Walking in the light

It’s a light display that puts Clark Griswold’s to shame and landed a family a spot in the Guinness World Records, I read at some online news outlet.[1] Tim and Grace Gay, together with their three children, of the Hudson Valley, proudly hold the record for the most lights on a residential property. The family earned the title in 2014 when they hung 601,736 lights around their home, spanning eight miles of extension cords, in a display of spirals, stars, animals, snowmen and icicles – synchronized to a playlist of 250 songs. They beat their own record [last] year when they set up a dazzling 686,526 lights on their property.[2]

We light one candle. And this year we do it again in the company of folks gathering for vigils. Once again the images have come across our screens of people holding a single candle in their hands, or leaving it at an improvised memorial in a parking lot people mourning the violent deaths of a janitor working his shift at a Virginia Walmart, a 40-year-old woman returning home to Colorado Springs for the holidays, and a young man at his girlfriend’s side, watching her friend perform in a drag show. Three college football players. A mother who worked to help foster children. One bartender who remembered your drink and another who danced. White and Black, gay and straight, old and young. Fourteen people who did not know their last Thanksgiving was already behind them. Tuesday’s rampage, in which six people were killed in a Walmart in Chesapeake, Va., was the 33rd mass shooting in November alone, and the nation’s 606th this year.[3]

We light one candle. One candle to contain our grief, our anger, our solidarity, and, yes, our hope. The first word from scripture we hear in Advent is spoken by the prophet Isaiah. In days to come the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be raised above the hills, and all the nations shall stream to it. They shall come – not to conquer, not to kill, plunder, and destroy as in days past, no – they come to learn God’s ways and walk in God’s paths. And they come not because they have been defeated and forced to pay tribute and to submit to the gods of the victors, no – they come willingly, uncoerced, eager to learn. Nations come to Jerusalem to let God’s justice be their justice, and under the Lord’s governance they are finally free to beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. The sound of Advent on this first Sunday is the sound of people coming from the ends of the earth making their way to the city of God. It is the beautiful noise of their chatter and their shouts, their stories and songs, their laughter — and above the happy clamor, the clanging of hammers falling on anvils, ringing across the land, bright and clear as bells. Swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, tanks into school buses and war ships into bridges, fighter jets into bicycles and M16s into water pumps – every tool of destruction is being forged into a tool of shared life.

Hope wasn’t Isaiah’s first word, though. His first word was a clear-eyed description of what he saw when he looked around the city and the land: what stands out from just the first four verses of the book’s opening chapter are words like rebellion, iniquity, sinful, evil, corrupt, estranged – and it doesn’t stop there. The religious festivals have become a burden God is weary of bearing. The country lies desolate. The city is marked by injustice. Her silver has become dross, her wine is watered down, her princes are companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them. The prophet’s first word is a long litany of indictments, line after line written with tears of grief and burning rage: “The strong shall become like tinder, and their work like a spark; they and their work shall burn together, with no one to quench them.”

Hope is not the first word the prophet utters. First come accusation and judgment and fiery conflagration, and then Isaiah abruptly stops. It’s as though he has picked up bits and pieces of a different tune, a song as old as creation and overflowing with the promise of newness. It’s like he must start over, because in the gloom of corruption and injustice in his beloved city, a heavenly light shines. And so he begins to speak of days to come, of a marvelous newness far beyond what current circumstances might suggest. He draws a wide horizon of hope, not because the citizens of Jerusalem suddenly changed their ways, but because God’s faithfulness is greater than our faithless ways.

Ruby Bridges was one of four children to integrate New Orleans public schools in 1960; she was the only black child to enter the William Frantz Elementary School that year. On her way to school, for days that turned into weeks and weeks that turned into months, this child had to brave angry mobs who were hurling threats and slurs at her. Every day, federal marshals walked with her to school and brought her home. At first, she attended school all by herself, because of a total boycott by white families. She sat alone in the classroom, and only one teacher overcame her own fear and taught her.

Robert Coles was a young psychiatrist working in New Orleans, and he volunteered to talk with Ruby to help her process the daily terror. A teacher told him, “I was standing in the classroom, looking out the window, and I saw Ruby coming down the street, with the federal marshals on both sides of her. The crowd was there, shouting, as usual. A woman spat at Ruby but missed; Ruby smiled at her. A man shook his fist at her. Ruby smiled. And then she walked up the steps, and she stopped and turned around and smiled one more time. You know what she told one of those marshals? She told him she prays for those people, the ones in that mob. She prays for them every night before going to sleep.”

Coles asked Ruby why she prayed for them. “I go to church every Sunday, and we’re told to pray for everyone, even the bad people, and so I do.” When the subject came up again she said, “They keep coming and saying the bad words. But my momma says they’ll get tired after a while and then they’ll stop coming. They’ll stay home. The minister came to our house and he said the same thing, and not to worry, and I don’t. The minister said God is watching and He won’t forget, because He never does. The minister says if I forgive the people, and smile at them and pray for them, God will keep a good eye on everything and He’ll be our protection.”

Coles asked her if she believed the minister was on the right track. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I’m sure God knows what’s happening. He’s got a lot to worry about; but there is bad trouble here, and He can’t help but notice. He may not rush to do anything, not right away. But there will come a day, like you hear in church.”[4] 

Young Ruby looked at the people who harassed and assailed her, but her eyes were fixed on God’s promise. There is bad trouble here, and God can’t help but notice. He may not rush to do anything, not right away. But there will come a day.

There will come a day. Ruby had learned, young as she was, that the most important question to ask is not, “When?” but “Who?” The future doesn’t belong to the haters and harassers, but to the One who is coming. About that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

When, no one knows, but we know the One who is coming is the same who has come and who is with us now. There is bad trouble here, but the future does not belong to the gun manufacturers and those who worship at the altar of the Second Amendment gods. The future belongs to the One who has made us his own and called us to walk in his paths. The future belongs to Jesus who lived fully for God’s reign and who entrusted himself completely to God’s faithfulness. Jesus died alone on a hill that looked nothing like the mountain of the house of the Lord. He died, scorned and taunted, surrounded by swords, pierced with a spear. And in the thick darkness of that Friday, the full depth of God’s commitment to Jesus and to us and to all of creation was revealed.

We didn’t start the fire in the forge where the nations will beat their swords into plowshares. God did by raising the crucified Jesus from the dead. John Calvin wrote,

A blessed resurrection is proclaimed to us – meantime we are surrounded by decay. We are called righteous – and yet sin lives in us. We hear of ineffable blessedness – but meantime we are here oppressed by infinite misery. We are promised abundance of all good things – yet we are rich only in hunger and thirst. What would become of us if we did not take our stand on hope, and if our hearts did not hasten beyond this world through the midst of the darkness upon the path illumined by the word and Spirit of God?[5]

What Calvin has in mind is not a faith that flees the world, but one that walks in it like Ruby Bridges did. A faith that sees clearly that there’s bad trouble here, like Isaiah did, and yet keeps its eyes on the horizon of God’s promises. The future doesn’t belong to the haters and harassers, but to him who fills all of creation with the light of his love. Come! Come let us walk in the light of the Lord!

[1] https://www.wvlt.tv/2021/12/14/familys-christmas-lights-breaks-their-own-guinness-world-record/

[2] https://www.mlive.com/news/2021/12/see-homes-guinness-world-record-setting-christmas-display-of-nearly-700k-lights.html

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/24/nyregion/shootings-virginia-walmart-club-q-thanksgiving.html

[4] Robert Coles, The Moral Life of Children (New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986), 22-24.

[5] John Calvin, quoted in Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 18-19.

"Disempiring" power

On the night of Jesus’ birth, angels sang and shepherds marveled. There was joy in the air, and the small cradle was big enough to hold all our hopes. “Do not be afraid,” the angel said to the terrified shepherds; “see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”[1] 

The songs of the heavenly hosts grew fainter, and soon there were other voices: tempting whispers about the possibilities of power—stones turned into loaves of bread, global rule over all the kingdoms of the earth. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here; God’s angels will protect you.”[2]

At the cross, the devil’s rhetoric is amplified many times in the taunts of leaders and soldiers and even a man who was crucified with Jesus: Are you not the Messiah of God? Are you not the king of the Jews? Show your power, do something, come down, save yourself and us.

Jesus remains silent amid their mockery. When he opens his lips, he prays, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” Forgive them, he prays, and we wonder who they might be—the soldiers who, as always, were only following orders? Those who gave the orders? The leaders who are always quick to assert that they only act with the best interest of the state in mind, or the temple, the church, the nation? Forgive them — those who stood by watching the scene? Or is he praying for all of us who stand by and watch when the witch is burned, the wimpy kid is bullied, the black man is lynched, the inmate on death row is executed?

For a moment, the waves of ridicule and abuse subside, and we hear the curious king who lives up to nobody’s expectations pray for forgiveness. Many of us have been in his company long enough to know that he wouldn’t ask for armies of angels to swoop down and smite the enemy. We have been in his company long enough to know that his kingdom is not of this world, but very much in the world.

In the gospel of Luke, only three characters say the word kingdom. The first one is the angel Gabriel who comes to Mary and says, “You will bear a son and you will name him Jesus. He will reign forever and of his kingdom there will be no end.”[3] After the angel, it is Jesus who speaks of the kingdom in teaching after teaching. And he doesn’t just speak the word, he manifests it with healing and food, by breaking the power of ungodly forces, and with his faithful refusal to follow a different path. The third character in the gospel according to Luke who says the word is a dying convict. After rebuking his fellow convict for taunting this man who has done nothing wrong, he turns to Jesus and says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He speaks of a kingdom hidden in the improbable future of a crucified man, and in this kingdom he wants to be remembered. He doesn’t know any better than you and I what it might look like, this kingdom. All he knows is that it is Jesus’ kingdom. All he knows is what we have noticed in the life of Jesus: a heart of immense compassion, the determination to end the reign of exclusion and condemnation, and the unfolding of a reign of mercy. What this convict knows is Jesus’ refusal to save himself or to curse his executioners. What he sees, perhaps, is an end of the ancient cycle of violence and vengeance, and the promise of a reign of forgiveness.

As requests go, “Remember me” is modest; but Jesus responds with royal extravagance. “Today,” he says to him, “you will be with me in Paradise.” Like one of the kings in his parables, Jesus generously lavishes gifts on the humble petitioner, granting him life in the presence of God. And in the face of death, this man finds himself closer to life than he may have ever been. Today, Jesus says to him. Like he said that day at the synagogue in Nazareth, after reading from Isaiah, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”[4] Like he said to Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector in Jericho, “Today salvation has come to this house.”[5] The last occurrence in Luke of this full-of-promise “today” is here, at the cross, in the hearing of a dying man, and in the hearing of all who long for a fullness of life no earthly kingdom can offer.

The reign of Christ is not a new and improved version of the kingdoms of the world. It is the end of our royal ideologies and the dreams of domination that feed them. It is a new way of relating, thinking, speaking, and acting in the name of Jesus.

Many say, offering good reasons, that we shouldn’t continue to call Jesus “the King.” Our imagination is already overstuffed with men on thrones. Some of us watch The Crown and follow the gossip on Harry and Meaghan, William and Kate, but royals don’t rule us, and we no longer think of power in royal terms. But first-century Galilee was a time of kings and rulers, as Katie Givens Kime urges us to remember. “The roots of our faith are located here, not in isolated issues of individual piety, but rather in resistance to the idolatry of power.”[6]

The crucifixion was a spectacle of humiliation, designed to project Rome’s power in even the most remote parts of the Empire. And the crucifixion carried a message: the crucified one is not a person, but a thing, an object of derision and complete subjection, a tool of terror and intimidation, a means to further the power and interests of Rome.

The first Christian witnesses, however, countered that arrogant assertion with the divine protest of the resurrection. In Colossians, Paul makes an audacious attempt to sort out the powers of the universe, declaring that this crucified victim is indeed the cosmic ruler whose reign is founded on the experience of suffering, and whose peacemaking is accomplished through the absorption, not the perpetration, of violence.[7] He is the firstborn of all creation. All things were created through him and for him, and in him all things hold together. All of creation, all of life, all people and things have their purpose and fulfillment in him. Nothing is outside of Christ.[8]

And because he is the firstborn from the dead, all of creation is redeemed through him. In Paul’s vision, “salvation is not the rescue [of individual souls] from a totally evil world but the claiming of the rightful possession of this world by the one who was an agent in its creation.”[9] The world does not belong to the Empires, but to Christ. Therefore, the powers that exercise authority in the world may in part shape the structures of the world in which we live. “But the cross, not the powers, determines the shape of Christian existence.  Christian discipleship, therefore, seeks to live in keeping with the power of Christ, a power that challenges and overthrows the ungodly powers of the world.”[10]

As those whom God has rescued from the power of darkness and transferred into the reign of Christ, we serve the flourishing of life. “We are as the power that rules us,” says Arthur McGill.[11] Yes, God has transferred us into the reign of Christ, but we must constantly ask ourselves, to whom do we give the power to tell us who we are? To whom do you give the power to define your dignity and worth? Who or what has the power to shape our moods and our minds? Who has the power to determine what is important and what is not? And how might we act, who might we become, if we knew in our bones that all authority has been given to Jesus Christ, that the Crucified One whom God raised from the dead is the Power of Powers?[12]

The reign of Jesus Christ is not a new and improved version of the kingdoms of the world. His reign does not call for crusades and invasions. His reign is the end of our imperial ideologies and the dreams of domination that feed them. It is a new way of relating, thinking, speaking, and acting through him and for him. In Colossians 3, Paul writes,

You have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

In celebrating the reign of Christ on the last Sunday of the church year, we rejoice in God’s renewal of creation in Christ. We rejoice, because nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord—and in that love, nothing will ultimately be able to separate us from each other and from the blessed communion of life which the universe was created to be. Thanks be to God.

[1] Luke 2:10-11

[2] See Luke 4:1-13

[3] See Luke 2:30-33

[4] Lk 4:21

[5] Lk 19:9

[6] Katie Givens Kime https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2013-10/sunday-november-24-2013

[7] See Andrew Lincoln, Colossians (NIB), 609.

[8] Jennifer Wyant https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/christ-the-king-3/commentary-on-colossians-111-20-5

[9] Andrew Lincoln, Colossians (NIB), 610.

[10] Marianne Meye Thompson, Colossians & Philemon, 35.

[11] Arthur McGill, quoted by Michael Pasquarello III, Connections, Year C, Vol. 3, 510.

[12] See Katie Givens Kime https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2013-10/sunday-november-24-2013

Beyond imagination

At a small event space somewhere in Brooklyn, 19 people gathered in a circle. They included a therapist, an immigration lawyer, a climate activist, an artist and a reporter. They were there for a workshop called “Cultivating Active Hope: Living With Joy Amidst the Climate Crisis.” To the reporter, the title sounded wildly optimistic. “Have you ever known someone who … doled out carbon offset gift certificates at the holidays?” she asks in a story she wrote about the experience. “[Someone] who sees new babies and immediately flashes to the approximately 15 tons of carbon emissions the average American emits per year? Who walks around shops thinking about where all the packaging ends up? You do now.”

Her name is Cara Buckley. She knows the planet is in trouble. And she does what she can: She donates to environmental causes, eats vegan, composts, takes public transport, carries around bamboo utensils, buys second hand and stocks up on carbon offsets — and yet none of it has been balm. “I [feel] complicit by merely existing,” she writes. “After all, I [belong] to the species that [is] taking most of the other ones down.” A friend suggested that her climate angst was an extension of her melancholic leanings, which struck her as plausible, but not quite right. “We know that the future is looking bad, that the present already is, and that inaction, especially here in America, is making it all worse. But how are we supposed to live in our hearts and souls with such an existential threat?”

What she took away from the workshop was a prescription for learning to live with hope. The facilitators taught her ancient wisdom: to seek out a spiritual path to forge gratitude, compassion and acceptance. Operating out of denial, fear, anger, and blame only burns us out. She began to see that what is needed is a way to move to a place not of tacit acceptance, but of compassion, fierce, roaring compassion, as she called it.[1]

Wanjira Mathai also knows the planet is in trouble. She’s a Kenyan environmentalist, and on the sidelines of the climate summit in Egypt, she commented on the testy deliberations about how we are going to pay for the transition to carbon-free energy production and for various mitigation measures. Wealthy nations like the United States, Great Britain, and European countries have been responsible for emitting the most greenhouse gasses into the environment. The world’s poorest countries, however, have been facing the gravest consequences of climate change, including floods, droughts, and deadly heat waves. Many agree that the economies that reaped the greatest benefits from development driven by fossil fuels also ought to pay the greatest share for the transition to a sustainable global economy. Even as negotiators contend with how to make those payments, Ms. Mathai said, “if we do not get over the fact that there is a crisis in how we see people of different colors, cultures, genders and geographies, we are cheating ourselves. We are lying to ourselves.” To her, the issue, in the final analysis, is not an economic or a political one. “We have a crisis in empathy,” she said. “We don’t acknowledge just how connected we are.”[2]

Where do we turn to learn compassion, to broaden our capacity for empathy? We turn to Jesus. During the final days of his ministry, he and the disciples were in Jerusalem, and they spent much of their time in the temple. Jesus overheard people marveling at the building’s size and splendor, and with great calm, I imagine, he said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

The temple was still under construction then. It was one of Herod’s biggest and most ambitious projects. Begun long before Jesus’ birth, the temple itself was completed in less than two years, but work on the outer courts and decorations continued until 64 C.E., decades after the disciples had begun to proclaim the good news of Jesus’ resurrection.[3] It was an enormous complex. Scholars estimate that the outer court could hold 400,000 people, and that during pilgrimage festivals it frequently held crowds of that size. “And the exterior of the building wanted nothing that could astound either mind or eye,” wrote the first-century historian, Josephus.[4] It was a space of great splendor, built to the glory of God. 

It was also a space that didn’t reveal at first or second glance how it was being funded. In the same chapter of Luke, just before this scene, we read about Jesus seeing rich people putting large gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”[5] She put in all she had to live on. The church has long held her up as an example of generosity and trust in God, but the magnificent structure would be associated with Herod’s name, not hers. The Jewish people knew it was a house for the name of God to dwell, but they also knew that Herod had reasons for building it that had little to do with God’s name and a lot more with his own.

“As for these things that you see,” Jesus said, “the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” Construction wasn’t even finished yet, and Jesus spoke of destruction and collapse. The disciples wanted to know when; they wanted a detailed forecast. They worried about news of wars, earthquakes, famines and plagues, just as we worry about what the future holds for our children and their children. Jesus warned them not to go after those who claim to know the endtime like it was a cosmic train schedule. You will go through times of blow after blow of heartbreaking and soul-draining news, and inevitably there will be those who will tell you how it all makes sense, how each event is a mile marker along the tracks to the great and final day. Do not go after them. Stay on the way with me, he said. Follow me. Don’t confuse the kingdom of God with beautiful stonework or with a glorious set of ideas that fit together seamlessly like blocks in the temple wall. The days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down and turned into a heap of rubble. Yet even amid the rubble, trust in God. Trust in the promises of God. Trust in the faithfulness of God. Trust in the power of God to create newness beyond the limits of your own imagination. Don’t go after the apocalyptic calculators, but continue to cultivate love: in your relationships with each other and with your fellow creatures, in your relationships even with your enemies. Cultivate love, and watch your compassion grow and your empathy broaden. Trust in the slow work of God, within you and among you.

“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” says the Lord, and it’s more than a saying. It’s a song of promise and hope, a song about a city without tears, a city of justice and fullness of life for all. It’s a song that carries echoes of our beginnings in God’s garden, of life in the blessed conviviality of creation. The song is the sound track of Jesus’ life and ministry. Trust in the promises of God. Beware that you are not led astray. Do not be terrified. Do not worry. Cultivate love and trust in the slow work of God.

Beautiful words. True words. On way too many days, though, a world of no more weeping, no more laboring in vain, and no more bearing children for calamity, seems so far away, and I find it much easier to imagine the whole world heating up and flooding in humanity’s denial, ignorance, and selfishness. Walter Brueggemann suggests that Isaiah’s vision of new creation “is outrageous because the new world of God is beyond our capacity and even beyond our imagination. In our fatigue, our self-sufficiency, and our cynicism, we remain convinced that such promises could not happen here.”[6] But Jesus, tirelessly, not only pointed to such promises, but lived them faithfully. Jesus embodied the fantastic truth of God’s profound solidarity with creation, and in particular with all of us, the creature made in God’s image, in our struggle to be who we were made to be.

That brief scene in the temple, the word about the collapse of even the grandest, most sacred structures, was among Jesus’ final teachings before his arrest. What followed was the overwhelming flood wave of rejection, betrayal, denial, ridicule, and torture, and at the end, his execution. Every lie, every injustice, every self-righteous illusion, every hateful word and angry blow — we let him have it. And he died, bearing it all for love’s sake.

And God, in fierce, roaring compassion, raised Jesus from the dead, for love’s sake. It was the dawn of a new creation, the first day of new heavens and a new earth. What a fantastic truth. What a fantastic occasion to finally acknowledge just how connected we are; not only through our common ancestry and intricate webs of mutual dependence, but through our shared belonging in the covenant of love which binds us to God and to each other. How do we cultivate active hope amid the crises of our days? We go to work, trusting in the unrelenting love of God.

[1] Cara Buckley, “Apocalypse Got You Down? Maybe This Will Help”, New York Times, November 15, 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/sunday-review/depression-climate-change.html

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/11/11/climate/cop27-climate-summit

[3] Six years later, in a Jewish uprising against the Roman occupation, the entire structure was razed by Roman troops, leaving only portions of the outer wall standing.

[4] Josephus, Jewish War 5.222

[5] Luke 21:1-4

[6] See Lectionary Homiletics Vol. XV, No. 6, 61.

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