Cross Purposes

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Matthew 16:13-28

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist but others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”… Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.  From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.  –Matthew 16:13-20

This is the turning point in the Synoptic gospels.  In Mark it comes in chapter 8, almost exactly in the middle.  In Matthew and Luke it doesn’t fall at the midpoint of the literary structure but it is, nonetheless, the turning point in their telling of the Christ story because this is when Jesus turns toward Jerusalem and the cross.  It is also a turning point in the disciples’ understanding of who Jesus is and what he is about, a moment in which they begin to see him in a new way, a moment when they begin to wrestle with their commitment to him and their own decision to follow him.  It is the beginning of their transformation.  And it all begins with the question: “Who do you say that I am?”

You are the Messiah,” said Peter.  

And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone.  Why?  Because he knows that even after all this time with him they don’t really have a clue what God’s Messiah is all about.  He knows that their whole religion, their whole culture, has a very, very mistaken idea of who the Messiah is and what the Messiah will do.  He knows that they’re expecting Power and Domination and Armies of Angels.

But this is a turning point.  So he tells them what’s going to happen in Jerusalem.  He spells out for them the reality of what it means to be the Messiah under the heavy political hand of the Empire.  He reminds them that empires do not have much patience for messiahs.  He tells them that it’s going to be very, very bad and brutal.  He tells them that the empire going to win, but in reality they won’t win anything because what the empire thinks is the end of the story will be, in reality, a new beginning.  But it’s not going to happen with Power and Domination and Armies of Angels.  It will be Power and Domination and the Army of Empire who nail him to the cross, because that’s what Power and Domination and Armies do. On that cross Jesus, Emmanuel, God with Us, will not display Omniscience and Omnipresence and Omnipotence—on that cross God in Christ will eschew every power except love.  Because Power is always coercive and corrosive.  And peace and transformation that comes through coercion is no peace at all.

Jesus tells them that it’s going to be ugly.  So Peter rebukes him.  At least Peter had the honest frankness to tell Jesus to his face that he didn’t like what he was hearing.  How often do we  do that?  How often are we so straightforward with Jesus?  How often are we simply passively resistant to Jesus or even passively aggressive in trying to reshape him to fit our belligerent agendas?  How often do we just discard Jesus altogether and put up a kind of pantomime Jesus behind a wall of carefully cherry-picked Scriptures which rarely, if ever, actually include things Jesus himself said because we want to summon the powerful political forces of our religion’s tradition and use them as a Billy club against a changing world that makes us squirm with discomfort?  And how many times, when we do that, are we actually putting ourselves in opposition to what Jesus is doing?  How many times do we end up opposing the Holy Spirit’s own work of transformation with our false Christ because the real Jesus just won’t be who we want him to be or say what we want him to say?

How else do you explain Christian Nationalism?  How else do you explain advertisements for a “Christian” Assault Rifle, an AR-15 with a Knights Templar cross on one side of the magazine and Psalm 144:1 on the other: Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle.

Get behind me, Satan.  You’re setting your mind on human things instead of divine things.  

What does the cross mean to you?

If you put aside all the official church answers—all the Sunday School responses, atonement theories, confirmation lessons—what does the cross mean to you?

What does it mean to you when Jesus says that if you want to be his disciple you have to shoulder your own cross—carry your own cross?

Jesus was carrying his cross during his entire ministry.

From the time he first stood up in the synagogue and read from Isaiah—“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…see, the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed and set the captives free and to announce that now is the time of God’s favor” he was making himself a target.

From the moment he began to announce that the Kingdom of God—the commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy—was at hand, was arriving, was within reach he was setting himself in opposition to empire and standing starkly silhouetted in the empire’s crosshairs.

From the moment he began to teach he was carrying the burden of trying to teach people to understand the world in a new way, to see it in a new way, to see each other in a new way he was conspicuously wading against the stream of the status quo.  

He was carrying his cross.

When he preached the beatitudes to show them—to show us—how we’re supposed to treat each other and how things are supposed to work in this God-made, God-beloved world

—when he spent time with all those outsiders that “nice” people didn’t associate with, all the “sinners” and tax collectors and prostitutes and Samaritans

—when he healed on the Sabbath and challenged the Pharisees and Scribes and taunted Herod

—when he asked them to open their eyes to see what their privilege was costing their poorer brothers and sisters

—when he said things that challenged tradition and infuriated people so much they wanted to throw him off a cliff

—he was deliberately risking the fire of their animosity by confronting all the hypocrisy of their religious and political systems, all the little compromises they made with themselves and with the structures of society to make things run smoothly and preserve their comfortable lives.  He was calling into question all the things that made them feel right, and safe and secure, and sure of their place in the grand scheme of things.  

Long before he stood before Pilate, long before they laid the wood across his shoulders, he was carrying his cross.  

And he didn’t do all this just to be the sacrificial offering in some mythic deal with God so he could magic away our sins.  He did it for exactly the reasons he announced when he read from Isaiah: To announce good news to the poor.  To open the eyes of people blinded by their habits and assumptions.  To release people from all kinds of things that oppressed them or held them captive—even things like their own greed or self-interest or ruthless ambition.

He carried the burden, the cross, of risking people’s anger and violence, knowing full well that it would end in a real cross, in order to show them a better way of being in the world.  

And the crowds followed him because his words were filled with promise and joy and love and gave them hope for a better life.  And love and compassion that flowed from him like living water had the power to heal.  

But he wanted them to understand that to do the work he was doing what was needed was not crowds but disciples.  Followers who would really take what he was saying to heart and live it day in and day out just as he was living it.  

He wanted them to know that following in the crowd and being a disciple are two different things.   

And he wanted them to know it wasn’t easy to be a disciple.  That it came at a cost.  That there was a cross to carry.  That they would be misunderstood.  That even people who claimed to be reading the same sacred texts and worshipping the same God would bristle when the liberating Word of God pushed on certain sensitive topics or challenged their thinking.

He wanted them to know that being a disciple isn’t safe.

There’s no shame in being in the crowd.  The crowd has its role and its place.  Jesus has compassion on the crowd.  He feeds the crowd.  He cares for the crowd.  But it’s the disciples who he calls to help him do the work of making God’s reign a reality on earth as it is in heaven.  The crowd are consumers.  Disciples are providers.

So he wanted them to know they had a choice.  

You have a choice.  You can be in the crowd.  Or you can be a disciple.  And I hope you do choose to be a disciple because the only thing that’s going to change the world, the only thing that’s going to heal the world is if enough of us stand up to confront the world with love. 

If you want to be a disciple…if you think Christ is calling you to be a disciple think long and hard.  Jesus spent 40 days and nights in the desert thinking about it before he picked up his cross.

And that leads us back to where we started.   If you are a disciple, where is love leading you?  If you shoulder a cross, whose burden will you carry?  Whose load are you lifting?  Who are you freeing—and from what?  Who will you protect?  Where will you take a stand?  Where will you put your life on the line for the life of others?

What does the cross mean to you?

The Keys of Heaven

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

The body of the old man lay stretched out upon the table, prepared according to custom and covered with a shroud.  The presbyter, who had been gazing out the window, or perhaps deep into his own thoughts, broke from his reverie, stood up, removed a papyrus scroll from the folds of his robe, then moved to the body lying on the table.  Gently, reverently, he lifted the edge of the shroud and took something from the right hand of the old man lying beneath it, then lifted it high in the lamplight for all to see.  

The others in the room reacted as he lifted the familiar object high so that it dangled before them.  Some smiled wistfully.  A few nodded in recognition.  One woman buried her face in her scarf and wept.  

It was a plain thing, a simple leather thong suspending ten stones, seven smaller, three larger, each separated from the others by a knot in the leather.  They did not catch the light in any particular way.  They did not glow or sparkle.  There was no mystic aura about them.  But the faithful people in that gathering would not have traded those stones for rubies or diamonds or sapphires or pearls. 

“The Keys to Heaven,” said the presbyter, then with care bordering on ceremony he handed the odd artifact to the deaconess who stood at the feet of the old man’s corpse.  She cradled the leather strip and its stones in her open hands, holding it out so all could see it in the soft glow of the oil lamps.  After a moment, the presbyter unrolled the scroll and began to read.

By vocation, the presbyter was the chief reader at a busy scriptorium.  Six days of the week he would read aloud to a phalanx of copyists—reading slowly, distinctly, and loudly enough to be heard at the back of the room yet fast enough to keep up with the demands of the business, to meet its deadlines and keep it profitable.  The qualities that made him so very good at his job also made him an excellent public Lector, a role which added to his income.  This talent served him well, of course, in his role as presbyter, the chief elder in this small community of the faithful.  But now, as he began to read his dear friend’s last will and testament, he put aside his professional voice and tried to find in himself the deep wells of strength and gentleness that characterized his departed friend, doing his best to summon his friend’s voice for his friend’s words.  This is what he read:

“My dear friends, my brothers and sisters, grace to you and peace in the name of the One we follow, who was, who is and who is to come.  Amen.  I pray you know how much you are loved.   I have so very little to leave to you in the way of earthly things.  My little house and my poor purse I entrust to this community.  Perhaps they may be used to benefit a widow or two.  Let the Deaconess administer these things as she is most capable.  Let the tools of my trade go Nathaniel, my apprentice.  I have no other possessions except the Keys to Heaven.  These I bequeath to you all for your common use and good, but I must tell you how I came to have them.

“I think that almost every one of you, most when you were children, but some when you were older, have asked me, ‘Andreas, what are those stones hanging from your belt?’ and I would say, ‘They are the Keys to Heaven and I am giving them to you.’  Then you would say, ‘When can I have them?’  And I would say, ‘When you can tell me how they are made!’ So now, I will tell you their story.

“For all the years I have lived among you, you have known me as Andreas the Leatherworker.  That was not always my name.  For that matter, working leather was not always my trade, but that is of no importance.  When I was much younger and full of anger at the world I did some dangerous and stupid things.  One thing in particular was even evil, though I did not think so at the time.  As a consequence, I found myself on the run, hiding from the patrols of soldiers that seemed to be everywhere on the road.  I cut my hair and shaved my beard.  I stole the tunic, mantle and belt of a tradesman while he was bathing in the river and left my very fine and costly clothes in their place.  Then I fastened a sword to my belt and kept on running.

“Three nights later, just at nightfall, I saw a man sitting by a campfire just to the side of the road.  Half mad with hunger and exhaustion, I moved toward him, drew my sword and said, ‘Give me your food and your money.’  I meant to growl it out in a menacing way but my throat was so parched I must have croaked like a raven.  

   ‘We will gladly share our food with you,’ said the man, ‘but what money we have with us is not ours to give.’  I started to move toward him with my sword when his words pierced the fog of my hunger.  We.  He had said ‘we.’  I blinked, looked again, and could not believe I had not seen them the first time—four other men. Two of them were some small distance behind the man by the fire but were now walking briskly toward us.  Another man was emerging from the brush carrying an armload of wood for the fire, and another with a water skin was just coming up from the stream.  Five men altogether.  Even if I were not nearly dead from hunger and thirst I could never take on five men.  My head began to swim, my knees gave out and I fell, unconscious.

   “I awakened to find one of the men bathing my forehead with a cool, wet cloth while another was bandaging my arm.  Apparently I had cut it with my own sword when I fell.  The man I had first seen, the one I had threatened and tried to rob, lifted a cup of cool water to my lips but urged me to drink it slowly.  As soon as I was able to sit up one of the men gave me a piece of bread and a piece of dried fish which I devoured immediately without a word.

   “I didn’t know what to expect next and I was too weak to try to run.  When the big man, the first man I had seen by the fire, picked up my sword I half expected him to kill me with it. Instead he laid it in front of me in the dirt.  ‘This is yours,’ he said, “though I think you might be better off not to keep it. That’s a Roman Gladius. A soldier’s sword.  And you don’t strike me as a soldier. I think maybe that sword has already brought you trouble and if I were you I would just bury it here at the side of the road.’  I was dumbstruck.  That sword had been nothing but trouble.  That sword and my hot temper were the whole reason I had had to flee for my life.

   “I looked at the big man.  He was smiling at me, and I realized, looking at him, that there was no fear in him.  No anger.  “You must still be hungry,” he said.  

   ‘I tried to rob you!’ I said, incredulous.  ‘I threatened you!’  

   ‘Yes.  You did,’ he said.  ‘I forgive you.’  

   ‘But I…’  I started.  

   ‘Let it go,’ he said, quietly.  ‘I have.  What you bind on earth is bound in heaven.  What you release on earth is released in heaven.  I release it.  I release you.  Let it go.’

“I sat staring at the ground for a long time, confused, not knowing what to think.  After a moment, I heard him chuckle, looked up and saw him smiling at me.  He leaned over and picked up a smooth agate pebble from the ground, walked over and placed it in my hand.  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Keep this.  This is the first Key to Heaven.  Forgiveness.’ 

   ‘I don’t know if I can be forgiven.’ I said.  His expression became reflective and he gazed into the fire for a long moment. 

   ‘I felt that way once,’ he said at last. ‘I betrayed my best friend…my teacher…my master.  I betrayed him three times in one night to save my own skin.’ 

   ‘What happened?” I asked.  

   ‘They crucified him,’ he said simply.  ‘But I got away because I pretended that I didn’t know him. Three times in one night someone accused me of being one of his companions and three times I denied it.  And I didn’t think I would ever be forgiven for that.  But he forgave me.  And he helped me forgive myself.  He released me from my sin and he helped me let go of my sin—helped me to stop clinging to it..’  

   ‘Wait a minute,” I said, ‘I though you said they crucified him.’  

   ‘They did,’ he said.  

   ‘Well then how…when did he forgive you?’ 

“The way he looked at me I could tell he was trying to decide something and it was another very long moment before he said, ‘That’s another story and if you would like to travel with us I will gladly tell it another day.  For now,’ and here he smiled again, ‘hold on to that little piece of forgiveness and let that be enough for today.’

“And that, my beloved brothers and sisters is how I came to have the first of the Keys of Heaven, the Key of Forgiveness.  Having nowhere else to go and nothing to lose, I became a travelling companion of Petrus, the Fisherman, who taught me the ways of his Master and baptized me into a new life with a new name.  And along the way he gave me the Keys of Heaven and taught me how they are made, or where they can be discovered, so that each of us can have them and carry them with us and unlock Heaven around us wherever we are.  

“The first key is Forgiveness.  The Second is Gratitude.  The third is Generosity.  The fourth is Compassion. These four open your heart to the world God made, the world God loves.  The fifth key is Integrity.  The Sixth is Thoughtfulness.  These two open the soul and mind to look beyond yourself and deal fairly with all others.  The seventh is Be Not Afraid.  This key gives you the presence of mind to remember that you have all the others at your command and it helps you to use them wisely.

Then there are the three larger keys.  These give the first keys their power.  At the same time, the first keys can unlock the power of these three.  They are Faith, Hope and Love.

“So, my beloved friends, these are the Keys to Heaven.  I hope you can see that I spoke the truth all these years when I said, ‘I am giving them to you.’  I hope and pray that in my life you saw forgiveness, gratitude, generosity, compassion, integrity and thoughtfulness.  I hope you saw me live without fear.  I pray that you are gathering these keys for yourself by the example of our Master.  May you all continue to grow in Faith, Hope and Love until we are reunited in the Life to Come.

Peace be with you.

I am always your brother,

Andreas”

The small assembly sang a hymn.  The presbyter pronounced a benediction.  The deaconess replaced the Keys of Heaven in the old man’s hand, and in the dim lamplight they reverently carried his body to its place of rest.  

Thought Pollution

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Matthew 15:21-28 and Mark 7:24-30

Are there stories or sayings in the Bible that make you uncomfortable?  This story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman has really bothered me for a long time, mostly because at first reading Jesus come off as a bit of a jerk.  But here’s the thing:  I think this story is supposed to be disturbing.  It’s supposed to bother us.  

This story is begging us to do our homework, because we won’t even begin to understand what Jesus is up to here unless we dig into some history and social context.  I’m pretty sure that Jesus was aiming for a particular reaction from his disciples and I think he wants that same reaction from us.  But for us to get to the “aha moment” here, we really need to go back.  Way back.  All the way back to Noah.

But before we set the Wayback Machine for Noah, let’s go back to what happened just before Jesus encountered this bothersome and determined Canaanite woman. 

At the end of the previous chapter, after a stormy night on the lake where Jesus walked on water and Peter tried to, they landed at the little town of Gennesaret.  As always, a crowd gathered and Jesus started teaching.  But before he got very far some Pharisees and scribes started to give him a bad time because his disciples didn’t wash their hands before eating.  So Jesus tells the crowd to gather round then says, “Listen and understand:  it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person.  It’s what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”  This offended the Pharisees.  And it probably offended them even more when Jesus called them blind guides of the blind.  

But Peter wanted to hear more about what goes into the mouth versus what comes out.  I really like how Eugene Peterson rendered this bit of dialogue in The Message Bible:

“Peter said, ‘I don’t get it. Put it in plain language.’

“Jesus replied, “You too? Are you being willfully stupid?  Don’t you know that anything that is swallowed works its way through the intestines and is finally defecated?  But what comes out of the mouth gets its start in the heart. It’s from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, and cussing.  That’s what pollutes. Eating or not eating certain foods, washing or not washing your hands—that’s neither here nor there.’”

So keep all that in mind—those things that come out of the heart by way of the mouth to pollute life—keep all that in the back of your mind because suddenly the story shifts and in one brief sentence Jesus walks about fifty miles to the region of Tyre and Sidon.

Why?  Why Tyre and Sidon?  Did he just want to put some distance between himself and the Pharisees and scribes?  Why does he suddenly head off for Gentile territory?  Why, of all places, Sidon?

Well to answer that, we go all the way back to Noah.  

After Noah left the ark he planted a vineyard.  He grew some grapes and made some wine.  And then he got drunk and fell asleep naked in his tent.  Like you do.  Noah’s son, Ham, wandered by, noticed that his father was naked, and covered him up which actually seems like a pretty decent thing to do.  But when Noah woke up things got weird. He was furious that Ham had seen him in such a state, so he cursed Ham with a curse that would apply to all of his descendants.  

They took cursing very seriously in those days, especially being cursed by your father.  Being cursed was devastating.  It was the opposite pole of blessing.  A blessing could give you a bright vision of your future and a big dose of optimism to help make it come true.  A curse would make your life a living nightmare. It would haunt you and hang over you like a shadow.  

So Ham was cursed.  And so was his son, Canaan.  And so was Canaan’s son, Sidon.  And on down the line.

Sidon, Noah’s grandson, inheritor of the curse, ended up having a lot of sons and grandsons and great-grandsons and so on until Sidon became a great nation.  And because Sidon’s territory butted right up against Israel, and because  the two nations were somewhat less than friendly, the nation of Sidon shows up fairly often in the history and scriptures of Israel.  

In the Book of Judges, the Sidonians conquer and oppress the Israelites.  King Solomon married several Sidonian women who then induced him to worship their goddess, Ashtoreth.  Sixty years or so later, Israel’s King Ahab also married a Sidonian Princess named Jezebel.  You’ve probably heard of her.  She caused all kinds of trouble, especially when she kept trying to kill the prophet Elijah.  The Prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah all predicted judgment and doom for Sidon because of their idolatry, but that doom kept getting delayed, maybe because the Sidonians were quick to ally themselves with whatever new empire happened to be expanding into the area.  When the Assyrians and later the Babylonians conquered Israel, they launched their ships from Tyre and their armies from Sidon.  

For devout and even slightly patriotic Jews, the region of Tyre and Sidon was not a friendly place.  In their eyes, the people there were cursed.

So why did Jesus go there?  

The obvious answer is that Jesus went there to put some distance between himself and the Pharisees and scribes.  Physical distance, cultural distance, and historical distance.  But it looks like he also went there to make a point about God’s love and grace.  Hang on, we’ll get to that.

They had no sooner arrived in this land of the accursed than a woman ran up and started screaming at them. The NRSV and other translations say she shouted, which sounds slightly nicer, but the Greek word Matthew uses is ekrazen which has a sense of both screaming and crying.  It’s a very emotional word.  

So this Canaanite woman—Mark specifies that she was Syrophoenician—comes rushing up to them and with tears and wailing pleads with Jesus to free her daughter from a demon that is  tormenting her.  “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon!”  Kyrie eleison.  

And Jesus . . . ignores her.  

So she starts to plead with the disciples and pesters them to do something.  And no matter how they try to put her off, she won’t give up.  Because she’s a Mom.  A good Mom.  So finally they come to Jesus and beg him to intervene. “Send her away!” they said.  “She’s driving us crazy!”  

And this is where Jesus says the first thing that makes him sound like a jerk.  Jesus turns to this desperate woman who is frantic with fear for her demon-assaulted daughter and says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

What!!???  Jesus! What the frankincense???

But she comes and kneels down in front of him and begs him.  “Lord, help me.”  

And this is where Jesus doubles down and says something truly ugly, something that makes him sound like a complete bigot.  “It’s not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

He calls her a dog.  

And there is no way to translate this that takes away any of the sting, dreadfulness and insult.


How does this make any sense at all?  Did Jesus, the same Jesus who was criticized for hanging out with tax collectors and “sinners,” the same Jesus who crossed all kinds of boundaries to embrace all kinds of outcasts, the same Jesus who laid his hands on  lepers! did this Jesus trek all the way to the heart of Sidon just to insult this poor woman with a racial slur?

Yes.  Yes he did. Jesus schlepped all the way to Sidon to create a teaching moment that his disciples and all his followers forever after would not forget.

In this moment with this desperate woman, Jesus is saying aloud what his disciples are thinking.  He wants them to hear the ugliness of their attitudes out loud.  He has led them to the neighborhood of “those people,” the ones who they think are inferior, the ones who they think are cursed.  The ones who, in their understanding, God doesn’t much care for. 

I am not for one moment suggesting that the disciples in particular or Jews in general were xenophobic.  I’m suggesting that almost all of us are to one degree or another.  We humans have a bad tendency to “other” each other.  

Jesus wants us to hear what our othering attitudes sound like to someone on the receiving end.  He wants us to hear the ugliness of even our most benign bigotries expressed out loud in the presence of someone who is “not one of us,” not our clan, not our race, not of our culture or religion or denomination or neighborhood. Someone who doesn’t speak our language.  He wants us to hear what overt othering sounds like to someone we are prepared to dislike or disregard or even hate for no reason at all except for a long-nurtured history of othering and mistrust handed down through the generations.  He wants us to hear just how brutal inherited ill will can really be.  He wants us to understand that it has consequences.  And he wants us to understand that unlearning all that has to be intentional.  

It’s not what goes into the mouth that pollutes, it’s what comes out of the mouth…and what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart. It’s from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, blasphemies, bigotries, othering and racism.  That’s what pollutes us.  That’s what poisons us generation after generation.  

“It’s not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” said Jesus.  “Yes Lord, she said, but even the dogs get to eat the scraps that fall from their master’s table.” “Woman, great is your faith!” said Jesus. “Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

Such faith.  Such amazing faith to let herself be ignored then insulted and degraded all in the hope of some kind of help for her daughter, all for a scrap from the table of God’s healing love and grace.  All for a lesson that far too many of us still seem all too reluctant to learn.  

Image: Crumbs of Love (2008), Michael Cook

Who Asked You to Walk on Water?

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Who Asked You to Walk on Water?

Matthew 14:22-33

After healing a multitude of people and then miraculously feeding an even bigger multitude of people, Jesus was finally going to get some time to himself.  Matthew tells us, “Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.  And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray.”  

I think it’s safe to say that he had a lot on his mind.  He had just learned about the gruesome death of John the Baptist, the prophet who had baptized him, his predecessor in announcing the advent of the reign of God’s justice and mercy which Matthew calls “the kingdom of heaven.”  He had spent the day healing people of all kinds of illness and wounds and then miraculously feeding more than 5000 people from five loaves and two fish.  And apparently, that’s when he decided it was time to close up shop and send everybody home.

Matthew says “he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side.”  The Greek verb here is anagkazo.   It means “to compel.”  He compelled them to get in the boat and row away.  Then he dismissed the crowds.  Jesus was determined to have his alone time.  Go in peace, y’all.  I’ve got an appointment at the top of the hill.

I’m sure the disciples had second thoughts about rowing out onto the lake just as it was getting dark. The Sea of Galilee, also known as Lake Tiberias, also known as Lake Gennesaret, sits about 200 meters below sea level in a warm, semi-tropical basin.  Steep hills and plateaus rise sharply above the water and often cool, dry air masses rush down from the heights to collide with the warmer, moister air at the water’s surface.  Narrow ravines and wadis act as natural wind tunnels which can significantly increase the speed of descending gusts until they become fierce, water-churning  gales.   These winds can be especially intense at the north end of the lake which is where the disciples find themselves when Jesus orders them to get into the boat and go on ahead of him.

While Jesus was up on the mountain praying, the night was getting darker and the disciples were getting farther and farther from shore.  Then the wind hit them.  Matthew says “the wind was against them.”  Enantios is the Greek word.  It has a sense of intentional opposition.  The wind was opposed to them.  And it’s not just any wind.  It’s amenos, a particularly strong or fierce wind.  Matthew tells us that their boat was “battered by the waves” but basanidzo, the Greek verb means “tortured” or “tormented.”  So, yeah. The disciples are out on the lake in the dark, unable to make any progress because the wind is almost antagonistically against them and the waves are threatening to tear their boat apart.  Good times.

“And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea.”  That’s how the NRSV translates it which is, frankly worse than useless.  The Greek text tells us this happened during the fourth watch of the night. That’s between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m.  Still dark.  Still scary.   “When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear.”   

Belief in ghosts was widespread in the ancient world, including among the Jews, so it’s not surprising that they think Jesus is a ghost.  Besides, who else could walk on water?  Must be a ghost.  These Galilean fishermen would have known more than a few friends and neighbors who had lost their lives in those waters.  On top of that, the sea, in their thinking, was a realm of chaos that harbored demons, malicious spirits, lost spirits and monsters.  So whatever or whomever it was they were seeing walking across the water, odds were not good that it would be friendly.

“But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’”  Much has been made in some commentaries about the wording of “it is I.”  In the Greek the words are ego eimi  which is the same wording God uses in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, when Moses asks God for God’s name.  Ego Eimi.  I am who I am.  Some think that when Jesus says this to his frightened disciples he is giving them a hint about his divine nature.  Because… what—walking on water isn’t enough of a clue?   Sarcasm aside, I think those who want to see this wording as Jesus making a statement about his divine nature are reading too much into it because ego eimi is also exactly how one would say, “It’s me.”  So when the disciples cry out in fear, Jesus calls back to them and says, “Get a grip and calm down, guys.  It’s me.”

And this is where things get strange.  Well…stranger.  “Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’” Oh Peter.  Peter, Peter, Peter.  What’s going on with you, man?  This challenge is so troubling on a number of levels.  First, “if it is you” sounds way too much like what the devil said to Jesus during the temptation in the wilderness: “If you really are the son of God…” (Matthew 4:3 and 4:8).  There is an echo there, is there not?  If it is you… If you really are…  It’s a challenge for Jesus to prove himself.   Second, Peter clearly has not thought this through.  If it is, indeed, a ghost or some malicious spirit, what’s to keep that entity from urging Peter to step out of the boat just so he can plunge to his death?  Whoopsie.  Finally, Peter’s challenge puts Jesus in a very awkward position.  “If it is you” creates a conundrum with no gracious exit.  If Jesus does not command Peter to come, to walk across the water to him, if he says, “No, Peter, don’t be an idiot” or even something gentler like “No Peter you’re not ready for that,” there will be a big question in the minds of the disciples about just who it is who is getting in the boat with them after walking across the water.  They might even try to prevent him from getting in the boat if they think he has failed the “if it is you” test.   Jesus is really left with only one option.

He said, “Come.”  

So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!”  Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”  When they got into the boat, the wind ceased.  And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

The traditional explanation of all this goes something like this:  when Jesus commands or asks us to do the impossible we can do it if we just have faith and keep our eyes on Jesus.  If we start to sink, Jesus will reach down and save us.  This explanation wraps the story in a nice, easily understood package suitable for church and personal use in any number of situations.  It also fits nicely with the recurring “you of little faith “ theme in Matthew.  Stepping out of the boat to take on a whopping financial obligation for a new building program?  Stepping out of the boat by quitting your job so you can start a new business?  Don’t let the winds bother you.  Keep your eyes on Jesus.  Keep your eyes on Jesus and everything will be okay.  “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”  

Keep your eyes on Jesus really is excellent advice in all circumstances always.  But when Jesus says, “you of little faith” what, exactly is he referring to?  Is he referring to Peter’s sudden, sinking fear when he realized that he was standing on turbulent water in a heavy wind without his floaties?   Or is he referring to Peter’s “if it is you” challenge, the doubt that initiated Peter’s perilous watery stroll that almost sank him? 

How many times in life do we get in trouble because we take on something nobody asked us to do?   Jesus ordered his disciples to get in the boat.  He never asked them to get out of it.  

Years ago, in the first parish where I served as pastor there was a man named Wayne who kept taking on jobs that nobody had asked him to do.  Wayne was a big, strong, retired older man who was always looking for ways to be of use to the church.  He was especially fond of gardening and, since he lived across the street from the church, he was on the church property puttering in the flower beds pretty much all the time.  This could have been a nice bonus for the congregation if Wayne had been half as knowledgeable as he thought he was and if he had paid even a little bit of attention to what the church property committee had spent many hours planning in terms of landscape design.

One day Wayne popped into my office to chat and found me sitting in the enclosed garden between my office and the sacristy.  He looked around the garden which, admittedly, was due for some attention, then said, “Pastor, why don’t you let me fix up this garden for you.  I can make it real nice.”   I thanked him for the offer but told him I already had plans for the garden, plans that had been approved by the Council and the Property Committee.  He asked me what I had in mind and I told him that I was going to plant some grapevines.  My plan was to plant some Syrah vines which I knew would do well there, then later have the Confirmation students harvest the grapes and make wine for communion.  It was also part of my plan for them to grind some wheat to make flour then bake bread for communion.  I had begun to plan a small communion curriculum around these experiences.  

I thought I had made it pretty clear to Wayne that I had a plan for that garden and I really didn’t want him to do anything with that space, so I was completely gobsmacked when I returned home from a continuing education retreat to discover that Wayne had planted grape vines in my office garden.  Specifically, he had planted table grapes.  Thompson Seedless grapes.  Which can’t be used for making wine because they don’t produce enough sugar.  Wayne was so proud and happy with what he had done that he couldn’t understand why the pastor and the council president and the property committee and the education committee were less than thrilled by his efforts.

How many times in life do we get in trouble because we take on something nobody asked us to do?   Jesus ordered his disciples to get in the boat.  He never asked anybody to get out of it.  

Image: The Hand of God by Yongsung Kim

Nothin’ Ain’t Nothin’

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

There’s no such thing as nothing.

Matthew 14:13-21

In this Sunday’s gospel reading Jesus feeds more than 5000 people with five loaves and two fish, so of course I’ve been thinking about quantum mechanics.  Bear with me here.

There are six accounts in the gospels of Jesus feeding multitudes of people from almost nothing: two accounts in Matthew, two in Mark, one in Luke and one in John.  The stories are similar in most details.  In each one Jesus is moved by compassion for the crowd and uses the very meager resources at hand—five loaves and two fish in some accounts or seven loaves and a few fish in others—to provide so much food that baskets of leftovers are collected afterward.  In the synoptic versions the initial loaves and fishes are something the disciples already have on hand, but in John’s version, the loaves and fish are provided by a young boy who has been watching Jesus from the edge of the crowd.  

This miracle story was clearly an important event in the memory of the early church which may be why there are six versions of it.  Of course, it’s also entirely possible that Jesus really did feed multitudes on multiple occasions.  It would be such a Jesus thing to do.

It’s very tempting to try to find ways to rationally explain the miracles of Jesus, especially the miracle of feeding a multitude with such obviously inadequate resources, but if we go wandering down that rabbit hole we’re bound to miss something important.  Some think that the people in the crowd were so inspired by seeing Jesus and the disciples passing out their measly 5 loaves and two fish that they all decided to share the snacks they had stashed away in their sleeves.  Sure.  That works.  Maybe.  I suppose it would be a small miracle in its own way and certainly a good example of sharing what you have to make sure everyone has something.  But the Gospel writers don’t even hint that that’s what was happening in these accounts.  They seem to think that something much more impressive happened. 

I, for one, have no problem believing that Jesus made food appear where none had been before.  After all, God has been creating something out of nothing since the beginning of . . . everything.  

“Nothing” seems to be God’s favorite material to work with.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  Emptiness is meant to be filled.  And nothing is not nothing—it’s always chock full of potential.  

Here’s what the science says:  In quantum mechanics, absolute nothingness cannot exist because empty space is filled with zero-point energy.  That means that the lowest possible energy state still holds a baseline of irreducible energy and movement that cannot be removed.  Even in a vacuum there are fluctuations of energy because “empty” space is actually filled with active quantum fields.  In other words, “Nothing” is actually full of Something and that Something is Possibilities.  In quantum mechanics, “Nothing” has the potential to be Anything.  Loaves and fishes, for instance.

So, was Jesus manipulating quantum fields to feed the multitude or was something else going on?  We’ll probably never know.  And is there really any point in figuring it out?  I think we lose something if we try too hard to demystify the mystery.  Plus, the whole point of the story is that Jesus found himself surrounded by hungry people so he fed them.  More specifically, he had the disciples feed them.

There are a lot of similarities in the 6 miracle feeding stories, but the context for each one is different, and the context is particularly important in Matthew 14, so let’s go back to the beginning.

When the disciples of John the Baptist came to tell Jesus that John had been murdered by Herod Antipas, Jesus “withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.”  It’s easy to imagine that Jesus wanted some privacy for his grief, some time to pray, some time to think about what this meant for the message of the kingdom of heaven that both he and John had been proclaiming.  But when he got to that lonely spot at the end of the lake, instead of a private retreat there was a multitude waiting for him.

When the crowds heard that John had been killed, they went looking for Jesus.  John had been important to them, and if anyone could speak to their fear, their loss, their broken hearts and their shattered hopes, it would be Jesus.  “They followed him on foot from the towns.  When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.”

When Jesus saw the crowd, in spite of his own fatigue and sorrow, he went to work.  He prayed.  He laid hands on the sick.  He hollowed himself out so all the power of the Holy Spirit could flow through him.  

And he let himself feel their hunger.  Spiritual hunger.  Intellectual hunger.  Hunger for a better life.  Hunger for justice.  Hunger for independence. Hunger for healing.  And just plain, old physical hunger for food.  He felt all of it.  From all of them.  A great chasm of hunger from the thousands on the hillside in front of him.

Standing in the vortex of all their hunger he loved them, and his compassion moved him to do the impossible.  He took what he had, five loaves and two fish, which by every worldly measure was obviously insufficient, then he looked up to heaven, and he blessed it.  Eulogesen is the Greek word in Matthew’s text.  It quite literally means that he said good things about it.  “Thank you.  This is good.”  Then he broke the bread and told his disciples, his students, to hand it out to the crowd, trusting that in this God-made, God-blessed world, on that God-blessed hillside with all its God-blessed hunger what they had to share was good, and that by God’s power and presence and grace there would be enough.  More than enough.

“And all ate and were filled,” Matthew tells us, “and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.”

Jesus fed five thousand men, besides women and children—such a weird way for Matthew to tell us that there were whole families there on that hillside but women and children were not included in the head count.  Jesus fed all those people from five loaves and two fish, but the food that fed them wasn’t the only thing that Jesus created out of almost nothing that day.  He also created a community.  A community of companionship.

Meals were not merely utilitarian in first century Palestine.  Sharing a meal was a way to affirm kinship, friendship and good will. Sharing a meal was also a way to affirm or elevate one’s status in a world where status was important.  To put it plainly, it was a way to show that those gathered together for the meal recognized each other as “acceptable” in a world where all too often some were regarded as “unacceptable” or “unclean.” 

Jesus, had been criticized by some Pharisees for eating with “sinners” and tax collectors, people considered unacceptable in good company.  But in this feast on the hillside at the end of the lake, he included everyone, regardless of their social standing or ritual acceptability.  In that great crowd of all kinds of people, no one was turned away.  No one was excluded.  Everyone was equal in their hunger.  Everyone was equal in being fed.

In the book After Jesus Before Christianity, the authors tell us that meals were the primary social engagement for the early followers of Jesus.  During the first two centuries, the people who were loyal to Jesus commonly organized themselves into something that would look like supper clubs to us.  They would gather once, twice or even several times a week in someone’s home to share a meal, to sing, to pray together and to remember the stories of Jesus. 

In an era when the Church is in decline, I can’t help but wonder what might happen if we followed the example of those early Jesus people today.  What would happen if we transformed our pews into long tables and benches and converted our sanctuaries into dining halls then gathered each week to throw open our doors and invite our neighbors in for a hearty meal, some prayer and some singing?   Who knows what kinds of hunger we might feed?  Who knows what kind of emptiness Christ might fill?

In a world where 645 million people will go hungry today[1]—48 million[2] of them in our own country—in a world where 45% of all child deaths are caused by hunger or hunger-related illness, these stories of Jesus feeding multitudes serve to remind us that we have a responsibility to feed a hungry world and we’re not doing a very good job of following his example.  

Hunger in our world and in our country is a solvable problem.  The US Department of Agriculture estimates that 120 to 160 billion pounds of food is wasted every year in this country alone—that’s 20 to 40% of the entire US food supply being dumped into landfills while 48 million people go hungry.  

Each of the Miraculous feeding stories begins by telling us that Jesus was moved by compassion for the hungry crowd, and I can’t help but think that maybe that’s the thing we’re missing when it comes to feeding our hungry world.  When grain shipments bound for food-insecure nations are blown up at the dock by the misguided missiles of a needless war, it’s hard to believe that food production is the problem.  When voices in Congress are trying to reduce or eliminate the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, it’s hard to believe that inflation of food prices is the main reason people are going hungry.  When 67 counties in our country are food deserts that don’t have a single grocery store because the big grocery corporations decided that a supermarket in those counties would not be profitable, it’s hard to believe that the high rate of food insufficiency in those same 67 counties is because people are uninformed about the importance of healthy nutrition.  When the Orange County Register reports that hunger in supposedly affluent Orange County, California, a county with 58 million-dollar zip codes, is worse now than in the Great Recession of 2008[3], it’s a sign that something is seriously out of balance in our nation, our culture and our world.

The six gospel accounts of Jesus feeding thousands of hungry people are a clear invitation for us to consider how we are or are not following his example in feeding hungry people today.  Remember, after Jesus blesses the loaves and fish he hands them back to the disciples and says, “You feed them.”

Those of us who come to church come with hungers of our own.  We also come to share a meal— a meal that reminds us that we are in Christ and Christ is in us—a meal that fills us with Christ’s compassion as we taste and see the goodness of the Lord.  We come to share a meal that calls us to trust that in this God-made, God-blessed world, that in this God-blessed place with all its God-blessed hungers what we have is good.  We come to learn again that we can share what we have even when it doesn’t seem to be enough, and that by God’s power and presence there will always be enough.  More than enough. 

[1] https://ipes-food.org/un-hunger-report-2026-global-hunger-remains-stubbornly-high-as-another-food-price-crisis-looms

[2]  https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america

[3] ANDRE MOUCHARD | amouchard@scng.com | Orange County Register

PUBLISHED: July 30, 2026 at 5:21 PM PDT | UPDATED: July 31, 2026 at 6:45 AM PDT

Matthew’s String of Pearls

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

The kingdom of heaven is….organic.

Matthew 13:31-51

From the very beginning of his ministry, the preaching and teaching of Jesus was centered on and anchored in one single, clear message:  “The time is ripe.  The Reign of God is arriving.  Change your life and trust the good news.”[1]   

Ever since Constantine this message has too often been either spiritualized or relegated to end times theology.  We forget that Jesus was actually delivering a radically subversive message in Roman occupied Galilee.  He really was committed to replacing the oppressive and violently enforced governance of the Roman empire—and all empires forever after—with the commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness.  He wanted people to understand, though, that it isn’t enough just to change governments or economic systems.  What he was aiming for—and is still aiming for—is a transformation of human persons and human society, a radical renovation of values and vision, a sea change in the collective human soul.  

Jesus wanted people to understand that he was not trying to raise a rebel army or initiate a political revolt because the kingdom of heaven, as Matthew calls it, would not be imposed on anyone.  God’s dominion does not arrive through military conquest or rebellion or heavy-handed politics.  Instead, it grows and spreads slowly, organically, until it has quietly amended everyone’s expectations and values while almost invisibly transforming the way the world operates.  This organic development of the kingdom, by the way, stands in stark opposition to the fever dream of Christian Nationalism.

In chapter 13 of Matthew, Jesus shares a series of parables, a string of pearls to help illustrate how the reign of God will softly supplant the iron grip of empire.  Since so much of what Jesus was teaching was about envisioning a whole new way of life with very different values, he wanted people to spend time with the ideas he was sharing.  So he gave them parables that hinted at his deeper message—stories that they could carry away with them so that they could feel some ownership of the vision when they worked out the riddles for themselves.

In the Parable of the Sower, the Sower spreads “the word of the kingdom”[2] everywhere with no regard for where it lands.  A lot of people don’t get it or can’t be bothered.  Some receive it but can’t hold on to it.  But some take it in and it takes root in their hearts, minds and imaginations until it becomes their reality.

In the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, Jesus reminds his followers that all the goodness of God’s dominion is going to be growing up side-by-side and surrounded by all the toxic evil of the world.  Why?  Because there are forces in the world that are hostile to God’s vision of how life should be.  He cautions us that evil often mimics good and we can’t always tell the difference, so we shouldn’t be too eager to rush in and eliminate what we think is evil in the name of purity.

Following the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, Jesus gives us six rapid-fire parables in a row in the space of 20 short verses: the parable of the Mustard Seed, the Parable of the Yeast (which is really sourdough starter, but we’ll get to that in a moment), the Parable of the Treasure in the Field, the Parable of the Pearl Merchant, the Parable of the Fish in the Net, and the Parable of the Old and New.

At the end of all these parables Jesus asks his disciples, “Have you understood all this?”  The word we translate as “understood,” syniemi , has a layered meaning in Greek.  It means to put it all together, to assemble, to assimilate.  

Have you understood all this?   Are you putting it all together?

So if we really want to understand the parable of the fish in the nets—to put it all together—it helps if we have a handle on the mustard seed.  So with that in mind, let’s start at the end of this string of parables and work our way back to the beginning.

“Every scribe who has been discipled for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”[3]  In The Message, Eugene Peterson put it this way: “Every student well-trained in God’s kingdom is like the owner of a general store who can put his hands on anything you need, old or new, exactly when you need it.”  I think that captures the point pretty well.  

We’ve all known people who are so devoted to the old way of doing things, the old ideas, the old songs, the old way we’ve always done it—whatever it is—that they just can’t or won’t adjust to anything new or different.  On the other side of the coin we’ve all known people who are so enamored with the new that they have no patience or tolerance with the old tried and true.  “Hold on,” says Jesus.  “A well-trained disciple for the Empire of Heaven will have a good battery-powered drill, but Grandpa’s trusty hammer, wrenches and screw drivers will also be in his tool kit.”  Followers of Jesus in the commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness need a variety of tools to reach people with God’s love and generosity.   

Reading this parable again, though, I find it intriguing that this parable begins with “Every scribe” and I can’t help but think that the writer of Matthew may be describing himself here.  We know that the author was a fairly accomplished scribe.  He had to be to write a work of this length.  We know that he was using a copy of the Gospel of Mark since he pretty much follows Mark’s order of events and there are places where Mark’s wording is copied verbatim in Matthew.  So, is the Gospel of Mark the “new” referred to here?  We also know that Matthew, the writer, is very familiar with the Hebrew Bible.  Is that the “old?”  Matthew’s gospel, in and of itself, gives us a good example of a well-discipled scribe for the kingdom of heaven who is bringing out of his treasure something old and something new.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind.  When it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous.”[4]   

This isn’t just any old net in this parable, it’s a sagéne, a long dragnet that was often pulled between two boats.  It is like the reign of God in that it catches fish of every kind.  It’s a very inclusive net.  The Empire of Heaven includes everyone.  There is no purity test for us to apply because the righteous fish are swimming right alongside the “bad” fish.  Like the Weeds among the Wheat the bad is mixed in with the good.  But that’s not our problem.  It’s not our job to do the sorting.  Angels will take care of it when the time comes.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”[5]

This parable may have been a bit shocking for the people originally hearing Jesus teach on the shore of Galilee or to those originally reading in Mattew’s gospel.  The “merchant” is a wholesaler, an emporo, in the Greek.  People in this business were not respected in Jesus’ time; they were regarded as decadent because they traveled a lot and associated with all kinds of people.  They also tended to be comparatively wealthy which made them suspect since making money meant that someone else was parting with money.  We know that this particular emporo in the parable had to be quite rich because he was wholesaling pearls which, in the first century world, were the most valuable and rarest of all gems.  This wholesaler is used to dealing with pearls.  He sees them all the time.  But unexpectedly, one uniquely beautiful pearl so captivates him that he feels he must possess it.  He gets out of the wholesaling business.  He liquidates his inventory so he can afford to buy this one very special pearl.  He trades the many for the one.  It transform him.  He becomes a buyer instead of a trader.  He has found the thing he had never realized he was searching for all along.  The domain of heaven is like that.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field.”[6]  A man taking a shortcut across the field stumbles across it.  When he realizes what he has found, he hides it again.  He doesn’t want to lose it to someone else.  He sells everything he has to buy the field but he’s not really interested in the field.  He wants what’s in the field.  Hidden.  Buried.  Get it?  God’s realm of justice and kindness is like that.  It’s the unexpected discovery that makes life immeasurably richer, enlarges joy, and changes everything.  

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”[7]

I have a pet peeve with our English translations of this parable.  First, it’s not yeast.  Nobody knew about yeast as a distinctive organism until Anton van Leeuwenhoek observed yeast cells under the microscope in 1680, and even then he didn’t know what it was he was seeing.  What the original text says is that the kingdom of heaven is like leaven.  Zumei is the Greek word.  Think of it like sourdough starter.  Also, the woman doesn’t mix it into the flour.  She hides it in the flour.  She conceals it.  Enekrypsen is the Greek word.  Like cryptic.  So again, the commonwealth of God’s love and generosity is a thing that is definitely there but hidden from casual observation.  It’s also worth noting that the three measures of flour described here is a very large amount of flour—forty to sixty pounds of flour.  This little pinch of leaven is going to produce a lot of bread. 

Leaven was well known in ancient Israel and used year round except during Passover.  It had to be eliminated from the house during Passover because it was considered an impurity.  Plutarch described it as “the product of corruption.”  Leaven is actually a small amount of cultured mold.  And yet Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven is like that.  A little bit of something that some think is impure hidden in the midst of everything desirable… and this little bit of impurity transforms all the good “pure” flour.  It makes it rise.  It gives it that wonderful baked bread flavor and aroma.  The kingdom of heaven is like that.

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”[8]

So, a small thing becomes a big thing… is that what this parable is all about?  Well, yes and no.  Mustard was and is an incredibly useful plant but it self-propagates so it takes a bit of work to keep it from taking over a field or garden.  Mustard seeds were ground like peppercorns and used to season food or make condiments.  The Gospel of Mark says it grows to become the greatest of all vegetables.  It’s leaves and roots are edible and there have been more than a few times in history where wild mustard plants saved people from starvation during a time of famine.  Farmers in Galilee and Judea would plant rows of mustard next to their crops to keep grazing animals like sheep, goats and cows out of their fields because the animals didn’t like the pungent taste or smell of the mustard plant.   It really can grow to the size of a small tree if it’s not trimmed back.  Sparrows and finches really do shelter in its branches and feed on its seeds, and it provides shade where any number of small creatures can escape from the heat.  So yes.  The kingdom of heaven is like that.  

Have you understood all this?   Are you putting the pieces together? Can you take these images with you and see where the seed is sprouting and the dough is rising?  

Maybe you’ll stumble across a remarkable treasure in a place where you would never dream such a thing or person or idea or insight could be.  Maybe one afternoon in the middle of something utterly familiar you’ll suddenly be completely captivated by something exquisitely beautiful that transcends everything else you’re accustomed to.

Have you understood all this?  Are you putting the pieces together?

Take your time.  Take these little stories home with you.  Let them percolate.  Every student who is in training for the commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness is like a good handyman who carries in his toolkit some of the newest and best but also some of the old tried and true.  Get the picture?

[1] Mark 1:15, my translation.  See also Matthew 4:23

[2] Matthew 13:19

[3] Matthew 13:52

[4] Matthew 13:47-48

[5] 13:45-46

[6] 13:44

[7] 13:33

[8] 13:31-32

Life Among the Weeds

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

He put before them another parable…

Have you ever wondered why Jesus did so much of his teaching with parables?   When his disciples asked him about that he said that he spoke in parables because people are not very good at listening.  “The reason I speak to them in parables,” he said, “is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’”[1]  When he was teaching about God’s commonwealth of justice and kindness, he knew that people would not retain what he was saying if he simply gave them factual information, so he told them enigmatic little stories that he knew they would take away with them.  

Parables are living stories.  They are stories that use real-life examples to shape the way we think.  Since so much of what Jesus was teaching was about envisioning a whole new way of life with very different values, he wanted people to spend time with the ideas he was sharing.  So he gave them parables that hinted at his deeper message—stories that they could carry away with them so that they could feel some ownership of the vision when they worked out the riddles for themselves.  

The stories and symbols of a parable almost always work on more than one level of understanding.  The parables of Jesus were brilliant in that they often work on three levels—they point to a cosmic interpretation, a community interpretation, and a personal interpretation.  When Jesus talks about “the kingdom of heaven” in these parables he is pointing to the ultimate cosmic reign of God and the beloved community of faith and  the internal life of the individual believer.  He wants his followers to understand that the Empire of Heaven is not only a longed-for future waiting to be fulfilled, it is also a very present vision that shapes the life of the beloved community as it transforms the hearts and minds of each individual follower of Jesus.  The kingdom is future.  But the kingdom is also now.

The parable of the Weeds Among the Wheat is one of four consecutive “organic” parables in Matthew which almost pile up on each other when you’re reading them: The Sower, The Weeds, The Mustard Seed, and The Parable of the Yeast.  Taken together they have a common theme.  In these stories the kingdom is organic—it doesn’t just suddenly appear out of nowhere.  Instead, it grows slowly and steadily, unobserved, often in unexpected ways and places and even in spite of opposition and challenges.  But while these stories share this basic idea, each one has its own distinct message about different aspects of life under the rule and reign of God, so it’s important to give each one time to percolate. 

The Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Mustard Seed are in all three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke.  The Parable of the Yeast is in both Matthew and Luke.  But the Parable of the Weeds Among the Wheat is only in Matthew.

So with all that in mind, what is Jesus teaching us when he says, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field;  but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away.”    

On the surface the message of the parable is fairly simple:  Jesus is telling us that there’s bad stuff in the world mixed in with the good that God intended.  Why?  “An enemy has done this.”  Literally, in the Greek it says “a person who was hostile” did this.  So right there we are invited to think about that dynamic on at least three levels.  On the cosmic level, who or what is hostile to God’s Domain?  More locally, who or what is hostile to the community of faith?  On a personal level, who or what is hostile to your own spiritual growth?  This is a bigger question than just “Who is the enemy?”  The door is open for us to think of any number of persons or entities or systems who might be hostile to seeing the love and generosity of God become sovereign in the world and in our community and in each of our own lives. 

 One of the details we’re likely to miss if we just read this parable in our English translations is just how hostile this act of sowing weeds in the wheat field really is.  Jesus is describing a situation that is potentially deadly.  This is not just any old dandelion that the enemy has scattered in the wheat field;  in the Greek text, Jesus says it is zizania.  Farmers today know it as Bearded Darnel.  Australians call it “sleepy wheat,” and botanists know it by its Latin name: Lolium temulentum.  

This weed looks so much like wheat that it’s easy to mistake it for wheat and vice versa.  But learning to spot the difference is critically important because the fungus that lives in Bearded Darnel’s seeds produces a potent neurotoxin.  Eating just a small amount of this grain can cause dizziness, trembling, weakness, ataxia, confusion and delirium.  Eating more can kill you which would be a relief since that would put a stop to all the nasty gastrointestinal misery this weed would be giving you.    

It’s no wonder the landowner’s servants in this Jesus story want to pull up this noxious weed as soon as they see it, but the landowner says no.  The landowner knows that the roots of the darnel will have tangled themselves in the roots of the wheat.  You can’t pull up one without pulling up the other.  The landowner also knows that as long as the weeds are in his field it’s contained.  He can keep an eye on it and keep it from spreading.

Matthew was writing his gospel in a community that was living under incredible stress.  Clues in the text tell us that this was a community of Jewish Christians who were struggling to faithfully live our both their Jewish heritage and their new identity as followers of Jesus, but their belief that Jesus was the promised Messiah led to conflict with their friends and family in the synagogue and Jewish community.  Their communal life as believers also created tensions with their Gentile neighbors who were trying to avoid being noticed any more than necessary by the occupying Romans.  These Gentile neighbors were trying to keep their distance because when Matthew’s gospel was being written the Roman Empire viewed Christians with suspicion.  The Romans viewed Christians as a troublesome, defiant and anti-social splinter group because they publicly refused to worship the emperor and the Roman gods, which was considered a sacred civic duty.  The Empire saw the Christians as weeds in their field.

Matthew probably included this parable in his gospel because it spoke directly to the community’s questions, concerns and anxieties.  On the cosmic level it addresses the question of theodicy, the problem of evil—

  • If God is sovereign, why is there evil in the world? 

Answer: because there are forces at work in the world that are hostile to God’s sovereignty.  

  • What is the nature of evil?  

Answer:  It can be a counterfeit good.  It mimics the good and grows alongside it until it becomes difficult to root it out without damaging the good.

  • Why is there conflict in the community?

Answer: Because often the counterfeit is mistaken for the real thing.  What one group thinks is wheat another group thinks is weeds and there are people on both sides who want to rush in and pull up what they think are the weeds.

In his Augsburg Commentary on Matthew, Robert Smith said, “In Matthew’s day and in every generation it takes little talent to finger members of the community who look like bad seed.  Where do they come from?  It is easy to lose confidence in the way God runs the universe.”[2]  

It’s an unfortunate trait of human nature that we tend to identify people and ideas we don’t like as poisonous weeds in our otherwise lovely and wholesome field.  We see this every day in politics.  We see it at school.  We see it at work.  We see it in science and medicine.  We see it everywhere human beings are interacting with each other.  We see weeds in our field and we instinctively want to yank them up by the roots.  It’s like there’s some old hillbilly song stuck in our brains: “Life would be almost perfect, dontcha know, if we just got rid of so-and-so.”

Jesus says to let the weeds grow.  The reapers will take care of them when the time comes.  But almost from the beginning, the church seems to have not been listening to that particular instruction.

You’ve all heard the word heresy, right?  It comes from the Greek heiresis which means “to take or choose for oneself.” In Greek debate it was used to describe “a differing opinion.”  In the church it came to mean “a belief or opinion that is contrary to orthodox doctrine.”  Unfortunately, it also has often meant, “Look!  Here’s a weed!  Quick, let’s pull it!”

In 431, at the Council of Ephesus, the teachings of the British Monk and theologian, Pelagius, were condemned as heresy.  Fortunately for Pelagius, he had died in 418 or he might have been in for a rough time, not that he hadn’t been roughed up a bit while he was still alive.  After all, you don’t go toe-to-toe with powerful bishops like Augustine and Jerome without getting a few bruises to your reputation.  Or your body.  Theologians played rough in those days.

In 1415, Jan Hus, a Czech academic theologian,  philosopher and priest was burned at the stake as a heretic for condemning indulgences and crusades and for advocating that the scriptures should be translated into the languages of the common people so that everyone could read them for themselves.  The Church said that was heresy.

In 1431 Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for heresy and cross dressing.  The case against her for heresy was weak, and Joan answered the inquisition’s questions with such pious intelligence that the English bishops hearing her case were ready to dismiss the theological heresy charges. But they had her dead to rights on the charge of dressing like a man.  Plus, they felt she needed to be punished for being such an inspiring military leader and a brilliant military strategist, talents that were not appreciated in a woman.

In 1521, Martin Luther was condemned as a heretic and sentenced to death for his widely circulated writings insisting on church reform.  Some of the reforms he advocated had been proposed by Jan Hus a hundred years earlier.  Luther had developed a large popular following and his denunciation of indulgences hit the church right in the wallet. Fortunately, because he was under the protection of Frederick the Wise, the powerful duke of Saxony, Luther’s opponents were never able to capture him and execute him.

In 1633, Galileo Galilei was declared a heretic and forced to recant his assertion that the earth moves around the sun and not the other way around.  He died under house arrest 9 years later, but 359 years later in 1992 he was vindicated when Pope John Paul II admitted that Galileo was right, the earth does move around the sun.  And in the year 2000, a mere 8 years after admitting that Galileo was right, the Church held a ceremony in which they issued him a formal apology.  Galileo, who had been dead for 358 years at that point, was unable to attend.

In his book Parables of the Kingdom, Robert Farrrar Capon reminds us that the enemy who sows the weeds doesn’t have any real power over goodness. The wheat in the parable is already sown.  The reign of God is already in the world and there’s nothing the enemy can do about it.  But, “he can sucker the forces of goodness into taking up arms against the confusion he has introduced, to do his work for him. That is why he goes away after sowing the weeds. He has no need to hang around. Unable to take positive action anyway—having no real power to muck up the operation—he simply sprinkles around a generous helping of darkness and waits for the children of light to get flustered enough to do the job for him.”[3]

All these heretics, all these persons with differing views, were seen in their time as weeds in the field.  Some were pulled and burned, ignoring the advice of Jesus: Let both of them grow together until the harvest.  He tells those who are eager to yank up the weeds that they’re likely to pull up the wheat, too.  Jesus also leaves a cautionary question hanging in the air, a question that echoes through this parable and our history: What makes you so sure you know the difference between weeds and wheat? 

Today, a fair number of theologians are thinking that maybe Pelagius wasn’t entirely wrong and maybe Augustine wasn’t entirely right.  Jan Hus is commemorated as a martyr whose ideas planted seeds that flourished in the Reformation.  Joan of Arc has been canonized as a saint and nobody much cares that she wore pants.  Martin Luther is acknowledge as a titanic figure who not only ignited the Reformation but set the stage for the Enlightenment.  And Galileo opened our minds to the notion that religious dogma should not stand in opposition to the empirical observations of science.  

Time and time again throughout our history, persons and ideas that were thought to be weeds in the field turned out to be wheat after all.

So if you think that some person or some group are weeds in the field and need to be uprooted because their ideas or habits or opinions differ from yours, maybe it would be best to leave them alone, to live and let live, and leave the judgment to the more far-sighted understanding of God.

Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.

Do not judge and you will not be judged.  Don’t be in such a hurry to yank those ideas or persons you think are weeds out of God’s field.  Grow and let grow.  Because that’s what Jesus said to do.

[1] Matthew 13:13

[2] Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament: Matthew; Robert H. Smith, 1998, p.178

[3] Robert Farrar Capon; Parables of the Kingdom, Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1991.

Whole Grain Goodness

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

You reap what you sow…

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23;  Isaiah 55:10-11

A sower went out to sow…  I have a special fondness for this parable which I’ll explain in a moment.

The parable of the sower, which appears in Matthew, Mark and Luke with slight but important differences, is an allegory, and when his disciples ask him to explain it to them Jesus tells them what the different elements represent.

In Luke, Jesus says that the seed is “the word of God.”  In Mark he simply calls it “the word.”  But Matthew is more specific.  The seed, says Jesus, is “the word of the kingdom.”

Then he talks about the different soils. 

The seed that falls on the path and is eaten by birds represents those who hear the word of the kingdom but don’t understand or take time to consider it “so the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart.”  

The seed that falls on rocky ground represents those who are initially enthusiastic but there is no depth in their response so the word of the kingdom doesn’t take root in their lives.

Some of the seed is choked by thorns.  Jesus tells his disciples that thorns and weeds represent the cares of the world, the lure of wealth, the busyness of maintaining a certain standard of living.  These things suck away all the energy that would sustain commitment to God’s kingdom.

And then there’s the good soil which produces a bountiful yield.  But what is that soil exactly?  A rich spiritual life?  A pious life? A life devoted to religion and evangelism?  What?

In all the years I’ve preached this parable, I’ve usually asked people to reflect on what kind of soil they are.  That’s a pretty common approach to this parable:  What kind of soil are you?  And what kinds of changes would you need to make so you could be more productive for the seed Jesus is sowing?

What kind of soil are you?  That is worth thinking about but it’s not the only way to place yourself in the parable.  When I really think about it, I know I have played other roles in this parable.

I think there have probably been times when I might have been a big, flat, underground rock in somebody else’s field.  I think of all the years I worked with young people and led youth events.  I remember the energy and enthusiasm of all those kids, and then I think about how few of them are still part of the church now, and I wonder—did we introduce them to a faith that was too shallow?  Did we give them too much flash and not enough substance?  Did we—did I— do something that somehow blocked their roots?

I know there were times when I was a weed.  I know there were times when my mere existence probably restricted someone else’s spiritual growth—if for no one else then at least for my parents.  I know that sometimes I was the “cares of this world” for them.   But maybe I was a burden and busy-ness weed that choked the growth of others, too.  It’s hard to live in any kind of interdependent relationship without bringing some of the cares of this world with you.  Relationships, especially family relationships almost always include pressures about time and money and other resources.  If you have kids or a spouse or a partner, then “the cares of this world” are just part of the package.  And once you get used to a certain standard of living and to making sure your loved ones enjoy certain advantages and opportunities, those things just automatically become part of your way of life and you don’t think too much about how all that might be affecting your relationship with the rest of the world or your relationship with God.  So maybe being the weeds or thorns in somebody’s field is just unavoidable if you have any kind of life at all with other people.

Let’s look at the Sower.  We usually think of the Sower as God or Jesus.  Maybe that’s humility on our part, but it’s also a pretty effective way to make sure that our own role in this parable remains passive.  And I don’t think Jesus is ever calling us to be passive where the kingdom of God is concerned.

As I reread and rethink this parable, it seems pretty clear to me that Jesus is inviting us to think of ourselves as the sower.  In fact, if we’re living in the imitation of Christ, it really is our job as followers of Jesus to be spreading the word about the commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness out there in the everyday world.  We’re supposed to be out there in the world scattering the seeds of Christ’s alternative reality everywhere we go.  It’s part of our discipleship.  In fact, you’ve probably already been the sower more times than you know.

Which brings us to the seed.  Just what is this seed that we’ve been sowing?

Assuming that in some way, shape or form you are indeed living out the gospel in your everyday life, just what Good News are you proclaiming with your life?  What is the seed that you are sowing?

As I said earlier, I have a special fondness for this parable.  It brings back some really great memories for me.  When I was growing up, almost every summer, as soon as school was out we piled into our 1960 Impala and drove from Long Beach straight to my mom’s family farm in Kansas so we could help with the wheat harvest.  

Harvest was a lot of hard work but it was also a lot of fun.  I remember how my dad and my mom’s cousin, Frank, who did the actual year-round farming, would talk for hours in the evening about what kind of seed should be planted in the Fall.  It was always a Hard Red Winter wheat but there were a lot of different strains so there was always discussion about which variety might give us the best yields and best quality and best price per bushel. 

I remember how several of the different varieties had Native American names like Pawnee, Wichita, Ponca, Comanche, Scout and Bison which seemed fitting since our farm was part of the great plains where buffalo had been hunted by Native peoples long before my Swedish great grandparents first broke the soil with their plows.  

There were all kinds of factors and decisions that determined how successful your next crop would be next year, but it all started with choosing the right seed.

For the past 20+ years, religion in general but Mainline Christianity in particular has been in decline.  There has been a lot of analysis of why that’s happening, but one thing seems clear:  it’s not for a lack of Sowers sowing the seed.  There are still a lot of evangelists out there in the world using some of the most sophisticated tools in history.  There is no shortage of church outreach and church growth and church invitation programs.  So why aren’t we getting results?  Has the whole world turned into rocky or Hthorny soil?  Is it all one hard-packed foot-path of cares and worries and pursuit of wealth where the Good News simply cannot take root?

Maybe.  Certainly there seems to be a lot more of all that.  But maybe we have a different problem altogether.  

Maybe there’s a problem with the seed we’ve been sowing.

Let’s go back for a minute to all that seed that falls along the path.  People hear the word of the kingdom and they don’t understand it.  It doesn’t connect with them.  It doesn’t get their attention.  So it doesn’t take root.

Now let’s stretch that metaphor.  What if it’s the seed that’s the problem?  What if somewhere along the way we substituted a sack of hybrid seed for the original seed that Jesus was sowing.  

And let’s say, for the sake of argument, that this hybrid seed worked pretty well for a very long time but now it doesn’t.  What if, even when that seed is falling on fertile ground, people understand the message but it just doesn’t make sense to them anymore so they reject it.

For a long time, we’ve been sowing a seed of what Brian McLaren calls “carrot on a stick” theology—talking about our faith in Christ as if it’s primarily about going to heaven when we die.  Sometimes that’s called fire insurance theology.

Here’s Fire Insurance theology in a nutshell:  

  • First, we’re all doomed to Hell; Hell is the default afterlife because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  God is deeply offended by sin.  But sin is inescapable.  It’s part of the human condition.  So we’re all doomed.
  • Next, God demands compensation for the offense of our sin and the way we have become a blight on the perfection of God’s original creation.  “The wages of sin is death.”  Right?  So, Jesus is sacrificed on the cross to appease God and save us.  Jesus takes the punishment we deserve and pays the debt we owe for our sin.
  • Finally, if we accept what Jesus has done for us and invite Jesus into our hearts, then God forgives our sin and we get to go to heaven

You’ve all heard this theological story, right?

Fire insurance theology doesn’t work anymore.   It’s not that people don’t understand it, it’s that they do understand it and it doesn’t make sense to them anymore.   And truthfully, it never really did make sense, even in a world where every culture and every religion practiced sacrifice in some way, shape or form because the gods needed to be pacified. 

Fire insurance theology doesn’t work anymore because the flaws in its internal logic have been laid bare:  

  • It’s a theology that talks about a God of infinite love one moment but then sanctifies bloodshed and violence the next. 
  • It describes a God who is satisfied if we agree to an intellectual transaction rather than a God who is passionately interested in living with us, working through us, and loving us as we work to realize God’s vision of the world as God intended it to be. 
  • Fire Insurance Theology portrays Jesus primarily as a cosmic dealmaker who goes through hell to buy our way out of eternal misery rather than as Emmanuel, the very presence of God with us, who teaches, inspires and leads us as we undergo a complete transformation of the heart, soul, and mind so that God’s vision of shalom for the world can become a reality “on earth as it is in heaven.” 
  • Fire Insurance Theology leads to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”—a way of thinking that says “since I’ve accepted Jesus as my personal savior and he’s paid the price for my sins, then not only is nothing more expected of me, but anything I do from here on out is okay.  It’s all forgiven in advance.”  
  • Fire Insurance Theology focuses on personal salvation so it numbs us to our systemic cultural sins like racism, greed, oppressive politics and economies skewed to favor the wealthy—all these things the prophets railed against for centuries.

Fire insurance theology has been the church’s primary theological story for a long time now.  But that’s not the Good News that Jesus preached.  That’s not the seed he was sowing.

In Matthew’s version of this parable, Jesus calls the seed “the word of the kingdom.” That’s what the sower is sowing.  In The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard said, “The Gospel is less about how to get into heaven after you die and more about how to live in the kingdom of heaven before you die.”

Have you noticed that in the gospels Jesus does four basic things:  

  • He announces that the kingdom of heaven is arriving.  It is within reach;
  • He describes what that reign of God looks like and how it operates.  That’s what the beatitudes and all the parables are all about.  When Jesus preaches and teaches, he is casting a vision of a new reality, a reality that, with his help, is achievable if we will live as he lives;
  • He liberates the spiritually oppressed so they are free to participate fully in this new reality; 
  • And he heals people.  He makes them whole.  

When Jesus sends his disciples out on their mission he tells them to do those very same things—announce the kingdom, put a stop to whatever is bedeviling people, and heal the sick.

THAT’s the seed the Sower went out to sow.

That’s the seed we should still be sowing.

The gospel is not just about your personal salvation—or anyone’s personal salvation—but it does include our personal salvation if we really understand what salvation means.  

For too long we’ve understood “being saved” simply to mean “being rescued” –-having our fat pulled out of the fire.  But that’s only one of its meanings.  Its older, deeper meaning is “to be healed, to be made whole.”  So when St. Paul says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” another way to hear that is “work out your healing” or “work out your wholeness” with fear and trembling. (Phil. 2:12)  

So here’s the Good News.  Here’s the seed we can sow, the seed Jesus was sowing:  

God loves us and wants to heal us and make us whole.  You, me, all of us. Collectively and individually.

God wants to heal your body.  God wants to heal your soul.  God wants to heal your anger and your fear and your doubt and your brokenness.   God wants to find that place in you that’s turned hard and stony and soften it with love.  God wants to touch that place in your heart that feels like it will always be wounded and bathe it with compassion and joy.  God wants to clear the weeds from the garden of You.  God wants to heal your relationships.  And that includes your relationship with yourself.

God wants to heal you, body, mind and spirit.

But it’s even better than that.  God doesn’t want to heal just you.  God wants to heal everything.  You.  Your family.  The community.  The culture.  The environment.  Our politics.  The nation.  The world.  

It’s true, the soil has changed.  Fields we thought were fertile might not be and the good soil might not be where we expect it—but then the Sower in the parable doesn’t go looking for fertile soil.  He just casts the good seed all around and trusts that some of it will land in fertile ground and grow.  

Weighed in the Balance

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Inspiring words.  Cherished words.  But I struggle with these words from the Declaration of Independence, especially this weekend as we observe the 250th birthday of our nation.  The semiquincentennial anniversary of our Declaration of Independence.  Semiquincentennial:  it literally means half of five hundred years.  The word itself sounds like a thing unfinished, which is appropriate.

And that’s where I struggle with the Declaration of Independence.  On the one hand, the words and the sentiment they inspire are noble and revolutionary in every sense of the word, especially the self-evident truth expressed in that core five-word phrase “all men are created equal.”  On the other hand, I almost reflexively want to change “all men” to “all persons are created equal.”  But that’s not what Mr. Jefferson wrote and it’s not what he meant.  For him and Ben Franklin and John Adams and all the others who signed this declaration “all men” meant “all white males who owned property.”  Women were certainly not included in that phrase in 1776 and neither were the 500,000 enslaved persons who made up more than 20% of the total population.  Forty-one of the 56 men who signed the Declaration owned slaves and another 7 profited directly from slavery either by trading slaves or supplying goods to slavery camps.  And, of course, no one at the 2nd Continental Congress was giving any thought to the Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness of the Native Americans on whose ancestral lands this new nation was being established.

There’s an anonymous meme that keeps popping up in social media that says, “Studying history will sometimes disturb you.  Studying history will sometimes upset you.  Studying history will sometimes make you furious.  If studying history always makes you feel proud and happy, you probably aren’t studying history.”

Still, having said all that,  I have to tell you I love this Declaration of Independence and I love the country that has grown out of it.  I still believe that, on the whole, despite all our faults and failings, the United States of America has been a powerful force for good in the world.  On the whole.

The men of that 2nd Continental Congress were creatures of their time, but within the paradigm of their time they were prophetic enough to plant within the Declaration seeds of vision that would set goals and standards for future generations.  Take, for instance, the idea that “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” are unalienable rights and that governments are instituted to secure those rights.  Not to control us, not to fleece us, not to oppress us, but to secure our rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness with a capital H.  No one had ever said anything like that before.

Or take the idea that governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government!”  Right there, in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, is a warning to would-be tyrants, authoritarians or despots of every stripe and in every age that the People have a right and a duty to remove them when they interfere with the People’s rights.  

The idea that “all men are created equal” was a spiritual truth that became an defining aspiration for us as a nation.  We have lurched toward it in fits and starts and we have often failed to realize in either law or in practice that we are all created equal.  In his 1963 I Have A Dream speech, Dr. Martin Luther King said that where Black people were concerned, the Declaration’s promise of equality was “a promissory note,” a “bad check” marked “insufficient funds.”

In his book The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin said that America is “guilty of the crime of innocence.”  When Tripp Fuller asked Cornel West what Baldwin meant by that, Cornel West said, 

“It’s Peter Pan.  You know, you never grow up.  You grow rich, you grow powerful, but you never grow up.  The benchmark of maturity is not just humility but unflinching, unequivocal engagement with reality.  And when you’re innocent, you evade reality, you avoid reality.”[1]

The reason some people want to quite literally Whitewash our history and perpetuate the illusion of our innocence is that confronting all our sins and shortcomings all at once feels like drowning.  Thinking of our nation always and only as “the good guys” or “the shining city on the hill,” is a coping mechanism.  It protects us from the pain of feeling guilty, but it also keeps us from growing up as a people.  This conflict between those who want to perpetuate the illusion of American innocence and those who want us to acknowledge and deal with our sins is one of the main sources of our political dysfunction.  The path of truth is painful, but it is the better way.  Denial always sows the seeds of its own destruction.

And that brings us to today’s Gospel text on this sixth Sunday after Pentecost.

While John the Baptist was in prison, Jesus had just been visited by some of John’s disciples, so John was very much on his mind.  In their proclamation of the kingdom of God, both John and Jesus were change agents, disrupters of the status quo, so those who were afraid of rocking the boat found reasons to object to both of them.  That’s what Jesus is reacting to when he says,  “But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

When Jesus talks about “this generation,” genea is the Greek word here, he is not talking about the Jewish people or even any particular chronological generation of people.  “This generation” is meant to identify any people of any place or time who decide to blame the messenger when God’s truth cuts too close for comfort.  Derek Penwell says that “this generation” is “the spirit that tolerates prophecy only as long as prophecy minds its own business.  When it refuses to cooperate, that spirit reaches for whatever tools of silencing are available:  stones, crosses, prison cells, budget cuts, deportation orders, or whatever is close at hand.”

Jesus likens “this generation” to children who play games in the marketplace but can’t agree on which game to play.  These aren’t innocent, sweet natured children from your Bible storybook, these are petulant, quarrelsome kids who refuse to play at all when they can’t have it their own way.

Our designated text then skips over verses 20 through 24 where Jesus chastises “the cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not repent.”  It’s very much a variation on the same theme.  He has harsh words for these cities because they had preferred to maintain the illusion that everything was fine—or at least manageable—rather than face the reality of their situation under Rome’s domination.   The influencers of those cities decided it was safer to slog along under Rome’s thumb and Herod’s watchful eye than to embrace the kingdom of God that Jesus was announcing.

When Jesus had finished venting his disappointment, he prayed saying, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”  

When Jesus says that God has “hidden these things” from “the wise and intelligent” he may be speaking indirectly about the scribes and Pharisees who frequently challenged him.  These were generally the most well educated and well situated members of the Galilean community but, as with smart people everywhere, their knowledge of how things are supposed to go and how things are supposed to happen and who is authorized to make changes ran headlong into Jesus who didn’t fit any of their preconceived ideas.  Instead, Jesus says that God has revealed the vision and knowledge of the kingdom to nepios.  Infants.  This term usually refers to a young child, but here it is used to refer to those with no credentials or recognized status among the well-educated.  This term is akin to “little ones” which Matthew often uses to identify the economically marginal, the politically irrelevant and the socially disposable.  The point here is that God’s wisdom often comes to those whom the world fails to notice.

Jesus ends with an invitation: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Just about everybody in Galilee was weary and carrying heavy burdens. Galilee was rich in agricultural production and the Sea of Galilee was a goldmine for fishing.  But everything was heavily taxed by Rome and Herod.  Priestly tithes and temple dues added to the economic burden so that Galilean families paid out about half of what they produced in taxes and tithes.

When Jesus talks about the yoke they were laboring under he is using a standard Jewish metaphor.  The rabbis often spoke of “the yoke of Torah.” Sirach 51 invites the reader to “put your neck under the yoke of wisdom.”  Zugos, the Greek word for yoke, also referred to a balancing scale, the kind used in the marketplace, so there is a kind of double meaning here.  He is telling people who stagger under the yoke of Imperial systems and centralized religious authority that his yoke involves a different way of life, laboring for a different kind of world and weighing the world around you with a different kind of balance.

Jesus tells us that his yoke is easy.  That’s the traditional translation, but a better translation might be to say benevolent or kind.  The word that’s used here carries a feeling of goodness and generosity.  The yoke of Christ is not effortless, but it is humane, merciful and life-giving.  Those who take that yoke upon themselves will find rest for their souls.  This is the deep Sabbath rest promised by Israel’s scriptures—a rest from busyness and anxiety, a rest from endless competitiveness. 

The ministry of Jesus and John the Baptist was a disruption of the Empire’s business as usual.  Jesus invited people to acknowledge the truth of their situation and visualize with him a better way.  

In the same way, the Declaration of Independence was a moment of disruption.  The revolution it ignited was, in Cornel West’s words, “the beginning of an anti-imperial movement against the largest empire of the day.”  Tripp Fuller says it was, “a courageous wager that ordinary people could build arrangements where each person carries equal worth and dignity.”  That, too, is part of our reality, part of our truth on this semiquincentennial weekend in our celebration of unfinished business.  Can we make arrangements where each person carries equal worth and dignity?  Our track record is kind of spotty, but I’m willing to wager that we can…if we weigh our choices with the yoke—the balancing scale—of  Christ.

[1] Guilty of Our Own Innocence with Cornel West; processthi@substack.com

A Blessed Antidote for a Dystopian World

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples.  When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” When Jesus heard this, he said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”[1]

For a long time now we have seen a strain of pseudo-Christianity in this country and around the world that has little to do with the teaching of Jesus as we encounter him in the gospels.  It is based on triumphalism, issue-based moralism, and a theology of glory.  It worships and celebrates power and ignores the call to enter into the world’s trials and suffering the way Jesus did.  It walks hand-in-hand with extreme nationalism and, often, racism.  It sees baptism as a get-out-o-hell-free card and not as a way of life in the beloved community.  It has co-opted the name Christian and Christian language and symbols, but it has not learned to do justice, to love kindness or to walk humbly with God.  It has not learned to love the neighbor as oneself. 

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us up front the criteria by which we as a people are being judged.  The final test, it turns out, is a practicum. “I was hungry and you gave me food.  I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.  I was a stranger and you welcomed me.  I was naked and you gave me clothing.  I was sick and you took care of me.  I was in prison and you visited me…Truly I tell you, just as you did it (or did not do it) to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”  The nations that have fed the hungry and brought water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, health care to the sick, the nations that have welcomed the stranger—these nations inherit the kingdom.  The nations that did not practice these basic caregiving duties of our common humanity are accursed and relegated to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and all his angels. [2]

So, what will be the judgment for a nation that cuts off medical aid to people around the world and makes medical care unaffordable for its own citizens?   What will be the judgment for a nation that stops food aid to dependent people in other lands and even curtails food assistance for its own citizens?   What will be the judgment for a nation that fills its streets with masked and armed agents who kidnap immigrants and deport them without a hearing or a trial or locks them up in overcrowded detention centers?  What will be the judgment for a nation that closes its doors to refugees who are fleeing from violence and oppression?

On Thursday the United States House of Representatives voted to cut $141 million in funding from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, a program that provides fruit and vegetables to poor pregnant and postpartum women and nearly 5.4 million children here in the United States.  The shutdown and dismantling of USAID last year has already led to more than 750,000 preventable deaths worldwide[3] and researchers warn that if the funding cuts are not reversed, the reduction in access to healthcare, nutrition, and sanitation could lead to more than 14 million preventable deaths by 2030.[4]

Last year, Elon Musk posted a meme on X that referred to the poor as “a parasite class.”  Musk’s philosophical guru, Curtis Yarvin, has “joked” that the poor should be melted down into biodiesel.[5]  Jesus, on the other hand, says that the poor are blessed and the kingdom of God is theirs.

The late Tony Campolo said, “If we were to set out to establish a religion in polar opposition to the Beatitudes Jesus taught, it would look strikingly similar to the pop Christianity that has taken over North America today.”  So how do we stay faithful to the teaching, love and ethics of Jesus while living under the shadow of a political culture that seems intent on dismantling and destroying so much that is good and helpful and life-sustaining in our country and in the world?  

The Beatitudes of Jesus are a good diagnostic tool for measuring our spiritual health, both collectively and individually.  Looking at how we understand these core teachings of Jesus and how we apply them—or how much we ignore them—can tell us a lot about what kind of Christians we really are.  

In his book, A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut said, “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. ‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom? ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break!”

As Vonnegut pointed out, the Beatitudes of Jesus are mostly conspicuous by their absence.  Now more than ever.  And that tells us something important about what we as a people really think about living in the Way of Jesus. 

In both Matthew’s and Luke’s versions of the beatitudes, Jesus was proclaiming a vision of the commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy that completely subverts the common understanding of who God favors and how the world works.  

Heather Cox Richardson has said that the stories we tell about our world shape our culture.  When he preaches about the kingdom of God, he is telling a story about a more whole and healthy culture.  He is helping us imagine a new world of compassion, justice, integrity and peace, and he wants us to understand that in this new world God prioritizes those whose need is greatest and not those who are already doing just fine thank you.  He starts by helping us to reimagine ourselves, to see ourselves as blessed.  

I wonder sometimes how much of the divisiveness, anger, greed and general dysfunction we experience today arises from the stories we tell ourselves about our world, a world we often picture as an arena of scarcity where we compete for survival.  We have forgotten how to bless each other—how to imagine and pronounce a positive vision and future for each other.  For all of us.  What might happen if we learned to give that gift to each other and the world?  That would be gospel.  That would be Good News.

When is the last time someone blessed you?  I don’t mean the hasty “bless you” that we say when someone sneezes or the “well bless your heart” people sometimes say in a way that sounds like what they’re really saying is “well aren’t you a curious little specimen.”

When is the last time that anyone spoke a real blessing to you?

When is the last time you felt like someone had spoken a powerful and prophetic word to tell you that you matter and that you live in the heart of goodness… 

When is the last time that someone told you 

that you are consecrated…  

that your life is sacred…  

that you are holy?

When is the last time someone told you that God sees you and loves you even when you’re not feeling it?  Especially when you’re not feeling it?

When is the last time you spoke that kind of blessing for someone else?

When Jesus looked at his rag-tag disciples, when he looked out over the crowd, he could see them in the deepest and most meaningful way.  He knew them.  He knew who they were and what they were.

He saw how life had broken them.  He saw their longing to be made whole again.  He saw their yearning to be told that their lives mattered, that their struggles mattered, that their pain mattered.  He wasn’t recruiting followers, he was just meeting people in the everyday reality of their lives and telling them the truth about themselves.  Just like he does for us.  

He told them who they were.  But he also told them who they could be.  His words were not just descriptive, they were prophetic.  Just like they are for us.

He looked out at them and told them they were blessed.  Just like he tells us.  Just like we should tell each other.

Blessed are the poor and the poor in spirit.  Blessed are those who doubt.  Blessed are those who struggle with believing.  Blessed are those who wonder if they have enough faith.  Blessed are those who feel spiritually malnourished and spiritually drained.  Blessed are those who are far from certain about who God is and what God does and how it all works.  Blessed are those who find all the old answers unsatisfactory or troubling.  Blessed are those whose minds and hearts are open to new information, new ways of seeing and new ways of thinking.  Blessed are those who sometimes feel lost in the mystery of it all.  Blessed are the poor in spirit.  They shall see things others do not see.  They will ask questions others do not dare to ask.  They will use their imaginations in ways that others find daunting.  

Blessed are the poor.  Blessed are those who are running on empty.  Blessed are those who are down to their last nickel.  Blessed are those who can’t make the rent or buy the medicine.   Blessed are the unhoused.  Blessed are the poor.  God sees them.  God walks with them.  Even when they can’t see it or feel it, heaven is all around them and within them.  And they are blessed.

Blessed are those who mourn.  Blessed are those for whom grief is an inescapable prison.  Blessed are those whose lives have been hollowed out by loss.  Blessed are those who live in the shadow  of death.  Blessed are those who weep.  Blessed are those whose tears have dried up but whose pain has not.  Blessed are those who have learned the hard way that grief is love persevering.  Blessed are the brokenhearted.  Blessed are those who are crumbling inside but hold themselves together to keep everyone around them from falling apart.  Blessed are those who mourn.  Their tears are sacred.  God carries their pain and walks beside them.  Blessed are those who weep.  Someday they will laugh.

Blessed are the gentle, the meek, the nonviolent.  Blessed are those who look for ways to compromise and cooperate instead of making life a contest or a competition.  Blessed are the strong who restrain themselves. Blessed are those who do not fight back, those who would rather take it than dish it out. Blessed are those who go unnoticed, the ones who sit alone at lunch, the unimpressive, the unemployed.  Blessed are the janitors and sanitation workers and fast food workers.  Blessed are the people on the street whom we fail to see because we pretend they are invisible.  Blessed are the meek.  God sees them.  God loves them.  They will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Blessed are those who were born with an acute sense of what is fair and what is not, what is right and what is not.  Blessed are those who have a passion for justice.  Blessed are those who work to overcome injustice even when the injustice has nothing to do with them or their lives.  Blessed are those who are wrongly accused.  Blessed are the undocumented.   Blessed are those who stand against the bullies.  Blessed are those who confront racism and work to dismantle it.  Blessed are those who march in the streets and speak truth to power.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  God sees them.  God loves them.  God will nourish them with justice and their cup will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful.  Blessed are those who fill the world around them with kindness.  Blessed are those who are generous with forgiveness.  Blessed are those who are just plain generous.  Blessed are those who are slow to judge and condemn because they understand how much grace they have been given.  Blessed are the merciful.  God sees them.  God loves them.  They will receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart.  Blessed are those who have retained their innocence and are just plain good.  Blessed are those who have recovered their innocence and cling to it.  Blessed are the honest.  Blessed are the truthful.  Blessed are those who love with no agenda.  Blessed are those who are in recovery, who are living out the twelve steps, who are cleansing their bodies and their souls and making amends.  Blessed are those who refuse to be cynical.  Blessed are the pure in heart.  God loves them.  God sees them.  And they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers.  Blessed are those who bring food to those who are starving.  Blessed are those who bring medical attention to those who are in peril.  Blessed are those who work to disarm a weaponized world.  Blessed are those who encourage us to seek common ground.  Blessed are those who care for the planet and work to heal the earth.  Blessed are the peacemakers.  God embraces them as God’s own children.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for doing the right thing.  Blessed are those who are disrespected and taunted for being compassionate.  Blessed are the woke.  Blessed are those who are scorned because they speak out for a better world and work for the shalom of God.  Blessed are those who are battered or imprisoned because they protest against all the things that dehumanize and oppress people.  Blessed are those who are persecuted for doing the right thing. The commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness belongs to them.

Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of untrue and evil things against you because you have embraced the Way, the Truth and the Life.  Blessed are you when people spread lies about you because your integrity exposes their duplicity.  Blessed are you when people criticize you for being awake to the pain and injustice around you.  If you only knew how great your reward is in heaven, you would be dancing with joy.  God sees you.  God loves you.  And remember, they persecuted the prophets in the same way, so you are in good company.

You are blessed.  

You are consecrated.  

You are holy.

You are set apart to bring a blessing and to be a blessing in a world that thinks it is cursed.

You are consecrated to help others see the beauty and sacredness of our life together in this amazing God-made world.

With all your faults—and God knows them better than you know them yourself—you are loved by God more than you can begin to imagine so that you can spread the love of God to others.

God is blessing you.  God is loving you.  God is transforming you.    

You live in the heart of goodness.

Blessed are you. 

Now…go bless the world… in Jesus’ name.

[1] Matthew 9:9-13

[2] Matthew 25:31-45

[3] ImpactCounter https://healthpolicy-watch.news/the-human-cost-one-year-after-the-us-took-a-chainsaw-to-global-health/

[4] UCLA Fielding School of Public Health

[5] Reported in The Cottage by Diana Butler Bass, 02/15/2025

Painting: Das Mahl mit den Sündern (The Meal with the Sinners) by the German priest-artist Sieger Köder