Attention-getter

At his hometown synagogue, Jesus was reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”[1] Jesus was reading ancient words, but when he spoke them, they were his own. That day at the synagogue, Jesus spoke Isaiah’s declaration, and throughout his ministry, he filled it, every word and syllable, with the fullness of his life — with his full attention, with his whole heart, with his every breath. When John sent word to Jesus from prison, asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” he said, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, …[and] the poor have good news brought to them.”[2]

The God who sent Jesus is openly partisan, and some might say, shockingly so. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,” Jesus declared. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Jesus didn’t declare that somehow it is a blessing to be poor, hungry, hated, or excluded. The poor, the hungry, the hated and excluded are blessed, because God is on their side.

In the world the poor and the hungry too often find themselves pushed to the margins of attention, that’s the way things work around here, but Jesus embodies and proclaims God’s reign. The good news proclaimed to the poor is that the kingdom of God is theirs, and not the property of those who like to think they own everything worth owning in the world. The good news proclaimed to the poor is divine solidarity, the assurance that God is for them and with them—and not sometime, someday, but now. “God has a preferential love for the poor,” says theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, “not because they are necessarily better than others, morally or religiously, but simply because they are poor and living in an inhuman situation that is contrary to God’s will. The ultimate basis for the privileged position of the poor is not in the poor themselves but in God.”[3] So what is it, we wonder, the rich have proclaimed to them? Every one of Jesus’ beatitudes is mirrored by a woe. Woe to you who are rich! Woe to you who are full now! Woe to you who are laughing now! Woe to you when all speak well of you! What are we to make of that? Is woe somehow the opposite of blessed? Does it mean cursed or damned? Jesus may have picked up from Isaiah the rhetorical style of woes linked together in a chain:

Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!  Woe to those who rise early in the morning in pursuit of strong drink, who linger in the evening to be inflamed by wine, whose feasts consist of lyre and harp, tambourine and flute and wine, but who do not regard the deeds of the Lord or see the work of his hands!  Woe to those who drag iniquity along with cords of falsehood, who drag sin along as with cart ropes! Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter![4]

Woe does not mean cursed, New Testament scholar, Matt Skinner, insists, and certainly not damned. “Like the English word yikes, it is more of an attention-getter and emotion-setter than a clear characterization or pronouncement.”[5] Well, Jesus got our attention, didn’t he? “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”

Who are the rich? The term denotes economic well-being and security, as well as belonging and power, and, in Luke, a sense of arrogance: the rich need not look to God’s reign for encouragement about the situation in which their social and economic status puts them. The rich are the ones who insist, “Oh, I’m not rich, I’m just comfortable.” The consolation of the comfortable is their wealth. The consolation of the poor is the kingdom of God.

Woe to you who are comfortable, for you have received your comfort. Woe to you who expect the future to be little more than a continuation of your comfortable present. Woe to you who say to the seers, “Do not see,” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things; prophesy illusions; leave the way; turn aside from the path; let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.”[6] Woe to you who can’t lean into God’s future together with those who long for a world where justice and peace embrace, and where all who hunger feast at the banquet of life. Woe to you when your wealth traps you in illusions of self-sufficiency, mastery, and control.

In the opening declarations of his sermon, Jesus isn’t delivering notes on sainthood or listing qualifications to get into heaven, nor is he dividing his audience into winners and losers. He speaks words of encouragement and affirmation to those who, by the world’s standards, have little to show. And he speaks words of warning to those who can’t ask for anything but more of the same. With encouragement and warning, Jesus is calling all who are listening – rich and poor, hungry and full, sorrowful and carefree – to lean into the dawn of God’s reign together and to live by the light of God’s mercy. Paul, in Ephesians, calls this “to see with the eyes of the heart enlightened”[7] – to see all things and ourselves in the embrace of divine love, where we are each fully ourselves and one with each other. Paul identifies this unity as both the ground of our being and the horizon of our journey in time.

The world, of course, is ruled by powers hostile to the creative and redemptive power of love, but before the foundation of the world, God chose saints to be agents of God’s reign, in every generation.[8] God chose ordinary people to live as God’s people, people set aside for God’s purposes, people who would let their attitudes, actions, and words be determined by the boundless love of God. In today’s passage from Luke, Jesus doesn’t speak of the love for God and the love for one’s neighbor as equally central to our lives as disciples; instead, his opening teaching, after the blessings and woes, is about loving our enemies, loving those who hate, curse, mistreat, beat, rob, and deprive followers of Jesus of what is rightfully theirs.[9] His descriptions reflect experiences of rejection and exclusion many believers in the first century had to endure, trials that pushed their love for God and their love for their hostile neighbors to the limit. For many of them, only the memory and example of Jesus on the cross gave them the strength not to give in to violence, retaliation, or hatred. The good news of the kingdom is more than a word spoken with conviction; it is a word lived by the followers of Jesus, a word embodied by the community of saints who bear the name of Christ. We desire to live the word that is good news to the poor, and we are fortunate that our commitment to this life isn’t being tested by violent rejection and persecution. One of our teachers at the abbey this summer told us a very short story about the power of loving one’s enemy.

Upon having his monastery invaded by Chinese soldiers and a gun pointed in his face, the Tibetan monk remained calm, continuing his prayers. The soldier angrily shouted, “Don’t you realize I have the power to kill you?” Undeterred in his prayers, the monk replied, “Don’t you realize I have the power to let you?”[10]

The message of radical love that Jesus brings and is, calls for change: change of perspective, change of vision, change of behavior. That’s a lot of change. And resistance to change, fear of change are widespread these days; they are among the main drivers in our current politics, both nationally and globally. But Jesus calls us to let ourselves be changed, to let ourselves be conformed to his radical love, to lean into the dawn of God’s reign and dream. Willie James Jennings writes,

Without dreaming, even holy dreaming, voting loses its compass and can be driven by anxiety, anger, or the desire to harm others. Such holy dreaming is not utopian – it is absolutely crucial to civic action that resists the powers of death. People of faith should remind everyone that they vote not simply to elect officials but to aim [the] world toward hope. The most important test of an election season should always be: Do the candidates, the proposed policies, the platform agendas, the bonds or propositions all promote a shared life, or do they draw us toward segregationist ways of living and thinking?[11]

In Luke we read that Jesus spoke the blessings and woes, and all the teachings that followed, on a level place. I like to think of the level place as the place where every valley has been filled and every mountain and hill has been made low, where the crooked has been made straight, and the rough ways smooth.[12] In my dream, in the level place, the powerful have been brought down from their thrones, and the lowly have been lifted up.[13] In the level place, Jesus comes face-to-face with us, all of us, the whole company of saints and sinners, and we come face-to-face with each other, recognizing one another as kin, and together we lean into God’s future, a shared life where love reigns.

[1] Luke 4:18

[2] Luke 7:20-22

[3] Quoted in Culpepper, Luke (NIB), 145.

[4] See Isaiah 5:8-22

[5] Matt Skinner https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/all-saints-day-2/commentary-on-luke-620-31-4

[6] See Isaiah 30:9-11

[7] Ephesians 2:18

[8] See Ephesians 1:4

[9] See Fitzmyer, Luke, 630.

[10] Nathan Foster, The Making of an Ordinary Saint (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2014), 23.

[11] Willie James Jennings, Aiming the World Toward Hope https://reflections.yale.edu/article/spirit-and-politics-finding-our-way/aiming-world-toward-hope

[12] Luke 3:5

[13] Luke 1:52

Sticky labels

On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus passed through Jericho. The city lay at the intersection of major trade roads and was a beehive of commercial activity. In the Roman province of Judea, it was one of the top markets for the collection of tolls and fees. The system was simple and effective: the collection rights for all districts were auctioned off by the Roman authorities to the highest bidder, then the bidder paid the governor and hired locals to collect tolls at bridges and gates.

In Jericho, Zacchaeus had won the auction. He wasn’t just a tax collector; we’ve met plenty of them already in Luke’s gospel. He was a chief tax collector. Whatever bothered people about tax collectors, Zacchaeus represented, as they say, a whole nother level of bad. And he was rich. Luke doesn’t tell us how Zacchaeus got rich, but a good number of people in Jericho probably would have been quick to tell you that that fancy house of his had been paid with coins from their pockets. Needless to say that he wasn’t a popular man. People shunned him, ignored him when they could, and the day Jesus came to town, they could.

The streets were packed with onlookers, and Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was, but he couldn’t, on account of the crowd and since he was small in stature. He didn’t measure up, both in terms of his height and on the likability index. He was a short fellow, and nobody was going to let him through. When I picture the scene in my mind, I see somebody like Danny DeVito staring at the backs of a wall of people standing shoulder to shoulder, with barely a crack between them. He stretches his neck, stands on the tip of his toes, he even attempts a few jumps, but he can’t catch a glimpse of the man he wants to see. Luke tells us that eventually he ran down the street a little way, and he climbed a tree for a better view. You have to like the fellow; so determined to see who Jesus was, he didn’t mind that everybody was laughing at him.

Zacchaeus was rich, and in Luke news about the rich is consistently bleak: They are the ones sent away empty when the hungry are filled with good things.[1] They are the fools who can only think of building bigger barns after a good year.[2] They are the gluttons feasting daily who don’t seem to see Lazarus starving at the door.[3] And the last time Jesus had looked into the eyes of a rich man, he said, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”[4] But rich as he was, Zacchaeus didn’t enjoy life strolling in the sunshine of his fortune and of his neighbors’ respect. Yes, he lived in Jericho, and he may have had one of the nicest houses in town, but he didn’t feel at home. That wall of bodies he tried to squeeze through? That was something he faced every day, one way or another: being ignored, rejected, excluded.

Why did he want to see who Jesus was? It had to be more than just curiosity. No grown man runs down the street and climbs a tree like a little boy merely out of curiosity. Zacchaeus was rich, but he was cut off from the life of the community like he didn’t even exist. Perhaps he had heard people talk about Jesus, the prophet from Galilee. He may have heard them call him a friend of tax collectors and sinners, and they said it with disdain in their voices, but to him it sounded like hope, like the promise of a different kind of life. Perhaps he was sitting up in that tree because he had been wondering for some time, if it could be true: acceptance, belonging, friendship even, for someone like himself.

Haven’t you sat in that tree? Some of you may have been sitting in it for quite some time, wondering who this Jesus is, who is so compassionate, so ready to forgive, so quick to relate to any person as a beloved child of God — Jesus who heals, and challenges, and calls us with great love. You want the stories to become real in your life. You want to see him, you really want to see him, know him, be with him.

A magical moment happens in the story: Jesus comes near the tree and he looks up, and he doesn’t turn away and move on, no, he stops, and he sees Zacchaeus and says, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” Luke says, So he hurried and came down, and he welcomed him joyfully. Joy erupts! The pronouns in the scene are ambiguous. He hurried and came down, and he welcomed him joyfully. We assume it’s Zacchaeus welcoming Jesus, but it could just as well be Jesus welcoming Zacchaeus, and of course both readings are true because the welcome is mutual and the joy complete. Either was eager to see and be with the other, and now they are on the way together to the welcome table where the guest is the host and Zacchaeus is at home.

Such joy, you’d think, would be uncontainable and contagious; such joy would pull in the whole crowd, you’d think, and they would all follow the two on their way to the table of gladness—but no, the old labels are very sticky, they don’t come off that easily. All who saw it, Luke tells us, began to grumble. All who saw it didn’t see what Zacchaeus saw, didn’t see what Jesus saw. All who saw it only saw what they’d always seen, and they began to grumble.

Grumble is the perfect word here, I hear it as a blend of growl and rumble.It’s a  protest that can’t quite bring itself to speak, but remains a mumbled growl, a muffled thunder, a dangerous rumble just below the surface, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” This has been a constant in Jesus’ ministry, practically from day one. Back in Galilee, Jesus saw Levi, sitting at the tax booth, and said to him, “Follow me.” And Levi got up and followed him. And then there was a great banquet at Levi’s house, and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them. There was joy in the house, but some who were watching, grumbled, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”[5] Notice that in those early days the grumblers were still talking to Jesus, rather than about him. Later, though, when Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, a similar scene: Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus, but some who were watching, grumbled, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”[6] According to Luke, whenever people are watching Jesus and grumbling, it’s about the same thing—sinners are drawn to him, and he just can’t distance himself properly from them; on the contrary, he appears to be quite intentional about seeking them out. The grumblers are watching, but they can’t see what Jesus sees, they can’t see what the people in his company see, they can’t see the mercy of God dancing right in front of their eyes.

Zacchaeus doesn’t grumble; he stands and speaks. “Look, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold.” Some readers think, Zacchaeus is making a promise here, that in his former life he might have been selfish, greedy, and corrupt, but from now on he would act generously and justly. Others point out that his words are in the present, not the future tense, and that apparently Zacchaeus isn’t making a promise to bear fruits worthy of repentance, but protesting against being labeled a sinner.[7] According to that reading, Zacchaeus is finally able to tell us, and we are finally able to imagine, that he is indeed a generous person with a profound sense of justice, and not the stereotypical “sinner” of our labels. Zacchaeus is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew name Zakkai, and in Hebrew the name sounds like upright, innocent, righteous. This is who the man truly is, even when all the grumblers see are labels like sinner or taxman or camel forever stuck in the eye of the needle. 

Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” Today salvation has come to this house, because in the presence of Jesus we are seen and known, we get to be who we are, and we get to see one another for who we are: sons and daughters of the covenant, siblings of Jesus, members of the household of God.

Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was, and he did. In his desire to see, I hear echoes of lines from Psalm 63, 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. Zacchaeus was rich, but he was thirsting for life, for connection with his neighbors, for a sense of belonging. He wanted to see who Jesus was, because like us he had heard that others had found life in his presence. Zacchaeus was seeking Jesus, and looking down from the tree, his eyes meeting the eyes of Jesus looking up, he discovered that in this relationship he was not the only seeker; Jesus was also seeking him.

So what? What does this mean come Monday morning? For the sake of life, seek the Lord with all your heart, knowing that the Lord is seeking you. And try to remember that, no matter how sticky your labels are, no person is beyond the reach of mercy.

[1] Lk 1:53

[2] Lk 12:16-21

[3] Lk 16:19-31

[4] Lk 18:25

[5] Lk 5:27-30

[6] Lk 15:1-2

[7] The Jewish Annotated NT notes, “Zacchaeus is less repenting than he is attesting his righteousness.” David Lose asks, “Are the present tense verbs in verse 8 to be understood, in fact, as present tense, thereby describing the current and ongoing behavior of Zacchaeus (as in the RSV and KJV)? Or shall we give them a future cast, describing Zacchaeus’ penitent pledge of future behavior (as in the NRSV and NIV)?” Scholars and translators are divided. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-31-3/commentary-on-luke-191-10-2

Humility and contempt

Two men went up to the temple to pray. Luke has let us know that Jesus told this parable particularly to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt. Luke’s gospel mentions regarding others with contempt twice: here and again later when Herod and his soldiers mock and abuse Jesus.[1] So the parable serves as a subtle reminder that the people we regard with contempt are in the blessed company of Jesus. Contempt for others is widespread these days, and perhaps the memory that the people so regarded, or rather disregarded, are in the company of Jesus, can yet teach our hearts a better way.

We have heard this little story for centuries, and we know that it is quite dangerous. Pharisee and tax collector have become “religious stock figures” to us, stereotypes of the self-righteous, rule-bound religious hypocrite, lacking in compassion and insight, in contrast with the contrite, meek and humble tax-collector.[2] We have learned the lesson, we know it’s all about being humble, and, irony of ironies, writes Marjorie Proctor-Smith, “as soon as we have arrived at a suitable state of humility, we … take pride in our accomplishment.”[3] This little story is dangerous because it plays with stereotypes, and because it sneaks up on us and traps us in our very genuine desire to be good people who do the right thing and enjoy being recognized for it—and if it’s the halo of humility we are to reach for, we will, thankful that we’re not like other people, especially this Pharisee. Ouch. We want to be good, we want to do right, and we can’t escape our inclination toward regarding others with contempt, whether we dismiss them as fundamentalists, deplorables, or libtards.

Two men went up to the temple to pray. One of them was a good man, and he knew it. He took his religion seriously. He observed the prayer times diligently, he studied scripture daily, he gave generously to help the needy, and when it came to fasting and tithing he went beyond what law and tradition required. He was the kind of dedicated person of which every community needs a few. People like him know what is good and right, and they do it. People like him provide the leadership and example any community depends on.

The other man, in stark contrast, was not a respected member of the community by any stretch of the imagination. He collected taxes, which doesn’t mean that he had a degree in accounting and worked for the IRS. He worked for Rome. He had crossed the line, he had put himself outside the bounds of belonging by collaborating with the occupying power. He had let himself be turned into one small wheel in the empire’s vast machine, making a living by squeezing the local population for cash. The Roman way of tax collection was a simple and effective franchise system: regional brokers bid for the contracts and hired locals to raise set amounts from specific areas. The local collectors were given their quota, and those higher up in the extraction scheme didn’t really care how they went about meeting those goals—and whatever they collected in addition to their quota was theirs to keep. You can imagine they didn’t have many friends. When, walking down the street, you saw one of them coming toward you, you crossed to the other side. Nobody you knew, nobody who cared about justice and righteousness, wanted anything to do with him. The tax collector was outside of all that was honorable, honest, and holy. He was a sinner, and he knew it.

Two men went up to the temple to pray, and then they went home, one of them declared righteous by Jesus. The next morning, for all we know, they each returned to the life they knew. One got up to collect a little more than his quota, give to Caesar what was Caesar’s, and keep the surplus to pay the bills and save for retirement. The other man returned to his life of careful, religious observance and communal responsibility. Nothing had really changed, except, hopefully, our assumptions about what constitutes righteousness. Jesus doesn’t tell us this story so we embrace the language of humility and redirect our contempt to the new outsider, the Pharisee. Jesus stands with those whom we regard with contempt and he draws our attention to God’s mercy. Jesus steps outside the  bounds of what we consider honorable, honest, and holy, not to shame those who desire to live honorable, honest, and holy lives; he steps outside those bounds to help us see that God’s righteousness does not exclude, but welcome the sinner. God breaks the power of sin for the sake of communion with us, for none of us can flourish under sin’s reign.

The Pharisee’s prayer opened beautifully, “God, I thank you.” With his heart’s attention focused on the generous gifts of God, he would never run out of things to name with gratitude for the rest of his days. But his eyes were on his own hands, his eyes rested on all that he had to show, and the only gratitude he could offer was for not being like other people. Looking up from his own hands, he compared himself to those who have little or nothing to show, and he was pleased with the difference. That very moment, of course, he had lost sight of the open, generous, welcoming hands of God.

The tax collector didn’t even look up. His eyes lowered, gazing at his toes, he  stood off to the side. Standing outside all that is honorable, honest, and holy he had no one to look down upon—but his heart’s attention rested on God, and his thirst for God’s mercy was his prayer. Jesus challenges us to imagine community differently. Instead of envisioning a community of righteousness whose boundaries are maintained with the granting and withholding of mercy, he challenges us to imagine a community of mercy that reshapes how we practice righteousness.

The two men who went up to the temple to pray remind me of two brothers. We know them from another story Jesus told in response to people who were grumbling about his habit of welcoming sinners and eating with them. It’s the story about a father who had two sons; the younger went to a distant country and burned through his inheritance while the older stayed at home and did everything he was supposed to. You know the story and how it ends with the father standing outside, pleading with the older son to come in and join the banquet. To the older son, righteousness is something he possesses and his brother doesn’t, something he has worked hard to uphold and his brother has squandered. He can’t see that mercy has prepared a feast for all. He can’t see yet that all of us need more love than we deserve. He can’t see yet that mercy heals our wounded, broken lives in the joy of communion with God. Karl Barth said in one of his sermons at the prison in Basel,

We are saved by grace. That means that we did not deserve to be saved. What we deserve would be quite different. No one can be proud of being saved. Each one [of us] can only fold [our] hands in great lowliness of heart and be thankful … Consequently, we shall never possess salvation as our property. We may only receive it as a gift over and over again with hands outstretched.[4]

The Pharisee, assuming that the tax collector had situated himself outside the bounds of righteousness, regarded that sinner with contempt. Perhaps he did pray with hands outstretched, but not to receive with gratitude the gift of God—he presented himself, holding up all his impressive accomplishments. He had no use for his brother other than as a dark foil against which his own light would shine even brighter. The tax collector, with empty hands, fully aware that he had nothing to show, threw himself into the arms of God’s mercy. Did he know, I wonder, when he went down to his home, that in the eyes of God he was righteous? How could he know, unless there was somebody who, like Jesus, with hands outstretched in welcome, embraced him as a brother?

In the eyes of mercy, we are all like other people: made in the image of God, beloved, and worthy of saving, and much of our salvation is about learning not to write off anyone as beyond the reach of God’s mercy. “Contempt for others lurks in the human heart, bubbling up easily and frequently,” writes Dan Clendenin. “We imagine that in denigrating others we validate ourselves.”[5] But the truth is, we all stumble in many ways, and what we need when we flounder isn’t moral condescension, but solidarity and compassion.[6] I want to close with a story about one of the desert fathers. It illustrates beautifully the kind of solidarity, I believe, Jesus wants us cultivate.

A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, ‘Come, for everyone is waiting for you.’ So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, ‘What is this, Father?’ The old man said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’ When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him.

We are busy comparing and judging, when all we need is to see ourselves and one another in the light of God’s mercy.

[1] Luke 23:11

[2] Marjorie Procter-Smith, Feasting, 213.

[3] Ibid., 215.

[4] Karl Barth, Deliverance to the Captives (Harper, 1961), 39.

[5] Dan Clendenin https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1148-the-pharisee-and-the-tax-collector

[6] James 3:2 (NIV); see Clendenin, note 5.

Faithful persisterhood

In 1986, Coretta Scott King, Dr. Martin Luther King’s widow, wrote a letter to Senator Strom Thurmond, when Jeff Sessions was nominated to serve as federal judge for the Southern District of Alabama. She was writing the letter to “express [her] sincere opposition” to the confirmation of Sessions, who, she wrote, had “used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as federal judge.”

A generation later, in February 2017, Senator Elizabeth Warren read the widow’s letter in a confirmation hearing for Jeff Sessions when he was nominated to serve as Attorney General. Interrupting her speech, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Warren of “impugn[ing] the motives and conduct” of Sessions, in violation of a Senate Rule prohibiting Senators from imputing to another Senator any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator. “Senator Warren was giving a lengthy speech,” McConnell said, defending the move. “She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”[1]

Widows and judges create fascinating resonances between a first century story and the struggle for justice in the 20th century and more recent attempts to silence persistent women. I don’t know who coined the phrase persisterhood, but I applaud them for their find. Both Paul in 2 Timothy and Jesus in Luke are urging persistence in proclamation and prayer, whether the time is favorable or unfavorable, so perhaps we could adopt for the fellowship of believers the descriptive term, the faithful persisterhood.

The book of Psalms is an ancient document of persistence. Voices of exuberant praise mingle with voices of confident teaching; lonely laments rise out of the depths of shattering human experience, along with insistent questions.

How long, O Lord?
Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
this sorrow in my heart day and night?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, Lord my God.[2]

How often have these questions been spoken with tears, shouted in anger, whispered on the verge of despair—and there was no answer? Will you forget me forever?

God’s people are a community of persistence in praising, teaching. lamenting, questioning and expectant waiting. “We have waited and prayed for justice so long, our knuckles are bloody from knocking on that door,” an old preacher sang from a Montgomery pulpit some sixty years ago. Bloody knuckles from praying. Blisters on your feet from praying with your legs. Praise, of course, soars like a bird on wings of joy and gratitude, but when prayer is little more than a heart’s cry for an answer, the night can be long.

Jesus told the disciples, “The days are coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it.”[3] He prepared us for a long Advent season of longing, an Advent season spent not in passive waiting, though, but in actively leaning into the promised day. He taught us to love and serve God and our neighbor, and he taught us to pray. Among his teachings about prayer is the story about the widow and the judge.

Widows in Jesus’ time weren’t necessarily poor, but they were in a very vulnerable position. When a man died, all his belongings became the property of his sons or brothers, and the widow depended entirely on them for her survival. Of course there were families who loved and honored mom; but you know what families can be like. The male survivors had certain responsibilities, based on law and custom, but that didn’t always mean they took them seriously. Disputes involving widows and orphans were quite common, and it was the judges’ responsibility to help resolve those disputes in the community. Jewish law and tradition were quite clear about what was expected of a judge:

Give the members of your community a fair hearing, and judge rightly between one person and another, whether citizen or resident alien. You must not be partial in judging: hear out the small and the great alike; you shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s.

Consider what you are doing, for you judge not on behalf of human beings but on the Lord’s behalf; he is with you in giving judgment. Now, let the fear of the Lord be upon you; take care what you do, for there is no perversion of justice with the Lord our God.[4]

It wasn’t just the part about the fear of the Lord this judge in Jesus’ story habitually ignored. He was a man without shame. Didn’t want to hear the widow’s case. Ignored her plea for justice. Some have wondered if he was waiting for a small payment from the widow for his troubles, a little grease for the wheels of justice.

The widow had nowhere else to go. No friends in high places. No judicial complaint hotline. No Legal Aid Society. What she did have was her remarkable capacity to make a scene, and she made good use of it. She didn’t go away. She knocked on his door, “Give me justice.” She camped out on the steps of the court, shouting, “Give me justice.” She followed him on the street on his way to lunch, “Give me justice.” She called his office several times a day and left messages on his voice mail, “Give me justice.” She cut him off on the golf course, shouting, “Give me justice.” She was persistent and shameless. And she finally wore him down. No, the judge didn’t suddenly develop reverence for God and respect for people and the law, no, he just wanted to get her off his back.

Now, Jesus said, if the worst judge you can possibly imagine will respond to the persistent plea of a widow, how much more will God grant justice to you, God’s children, who pray night and day? Luke says, the story is about our need to pray always and not to lose heart. To pray boldly and tirelessly. To pray as though the coming of God’s reign depended solely on our prayers. To ask, to seek, to knock with unrelenting persistence. Do you know what they say about bulldogs? Their nose is slanted backward so they can breathe without letting go. Pray like a bulldog. Pray with the doggedness of this widow. According to Luke, that’s what the story is about. Be persistent in prayer, and don’t lose heart.

It’s quite a privilege to reflect on the state of our prayer life while many widows are struggling to pay for food and prescriptions and a roof over their head. The widow in the parable is more than a funny you-go-sister illustration for good prayer habits. She’s a human being crying out for justice, and in the story, she’s alone. Yes, she keeps coming, she keeps shouting to move a corrupt judge, but doesn’t her persistence also move us? She is making a scene, and isn’t her persistence reminding us that God’s reign is a reign of justice? Yes, she invites us to pray like her, but she also urges us to pray with her, to join her in wrangling justice from broken institutions that reflect no fear of God and little respect for the dignity of human beings.

We must be persistent in prayer because prayer keeps the flame of hope alive. The night of waiting can be long, and in prayer we engage with the living God in whom we trust and whose purposes we want to serve. In prayer we let the priorities of God reorder our own priorities.

We ask, “how long?”, we seek with honesty, we knock on heaven’s door, and we keep at it. And sometimes the questions we address to God get turned around and come back to us. Because God is not at all like this reluctantly responsive judge. God does not need to be badgered into listening. In fact, God’s presence is closer to us in the widow’s relentless commitment to justice than in the judge’s slow, unwilling response. God has responded and continues to respond, God comes to us — persistent, unrelenting, determined to get our attention. How long will you hide your face from me, she asks. How long must children in this city go to bed hungry? How long must old men wander homeless in the streets? How long must I bear this sorrow in my heart day and night and you, you do not know? Look on me and answer. In the widow’s cry, God’s demand is given voice and suddenly we find ourselves in the position — of the judge? God forbid. God help us that we may always find ourselves in the position of the follower of Jesus who joins the persisterhood.

Sometimes we pray just to keep our head above water and breathe. Sometimes all we want from our prayers is the assurance of God’s mercy in a world that’s going nuts. But Jesus reminds us of our need to pray always so that the purposes of God can reorder the priorities of our lives. We pray for God’s kingdom to come, we pray for daily bread and forgiveness, and as we knock on heaven’s door we hear knocking from the other side: God’s persistent presence, calling us to walk with Jesus.

[1] https://time.com/4663497/coretta-scott-king-letter-warren-senate-sessions

https://time.com/5175901/elizabeth-warren-nevertheless-she-persisted-meaning/

[2] Psalm 13:1-3

[3] Luke 17:22

[4] Deuteronomy 1:16-17 and 2 Chronicles 19:6-7

If mercy didn't have eyes

Praise is the duty and delight, the ultimate vocation of the human community; indeed of all creation…  All life is aimed toward God and finally exists for the sake of God. Praise articulates and embodies our capacity to yield, submit, and abandon ourselves in trust and gratitude to the One whose we are. Praise is not only a human requirement and a human need, it is also a human delight. We have a resilient hunger to move beyond self, to return our energy and worth to the One from whom it has been granted. In our return to that One, we find our deepest joy.[1]

These strong affirmations were written many years ago by Geoffrey Wainwright and Walter Brueggemann. There are moments in life when our hearts are opened wide to the miracle that life is, to the gift that it truly is, to the wondrous reality of our being part of the unfolding mystery of creation, that we get to hear and see it, touch it, taste and smell it, explore its depths and learn it, love it, share it: life. Praise is our response to the gift and to the loving giver. Praise is joy and gratitude poured out in shouts and words and songs and dance and generosity.

Does God need our praise to be God? Does God need our worship, our offerings, our attention? Many ask questions like that, but the crucial question is, can humans survive as humans without praise? To withhold acknowledgement, to avoid celebration, to stifle gratitude, may prove as foolish as refusing to breathe.[2]

I wonder if a growing number of us are slowly running out of breath. I wonder if a growing number of us are too busy and distracted to recognize life as anything other than the stage, backdrop and material for our own projects. Russell Johnson writes, and we all know the reality he’s describing,

The majority of Americans read headlines but rarely read news stories, we move our attention from subject to subject more rapidly than ever before, and the pandemic accelerated our tendency to focus on tweets and TikToks at the expense of lengthier media. We look at each webpage for an average of fifty-four seconds.[3]

We are switching our attention from one thing to another at an unprecedented rate. Russell says,

I can still read a book uninterrupted for several hours… if I’m on an airplane and have no other options. I can still watch a long movie… if I’m in a movie theater and devices are off. More frequently, I’m looking at my phone to distract myself from the TV show I put on to distract myself from my lunch.

Blaise Pascal lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, and he already suspected then that diversion and distraction were the principal threats to a life of faith. “All of humanity’s problems stem from [our] inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” he wrote. Today, flitting from preoccupation to preoccupation, our capacity to be attentive is shrinking rapidly, and with it our capacity to notice and marvel and breathe out praise. Early in the twentieth century, Simone Weil wrote, “Not only does the love of God have attention for its substance; the love of our neighbor, which we know to be the same love, is made of this same substance.”[4] Attention is the substance of love. Attention is at the heart of Luke’s story.

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

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, traveling through the region between Samaria and Galilee, when he was approached by ten men with leprosy. Leprosy was dreadful. It was the name given to any skin blemishes that looked suspicious and triggered fear of contagion. Leprosy was a sentence to exile. These men who approached Jesus had been banished from their homes and villages. How long had it been since they had felt the loving touch of another human being? It no longer mattered which side of the line they once claimed as home or which community they claimed as their own or who they used to be or dreamed of being—now they were lepers. Whoever saw them didn’t see them as persons, but as no-longer-persons, as untouchables pushed out and left to beg and wander in the borderlands. “They shall live alone,” the law of Moses declared; “their dwelling shall be outside the camp.”[5]

The ten approached Jesus, crying out for mercy, and Jesus saw them. He was attentive to them and to their cry. He didn’t cross to the other side of the road and walk past them. “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” he said. The priests were the ones responsible for determining if a rash was leprous or not. The priests were the ones who would examine the skin and decide, after the blemish had faded, if a person could return from their exile. “Go, show yourselves to the priests,” Jesus said to the ten, as though the time had come for them to return to life. And they went, and as they went, they were made clean. Made clean meant they would belong again. Made clean meant they could touch and be touched, hold the baby, kiss the children, hug their wives, do their work, hang out with their friends. The ten had encountered Jesus in the land of not-belonging and now they were restored to life, restored to wholeness.

One of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice, and he thanked Jesus. One of them, when he saw that he was healed, noticed something the others didn’t; he was attentive and responsive. Nine of the ten got their old lives back. One found new life. And he was a Samaritan.

Again it was a Samaritan, the proverbial outsider in Jewish circles, who saw what others didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t see. Jesus told a story about a man who fell into the hands of robbers on the Jericho Road. You know it well. A priest happened to come down that road, and when he saw the victim, he passed by on the other side. He saw him, but he wasn’t attentive. He didn’t see what he needed to see. Next a Levite came to the place and saw the man, and he also passed by on the other side. His attention elsewhere, he also didn’t see what was there for him to see. And then a third man came near, and when he saw the man, he was moved with compassion. And he was a Samaritan. It was an outsider whose actions on the Jericho road revealed the substance of being a neighbor, and it was again an outsider who was attentive to the presence of God in Jesus. The gospel draws our attention to the outsiders who saw what many others didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t see.

Ten cried out for mercy. Ten did what Jesus told them to do. Ten were made clean. Nine went home and lived happily ever after; and nothing suggests that their healing was revoked for their lack of gratitude. God’s mercy is unconditional. One of the ten, though, one of them turned back and gave praise to God at Jesus’ feet.

In Jesus, the kingdom of God has come into the region between where exiles wander, longing for redemption and crying out for mercy. Leprosy meant exclusion and isolation, and that makes it the perfect symbol for all the ways in which human beings experience not being at home, not belonging, not being seen, not being at one with each other, not being at one with ourselves. It was the Samaritan, the outsider, who was attentive and who recognized that with Jesus the realm of God was present. He saw a new reality of belonging. He saw an embrace so wide and welcoming, it wouldn’t create yet another camp in this broken, divided world, but a new community, one that included Jews and Samaritans; he saw the promise and presence of a redeemed humanity, made whole by God’s mercy. The Samaritan saw grace so deep, mercy so wide, his whole being became gratitude and praise.

“Get up and go on your way,” Jesus said to him; “your faith has made you well.” Ten had been healed. Ten had been restored to life and community. But one of the ten returned, and not just to say, “Thank you, Jesus.” He returned and praised God. Martin Luther was once asked to describe the nature of true worship. His answer: the tenth leper turning back.

The story of the grateful Samaritan can help us see that “to be saved is not only to be healed and forgiven but to be delivered from [anything] that inhibits grateful praise.”[6] In grateful praise we live the life we were made for, abandoning ourselves in trust and gratitude to the One whose we are.

The story of the grateful Samaritan can also help us see that there are people in the region between in our world, people who belong neither here nor there, people who would be invisible if mercy didn’t have eyes.

Now we can pray, “Mercy, will you look through my eyes, that I may see what is there to see, that I may let my whole heart be yours, and my hands your hands—my whole life yours?”

May it be so.

[1] Walter Brueggemann, Israel’s Praise: Doxology against Idolatry and Ideology, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1988), 1. The first sentence is a quote from Geoffrey Wainwright, “The Praise of God in the Theological Reflection of the Church,” Interpretation 39 (1985), 39.

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

[3] Russell Johnson, “Attention, Please,” Sightings, September 22, 2022 https://mailchi.mp/uchicago/sightings-218364?e=6562fb9336

[4] See Johnson, “Attention, Please”

[5] Leviticus 13:46

[6] See Eugene Boring and Fred Craddock, People’s Commentary, 247.

Table power flip

Ashley Jones wrote a poem about Sally Hemings. Sally Hemings? Ashley Jones says, “It’s safe to say I’ve always been fascinated by the ways that history is taught in America.” And she goes on,

Let us tell it, 1492 was a year of great discovery and exploration instead of the start of mass genocide and pillaging. Slaves and masters were happy together. The Emancipation Proclamation marked the end of second-class citizenship for Black people in America. We know these things aren’t true, that history is painted over to make us seem more heroic, more loving, more okay with the way things are.

Ashley Jones wrote a poem about Sally Hemings because she’s “interested […] in the discrepancies between the story in our history and the reality of what happened.” She says,

Some people will tell us that Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson’s mistress, lover, girlfriend, etc., but none of that is possible because she was a slave. She could not give consent, and in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of her master, she wasn’t human enough to feel such a complex feeling as love. [...] Thomas Jefferson didn’t think of Sally, of any Black person as a full human being. In [Notes on the State of Virginia], Jefferson asserts his belief that Black people are scientifically inferior to White people for many reasons, but some of note are that we are smellier (more sweat), require less sleep, are incapable of complex cognition, and we are unable to feel love, only lust.

Ashley Jones wrote a poem about Sally Hemings because she’s interested in the discrepancies between the story in our history and the reality of what happened. She’s interested in the discrepancies between the story in our unquestioned assumptions, our comfortable assumptions, our oft-repeated assumptions and the reality of what happened. “As the poem developed,” she says, “I realized I wanted the facts to stand alone so the reader could draw her own conclusions. I didn’t want to moralize, as Sally’s voice has been silenced enough—I wanted her life to exist on the page so everyone could see who she was and what was done to her. I wanted her to finally get to tell her truth.”[1]

Ashley M. Jones, What It Means To Say Sally Hemings

Bright Girl Sally
Mulatto Sally
Well Dressed Sally
Sally With the Pretty Hair
Sally With the Irish Cotton Dress
Sally With the Smallpox Vaccine
Sally, Smelling of Clean White Soap
Sally Never Farmed A Day In Her Life
Available Sally
Nursemaid Sally
Sally, Filled with Milk
Sally Gone to Paris with Master’s Daughter
Sally in the Chamber with the President
Sally in the Chamber with the President’s Brother
Illiterate Sally
Capable Sally
Unmarried Sally
Sally, Mother of Madison, Harriet, Beverly, Eston
Sally, Mother of Eston Who Changed His Name
Sally, Mother of Eston Hemings Jefferson
Eston, Who Made Cabinets
Eston, Who Made Music
Eston, Who Moved to Wisconsin
Eston, Whose Children Were Jeffersons
Eston, Who Died A White Man
Grandmother Sally of the White Hemingses
Infamous Sally
Silent Sally
Sally, Kept at Monticello Until Jefferson’s Death
Sally, Whose Children Were Freed Without Her

Jesus seems uncomfortably comfortable talking about slaves, not as persons with names, persons with their own stories, but as nameless characters in his parables. “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’?” he says, and the expected answer is, “No one; it would be unthinkable.”

According to Luke, Jesus told this story to the apostles — are we to assume then that there actually were owners of slaves among the first followers of Jesus? Or was this question just another conventional way to begin a story? Like, “In a certain city there was judge” or “there was a rich man who had a manager”?

The question may have been just another conventional way to begin a story, given that slavery was a painfully common institution in the first century and beyond. The word slave occurs more than 150 times in the Greek New Testament,[2] and our hearts are heavy with grief and shame and anger, because we know how this frequent occurrence was used for centuries as a convenient cover to justify chattel slavery in this country.

The stories of masters and slaves, or slaves and fellow slaves, presuppose the institution of slavery as it existed in the first century; and the writers of the New Testament appear to have largely accepted it as a given of the social order. Explicitly the institution wasn’t questioned until later, but Jesus’ teaching, together with the unsettling reality of his dying a slave’s death on the cross and his being raised by God on the third day, undermined the whole structure of divisions between Jews and Gentiles, free citizens and slaves, male and female, and the old world began to crumble, and a new one began to emerge.

All of creation was radically renewed with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the pouring out of God’s Spirit on all flesh—but the wave of reconciliation unleashed by God’s act of new creation did not spread at the speed of an imperial army; it spread at the speed of trust: one gesture of brave hospitality at a time, one faithful act of service, one small step toward wholeness at a time.

The story that begins with the question about your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field is Jesus’ response to the apostles’ request to increase their faith. Why increase it? Are they looking for more, bigger, better, faster faith? New and improved faith? This year’s model of faith? In the preceding verses, Jesus teaches the disciples about repentance and forgiveness. “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive,” he says. And then he adds, “And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent’, you must forgive.”

Rebuking the offender? Not a problem. Forgiving if there is repentance? Perhaps you could say a bit more what true repentance looks like… But seven times? Increase our faith.

They’re like most of us. They don’t think they have quite enough of what it takes to be forgiving like that. They don’t think they’re ready for what they perceive to be the major leagues of Christian living. And Jesus tells them in so many words that they have all the faith they need for one small step toward wholeness and then another; for one gesture of courageous hospitality that lets the stranger in, and then another; all the faith we need to look at our history and at each other and let go of one comfortable assumption, and then another, and begin to know what it means to say Sally Hemings and Uncle Nearest[3] and David Drake[4] and Abraham.[5]

In Jesus’ story the assumption is presented that the slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field doesn’t get to eat and drink until he has prepared supper for his master, put on his apron and served his master while he eats and drinks.

“Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?” Jesus asks, and again the expected answer is negative, “No, such a thing would be unthinkable.” Up to this point, the apostles and all of us who have followed Jesus’ story, have been encouraged to identify with the master, regardless of whether we did so comfortably or not. But now Jesus flips the scene, something he likes to do a lot.

“So you also,” he says, “when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We servants deserve no special praise. We have only done our duty.’” Forgiving a person seven times a day is nothing extraordinary like hitting sixty-one home runs; it’s as everyday as it is for a slave to plow, tend sheep, prepare food, or serve at the table. Forgiving, offering hospitality by making space for others and letting them in by listening to them, entertaining their thoughts, eating their food and offering ours, letting go of comfortable assumptions—all these actions are simply things we do because we follow and obey Jesus.

And because it is Jesus we follow, there’s one more twist. In a later scene, where the disciples are busy debating which one of them ought to be regarded as the greatest, Jesus asks them, “Who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table?” All heads nodding. Some still quietly composing seating charts for the great banquet. And Jesus adds, “But I am among you as one who serves.”

We know he likes to flip the scene. In chapter 12 of Luke, we hear him say, “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes.” Here the master is the one who comes in, not the slave. We wonder what the master will tell the slaves. We wonder who will sit at table and who will put on the apron. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.” The master is the servant, and the slaves are the guests of honor. And we are only beginning to know what it means to say Jesus is Lord.

[1][1] From Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press, 2017); all author’s quotes and the poem at https://poetrysociety.org/poems-essays/in-their-own-words/ashley-m-jones-on-what-it-means-to-say-sally-hemings

[2] According to https://biblehub.com/greek/1401.htm, the word group δοῦλ- is used more than 150 times. In English translations, the word slave is used 130 times in the New Testament, 31 times in Luke alone, if you read the version we read in worship, the New Revised Standard Version. Other editions, including the King James Version and the New International Version prefer the translation “servant.”

[3] https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/industries/2022/06/22/uncle-nearest-whiskey-preserving-historic-legacy/7610307001/

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/arts/design/-enslaved-potter-david-drake-museum.html

[5] http://truthsofthetrade.winterthur.org/silver-spoon/

The gate of heaven

You remember Mary’s song, don’t you? The one she sang when she was pregnant with Jesus? The song about God who has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly, who has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty?[1] And do you remember Jesus’ sermon at Nazareth, where he declares that he’s been anointed to bring good news to the poor?[2] And you remember Luke 14:12, don’t you, where he admonishes his followers not to give dinners for friends and family and rich neighbors, but to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you remember how he told a certain ruler who wanted to inherit eternal life, “Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”[3]

Poverty and wealth are of great concern to Jesus. Greg Carey calls today’s story from Luke a “juxtaposition of obscene luxury and abject poverty.”[4] Topics of great concern to Jesus are thrown into sharp relief in this story. Barbara Rossing calls it “a wake-up call, pulling back a curtain to open our eyes to something we urgently need to see before it is too late.”[5] A wake-up call, in case we got drowsy and dozed off when Jesus declared, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. … But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”[6] Poverty and wealth are of great concern to Jesus.

The poor man in today’s story has a name, which is remarkable. Lazarus is the only named character in all of Jesus’ parables. The name is the Latin rendering of Eleazar or Eliezer, which means “God helps” — and no one else in the story does. We live in a world where the rich have names and the poor are statistics. The rich have their names written on large buildings, and spoken with hushed reverence at fundraising dinners; tour busses drive by their homes and the guides point to the gates and speak their names and everyone on the bus knows who they are. The poor are nameless and countless. But Jesus tells a story of a nameless rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. A rich man dressed in purple and fine linen and feasting sumptuously every day, and Lazarus, covered with sores, lying at the rich man’s gate, longing to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs were licking his sores. Perhaps the dogs were also snatching the pieces of bread the rich man’s guests used to wipe their greasy hands — bread napkins, tossed under the table. Perhaps Lazarus was too sick, too weak to jump up and grab even a morsel.

Jesus doesn’t tell us if Lazarus died of starvation, or if one of the sores got infected, or if it was one of those nights when temperatures outside the gate dropped into the upper 20’s. Lazarus died and he was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died, but no angels came to carry him away. He died and was buried. We may imagine that it must have been a lavish funeral in one of the city’s choice cemeteries, with an opulent reception, but that kind of detail doesn’t get any attention in Jesus’ story. Both men died, as all of us eventually do, and at the moment of death, suddenly their relationship was reversed.

Lazarus’ suffering was over, he reclined in the seat of honor at Abraham’s table, and the rich man was in agony in the flames of Hades. He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.” Have mercy on me, he said, and we wonder if Lazarus used to shout or whisper those words at the rich man’s gate to deaf or distracted ears. And did you notice? The rich man spoke of Lazarus by name. So he knew him, he recognized him, and now we wonder how long he might have known his name without acknowledging his presence and his need. And he didn’t say, “Lazarus, would you come over and help a brother out?” He asked Abraham to send him — still he could think of Lazarus only as socially inferior, somebody to be sent on an errand.

Abraham told him, “Between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” Who was it that fixed the great chasm?

I suggest that it was the rich man himself. The great chasm between him and Lazarus is nothing but the reverse manifestation of the one that existed in their earthly lives — only now their separation is permanent. The time to bridge the yawning abyss with a little attention and kindness has run out. The gate where Lazarus begged and waited, the gate that kept him outside, was and is and forever will be the very gate that keeps the rich man out of Abraham’s banquet.

In Anton Chekhov’s story, Gooseberries, one of the characters says,

Apparently, those who are happy can only enjoy themselves because the unhappy bear their burdens in silence, and but for this silence happiness would be impossible. It is a kind of universal hypnosis. There ought to be a man with a hammer behind the door of every happy man, to remind him by his constant knocks that there are unhappy people, and that happy as he himself may be, life will sooner or later show him its claws, catastrophe will overtake him – sickness, poverty, loss – and nobody will see it, just as he now neither sees nor hears the misfortunes of others. But there is no man with a hammer, the happy man goes on living and the petty vicissitudes of life touch him lightly, like the wind in an aspen-tree, and all is well.[7]

We don’t know if Lazarus bore his burdens in silence. We don’t know if the rich man ignored the poor man at his gate, or if the poor man’s presence and need had blended into the background of the rich man’s life, together with the dogs and the people on the sidewalk and the traffic noise. We don’t even know if the rich man was happy. All we do know is that he was well-dressed and well-fed and that Lazarus was neither, and when the great reversal came it was too late to do anything about it.

In a way, the rich man was saying to Abraham, “Behind the door of each of my brothers, there ought to be a man with a hammer, to remind them by his constant knocks that there are people in great need. Send Lazarus that he may warn them.”

And Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” The commandments are clear: Do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.[8] The words of the prophets are indeed constant knocks at the gate: Share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house.[9] The commandments speak of obligation. The prophets proclaim the word of the Lord with urgency, and when their words fall on deaf ears, they “lament over people who can see nothing about which to lament.”[10]

Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, who lounge on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of [my people].[11]

The rich man in Jesus’ parable doesn’t have a lot of confidence that his siblings will heed the scriptures. “No, father Abraham,” he pleads; “but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.”

Will we? Are we listening to the man with the hammer? Are we reaching across the great chasm that separates us one from the other? Do we hear Mary’s song with joy and hope and join her in singing it? Do we want to see every valley lifted up and every mountain and hill made low?[12] Are we letting God guide our feet into the way of peace, across bridges of mercy and compassion and difficult, demanding justice? Or are we happy enough with the way things are?

Poverty, hunger, and homelessness are very complicated issues, but they are also very simple: open the gate. Because lying at the gate is not a bunch of issues and problems; lying at the gate is a human being with a name, a person made in the image of God. The man with the hammer wants us to pay attention and repent. He wants us to refuse to sit in the isolation which horded wealth creates. He wants us to realize that, as one of America’s martyrs wrote from jail, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”[13] The gate between me and the neighbor waiting at my threshold is the very gate of heaven.

Jesus calls us to repent, to turn and walk with him on the path of faith and compassion. His love lifts us out of our fear and pride. His love gives us the courage to let our neighbor in. His love, embodied in countless daily acts and gestures, bridges the great chasm between us.

Jesus told us the parable of the rich man and Lazarus so we would rewrite its ending with our lives. Imagine, one morning the rich man stepped out of his gated existence and said, “Good morning, Lazarus. Come on in. I just made some biscuits and a fresh pot of coffee.”

[1] Luke 1:46-55

[2] Luke 4:16-21

[3] Luke 18:22

[4] Greg Carey https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26-3/commentary-on-luke-1619-31-2

[5] Barbara Rossing https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26-3/commentary-on-luke-1619-31-4

[6] Luke 6:20,24

[7] Anton Chekhov, Gooseberries, 1898 http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1290/

[8] Deuteronomy 15:7

[9] Isaiah 58:7

[10] Donald Gowan, NIB, 398.

[11] Amos 6:4-6

[12] Isaiah 40:4

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

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

Shrewd like that

Where do I start? Thank you. Thank you for letting me take a sabbatical of more than three months. It was wonderful just to be, to hike, to pray, ro read, to paddle, to be with family, to rediscover forgotten rhythms and practice new ones.

I read Scripture in worship a couple of times while I was at Mepkin Abbey in July, but I haven’t planned a worship service or prepared a sermon since the end of May. And a lot has happened since then in your lives, in mine, and in the world. We’ll be catching up for a while, I imagine, and our stories, questions and experiences will weave their way into our conversations for who knows how long.

I haven’t lived with the rhythm of weekly preaching since the end of May, and when I looked at the lectionary readings for this Sunday, a voice in my heart whispered, “How about this one?”It’s one of the most baffling of Jesus’ parables; in it, a master summons his manager and says,

“What is this I hear about you? Give me an account of your management.”

The master has heard reports, rumors perhaps, that this manager had been squandering his property.

“What is this I hear about you? Give me an account of your management.”

I found myself once again drawn to this line; it has resonated with me for many years because the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, as it says in Psalm 24, but many of us have lived on it as if it were ours, to do with as we please. At the end of today’s passage, Jesus asks, “And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?” We are stewards destined to be heirs, but if we aren’t faithful stewards, what will we inherit? Certainly not the fullness of life God desires for God’s creation.

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, and the owner demands an account from the squanderers. I’ll come back to this.

You’re still wondering, “What did he do with over three months of time off?” and you don’t demand an account, but you want to know what I did, what I saw and heard and tasted, whom I met and what I learned, what joys and sorrows I encountered. I had one of the best summers of my life, and today, since the gospel reading alludes to a ledger, I thought I’d share with you some numbers from the only document of this summer that looks anything like a ledger. In June I spent eleven days hiking in the Italian Alps, and I used GPS to track distance and altitude. I walked about a hundred miles, but walking may not be the best term, because what I did day after day was climb or clamber up and down — up from the valley to the pass, and down on the other side into the next valley. I climbed up a total of about 33,000’, and down a total of about 35,000’, and the highest pass I crossed was Passo del Maccagno at 8,179’. Those eleven days in the Alps were also the only days that I wore socks all summer long until this morning. Now back to the story.

There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. That’s all we’re told. A lot is left unsaid, not even hinted at. We don’t know if this manager was incompetent or corrupt; if “squandering” meant he had missed his quarterly earnings goals for the fifth time in a row or if he was embezzling. We don’t know if this manager was an employee or a slave, although some of the language suggests the latter.

The rich man summoned the manager and demanded to see the books. The manager had to think and act fast. He may not have been strong enough to work the soil, and wouldn’t consider begging, but he was quick. One by one, he summoned his master’s debtors, and together they rewrote the paperwork.

“How much do you owe my master?”

“A hundred jugs of olive oil.”

“Take your bill, sit down, make it fifty.”

Those weren’t the jugs you keep in your kitchen cabinet, the ones most of us can easily lift with one hand. Each of those jugs held about ninety gallons. They were looking at a lease agreement or a loan document involving 900 gallons of olive oil. And the manager said, Cut it in half. And to another who owed a hundred containers of wheat, he said, “Take your bill and make it eighty.” 20% off, that’s still a substantial discount. We can assume there were other debtors, although none are mentioned, because nobody needs a manager to handle only two accounts. But we don’t know if the manager was giving away what was his to give, say his commission, or if he was reducing payments owed only to his master.

The purpose of his actions, though, is obvious: he made sure that tomorrow his master’s debtors would owe him. He knew how to make the best of a critical situation, and he may have been a squandering scoundrel, but he sure was a clever one.

But now comes a curious twist: his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. What kind of master would commend a dishonest manager? What is going on here? And then there’s another twist, because now Jesus holds him up as an example, telling us to make friends for ourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome us into the eternal homes.

Jesus’ parable of the dishonest manager has always puzzled its readers. It’s an old story that bucks like a young horse the moment you try to put a saddle on it. We’re looking at a man running out of time, making urgent decisions under the pressure of a world coming apart; and Jesus praises him—not for being dishonest, but for being shrewd: he was quick, creative, and decisive when he realized that his squandering days were over.

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, and we have been notified that charges have been brought against us that we have been squandering the master’s property with careless, loveless, and sometimes clueless stewardship. We clearly need to be reminded constantly, that we cannot serve God and wealth. “The domain ruled by wealth is a dangerous habitat,” writes John Carroll, “for attachment to wealth entangles one in concerns that run counter to the … commitments of the realm of God.”[1] And five hundred years ago, Martin Luther wrote,

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

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

Some of the clothes I wore on the trail and on the water this summer were made from recycled one-way water bottles and discarded fishing nets that were pulled from the ocean. Several of them were made by Patagonia. On Wednesday, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, revealed that he and his family had given away the company and that all future profits from the apparel maker would go toward fighting the climate crisis.

“Rather than selling the company or taking it public,” David Gelles wrote in the New York Times,

Mr. Chouinard, his wife and two adult children have transferred their ownership of Patagonia, valued at about $3 billion, to a specially designed trust and a nonprofit organization. They were created to preserve the company’s independence and ensure that all of its profits — some $100 million a year — are used to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe. …

“Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,” Mr. Chouinard, 83, said in an interview. “We are going to give away the maximum amount of money to people who are actively working on saving this planet.”[3]

“Earth is now our only shareholder,” Chouinard wrote in a letter posted on the company website.[4]

I tend to read corporate PR with great suspicion, especially when they tell me what I want to hear. But I hope they will be successful and that others will follow their example.

Our squandering days are over. The manager in Jesus’ story realized that his familiar world was coming to an end and he jumped into action. He invested himself and all his resources in the world to come. Shrewd like that is how Jesus wants us to be so that we may inherit fullness of life.

[1] John T. Carroll, Luke: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 125-126.

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

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-climate-philanthropy-chouinard.html

see also

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/climate/yvon-chouinard-patagonia-philanthropy.html

[4] https://www.patagonia.com/home/

God's Language of Imagination

For many reasons, I love Children’s Bibles. When done well, they are a wonderful tool to help learners of all ages and abilities to hear about God’s presence in the world and God’s relationship with God’s people. I love the artistic interpretations that illustrators create. I love that they can cover massive amounts of text in a way that is accessible and understandable. And I love the fact that with careful listening, adults can hear familiar stories in a new way. No, they aren’t exact translations. Yes, they are an invitation into God’s story. So this summer, most weeks we’ll hear at least one story from a Children’s Bibles. For kiddos, I invited you to listen and hear God working in the world. And for adults, I invite you to notice some differences and wonder why some of those choices were made. And I invite you to ask some of the kids this summer, “What did you notice? What made you wonder?” You may be surprised at their answers!

This story of Pentecost is an invitation into the people of God. It’s an invitation to imagine what could be, to imagine what the Kingdom of God on Earth might look like and sound like and feel like. It’s an invitation to engage and create something new, at God’s insistence. It compels a response to God’s call. For those who lean on empire and coercive power, imagination can be a dangerous exercise. It leans into abundant possibilities that liberate.

“The book of Acts speaks of revolution. We must never forget this.”[1] writes theologian Willie James Jennings. After the seemingly endless news of violence over the past days, weeks, and months, after the seemingly constant barrage of accounts and witnesses of injustices, the idea that the story of Acts speaks of revolution feels almost like relief. But, as we see in this story, and heard in other stories of Acts—Peter and Cornelius, Tabitha, Paul and Silas—this revolution isn’t coercive or violent. No, this revolution is compassionate and invitational. It invites us, as listeners and readers, into the story of and into relationship with God: A God that is revealed and made known, again and again, in new and surprising ways; a God that does not rely on the power of empire, but is made known in the wisdom and experiences of the child, the widow, the slave, and the oppressed. “God speaks people fluently. And God, with all the urgency that is with the Holy Spirit, wants the disciples of his only begotten Son to speak people fluently too. This is the beginning of a revolution that the Spirit performs.”[2]

Again and again, we’re invited into the story. We’re invited to recognize God’s presence and God’s spirit. We’re encouraged to imagine what a new world, what God’s Kingdom on Earth, might look like and feel like. And we’re invited to help shape that reality, not only as individuals but as larger communities. We're invited to imagine and we’re invited to ask others to imagine with us.

Like John the Baptist proclaiming, “Repent! The Kingdom of God is at hand!,” Peter and the apostles proclaim God’s presence in the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Peter and the apostles praise a God whose Spirit and presence is revealed and made known in a rush of wind and tongues of fire. But, as miraculous as it was to hear such news in a variety of languages—it was a struggle for many to believe. It was easier to write Peter off by saying they were drunk. Still today, it’s a struggle and a challenge to yield to God’s Spirit, following God into the new that God imagines and is bringing about for the world.[3] To imagine, to wonder, to lean into to God’s Spirit that doesn’t work in the ways that we’re used to can be hard in a world that often demands black and white answers and is too often fueled by greed and violence. 

And yet God continues to show up in the world, constantly, continually, throughout time and place. God continues to be in relationship with the world, speaking to people fluently, in ways that we might understand. The story in Acts shows us what God’s design might be for the world—that in all our diversity, we are known by God and that we seek to continue to know God. It makes plain God’s call and our response, our call and God’s response.

Sometimes that requires a different voice or different language, different imagery and illustrations, different life experiences and different questions to help each of us recognize God’s expansive love, that God knows us and wants us to know God and others. We’re reminded that God is not made in our image, but that we are made in God’s. And so we celebrate the diversity and work to understand friend, neighbor, stranger, and even enemy. And maybe in turn, even be truly known. It’s a powerful, revolutionary act to speak in a way that another understands. It’s a gift in and of itself.

My father’s first language is Samoan, but growing up in Southern Indiana didn’t afford us many opportunities to interact with the Samoan community. And even though he lived in the States longer than he lived in Samoa, whenever he met someone from “back home,” he was noticeably different. His countenance visibly changed. He held himself differently. His eyes seemed brighter. And after switching back to English, he spoke differently, almost as if his Spirit was lifted from that encounter. Because he didn’t have to explain his experiences or code switch and he didn’t have to deal with micro-aggressions. He could just be known. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve recognized what a gift it was to him.

Church, what are the languages we need to learn so that this revolution of the Spirit might be more fully known? What is the language of God we most desperately need to hear so that we might be transformed?[4] How might we be changed so that the Spirit’s daring revolution might break us open in ways that we might not only imagine possibilities, but that we might work towards making them a reality here on Earth?

Over a year ago, a “Faith Formation Task Force” gathered to help name what was integral to our community of faith and helped give language to principles/pillars that help ground us so that we might share the love of God with ourselves, our neighbors, and the world. These pillars invite us to practice together, to make space to be authentically known, and to affirm our many gifts. They have been written about and shared briefly, but this summer we’ll be taking a deeper dive to each of these eleven pillars so that we might imagine together, be transformed together, that we might offer welcome, and that we might recognize God’s presence in and among us.

May we give thanks for the multitude of diverse ways God’s makes Godself known to us in big and small ways. May we celebrate the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. May our language, our minds, and our actions be opened to the Spirit’s transformative and revolutionary ways. May we learn together to speak to and with people a little more fluently. Guided by Christ’s teachings, may we imagine together. And may we work together in compassion, justice, and love.

[1] Pg.1 Jennings WJ. Acts / Willie James Jennings. First edition. Westminster John Knox Press; 2017.

[2] Ibid. 30. 

[3] Ibid. 2.

[4] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/ecopreacher/2017/06/lengua-dios-pentecost-language-god/. Accessed June 1, 2022.

Courage to love

My friend Virzola is a pastor in Texas. On Wednesday, between prayers and outrage, she wrote a post about her granddaughter. “Ava had lots of questions still this morning. We tried to shield her from the news. Her mom put her to bed … but she woke up and saw us watching the news. And this morning she said, ‘Today is super hero day at my school.’” Virzola did everything she could not to cry, but tears flowed as her little girl, dressed in pink tights, with a shiny pink satin cape draped around her shoulder, proclaimed, “Ava will save the day.”

“She had questions,” Virzola wrote, “and she had answers.” And I have a lot more confidence in a little girl’s super powers, than in the ability of some of our political leaders to stand up straight with anything resembling a backbone. Dressed in their navy power suits, they repeated the old talking points of the gun industry. “What we need now is a top-to-bottom security overhaul at schools all across our country. Every building should have a single point of entry,” one of them said on Friday in Houston, at the great assembly of the true believers. “There should be strong exterior fencing, metal detectors and the use of new technology to make sure that no unauthorized individual can ever enter the school with a weapon.”[1]

They refer to this as “hardening soft targets.” We need to harden schools, and I assume that means we must also harden grocery stores. And churches, and synagogues and temples. And don’t leave us vulnerable at malls and movie theaters. And perhaps we ought to consider replacing school busses with armored personnel carriers? The hardening of soft targets goes hand in hand with the softening of constitutional thinking that insists, against all historical evidence, that the Second Amendment “gives anyone, anywhere in the country, the power to mow down civilians with military weapons.”[2]

Asking for prayers, the archbishop of Chicago reminded the faithful that “the Second Amendment did not come down from Sinai.” But the second and third commandment certainly did. Another bishop spoke of sacrifice, stating that “this bloody sacrifice of children enabled by the death-culture of guns cannot be justified by appeals to ‘rights’.” And a chaplain at Harvard also spoke of sacrifice, “Our society is in deep crisis. We desperately need to relearn how to sacrifice for one another.”[3]

The bishop’s decision not to call the massacre at Robb Elementary School a tragedy but a “bloody sacrifice of children” shocks us into realizing that what we have witnessed again is the idolatrous ritual of a blasphemous death cult. And the chaplain’s words point to the reversal that is needed: from sacrificing others on the altar of our presumed “rights” to “relearning how to sacrifice for one another.”

After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School ten years ago, Garry Wills wrote,

Few crimes are more harshly forbidden in the Old Testament than sacrifice to the god Moloch (for which see Leviticus 18.21, 20.1-5). The sacrifice referred to was of living children consumed in the fires of offering to Moloch. Ever since then, worship of Moloch has been the sign of a deeply degraded culture.

Wills quotes lines from Paradise Lost, where Milton represented Moloch as the first pagan god who joined Satan’s war on humankind:

First Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood

Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,

Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud

Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire

To his grim idol.

Against the noise of distractors Wills insists that

The horror [of the massacre] cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. … Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. … The answer to problems caused by guns is more guns, millions of guns, guns everywhere, carried openly, carried secretly, in bars, in churches, in offices, in government buildings. Only the lack of guns can be a curse, not their beneficent omnipresence.[4]

How can we turn away from this horrifying idolatry? How can we “relearn how to sacrifice for one another”? I am convinced little Ava knows the power that’s needed. “Ava will save the day,” she declared with great confidence, ready to step into the world, with her pink satin super hero cape. Ava knows she is loved by her mom and dad, her granny, her siblings and cousins, and she knows all of them are loved by Jesus, and that God, who is big enough to love all people and all animals and the whole universe, does indeed love all people and all that God has made. Ava knows she is loved, and that’s the best super power of all. In her family, and in the company of Jesus, she is learning how all people and all thing are one in the love of God, and that gives her the courage to love others.

The gospel reading for today comes from Jesus’ last night with the disciples. He has shared a meal with them. He has washed their feet and told them, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”[5] He has responded to all their worried, anxious questions about his going away. And now he stops addressing them, and starts praying for them, praying for us. His final words that night aren’t last-minute instructions about how to be God’s people in the world. His final words are words of prayer, and we have the privilege of overhearing what he says. In the other three Gospels, when Jesus prays before he is arrested, he is in Gethsemane, and he prays alone. Even his most trusted disciples are some distance away from him, and rather than praying with him or keeping watch, they fall asleep.[6] In John, the disciples, and we with them, get to witness the intimacy of the relationship between Jesus and the one he has consistently called “my Father” and “your Father.”

“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you,” Jesus prays, “may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” He prays for us to be drawn into the intimacy and mutuality of their life. And he prays for us to be drawn into the communion of love that is God, he doesn’t just make it so, because there is nothing coercive about this love. The commandment he has given us is new not in commanding us to love one another, but to love one another as he has loved us. This means that the center of the circle of love that holds us, as well as the radius that determines its reach, have been marked and drawn by Jesus, the Word of God made flesh. And the purpose of this wide-reaching unity is not only for us to find fullness of life in our communion with God and one another. The purpose is beyond us. The purpose is for the world to be fully alive. It was for love of the world that God sent the Son, and in Jesus’ great intercession, the farthest horizon of love’s reach is still the world, even the hostile world, the idolatrous, violence-torn, gun-obsessed world. He prays for us that our unity in love will be a living witness to God’s love for the world, and that the whole world may let itself be drawn into the consummation of life in the communion of love that is God.

We have been entrusted with the sacred responsibility of making the love of God visible and tangible in the world. Frightened and prone to stumbling into idolatrous paths as we are, God has entrusted the continuation of Christ’s mission to us. And John wants us to know that we belong to the community for whom Jesus prays. We are not alone in our mourning. We are not alone when our capacity to hurt each other breaks our hearts. We are not alone in our prayers for the world’s healing. We are not alone when we sacrifice for one another. And we are not alone when we ask for the courage to love as Jesus has loved us.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-schools-must-harden-after-uvalde-texas-already-tried-that-1711100

[2] See Garry Wills’s article from 1995 https://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1995/sep/21/to-keep-and-bear-arms/

[3] Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago; Archbishop Elpidophoros, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America; Greg Epstein, humanist chaplain, Harvard University https://religionnews.com/2022/05/25/uvalde-school-shooting-faith-leaders-offer-comfort-call-for-reform-of-gun-laws/

[4] Garry Wills, “Our Moloch,” New York Review, December 15, 2012 https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/12/15/our-moloch/

[5] John 13:34-35

[6] See Mark 14:32-42 and parallels