of the Apostles, yet it could also be called The Acts of the Holy Spirit Poured out on all Flesh. It tells the story of the first believers struggling to keep up with the movement of God’s Spirit after God had raised Jesus from the dead. The opening chapters of Acts are centered in Jerusalem, but the Spirit pushes outward, and soon we hear about Philip’s witness in Samaria and the wilderness baptism of a man on his way back from Jerusalem to Ethiopia. But what presents the most difficult challenges to the first witnesses isn’t geography or the hardships and dangers of travel: it’s learning to think about themselves as participants in God’s movement in the world.

One of the most significant divisions in the ancient Jewish world was between Jews — God’s people, called to live in righteousness and holiness — and Gentiles, seen as living far from God in the darkness of their idolatrous ways. And now the good news of Jesus was spilling over into the Gentile world, crossing boundaries and reshaping identities that had been in place for generations. In Acts, Luke masterfully compresses this gradual, very difficult, and contested development into a sequence of dramatic scenes with Peter as a key character.

Last Sunday, Nancy read Acts 9:36-43, the story about Peter praying at Tabitha’s bedside. Tabitha had died, and after praying for her, Peter told her to get up — and she opened her eyes and got up. The scene concludes with the narrator’s comment, “This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.” The next verse, verse 43, seemed a little odd as a conclusion to the reading, so Nancy asked, “Do I have to read the last verse? Meanwhile [Peter] stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner. What does that have to do with anything?” So, she ended the reading with verse 42. That odd verse 43 doesn’t add anything to the story about Tabitha, but it prepares Luke’s audience for the story that unfolds over the next two chapters. Peter was in Joppa, a port on the Mediterranean, on the edge of the Jewish heartland, where he was staying at the home of Simon the tanner. Tanners work with animal carcasses, and their occupation made it very difficult for them to remain ritually clean. Many pious Jews would have chosen a different place to stay on a visit to Joppa. So, Peter wasn’t just on the edge of the Jewish heartland; he was awfully close to the boundary line of purity and holiness. Some would have thought that Peter had already gone too far, but this was only the beginning.

Now Luke introduces Cornelius, an officer in the Roman army, in Caesarea, forty miles up the coast from Joppa. Caesarea was a thoroughly Gentile port city, but Luke lets us know that Cornelius was a devout, God-fearing man. They knew him at the synagogue, and they liked and respected him. He participated regularly in the daily prayers and shabbat services, and he gave generously to those in need. Cornelius was as close to being a Jew as a male Gentile could be without undergoing circumcision. And one afternoon Cornelius had a vision. An angel of God came to him and said, “Cornelius! Your prayers and gifts to the poor have ascended as a memorial before God. Send messengers to Joppa and bring back a man named Simon, who is known as Peter. He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.” Cornelius called two of his servants and a soldier from his personal staff, and sent them to Joppa.

In the next scene, we see Peter on the roof the house, where he’s praying. He became hungry, and while the meal was being prepared, he had a vision. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being lowered to the earth by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four-legged animals, as well as reptiles and birds. And a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”

“Absolutely not, Lord!” Peter exclaimed. “I have never eaten anything that is impure or unclean.” The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” This happened three times. Three times — who would have thought that a heavenly voice could run into such resistance! Clearly a lot was at stake here for Peter. What he was told to do went against some of his most deeply held convictions, things he had been taught since he was a little boy.

Now while Peter was wondering what to make of this very persistent vision, the men sent by Cornelius arrived at the gate, and the Spirit interrupted his thoughts, “Simon, three men are looking for you. Get up and go downstairs, and do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them.” So, Peter went down and the men told him, “We’ve come on behalf of Cornelius, a centurion in Caesarea; he is a righteous and God-fearing man, who is well-respected by all Jewish people. A holy angel told him to ask you to come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say.” Peter invited the three into the house as his guests, and the next day he went with them, and some of the believers from Joppa went along.

Anticipating their arrival, Cornelius had gathered his relatives and close friends. Upon entering the house, Peter found a large gathering of people, and he said to them, “You all are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. However, God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?” Cornelius told him of his vision and said, “It was good of you to come. Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to all that the Lord has commanded you to tell us.” And Peter said, “I now realize that God shows no partiality to one group of people over another. Rather, in every nation, whoever worships him and does what is right is acceptable to God.” And while he was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. God was indeed pouring out God’s Spirit on all flesh! Peter declared, “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water; they have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” So he ordered the whole Gentile assembly to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

An ancient boundary, deeply embedded in Jewish life and tradition, was eroding and collapsing. It was astonishing, yet for all who were there, their actions only followed the lead of God’s Spirit — they certainly felt quite uncomfortable on the way, but they went anyway, prodded by the Spirit, and to them their actions didn’t manifest disobedience, but rather true obedience.

Back in Jerusalem, Peter was criticized for crossing the line: “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them?” Brian Peterson writes,

To those serious about Israel’s covenant, eating with Gentiles carried a whiff of idolatry. It might have been understandable to preach the good news to these Gentiles. It might even have been acceptable to baptize the household, especially if the Spirit was as evident as Peter alleged. However, those in Jerusalem apparently did not agree with Peter in how to interpret, and even more importantly how to embody, what this event meant. Baptism admitted these Gentiles into some level of belonging.[1]

Maybe Gentile faith and baptism meant that they could be welcomed at the table where the disciples of Jesus gathered; but should disciples of the Lord really join a Gentile table?

Luke then tells the story of Peter telling them the whole story, and it all ends beautifully. Peter says, “God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ—who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?” And his critics praise God and say, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

Even to the Gentiles. The church in the first generation moved from a carefully bounded ethnic identity to a multi-ethnic, Christ-centered identity, and it wasn’t the church’s doing. The initiative was God’s and the church followed — slowly, hesitantly, but Jewish and Gentile believers followed. Both Cornelius and Peter were given visions that allowed them to see what God was up to. Both were given new identities as recipients of God’s boundary-crossing initiative. Both were given new purpose as witnesses to the wideness of God’s embrace of the whole human family. And Luke shows us repentance that leads to life not only among the Gentiles in Cornelius’s household, but also among Peter’s circumcised fellow believers in Jerusalem. We witness a miraculous change of heart, inspired by the Lord, that infused the early believers with a radically transformed sense of the kind of community that is possible in God’s new realm.[2]

It is tragic that for centuries, conversion has meant that they have to become like us in order to be acceptable, or that we have to become like them. But Luke tells a different story, a powerful corrective to that dominant story of conversion: in obedience to the Spirit’s guidance people welcome one another despite all that divides them. They welcome the stranger, ready to hear what divine word they might bring. They enter the house of the stranger, not to take it over and make it their house, but completely entrusting themselves to the Spirit’s movement and work.

What if we, amid the seismic shifts we’re experiencing and the deep divisions we watch only getting deeper, what if we entrusted ourselves to the Spirit’s movement and work? What if we went, wherever we go, trusting that God is already there, preparing encounters for our continuing conversion into the likeness of Christ? What if we embraced, in every encounter, the repentance that leads to life?

In Revelation, the end of our story is seen as a city. “See, the home of God is among mortals. God will dwell with them; they will be God’s peoples, and God will be with them and be their God.” According to John, our story doesn’t end with all of them finally becoming like us; it ends with God being at home with God’s peoples. And you heard that right, it’s peoples, plural. The One who is making all things new delights in plurality and is at work even now to heal all our divisions. Thanks be to God.

[1] Brian Peterson https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter-3/commentary-on-acts-111-18-4

[2] See Karl Kuhn https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter-3/commentary-on-acts-111-18-5

The conquering Lamb

WPLN’s Blake Farmer did an exit interview with outgoing Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey. Talking about what she learned as a public health official during the pandemic, she mentioned dropping by a grocery store in rural Gibso County. The sign on the door read something to the effect of, “no masks allowed.”

“It was an interesting case study because I knew these people,” she said. “That’s where I grew up and that’s where my family still lives.” While she served as health commissioner, Piercey split her time between her West Tennessee home and an apartment in Nashville. So she experienced the rural-urban divide every week. And on that day, prior to any COVID vaccine being available, she took off her own mask — despite her public statements about their importance — did her shopping and was on her way. She realized that her Nashville messages didn’t quite land in Gibson County. “One of the biggest lessons I learned was that facts don’t change people’s minds. And as a scientist that baffled me initially. I thought, ‘Oh, well maybe I need to say it louder? Maybe I need to say it in a more simple term?’ But it wasn’t that … What we learned very quickly is facts don’t change people’s minds if it causes them to go against their tribe.”[1]

We are very reluctant to go against our tribe. “Tribe” has become a way to speak about, or to somehow get a handle on, the deep divisions that baffle us. Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist who studies polarization, said about the electoral landscape, “It’s two different worlds — hostile, suspicious of each other and assuming bad intent. It’s become totally tribal. There are no opponents anymore. Everyone is an enemy.”[2] And it looks like not even the hightest court in the land can resist the pull of the tribal vortex.

“Five of the last six presidents talked about healing America’s divide,” writes Peter Baker.

George H.W. Bush called for a “kinder and gentler nation,” Bill Clinton promised to be the “repairer of the breach,” George W. Bush termed himself “a uniter not a divider” and Barack Obama declared there was not a Blue America and Red America but “the United States of America.”[3]

I assume they all meant what they said, but the tribal divide only grew deeper, year after year.

The passage from Revelation we just heard, speaks of a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, gathered around the throne of God, along with angels and elders and four mysterious creatures, all of them shouting and singing together. We are given a vision of a community that transcends all human divisions and even the division between earthly and heavenly creatures — it is the vision of a community of praise, a joyful, crosscultural,  polyphonic and multilingual shouting fest of gratitude. We have trouble identifying the powers and forces that are driving us apart, but John tells us that in heaven, the angels and saints are singing of the one who is drawing us together: they are singing about lamb power.

According to the book of Revelation, the risen Lord appeared to John on the island of Patmos in the eastern Mediterranean, and gave him messages to be sent to the seven churches in the Roman province of Asia, the part of the world we know today as Turkey. John is caught up into what he describes as the heavenly throneroom, where he sees a book with seven seals, and the vision unfolds with each broken seal, the seventh seal opening into seven trumpet scenes, and the last trumpet announcing a set of seven bowls of wrath which are being poured out upon the earth. John sees plagues and devastations, climaxing in the destruction of Babylon, the “great city,” representing imperial Rome. Then he sees visions of the final triumph of God as Christ returns: the dead are raised, the final judgment is held, and the new Jerusalem is established as the capital of the redeemed creation.

Revelation was probably meant to be read in its entirety in worship, perhaps with the congregation singing along with its many doxologies, hymns and anthems, uniting heavenly and earthly creatures in worship. The whole thing feels like the script for a cosmic-scale performance, and it’s no coincidence that the rich, symbolic world of Revelation has inspired poets, musicians, painters, and even architects. However, the same symbols, writes L. T. Johnson, have also “nurtured delusionary systems, both private and public, to the destruction of their fashioners and to the discredit of the writing … Few writings in all of literature have been so obsessively read with such generally disastrous results as the Book of Revelation.”[4]

Revelation was written to fledgling churches during a period of oppression and persecution. It was meant to strengthen their faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead, during a time when the Roman empire was making claims on believers’ allegiance that made it challenging and costly for them to hold on to their confession of Jesus Christ as Lord. Revelation was written as a letter of encouragement, urging believers to keep the faith in the clash of Rome’s empire and God’s kingdom. Most of the letter’s first audiences probably knew how to read it; they were familiar with John’s world of symbols and the letter’s countless allusions to the Hebrew prophets and other parts of Scripture. But it didn’t take long before the book began to be read as “something akin to a train schedule” for the final years of the world. Rather than a source of hope, the text soon became an instrument of fear and abuse in the hands of those who claimed to know the true, but hidden, meaning of its bold declarations.

The book contains plenty of material that is difficult to absorb if your faith has been shaped by the Jesus who embodied love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. In scene after scene, God, the heavenly armies, or Christ are presented as violent perpetrators. There’s no turning the other cheek, no prayer for those who persecute, no love of enemies. Eugene Boring writes, “The reservations of some [against Revelation] have been based on the real dangers that have emerged when [the book] has been interpreted in foolish, sub-Christian or anti-Christian ways. Although every biblical book is subject to misinterpretation, no other part of the Bible has provided such a happy hunting ground for all sorts of bizarre and dangerous interpretations.”[5]

The way to read Revelation faithfully is to keep our eyes on the throne that stands at the center of the heavenly worship. Amid scenes of unimaginable destruction and cosmic upheaval John shares with us his vision of the heavenly throne where God is seated together with the Lamb, the crucified Jesus, risen from the dead. The way to read Revelation faithfully, the way to read our own challenging circumstances faithfully, is to keep our eyes on Jesus.

Rome’s oppressive power was real and reached into all aspects of daily life, but it wouldn’t last, John declared. The Nazi empire of industrialized death was real and horrific, but it couldn’t last. Apartheid in South Africa was real and horrific, but it couldn’t last. The devastating legacies of colonialism and slavery are pervasive and persistent, but they will not last. Putin’s imperial aspirations are terrifying and cruel, but they will not last. They cannot last, John declares, because they have already been conquered by the Lamb, conquered by the wondrous love of God who embraces all of us on the cross. All that separates us from God, all that separates us and from each other and from the fullness of life God desires for all of creation, all the forces and powers of division and domination have already been conquered. The Lamb is on the throne. John saw a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands, and singing, “Victory belongs to God.” John saw humanity gathered together not by imperial order, nor by coercion or dreams of greatness, but by the gentle gravity of Jesus’ life.

John heard one of the elders say, “The Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” There is much in the book of Revelation that worries me. Too much room is given to vengeful fantasies that don’t reflect the compassion and mercy of Jesus. But the affirmation that the Lamb at the center of the throne will be our shepherd is one I want to embrace with my whole being. It’s a curious, species-hopping play with metaphors: Jesus is likened to a lamb, and the lamb in turn is likened to a shepherd, a human figure of care and protection. The one who guides us to springs of the water of life, is both utterly vulnerable and the most powerful reality in all of creation. Jesus completely resists the temptation to dominate, and he is the one who conquers and reigns.

John saw them, a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, singing with the angels, praising the wondrous love that heals creation. “God’s praises are sung both there and here,” wrote St. Augustine.

Here they are sung in anxiety, there, in security; here they are sung by those destined to die, there, by those destined to live for ever; here they are sung in hope, there, in hope’s fulfillment; here they are sung by wayfarers, there, by those living in their own country. So let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labors. You should sing as wayfarers do—sing, but continue your journey. … Sing, but keep going.[6]

Amid all that divides us, even amid terror and war and all our fears and worries, John invites us to keep our eyes on Jesus, the Lamb upon the throne, and to sing as wayfarers do. To sing, and to keep going. To sing, and to press on to the better city.

[1] https://wpln.org/post/in-exit-interview-tennessee-health-chief-lisa-piercey-defends-how-the-state-dealt-with-covid/

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/us/politics/abortion-rights-supreme-court-roe-v-wade.html

[3] Ibid.

[4]Johnson, L. T., The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,1999), 573.

[5] Eugene Boring, Revelation (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1989), 4.

[6] Augustine of Hippo, quoted in Gabe Huck, A Sourcebook about Liturgy (Chicago: LTP, 1994), 35.

Fall from certainty

Acts 9:1-9

We meet Saul at the end of Acts 7, where Luke introduces him, almost in passing. A group of people opposed to the teachings and witness of Jesus’ followers have dragged Stephen out of the city to stone him, and some of them, we’re told, “placed their coats in the care of a young man named Saul.”[1] And he wasn’t just watching coats. “Saul was in full agreement with Stephen’s murder,” Luke lets us know, and he adds, “Saul began to wreak havoc against the church. Entering one house after another, he would drag off both men and women and throw them into prison.”[2] And in ch. 9 we read how Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, wants to expand the persecution to the synagogues of Damascus. Followers of Jesus’ there were known as people of the Way, and Saul was looking for paperwork that would authorize him to take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. He was a man on a mission. His certainty was unshakable; his authority, unquestionable; his cause, righteous. And on the road, he suddenly found himself thrown to the ground, surrounded by blinding light, and questioned by a heavenly voice identifying itself not with him, the fervent defender of pure doctrine, but with the people he was harassing.

One moment, he was so certain, so self-assured, striding forward with great confidence, and now he was helpless and blind, had to be helped up and led by the hand like a toddler. For three days he was without sight. And then something like scales fell from his eyes—and it was after Ananias, one of the ones Saul had come to find and bind and take away, had laid his hands on him. Saul had his eyes opened, quite literally, by someone he was 100% certain belonged in prison for their distorted and dangerous views of Jesus.

This is the kind of thing that can happen when church happens: The living Christ may appear, disrupt, intrude, may cause us to fall from certainty, take away our former way of seeing things, open our eyes, and claim us for life in his name—no one knows when or where or how.

A week ago, the Tennessee legislature voted to make it illegal to camp on public property in Tennessee. It’s already illegal to camp on both state and private property at night. The bill, now on the Governor’s desk, would add serious criminal charges for camping on city and county property as well. It would be a Class E felony to camp on any public property between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. — that means up to six years in prison and a fine up to $3,000. If the measure becomes law, there would be nowhere left for homeless individuals and families to sleep without risking a criminal charge. And people convicted of felonies in Tennessee face more than the possibility of fines or prison time. They also lose the right to vote, and anyone with a felony on their record faces enormous barriers to securing employment or housing. Tennessee does not have enough shelter capacity to house all of the state’s homeless population, and nationwide, the homeless population is growing. And our legislation is doing nothing to improve mental health services, incentivize affordable housing stock in critical markets, or boost TennCare funding. What our legislature is saying, is, “We’re not willing to do much to help you get a roof over your head, but if we catch you camping in parks or under bridges, you go to prison.”

The Governor has not said publicly if he supports the bill, and I joined with faith leaders from across the state in signing a letter urging him to veto it. I have little confidence he will, but I’ve been wrong before.

A group of professional social workers and mental health advocates wrote in Tennessee Lookout,

We recognize homelessness is a complex issue. Leaders must work collaboratively to develop community-specific solutions that support but don’t punish our most vulnerable neighbors. … Criminalizing sleeping in public is a solution for no one in Tennessee.[3]

Remembering Saul, I pray for a fall from certainty for our legislators, that they may lose their reductive vision of felony and punishment, and come to see the hard and often frustrating complexity of our life together. Like Saul having his eyes opened by hanging out with Ananias, they may come to see in new ways by listening to the very people they’re seeking to lock up.

On Wednesday, our representatives were having a debate about books. A last-minute amendment had been introduced requiring school districts to submit lists of school library books to an expanded state textbook commission. This amendment was to make certain that obscene material wouldn’t end up in children’s hands. There had been an earlier version that required the commission to issue a list of “approved” materials Tennessee schools could provide to students, but it caused such an uproar among parent and librarian groups, that the sponsors withdrew it. So now it was school districts submitting their lists of library collections to a politically appointed commission for final approval.

The debate was quite heated. At one point, Rep. John Ray Clemmons asked what the state would do with the books deemed inappropriate, put them out in the street or set them on fire? To whch Rep. Jerry Sexton responded, “I don’t have a clue, but I would burn ‘em.”[4] Let’s make it simple. We don’t trust the teachers. We don’t trust the librarians. We don’t trust the local school boards. So let’s just make a list of approved titles, pull the rest and burn them.

The simplicity is tempting. We don’t like all these tents and shopping carts on the side of the road and in our parks—let’s just threaten the campers with prison time; that’ll teach them.

We don’t like certain books that present a perspective on life quite different from our own—let’s just put them on an index, pull them from our school libraries and burn them.

Saul was on the way to Damascus when Jesus found him. Peter was fishing with his friends when Jesus found him. What these stories invite us to consider is that Jesus is neither safely buried in the grave, nor safely gone to heaven never to be heard of again. They present to us a world perpetually disrupted by the presence of the risen Christ, and not a far-away world, but ours. They tell us that Jesus used to be somewhere: somewhere in Nazareth or Capernaum, Bethany or Jericho, somewhere on the lake, on a mountain, in somebody’s house. You could have traced his movements on a map. But now his astounding intrusions may occur anywhere and anytime. The resurrection is the world in which Jesus has been raised, the reality of the continuing, disruptive presence of Jesus.

Chapter 20 of John wraps things up nicely:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.[5]

That’s a lovely ending, isn’t it? But there’s another chapter; it opens with a wide view across the lake: we’re in Galilee, where it all began. Peter is here and Thomas, the sons of Zebedee and two others of Jesus’ disciples, and Nathanael—Nathanael who hasn’t been mentioned again since Jesus promised him in chapter 1 that he would see greater things. And now he sees them, along with the other disciples, after a long night of hard work with nothing to show for it.

“Cast your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some,” the stranger said, and they did, and they couldn’t haul it in because of the abundance of fish they had caught.[6]

One of them said, “It is the Lord!” What about Peter? We haven’t heard much from Peter since he rushed off to the tomb, entered it, and then returned home without saying a word.[7]

Peter put on his clothes and jumped into the lake, so very eager to get to shore quickly. There was a charcoal fire with fish on it, and bread. I can almost smell it, delicious.

“Come and have breakfast,” Jesus said. Bread and fish in abundance—did any of them remember that day by the lake when Jesus fed five thousand with a boy’s lunch of five loaves and two fish?

For Peter, the charcoal fire brought back memories of the fire in the courtyard where he had come to warm himself, and three times he denied that he was a disciple of Jesus. Three times he denied having anything to do with the love by which people know that we are Jesus’ disciples.[8] But in the world where Jesus is raised from the dead, this love will continue to be fundamental to Peter’s identity.

Three times Jesus asked him, “Do you love me?”— not to shame him or burden him with guilt, but to give him a new way to make his love manifest: Feed my sheep. When you make a pledge today, when you add your name to one of our ministry teams, you say yes to making the love of Jesus manifest. Jesus, risen from the dead, finds us and feeds us, and he sends us to feed others in his name. Sends us as he has been sent, to be people of the way. His life our life. His love the heartbeat of all things, especially in a time of war and deep division.

Sometimes you wonder what all we affirm and declare when we confess our faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead. We affirm the faithfulness of God. We affirm the power of love to drive out fear and guilt and shame. We affirm the newness of life the first witnesses embraced and proclaimed. We affirm that this newness will erupt wherever and whenever the love of Jesus disrupts our loveless ways. We affirm our hope that Jesus, raised from the dead, will find us again and again to open our eyes and draw us into fullness of life.

[1] Acts 7:58 (CEB)

[2] Acts 8:1, 3 (CEB)

[3] https://tennesseelookout.com/2022/04/12/commentary-criminalizing-sleeping-in-public-will-make-problems-for-homelessness-worse/ See also https://wpln.org/post/tennessee-lawmakers-pass-a-bill-that-could-target-people-experiencing-homelessness/

[4] See https://tennesseelookout.com/2022/04/27/representative-says-he-would-burn-books-deemed-inappropriate-by-state/ and https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2022/04/27/jerry-sexton-burn-books-tennessee-school-library-bill-debate/9554117002/

[5] See John 20:26-31

[6] Funny sidenote from a great scholar, “It is notable that never in the Gospels do the disciples catch a fish without Jesus’ help.” Raymond E. Brown, John, 1071.

[7] John 20:3-10

[8] John 13:34-35

The resurrection continues

John 20:19-31

It’s a strange reversal: Jesus is risen from the dead, his body no longer in the tomb—and the disciples? Hidden behind locked doors, sitting motionless in a sturdy tomb of fear and confusion. They didn’t know what to make of the words Mary spoke after she returned from the tomb, earlier that day. “I have seen the Lord,” she said, “and he spoke to me. He told me to tell you this: ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” It was in the evening of that day; they were together, but nobody said anything. I imagine Mary sitting in a corner, frustrated that all she had were words, and her words were not enough to break the paralysis of fear and guilt, not enough to let her fellow disciples hear what she had heard and see what she had seen. Her words were not enough.

Then Jesus came and said, “Peace be with you.” The first word of the Risen One to the gathered disciples was peace. The last time they had been together, he had told them, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”[1] And now Jesus stood among them, after they had betrayed him, denied and abandoned him—they saw him, he stood among them, and he didn’t say, “Shame on you, you sorry bunch” or “OK, friends, we need to talk,” but, “Peace be with you.” The Risen One spoke his peace into their troubled, fearful hearts. He showed them the wounds in his hands and his side, and his presence transformed that dark tomb into a house of joy, with laughter pouring into the street. The living Christ was once again the center of their lives. Only moments ago they had been little more than bodies in a tomb, now they were a community with a mission, a community of new life.

In the book of the prophet Ezekiel, the prophet looks at a valley full of bones, and the Lord asks him, “Mortal, can these bones live?” And the Lord tells him to prophesy to these bones, to speak to the bones and say to them, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”[2] In Ezekiel’s day, the bones represented the people of God in exile, lifeless, dry, dispirited and discouraged. I know Mary must have felt like she was talking to a pile of bones when her words couldn’t lift the pall of fear and grief that lay on the disciples. But now Jesus was in their midst, and he breathed on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. A small band of fearful disciples, held together by little more than habit, shame and fear—now they were the church, sent and empowered by the living Christ, born into living hope.

Since the days of Mary, frightened disciples could be the church because the Risen One has kept breaking in on us, breathing on the white bones of our lives, leading us out of our tombs, and placing in our hands, on our lips, the gifts of peace and forgiveness. Christ is risen from the dead, and now we no longer live toward the horizon of death, but toward fullness of life for all God’s creatures. Jesus is the firstborn from the dead, but the resurrection isn’t merely something that happened to Jesus some two thousand years ago—the resurrection began with him and continues with those who hear the word of life. It is the transformation of our tired world into the new creation. It is the wind that blows from the future of fulfilment, the breath that brings life to dry bones, the dew from heaven that renews the earth.

Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus came in the evening of that day. Neither were any of us there. All we have is what Thomas was given, the words of witnesses. The other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But their words, just like Mary’s before, didn’t get past his skepticism. Who knows whom or what they had seen, what apparition might have fooled them—he needed to see for himself, with his own eyes and his own hands. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” He needed to see, he needed to touch, he needed to get close.

Thomas wanted proof—not a convincing argument about the general possibility of bodily resurrection, but tangible proof that Jesus was risen, that the Crucified One had been raised. He needed to see, he needed to touch, he needed to know himself what they said they knew—and he needed to know it not just in his mind, but in his whole being.

A week later the disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. They were together, all of them—the ones who declared, “We have seen the Lord,” and the one waiting to see for himself. No one had been pushed out, no one had been forced in. And then the scene of the previous week repeated itself, solely for Thomas’s sake, we suppose. Jesus came and stood among them and said, for the third time now, “Peace be with you.” And far from rebuking Thomas for his stubborn insistence on something more tangible than words, the Risen One said, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” And Thomas responded, “My Lord and my God.” We’re not told if he did reach out his hand or not. But Thomas who wanted proof, who didn’t settle for repeating the words of others, but held out for an experience of the Risen One on his own terms, this Thomas made a confession of faith unlike any other in the gospels.

Thomas has been remembered in the church as the doubter par excellence, and he has often been called upon when the questions of some became uncomfortable and needed to be squelched—whenever church became a matter of pushing out or forcing in. I don’t think we should remember him as a doubter. I suggest that we remember him as one who insisted on the continuity between the ministry of Jesus and the mission of the church, one who insisted on seeing the glory of God in the wounds of the crucified Jesus. John’s Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and close to the end of the gospel, it is Thomas who affirms that statement in the presence of Jesus, crucified and risen, “My Lord and my God.”

The resurrection is not something that happened to Jesus some two thousand years ago; it is a new reality that began when God raised him from the dead. In John’s Gospel, the disciple whom Jesus loved came to the tomb and saw the linen wrappings; then he went inside, got a little closer, and he saw and believed. Mary Magdalene had seen angels at the tomb, but they had no comfort for her; then a stranger spoke her name, and she recognized Jesus and believed. The disciples believed when they saw the risen Jesus, and they rejoiced, “We have seen the Lord!” Thomas believed when he saw Jesus in the company of the other disciples, and he confessed, “My Lord and my God.”

In the final verses of this chapter it becomes clear that the Sunday evening scene wasn’t repeated solely for Thomas’s sake, but also for ours. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” We have not seen what the first disciples saw, but we continue to hear their witness. In the final verses of the chapter, we read a note from the author to the readers, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” We trust the Word that comes to us through the proclamation of the first witnesses and the witnesses that surround us. We follow the call that comes to us through their word and the work of the Holy Spirit. And the witnesses themselves tell us to be patient with our questions and our hunger for certainty. Much of the time, our faith will be a mix of belief and disbelief, a back and forth between clarity of vision and stumbling in the dark, moments when we are able to speak with great confidence and moments when we realize that, deep in our bones, there’s an awareness of things for which we have no words.

The witnesses encourage us to be patient with our questions and our hunger for certainty; they encourage us to come and see. They invite us to let ourselves be drawn into the life we can only know by entering it. They invite us to enter the wonder of God coming among us in human vulnerability. The wonder of God living and knowing life through our flesh—flesh that can be stroked gently and struck violently, flesh that can be honored and tortured, anointed and abused.

In our Good Friday world, we don’t need to be reminded of the human capacity for inflicting hurt, but we need to remember that God is present in that suffering, and that God is committed to healing the wounds of creation. Jesus has been raised, the firstborn from the dead, and he still bears the marks of our weary world in his body; the resurrection does not erase the past, it transfigures it. In the resurrection, the wounds we bear in our bodies, wounds we have inflicted and received, these wounds are no longer denied, buried, hidden, covered up, ignored or forgotten, but revealed and healed in the peace of Christ.

Mary didn’t ask to see, and Thomas insisted on seeing. Both of them came to see and believe, and with them we look to the day when all of creation will know the peace of Christ.

[1] John 14:27

[2] Ez 37:1-14

All things new

Isaiah 65:17-25

Luke 24:1-12

On Friday, scrolling through the New York Times live updates about Putin’s war, among more tweets about atrocities, images of devastation, and reports about attacks and troup build-ups, I came upon an image of three little girls, the oldest maybe 8, the youngest maybe 5 years old, all dressed in shades of pink. They were sitting at the end of a long, narrow table; between them, on the beige table cloth, a blue pony with a white mane, with its face to the camera. None of the girls was looking at the camera; being completely absorbed in their work, they may have been utterly unaware of the fact that a photographer was in the room. “Children displaced from eastern Ukraine painting eggs for Easter and Good Friday mass at a Catholic church in the western city of Lviv,” the caption read.[1]

On Thursday, in the car, somewhere between Old Hickory and the church, I was listening to a story on the radio about a family with two children who have been living underground in a subway car since Putin’s attacks on their city started. Some of their neighbors lived in adjacent cars in the same subway station, neighbors they hadn’t known really well before the war, and now, every night, they prepared a meal together, and they waited until all of them were there before they started to eat, and I could hear them laugh.

Those two scenes of children absorbed in making art for worship and of neighbors laughing as though they had nothing to worry about, those two scenes are sacred to me now, like visits by angels. We have much to worry about given the state of our world, and the children show us how to remain focused on resurrection hope, and how to be absorbed in the work of creating beauty. And the neighbors eating and laughing underground, invite us to their terror-defying and life-affirming celebration of communion.

Isaiah spoke and wrote exuberant resurrection poetry, overflowing with promise and hope, giving his voice and words to the voice and words of the God of faithfulness he served:

I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.

This is not an argument for amnesia or an excuse for willful forgetfulness of a difficult past, we got too much of that already. The prophet is singing of a gladness so overwhelming that it floods even the past with healing joy.

Be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people.

In this new creation, God and God’s people will rejoice in mutual delight. The sound of weeping and the cry of distress? No more. Infants that live but a few days and old persons who don’t live out a lifetime? No more. Workers building houses and others inhabiting them, or planting vineyards, fields, and gardens and others eating their fruit? No more. No more laboring in vain. No more bearing children for calamity. No more war. No more dreams of empire. No more old men sowing lies, and terror, and death.

Isaiah’s prophetic poetry is beautiful, and it is “also an act of daring … faith that refuses to be curbed by present circumstance.” This poet knows that God’s coming newness is not contained within our present notions of the possible. And what this poet imagines for his treasured city, the subsequent people of faith have regularly entertained as a promise over every city where justice is broken and righteousness is not at home. “[Every] city is submitted to the wonder of the creator, the one who makes all things new,” writes Walter Brueggemann.[2]

We live in a Good Friday world where justice is broken, a world far from righteousness. The girls in Lviv know it, and yet they paint the eggs for Easter.The neighbors in the subway car know it, and yet they laugh as they gather for supper. We know it, and yet we gather to sing of resurrection. We sing because, as Jürgen Moltmann put it, “Good Friday is at the center of this world, but Easter morning is the sunrise of the coming of God and the morning of the new life and is the beginning of the future of this world.”[3] We live in a Good Friday world recentered in the impossible possibilities of the one who makes all things new, the God who raised Jesus from the dead.

The women who had followed Jesus from Galilee watched as the body of Jesus was taken down from the cross. They watched as Joseph of Arimathea took the body, wrapped it in linen, and placed it in a tomb. They went home to prepare ointment and spices that would be needed to complete the proper burial of the body. And then they just sat waiting. Luke says they rested, but we know they didn’t. They were waiting for the dawn so they could go to the tomb at first light and do with love and care what had to be done in a hurry before sunset on Friday.

And when they came to the tomb nothing was like it was supposed to be. The tomb was open, and they could not see, let alone anoint, Jesus’ body. They did see angels and heard them speak, heard them ask why they were looking for the living among the dead, heard them say that Jesus had been raised. Heard them tell them, “Remember what Jesus said.”

They remembered, but they didn’t break into a new creation song, they didn’t dance the resurrection—they began to slowly unfold the wondrous thing God had done: The world of broken justice had had its way with Jesus, but God raised him from the dead. The world of broken justice had spoken its violent No, but God spoke a vindicating Yes.

The world of broken justice proudly asserted,  and continues to assert, its own way, its own truth, and its own life, but God affirmed Jesus. God didn’t just raise somebody to reveal God’s power to bring life out of death. God raised Jesus who lived to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor to all. And the women found the stone rolled away, not because somehow this was necessary in order for Jesus to get out of the tomb. No, the stone was rolled away so they could get in, so they could get in and come away with the good news of a new creation in Christ. The stone was rolled away so we would get out of the tomb of despair and go to find the living one among the living.

The women told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Their response? The translations vary, just pick one. “These words seemed to them an idle tale, empty talk, a silly story, a foolish yarn, sheer humbug, utter nonsense, and they did not believe them.” You don’t have to be a Bible scholar to detect “a definite air of male superiority in this response.”[4] But there’s more here than just common sexism. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is like the dawn of light on the first day of creation: radically new. And like day and night are fundamental to our experience of the world, so will the resurrection of Jesus either establish a whole new frame of reference for our experience of life, or it will remain an idle tale.

And then there’s Peter. Peter who had been with Jesus pretty much from day one. Peter who had heard Jesus’ every teaching, witnessed every healing, and shared in more meals with sinners than he could count. Peter who before dawn on Friday had denied three times that he knew Jesus. Now why would Peter get up and run to the tomb after they had all just dismissed the women’s words as utter nonsense? What was it that made him get up and not walk, but run, to the tomb? Was it that he was simply curious? Was he wondering if the women might be right? Was he hoping they might be right? Was he wondering if he was the reason Jesus was alive? Was he desperate because he felt guilty? [5] Those are all good questions to ponder. I think Peter was wiping bitter tears from his face because a glimmer of hope and joy had entered his heart, and so he ran.

When Jesus was born, Luke tells us, angels proclaimed the good news of great joy to shepherds in the fields—and the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” They went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.[6] Peter ran like a shepherd who had just heard the good news of great joy, he wanted to go and see—and he found a whole new life of hope and courage.

The way of Jesus did not end on the cross, and it did not end in the tomb. The way of Jesus did not end. It opens before us as long as there are witnesses who join the women and the other disciples in telling the world of Jesus’ faithfulness to the kingdom of God, his great compassion, and his embrace of sinners. The way of Jesus opens before us as the road to no more war; the road to no more dreams of empire; the road to no more old men sowing lies, and terror, and death. It opens before us every morning as the road to the city of peace, where all children are completely absorbed in making art and playing, and all neighbors laugh and sing around tables of plenty.

[1] Finbar O’Reilly for the New York Times https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/04/15/multimedia/15ukraine-blog-easter-photo01/15ukraine-blog-easter-photo01-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah (WBC), 251.

[3] Jürgen Moltmann, Cole Lectures at Vanderbilt 2002; Jürgen Moltmann, Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, Passion for God: Theology in Two Voices (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 84.

[4] Luke Timothy Johnson, Luke (Sacra Pagina), 388.

[5] See Anna Carter Florence, Journal for Preachers 2004, 35-37.

[6] Luke 2:15-20

Remember the borrowed donkey

Luke 19:28-40

Philippians 2:5-11

Peace. We all know what it is, even when we can’t quite find words for a simple definition. Peace is when no one is afraid; when no one is hungry, when all are alive in the fullest sense of the word. And peace comes when the struggle is over, when we entrust each other to the peace of life restored and fulfilled in glory. Peace is the name we give to life when it is what God made it to be. All of us, I hope, have known moments of it, moments that nourish our longing to see its fulfillment, and our desire to live and work toward it.

For seven weeks, Putin’s war has brought death and destruction to the cities and towns of Ukraine, and to the people who live there, and some will remind us, lest we forget, that it’s been eight years of incursion and fighting for those living in the east of the country. And the devastations aren’t limited to where the bombs are dropping and the atrocities are coming to light. Ukraine is one of the largest grain exporters, and when global grain prices continue to rise, the poor will starve, not only in Afghanistan and Yemen, but around the world. And we don’t know what cruelties may be revealed tomorrow.

Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”[1] Our hearts are troubled, and he knows it. And he won’t treat the wound of God’s people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. What I hear him say is,

Don’t be afraid to take in the whole truth about the world and humanity. Notice the greed, the need to control and manipulate; notice the desire to make your own story the only story, violently if necessary, and notice it not just in others. Take a good look at the whole ugly picture—but do not submit to it. Do not surrender to the way of greed, manipulation, and violence. Do not believe that this is the whole story. My peace I give to you. The peace that frees you to trust in the power of mercy over injustice, and the power of love over hatred. My peace, rooted in the faithfulness of God.

In the first chapter of Luke’s gospel, an old man declares, “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”[2] And at Jesus’ birth, a multitude of the heavenly host praise God, saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” Peace on earth.

In today’s reading from Luke, we hear the echo of that praise from the streets outside of Jerusalem:

As Jesus was approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

At the beginning of the journey, a multitude of angels sang of peace on earth, and now the whole multitude of disciples echoes their song with shouts of peace in heaven. Perhaps you find it curious that angels are speaking of peace on earth, and disciples of peace in heaven, and you wonder if it shouldn’t be the other way round? I don’t know, I find it curious, but I’m not on the team that writes talking points for angelic proclamation or lyrics for the songs of angels. And I love the way the shouts of the human multitude on the road to Jerusalem repeat the sounding joy of the heavenly multitude, and of the fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains—earth and heaven together, all of creation joined in praise of God.

And so we too shout and sing with joyful exuberance, welcoming the Lord Jesus to the city. We pretend that the tall double doors facing the street are the city gates, we watch him ride down the center aisle, and we shout, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” because we do want him here, we do want him to rule and make all things right and whole.

But we also remember that this week is not all “Blessed is the king” and “peace and glory.” And it’s not just they who get in the way of king Jesus’ reign—they being the Romans and the temple leaders, the fickle crowds or whoever else we think we can blame. We ourselves can’t let Jesus be the king he is, because we want him to be the king we want. Our visions of a world made right often reflect our own dreams of domination rather than the peculiar way of Christ. We get power wrong, and we half know it, and so we feel a little awkward standing in the gate of the city and watching Jesus riding by on a borrowed donkey. He’s turning our world upside down, and we half know that that is what it takes to make things right, but we only half know it and with the other half we resist the pull of God’s vulnerable love.

We get power wrong. We see the donkey and Jesus on it, but we still want the strong man on the white horse, the one who comes to save us and kick them. We get power wrong, because our hearts and imaginations have not been fully converted. The peace of Christ is not the Pax Romana with a doxology attached.

Every year, in time for Passover, the Roman governor moved his headquarters from Caesarea by the sea to Jerusalem. Passover made the empire very nervous. Large crowds were difficult to control under any circumstance, but add the sacred memory of Israel’s liberation from the house of slavery, and the situation could turn easily from joyful worship to revolt.

So Rome made its presence and power known. The governor, Pontius Pilate, entered the city riding on the biggest horse he could find in his stable. Behind him, elite soldiers on horseback, followed by rows and rows of foot soldiers. The procession was designed to impress and intimidate. Rome knew how to project power and quell any outbursts of enthusiasm that might quickly escalate into a governor’s nightmare. The heavy beams used to crucify the most dangerous troublemakers were already stacked at the governor’s headquarters; Rome was prepared to keep the peace.

Jesus entered the city from the East, in a very different kind of procession. He didn’t ride at the head of a conquering army to take over the system and put himself at the top. He came to undermine and topple the logic of domination. He didn’t impose his will on anyone. He renounced Satan’s whispered proposals for global dominance. Doing what love demands was the defining passion of his life to his final breath.

We call this week holy because the events we recall draw us into the mystery of God’s power revealed in Jesus. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” Paul urges his readers. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit … Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Such words were rare and foreign in a city like Philippi, which isn’t to say they aren’t rare and foreign in a city like Nashville. The citizens of Philippi valued their privileges as subjects of Caesar. Roman culture valued force, competition, and honor-seeking, and humility was not considered a virtue. Roman society, much like ours, was built on the pursuit of status.

“You want to talk about status?” Paul seems to suggest. OK, let’s talk about status. If you think of society as layered groups where everybody serves those above and is served by those below, God is at the top—being served by all and serving no one above. In this layer model, Jesus had the highest status imaginable: equality with God. Only he did not use his status for his own advantage. He humbled himself. He embraced the lowest status in the human hierarchy, and on the cross, he died the most cruel and degrading death, reserved for slaves and for rebels against the peace of Rome.

We look to the cross and recognize what we are capable of doing to each other in the name of religion, in the name of justice, or just for political convenience. But we also look to the cross because it has a bright, hopeful side: God vindicated the humble way of Jesus. God raised Jesus from the dead and gave him the name that is above every name. We call this week holy, because Jesus reveals who God is, and not despite the cross, but because of it. We see that the heart of reality is not relentless competition in pursuit of status; the heart of reality is this relentless love in pursuit of communion. We look to the cross and we see love that goes all the way for the sake of communion with us, for the sake of peace.

Alan Culpepper writes, “It is so easy to project false images of the Lord we worship, to make for ourselves a king whom we can worship rather than to worship the Christ as our king.”[3] So when the Apostle Paul writes, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, it is good for us to keep in mind that he’s not opening a backdoor for dreams of domination and Christian hegemony. Instead he points to our hope that ultimately all of creation will know that love is lord of heaven and earth.

So let’s not be too quick to dress Jesus in royal garb and shining armor, and remember the manger, the borrowed donkey, and the cross. For he’s humbly guiding our feet into the way of peace.

[1] John 14:27

[2] Luke 1:79

[3] Alan Culpepper, Luke (NIB), 370.

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?