Author Steve Beckham

Unresolved Melody

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Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

When I was seven years old, not long after we moved to California from Kansas City, a little black dog showed up at our door one night, whimpering on the front porch and scratching on the door to be let inside.  This adorable and pugnacious little Pekingese/Cocker mix of a dog didn’t have a collar or tags, and this was decades before microchips, so we had no idea where he came from or who his people might be.  We ran an ad in the paper and I went door-to-door for several blocks asking if anyone had lost their little black dog, but nobody claimed him. 

So we did.  We named him Barney. We got him his shots and tags, and he officially became our dog.

We loved Barney, and I’m pretty sure he loved us, too.  He would sleep curled up next to me in my bed.  He would snuggle up next to us on the couch when we were reading or watching TV.  He gave us lots of little dog kisses.  He loved to pull my sister and me up and down the sidewalk on our roller skates.  And he rode patiently in the car with us as we made the long car trip every summer back to Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas to see family.  He was in almost every way a perfect family dog.  But Barney had one bad habit.  An impulse, really.  If anyone left the back gate or the screen door open, he would be off like a shot, running as fast as his little legs would carry him, launching himself out into the world to have an adventure.  A few times he was gone for several days before some kind soul took him in and then called us to come pick him up.  

When Barney took off on one of his adventures, I’m sure it never crossed his little canine mind that we were heartbroken and worried sick about him.  And when he came home nothing was ever really resolved.  Dogs are very capable of showing regret, but Barney never did.  There was always a risk that he would take off and go exploring again.  It was just in his nature.  Some dogs are like that.  And so are some people.

We are all happier when people—and dogs—color within the lines.  We all secretly think that the world would be a better, happier place if everyone stayed in their lane and lived by the rules and boundaries as we know and understand them.  But the plain truth is that not everyone does.  Some people have different, looser ideas of what is acceptable and what is not.  Some dogs just want to see what else is out there.

Some Pharisees and scribes were grumbling because Jesus was hanging out with and sharing meals with “tax collectors and sinners.”  They didn’t think it was appropriate for Jesus to be making friends with people who were not socially acceptable by their standards, and they told him so.  But Jesus didn’t respond directly to their criticism.  Instead, he told them a story.

“There was a man,” he said, “who had two sons.”  We all know this story.  We call it The Prodigal Son, although a better title might be The Two Brothers, or even The Over-Indulgent Father.  Amy-Jill Levine suggests that it could be called The Parable of the Absent Mother.  That puts a different spin on things, doesn’t it?   And it fits, since this is really a story about family dynamics.

Whatever title we use, we know this story so well that I wonder if we really listen to it.  There is a lot going on in this parable that could, maybe should, make us uneasy.  We assume that it’s about sinning, repenting, and forgiving.  But is it?  Or are we imposing our traditional understanding and ideas on this story and ignoring the ancient culture that heard it first, a culture that saw things very differently?

Was it a great sin for the younger son to ask his father for his inheritance?  Jewish law did not prohibit asking for your inheritance, so while it might have been considered foolish, it would not have been seen as a sin—at least not by the first century Jews who were listening to Jesus as he told this story.

Does the father sin by giving away half of his estate to the younger son?  Deuteronomy 21 says that the oldest son should inherit a double portion, but by the first century it was considered perfectly allowable for a man to divide his estate any way he saw fit.  So while the father’s actions in this parable could also be seen as prodigious foolishness, no one would think he was sinning.  In some circumstances he might even have been seen as prudent.  In The Wisdom of Ben Sirach, Ben Sirach counseled, “When the days of your life reach their end, at the time of your death distribute your property.”  Is the father in this parable, perhaps, nearing the end of his days?  Would that explain why he so readily indulges his son’s unusual request?  The wording in the New Revised Standard Version says that the father “divided his property,” but the wording in the original Greek text says that he “divided his life.”  How should we hear that—not that he is giving half his money or property, but half his life to this younger son?

After asking for his inheritance, the prodigal son doesn’t leave immediately.  “A few days later” he gathers up his things and leaves.  Jesus doesn’t say what happened during those few days.  Did the father try to talk his son out of leaving?  Did the older brother step in and try to talk some sense into him?  The story doesn’t say.  We don’t even know if he said goodbye.  

What the story does tell us is that he went far away—to a far country—somewhere out beyond the boundaries of Jewish law, somewhere far beyond the boundaries and expectations of the home and community he grew up in.  In that far-away place, out beyond the familiar restrictions of home and community, he squandered his wealth with reckless living.  When his money was gone and famine hit the land, nobody helped him.  He managed to find a job feeding pigs, but it didn’t pay anything and he was so hungry that he thought about eating the seed pods that he was feeding to the pigs.  Amy-Jill Levine points out that there’s a proverb from the rabbinic commentary Leviticus Rabbah that says, “When Israelites are reduced to eating carob pods, they repent.”

This is the point in the story where this reckless young man decided that it was better to go home and eat crow than to starve to death in a pigsty.  Jesus, telling the story, says he came to himself.  He admitted to himself that he was not living the dream and having his best life.  He also seemed to realize that if he was going to go home, some sort of apology might be in order.  So as he walked the long way home, he rehearsed a little speech: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”

Now this might sound like he’s repenting, but is it real repentance or is it conniving?  He already knows that his dad is inclined to be extravagantly generous.  And notice this:  he not going to ask to be restored to the full status of being a son, but he’s not volunteering to be a slave, either.  He’s planning to ask his dad to treat him like one of the hired laborers.  They get paid.  When you read his little speech carefully, he still sounds pretty self-absorbed.  There’s no remorse for how he has treated his dad or his brother.  His confession that he has sinned is generic at best.  Basically, as David Buttrick put it, what the prodigal is really saying to himself is, “I’ll go to Daddy and sound religious.”

He has rehearsed his little speech, but he never got to deliver all of it.  Before he even got all the way home, “while he was still far off” his father saw him and was filled with compassion.  His father ran to him, put his arms around him, kissed him, then started issuing orders.  “Get him some clean clothes!  Put a signet ring on his finger!  Get the barbeque going, and let’s celebrate!  My son was dead and is alive again!  He was lost and is found!”

And now the story shifts focus.  The older brother comes in from mowing hay all day in the hot sun and is surprised to find that there is a party going on because his younger brother has returned home.  This makes him mad, so angry that he refuses to go in the house.  His father comes out to plead with him, to beg him to come in and join the party.  And that’s when we learn that the relationship that is most damaged in this story is the connection between the father and the elder brother.  The older brother unleashes a tirade of pent-up resentment, and as he spews out his bitterness over years of being neglected and overlooked. That’s when the father realizes that it’s his older son who is truly “lost” to him.  For years the older brother has worked hard to be “the good son.”  For years he has been faithful to the family values.  For years he has faithfully contributed to the success and wealth of the family.  It’s clear from his outburst that he has a pretty low opinion of his younger brother, but it’s even more clear that his anger is directed primarily at his father.

In response to this flood of anger, all the father can do is try to reassure his eldest son that their bond endures.  “Child,” he says, “you are always with me.  All that I have is yours.  But we had to celebrate and rejoice because your brother was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”  

And that’s where Jesus ends the story.

As I said earlier, we have a long tradition of assuming that this parable is about sinning, repenting, and forgiving.  But is it?  As I read it again, I can’t help but notice that nothing in this story gets resolved.  It’s like a melody in the key of C that ends with a G7 chord.  Everything feels suspended.  The younger son never really expresses any remorse or sorrow, in fact no one in this family expresses any regret for the ways they’ve hurt each other.  The father gins up a party to celebrate the return of his younger son, but did you notice that he never actually speaks to him?  He does speak to his oldest son, but the story ends with the two of them still standing outside the house, outside the celebration.  

This parable leaves us with questions hanging in the air.  Will the two brothers reconcile?  Can the father repair his relationship with his oldest, neglected son?  Can he even persuade him to come into the house, to join the party?  Will the prodigal son stay and work for the good of the family, or will he be out the door again when someone leaves the gate or the screen door open?

When all is said and done, if it’s not about repentance and forgiveness, then what is Jesus trying to teach us with this parable?

In Short Stories by Jesus, her outstanding book on the parables, Amy-Jill Levine says that this parable actually guides us with straightforward advice: “Recognize that the one you have lost may be right in your own household.  Do whatever it takes to find the lost and then celebrate with others, both so that you can share their joy and so that the others will help prevent those who have been recovered from ever being lost again.  Don’t wait until you receive an apology; you may never get one.  Don’t wait until you can muster the ability to forgive; you may never find it.  Don’t stew in your sense of being ignored, for there is nothing that can be done to retrieve the past.

“Instead, go have lunch.  Go celebrate and invite others to join you.  If the repenting and forgiving come later, so much the better.  And if not, you still will have done what is necessary.  You will have begun a process that might lead to reconciliation.  You will have opened a second chance for wholeness.”[1]

[1] Short Stories by Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine, p.69

Painting by Ron DiCianni

Stuff Happens

Steve Beckham 4 Comments

Stuff Happens

Ten weeks ago 16,255 homes, businesses and other buildings were destroyed and 29 people died in the Palisades and Eaton fires here in Southern California. 

Last weekend, a deadly series of storms across the US South and Midwest leveled homes and businesses and killed 42 people.  Wildfires swept across Oklahoma and destroyed 400 homes.  In Kansas, a dust storm led to a highway pileup involving at least 50 vehicles in which 8 people were killed.

Four weeks ago, 68 people were killed when heavy rains in the Philippines caused a landslide that destroyed a gold-mining village.  Another 51 are still missing and presumed dead.

Twenty-six people were killed when a train was hijacked by a militant group in Pakistan, and a fire in a nightclub in North Macedonia left 59 people dead.

Last Saturday, under orders of the President, US Immigration & Customs deported hundreds of Venezuelans to a brutal prison in El Salvador in defiance of a court order instructing them to turn the planes around.  As a result, many legal experts are saying that our country is now in a full-blown constitutional crisis.

There is no shortage of tragedy in our world.  On any given day, in any given week, horrible things happen to people.  And when horrible things happen, one of our first instincts is to look for somewhere to lay the blame.

Sometimes it’s easy to pinpoint the source of the tragedy and fix the blame on the responsible party or parties.  I think we could all agree on who is primarily culpable for the slaughter and destruction in Ukraine.  But knowing who to blame and knowing the motives behind their aggression only makes the carnage more horrible.

It isn’t always easy to decide who or what has caused a tragedy.  Sometimes—far too often—we blame the victims.  What were those people in the Philippines thinking when they built their houses on an unstable hillside?  

Some people blame God when horrible things happen.  When a horrendous earthquake killed more than 100,000 people in Haiti in 2010, evangelist Pat Robertson said that God was punishing the people of Haiti because in 1804 they had made a deal with the devil to drive out their French colonial overlords.  He didn’t say why God waited 106 years to exact this punishment.  Robertson also claimed that Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and killed more than 1800 people in 2005, was God’s punishment for allowing abortion, gay rights, and other liberal policies to continue in the U.S. 

We might think Robertson’s ideas are Loony Tunes, but a surprising number of people still see the world that way.  The idea that calamity is God’s punishment for sin is as old as humanity.  In the Book of Job, when Job is afflicted with one heartbreak after another, the three friends who come to offer him moral support yammer on for days insisting that Job must have offended God in some way.  When Job resolutely insists that he is innocent, their response is pretty much, “Well you must have done something!”  In the end, though, God puts an end to their speculation about what Job might or might not have done. “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” says God. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Go on, tell me if you’re so smart.”   The message in the end is that, while God may have allowed Job to suffer, God didn’t cause Job’s troubles.

While Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, some people brought up the issue of some Galileans whom Pilate had killed mingling their blood with their sacrifices.  It’s important to note that this wasn’t just Pilate being randomly cruel and bloodthirsty, although he was certainly capable of that.  The Galileans in question were almost certainly executed for being resistance fighters in the endless underground campaign against Rome’s occupation.  

So why was the crowd asking Jesus about this?  Were they thinking he would be scandalized by it?  Did they think he would be shocked that Pilate would not only kill these Galileans but would also profane their sacrifice?  Did they think that maybe, since Jesus was also a Galilean, he might be angry enough to join the zealots who were fighting against Rome?  Or did they simply want him to share his thoughts on why God would do this or allow it to happen?  Was God punishing those Galileans for some reason?  Was their sin really so awful that they deserved to die that way?  

So Jesus asks them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?  No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.  Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?  No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Stuff happens.  Do you think God or Karma or the universe was punishing the people of Pacific Palisades and Altadena because they were worse sinners than everyone else in California?  No.  That’s not how it works.  And those forty-two who were killed by tornadoes—do you think they were snuffed out because they were the most awful people in that part of the country?  No.  God doesn’t work that way.  But… unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.  

What did Jesus mean by that?  Repent is such a ponderous and dreary word. It’s all about regret and contrition. The Greek word, though—metanoia, the word that we translate as “repent”—that word is full of possibility.  Metanoia means a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of viewpoint, a change of direction.  Metanoia might start with contrition, but it doesn’t end there.  Metanoia is always a way forward.  

Jesus is telling them, “Unless you change the way you see and understand life, unless you change the way you see and understand God and how God works, you’re all going to be lost the same as they were.  You’ll die in your ignorance.  Death can sneak up on you or catch you by surprise, and when it does, you’ve lost your opportunity to embrace the life and love of God and for that matter, the life and love of humanity.  You’ve lost your opportunity to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with God and humankind and the rest of creation.  You’ve lost your opportunity to make a positive difference in the world.

To bring home the point, he told them a parable.  A story.  “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it but he didn’t find any.  So he said to the gardener, ‘Look,  for three years now I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none.  Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’  The gardener replied, “Sir, leave it alone for another year.  I’ll dig around it and put manure on it.  Maybe it will bear fruit next year.  But if not, then you can cut it down.’”

A lot of us were taught in Sunday School to read parables as allegories.  So if we did that with this parable, the land owner would be God and the fig tree would be some unproductive person who is not doing anything to improve the world, and the gardener who wants to spare the tree and work with it would be Jesus.  That’s the Sunday School explanation.

Reading the parable that way has some merit, but it also has some problems.  “Allegorical readings,” said Amy-Jill Levine, “can speak to eternal truths and ultimate longings. Yet…such readings rarely produce a challenge and rarely offer a surprise; rather, they confirm standard Christian views.  A second problem with the traditional allegories…is that they cannot convey what a parable would have meant to its original audience.  Allegories require keys, so that readers know that the elements given in the tale correspond to very particular elements on the outside.  As these allegories were developed much later, that original audience would not have had the key.”[1]

How would you hear this parable if, instead of treating it as an allegory, you put yourself into the story?  What would you hear if you were to sit inside the parable, put on its characters for a moment and let them speak to you and through you?  What questions would this parable prompt you to ask yourself if you let it be more than a simple morality tale?  

For instance:  Am I like the absentee landowner?  Have I avoided getting my hands dirty by keeping my distance from those places and moments where life and death actually happen?  Have I been pronouncing judgment from the sidelines?  Have I been seeing the value of things only in terms of whether or not they are productive in some measurable, consumable, marketable way?  Have I been looking at life through the lens of cost/benefit analysis, weighing how people and other living things consume resources and take up time and space?  Do I need to be persuaded to see possibilities, to extend a little patience and grace?  Do I need to show some empathy?

Am I like the fig tree?  Am I failing in some way to nurture and nourish others?  Am I holding on to space and resources that could be used more productively to sustain others?  Am I throwing shade over someone else’s life and preventing them from growing or fulfilling their potential?  Am I willing to change or let myself be changed, to “repent,” to take the path of metanoia so I can learn to bring more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and gentleness into the world around me?  Am I taking life—being alive—for granted and neglecting the gift that God has given me to be present and aware and alive in this amazing God-filled world?

Am I like the gardener?  Am I willing to get my hands deep into the dirt and manure of life if it will bring someone else some grace, give someone else a chance to grow and bloom and become what they were made to be?   Am I willing to give time and energy and sweat and love and hope to help someone else thrive?

Why do horrible things happen?  Jesus is not going to answer that question…  because “Why?” is not a life-giving question.  Jesus is not going to play the blame game, because placing blame doesn’t heal anyone or help the survivors.  Instead, Jesus tells us a story to remind us that life is both precious and precarious, to remind us that we are interconnected and our choices affect each other, and to remind us that time is not on our side.  He reminds us that there are forces at work in the world which, like the land owner, would cut us down without hesitation or remorse.  But his story also reminds us that the force of love and life is also in the world, a force that is willing to go elbow deep in muck and manure to give us a chance to grow and thrive and bear good fruit.  

Fred Rogers once said to his television friends in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things on the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.’”

I was reminded of Mr. Rogers’ good advice the other day when I read about the group of masons that has banded together to form Save the Tiles.  These volunteers are racing against the clock to rescue valuable Batchelder and other historic ceramic tiles from Altadena homes destroyed by the Eaton fire before the Army Corps of Engineers bulldozes the burned out houses to the ground.  The group is using their special skills to retrieve the tiles and return them to the owners of the burned homes so the owners can use them in the construction of their new homes.   

Look for the helpers.

When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago we saw a steady stream of stories about violence, destruction and devastation.  But there were also stories about the extraordinary things people did to help the people of Ukraine survive their nightmare.  

Border guards, volunteers and ordinary people lined the sides of the wooden pedestrian bridge across the Tisza river with stuffed animals and toys so that refugee children crossing from Ukraine into Romania could, as one volunteer put it, “enter the country with a nice thought.” 

An organization called Deaf Bridge, which had been working in Ukraine to help establish church ministries for deaf and hearing impaired people, quickly shifted to helping deaf people in Ukraine find shelter and escape routes.  Also, since deaf people can’t hear air raid sirens, they taught them to look for visual cues and paired them with hearing persons so that they would know when danger was imminent.

Polish parents left baby strollers in Poland’s railway stations for refugee parents to use when they arrived with their babies in their arms and their childcare necessities in a backpack.

Volunteers arrived in Poland from all over the world to work with World Central Kitchen which is still providing food for refugees and also for Ukrainian cities where food is in short supply.  

Life is both precious and precarious.  Horrible things do happen on a daily basis.  We are living in a difficult time and it feels like the ground is shifting under our feet.  There is always someone who is all too ready to cut down the tree.  

But there is also always someone who is ready to try to save it, someone who is willing to stand up to those who wield the axe, someone who is willing to dig around the roots and even sink their hands into the muck to give it another chance at life.  

So who, in this story, are you?

[1] Short Stories by Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine, p.128

Nobody Here But Us Chickens

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

Luke 13:31-35

When some Pharisees came to tell Jesus that he should get outta Dodge because Herod wanted to kill him, Jesus made it clear that he wasn’t going to let the Pharisees or Herod disrupt his mission.  “Go and tell that fox for me,” said Jesus,  “Listen, I am casting out demons and curing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.  Then I’ll be on my way.”  I wonder if those Pharisees were brave enough to actually go back to Herod with what Jesus had said.  I bet they did.  There’s something about human nature that just loves to stir the pot.

Calling someone a fox was not a compliment in those days.  Today if you call someone a fox you usually mean they’re pretty good looking, but it meant something very different in those days.  A fox, in both Greek and rabbinic literature, was what you called someone who was crafty, sinister,  dishonest, greedy, self-obsessed… Remind you of anyone in power these days?  Herod would not like being called a fox, and we should remember here that Herod was dangerous.  He had already killed Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist.  The Pharisees were saying that he wanted to kill Jesus, too.  So maybe calling him unflattering names wasn’t the safest thing to do. 

But Jesus had even more to say in his message for Herod.  “Tell that fox I’m casting out demons and curing folks today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.  On the third day I’ll be on my way to Jerusalem because it’s unthinkable for a prophet to be killed anywhere else.”  

Maybe it’s just me, but I hear Jesus being a little bit snide here.  Just a little.  Getting in a dig. “Hey Herod, come see me, buddy.  Those demons that have been making you act like such a putz?   I can get rid of those for you and heal your shrunken heart at the same time.  But don’t think about it too long.  I’ll only around for a couple more days, then I’m on my way to Jerusalem because that’s where prophets go to be killed.  Sorry, I know you wanted to murder me here, but that job is scheduled for elsewhere and is reserved for someone higher up the food chain.” 

Well, maybe that’s not the tone of voice Jesus was using, but he was making it clear that he was not afraid of Herod, the man who had killed his cousin.  He wasn’t going to let a threat from Herod stop him from healing people and freeing them from whatever was bedeviling them.  

So, Jesus sent the Pharisees back with a message.  And because he had mentioned Jerusalem, it got him thinking about where he was headed and what was waiting for him there.  And that made him sad.  “Jerusalem, Jerusalem.  The city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often have I wanted to gather your children together like a hen gathering her chicks under her wings.  And you were not willing.”  

I hear such sadness in these words.  A lament.  It’s heartbreaking to hear the yearning in the heart of God expressed this way.  It’s painful to think of all the times God has reached out in love to gather and guide and protect, but like rebellious adolescents (which is a pretty apt description of humanity on the whole) we have turned away.  

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, The city that kills the prophets.  The city that stones the messenger.  Jesus calls out Jerusalem, but his words apply to any place, every place where people refuse to hear plain-spoken truth if it isn’t the “truth” they want to hear.  “Jerusalem, Jerusalem. Washington, Washington.  America, America.  Russia, Russia.  Humanity, Humanity.  How many times have I wanted to pull you all together in one protective and loving embrace, but you would not let me.” 

Like a hen gathering her chicks when danger threatens, when a hawk is circling overhead, when a fox or weasel is slinking around nearby—this is how God has yearned to protect us from all the craziness that we throw at each other in this world.  

Like a mother hen.  

When we talk about God helping and protecting us, I don’t think the go-to animal image for most of us would be a chicken.  When the prophet Hosea was telling the people how angry God was with them, he said God was going to come at them like a lion or a leopard.  God, he said, was going to come down on them like an enraged mother bear who’s been robbed of her cubs. (Hosea 13:7-8)  Yeah!  Hosea is talking about Angry God, here, but I think that’s what most of us want Protective God to be like, too.  When we feel threatened, I think most of us want Angry Bear God to show up.  But no, says Jesus.  That’s not how God does things.  God will not be a predator on our behalf.  But God, Jesus, will put himself between us and whatever predatory trouble is coming at us.  God, Jesus, will take the first and hardest hit.

Barbara Brown Taylor said, “Jesus won’t be king of the jungle in this or any other story.  What he will be is a mother hen who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm.  She has no fangs, no claws, no ripping muscles.  All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body.  If the fox wants them, he will have to kill her first.”

Mother Hen God is no chicken.  When the fangs and claws come after her defenseless brood, she doesn’t run away.  She puts her whole self between the danger and her babies.  That, said Jesus, is what I’ve wanted to do for you always and everywhere.

But we won’t let him.  

The longer I live, the more I am convinced that there are really only two essential forces at work in this world:  fear and love.  That’s it.  They come in a lot of different guises, but it’s really only the two.  Fear, forever resisting the full, transformative power of love.  Love, forever trying to mitigate the destructive power of fear. 

Greed, lust, rage, hate, violence, blind ambition, racism, exclusion, a thirst for power, revenge—those things are all born in fear.  Grace, forgiveness, courage, generosity, helping, healing, peacemaking, goodness—those things are all rooted in love.  

The militant Jesus imagined by Christian Nationalism, the Jesus who looks like Rambo, is just fear creating a macho theological puppet.  It might look tough and invulnerable, but that’s not the Jesus of the gospels.

We will never be done with fighting and war until we conquer our fear,” said Martin Luther King. “We won’t be able to get on with the practical work of building a sustainable and peaceful humanity until we rid ourselves of the fear that spawns violence.  Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win their understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness,” he said. “Only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate.  Only love can do that.”  Fear cannot drive out fear.  Only love can do that, too.

“There is no fear in love,” says 1 John 18, “but perfect love casts out fear.”  

When fear starts to stalk us like a fox, when pain or disruption seem to be aimed right at us, Jesus wants us to know that there is a safe place under the shelter of God’s wings where we can catch our breath and be still while we wait for trouble to pass or gather our strength to resist it.

“In you my soul takes refuge;” said the Psalmist.  “In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge until the storms pass by.”  May we all learn to be willing to place ourselves under the protecting wings of Christ.  May we all learn to embody Christ’s love that lifts us up and out of fear.  And just as we have found shelter under metaphorical wings of Jesus, when trouble threatens, may we be loving enough and brave enough to spread out our wings to shelter others.  May we all be as brave as a mother hen.

That Reasonable Voice

Steve Beckham 4 Comments

Luke 4:1-13 (NRSV)

  Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.  The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”  Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” 

  Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.  And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please.  If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”   Jesus answered him, “It is written,

         ‘Worship the Lord your God,

                  and serve only him.’” 

  Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here,  for it is written,

         ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’

and

         ‘On their hands they will bear you up,

                  so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” 

Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”  When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

————-

By the end of the third day the constant ache of his empty belly began to fade.  He had fasted before and expected this, and gave thanks for this small blessing that made the discipline easier.  A little easier.  But he knew, too, that his craving for food could come roaring back unexpectedly, that his body’s impulse to survive would mean that no stray lizard or bug or mouse or even a scorpion would be safe from his appetite unless he harnessed his will and tuned his physical hunger to the feast of his spirit.  

He had fasted many times for a day, several times for three days, and once even for seven days.  He knew what to expect and how to prepare for such fasts.  But this time was different.  Very different.  He had not prepared for this fast.  He had been led to it.  Led here, to this parched, eerie, yet providential place in the wilderness by a dove.  A snow-white dove who had fluttered down out of nowhere, out of everywhere, out of heaven to land on his dripping, baptized shoulder and nuzzle his cheek, then raised her face to the sunlight, eyes closed and perfectly still as she listened for a moment to the whispering wind before taking wing and beckoning him to follow. 

         On his fourth day in the wilderness, he realized that it would be very easy to lose track of the days altogether, so every morning when the first light began to tinge the sky he made a mark with a sharp stone to count the days on the sandstone face of the cleft where sheltered in the wadi.  Then he would splash water on his face and his head and drink a sip from the small, clear pool, barely more than a puddle, that seemed to almost miraculously refill itself every night from a tiny trickle that dribbled out of the rocks.  He supposed there must be a spring somewhere uphill, or perhaps a larger oasis.  But this place and this water were enough for him, this small gash in the hillside with its pool and its single scrub tree and its long, unobstructed view across the desert.  

         And the days went by, each one like the day before.  Every morning the splash of water on his face—and with each splash hearing again, so fresh in his memory, that voice he had heard from heaven as he rose out of the waters of his baptism:  “You are my son. You are loved.  I am so pleased with you.”  Now, as the sunlight began to chase the shadows into the deeper recesses of the dry canyon, he would stop and raise his wet face to the sky as the water he had splashed on his face mingled with his tears of joy.  He would stand still like that, wet face raised to the sky, until the sunlight and warming air dried his cheeks.

As the sun began to shine full on his face, he would retreat to the shade, lean back against the canyon wall, and pray.  And meditate.  And listen.  Listening to his body.  Listening to his breath.  Listening to the sounds of the wilderness.  Listening to the earth.  Listening to the night sky.  Listening for God.  And he would watch.  Watching the dust devils dance across the desert.  Watching the plants sway and bend in the wind.  Watching, sometimes, the endless dance of predator and prey, things hunting and things hunted.  Watching things rest.  Watching the stars move across the night.  Watching the moon slip through its phases.  Watching his own dreams.

         By the tenth day he would have had no clear idea of how long he had been there without the marks he made every morning on the sandstone wall.  By the twentieth day he hardly moved.

He had vivid dreams when he slept and vivid visions when he meditated so that day and night began to blend together and he began to slip fluidly from one state of consciousness to another with little or no space in between, from wakeful alertness to vision to dream so that it all seemed as one to him.  His thoughts and his prayers blended into a single thing, a constant conversation with God who had affirmed him at the Jordan.  He would think, then pray for the earth.  He would think, then pray about humanity.  He would think, then pray about his mission.  He prayed for clarity.  And when clarity came to him he sat with it and examined it, too, in his thoughts and his prayers.

         And often, often the devil would come to him.  To test.  To tempt. To assault with phantasms of the imagination.  To ask leading questions.  To challenge.

         On the very first night he had  heard the maniacal gibbering of hungry hyenas prowling through the darkness not far from him and a great shadow of fear came moving up the wadi toward him.  But he just kept gazing at the stars and sang aloud from Isaiah, “The Lord is my light and my salvation.  Whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?”  And in the face of his smile and his song, the fear evaporated, and the gibbering of the hyenas as they moved off into the darkness sounded like laughter.  But the devil didn’t give up

         Often the devil would come with questions.  Usually the same questions or accusations or challenges repeated ad nauseum…  

     Are you really the Son of God?  What does that even mean?  

     This mission of yours, is it really worth it? 

     How will you save them?  Are they even worth saving?  And what makes you think you can do it?  

     You don’t think people are really going to understand what you’re trying to teach them, do you? 

     You know how this turns out, don’t you?

     Why are you even doing this…this fasting, this mission… any of it?   

     Over and over again, these questions.  Constant seeds of doubt insinuated, whispered in the spaces between his own thoughts in a voice that sounded almost like his own or like the Spirit.  Almost.  But not quite.  

         He would sit and listen, sometimes marveling at the devil’s persistence but in the end he would tire of it and simply say, quoting Isaiah again, “The Lord called me before I was born.  In my mother’s womb he named me. The Lord said I will give you as a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”  And then the devil would leave him.  For a while. 

         On the fortieth day his body’s reserves were utterly spent.  He knew that one way or another this day would be the end of his fast.  He had seen angels in the night.  Or had he dreamed them?  He had often sensed them nearby like the hyenas.

         As the first light of morning seeped into the sky he had no strength to move the few steps to the pool for a splash of water and a drink.  Still, when the edge of the sun blushed across the horizon he managed to croak out the morning prayer his parents had taught him so many years ago:

Blessed is the One who spoke and the world came to be. Blessed is the One!

Blessed is the One who continually authors creation.  Blessed is the One whose word is deed:  blessed is the One who is compassionate towards the world; blessed is the One who is compassionate towards all creatures. Blessed is the One who rewards the reverent.  Blessed is the One who exists for all time.  Blessed is the One who redeems and saves.

As he finished the prayer a large dust devil came spiraling lazily toward him and as it reached the apron of the hill it released a tendril to blow its hot, gritty breath into his canyon, into his face.   And in that tendril of dry, dusty wind came the voice—that voice so much like his own, so much like the Spirit, but not, insinuating itself between his thoughts.  That voice with its poisonous seeds of doubt.  That horrible voice.  That reasonable voice.  

Why are you starving yourself, Son of Man?  Forty days without food is a bit excessive, don’t you think?  You’ve made your point.  You can’t do any good for anybody if you die of starvation out here in the wilderness.  So…if you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.

And there it is, he thought.  Two things.  No, three things.  But so cleverly hidden in that reasonable little speech.  If you are the Son of God… this evil wants me to doubt not just myself, but God.  God who proclaimed me the beloved Son.  And then this evil suggests that I should prove my identity.  Prove it to whom?  To myself? To God?  To this voice of evil, this hot wind blowing through the canyon, through the delirium of my hunger?  This thing would have me deny my humanity.  Hunger is part of being human.  Yes, I could change the stone to bread, but others cannot.  Others must make do with the resources at hand or go without.  So the last thing evil suggests might be the worst.  Command the stone to become bread.  Turn your back on your humanity.  This thing would have me deny what I am and also make the stone something it is not.  Refuse to see it for what it is.  Ignore its worth and value and history as a stone.  Coerce creation to satisfy my hunger.  Do violence to this thing God has made and to the workings and patterns God set at work in the world so that I can take a shortcut to feed myself?  Simply because I can?  No.

And then, because it would not do to simply say it in his thoughts, because, oddly, he wanted the stone to hear it, too, he said it aloud in his starved, parched voice…  

One does not live by bread alone.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he was caught up in a vision. He was floating high above the world looking down on all its gleaming cities, its mountains and valleys, forests, farms and deserts and seas.  An angel of light was beside him but there was something not quite right about either the angel or the light.  It was a dark kind of light.  And the angel wore a mask.  And from behind the mask came the voice.  To the ears of his spirit it still sounded reasonable, but it also sounded imperious.  And hollow.

Look at this world, Son of Man, these kingdoms.  This is what you came for, isn’t it?  Isn’t that the promise?  That you will be king of kings and lord of lords, that your kingdom will rule over all others? I will give you authority over all of them right now, all the glory that comes from them, because it has all been given over to me and I can give it to anyone I choose.  All you have to do is worship me.  Bow down to me and it’s all yours.

He looked down at the world for a long moment that felt like forever.  He looked and thought of the difficult, painful path that lay ahead of him if he was to continue in the way he knew was right.  He knew there was some truth in what the devil said.  Evil  did seem to have sway over so much of what happened in the world and for a moment the devil’s caustic words echoed in his soul.  It’s all been given over to me.  But then he thought, By whom?  Who gave it over to you?  People gave it over to you.  People you tricked.  People you seduced with your reasonable, poisonous propositions and your false promises.  I’m here to win it back one person at a time because it was never rightfully yours to begin with.  And again you try to tempt me with a shortcut.  But it only shows how much you misunderstand.  I did not come to seize power.  I came to give love.  And you can’t order people to love.  You can’t coerce love.  If I took your path I would be just another dictator.  And worship you?  As we stand in this place between heaven and earth in your sickly, false light?  You clearly do not know me.  And then, to bring the vision back to earth, he said aloud…

It is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.

Instantly, his vision shifted with a vertiginous twist. But instead of being returned to the canyon, he found himself standing on the highest point of the temple with the devil standing beside him robed like a priest, his face behind a veil.  And from behind the veil came that voice, that reasonable voice.

I don’t know why you insist on making things so difficult for yourself.  I’m not clear on what your plan is, holy man, but whatever you’re trying to accomplish, you’re going to need followers.  You’re going to have to persuade a lot of people to believe in you, to trust you.  You seem to believe that you’re the Son of God, so you’re going to need them to believe it, too.  I suppose you could do a miracle here and there, turn up your charisma a bit, impress a few people at a time.  But why not just do something big and dramatic?  And there is a scriptural warrant for this. If you are the Son of God, just throw yourself down from here, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you.  And it’s also written, On their hands they will bear you up so that you will not so much as bruise your foot against a stone.

And there it is again, he thought.  That challenge.  If you are the Son of God.  Prove it.  It occurred to him that he was making the devil uneasy.  No, I don’t need to prove anything, he thought.  God doesn’t need to prove anything.  You are my son.  You are loved.  I am so pleased.  I did hear God’s voice.  I did follow the Spirit.  And I did it out of love.  And those who follow me will do so out of love.  And yes, it will be hard.  And yes, they will miss the point, over and over again.  They will get it wrong.  They will make mistakes.  But that’s what forgiveness is for.  And impressing people, even with angels catching me in midair, won’t convince them to keep following when things get really difficult.  Only love can do that.  Only love can carry them through those dark valleys, those dark days.  Admiration, being amazed, is not the same thing as love.  No, this is just another shortcut and one that would be short lived, at that.   

And then, as he stood atop the temple, without looking at the thing in the priest’s robes, he said aloud…

You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

And the hot wind stopped.  There was a moment, a breath, and a cool breeze filled the canyon.  He opened his eyes and saw an angel smiling at him.  He closed his eyes.  And when he opened them again, there was a traveling peddler beside him, urging him to drink some water and take a bite of bread.  He smiled and laid his hand fondly on the warm stone beside him as he said a prayer of thanks.

When you hear that reasonable voice that insinuates itself between your thoughts—and you will—that voice that entices you to take the shortcut, that voice that tempts you to discount your own humanity and the bond you share with others, that voice that thirsts for power, status and wealth at the expense of the rest of the world, take time to listen very carefully. Listen not just to what it offers, but to what it will take from you in return.  Listen not just to what it promises to give you or make you, listen to what it will cost you.  And what it will make you deny.

Lent and the American Sadness

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Lent came early for me this year.  Lent came early for a lot of us.  It started back in November and has hung like a cloud over Advent, Christmas and Epiphany.  Shrove Tuesday was just another day because we had been unwillingly shriven for weeks and there was nothing left to shrive.   Ash Wednesday was an anticlimax due to all the actual and figurative ash that had already been blown in our faces.  Our foreheads were already marked with deep creases of concern and unpleasant astonishment. 

I realized as I puttered around my kitchen this morning that I have been feeling a bone deep exhaustion since the election.  My wise and reflective friend Phil said, “It seems like everything is a slug, doesn’t it? And when you think it can’t get any worse, well, there you go. It’s an odd feeling to feel depression brought on by national politics and experience the unexpected sensation of visceral anger.”  He hit the nail on the head.

I’ve been feeling—a lot of us have been feeling—an enervating, soul draining gloominess.  Phil called it depression, but out of respect for those who suffer from genuine clinical depression, I’m going to call it sadness.  It’s a sadness born in disillusionment, a melancholy arising from the realization that so many of my fellow Americans do not share the values that I always assumed were bedrock for us as a people and that a staggering number of us not only couldn’t see a psychopathic grifter for what he is but actually have embraced his greedy narcissism as a kind of virtue to be emulated. 

It’s a sadness arising from the realization that we as a country are deeply broken.  Our systems are compromised and corrupted by money and the persons now in power are busy undermining the safeguards and mechanisms that would give us some way to curtail their abuse of power.  Worse, they are dismantling the systems and structures we will need to rebuild and restore once their top heavy regime collapses.

And it will collapse.  History has taught us that despotism, after being horribly powerful for a time, always collapses.  Always. Government of any kind requires the consent of the governed, and by that standard a growing number of us are well on the way to being ungovernable.  

It helps me to name this sadness, because with sadness you can name what is making you sad.  But now comes the tricky part.  I need to turn this sadness into a particular kind of anger.  A fierce, loving anger.  Anger brings energy, and we need energy to confront the destruction of our democracy and our values.  But it has to be a loving anger.  Like I said, it’s tricky.  It’s not easy to hold love and anger in the same heart.

I’ve never liked the expression, “hate the sin but love the sinner.”  Those using the phrase have too often been quick to demonize and dehumanize persons who are inherently different in some way and too slow to show any kind of love or understanding. “Hate the sin but love the sinner” has too often been used to lay a thin veneer of piety over deep seated bigotry.  In this case, though, I think it’s appropriate.  Hate the sin of greed.  Hate the avarice for power.  Hate the disrespect of the people who are daily assaulting diversity, equity and inclusion.  Hate the bigotry, the racism, the willful ignorance and general obtuseness of the people who are all too gleefully pulling apart the carefully constructed framework of civil rights and the organs of generosity that have been our pathway to and our hope for a better country and a better world.  Hate the shortsighted economics that treats persons like inventory.  Hate the binary politics that divides us into us and them, that sneers at cooperation and makes everything a competition.  

Hate the sin, but love the sinner.  That’s the hard part.  Love the sinner.  Yes, even the misanthropic billionaire.  Pray for him.  God has been in the transformation business for a long time with some very surprising results.  Some have been world changing.  Pray, too, for the president with the bad hair who can’t seem to get his bronzer right.  It’s a long shot, but there may be a Road to Damascus in his future, too.  So pray.  Then act.  Go to the protest.  Write and call your representatives until they’re annoyed with you.  Boycott the business that are funding our destruction.  Let them know you are boycotting them and why.  Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God, as we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.  

The Hard Stuff

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Luke 6:27-38

Have you ever been reading along in your Bible and you come across something you wish Jesus had just not said?

Love your enemies.

Do good to those who hate you.  

Bless those who curse you.

Pray for those who abuse you.

Turn the other cheek.

If someone takes your coat, give them your shirt, too.

Give something to everyone who asks.

This is the hard stuff.  This is the part that’s difficult.  It’s all so counter-intuitive.  Jesus is asking us to behave in a way that is diametrically opposed to our instincts.

It would be very easy to ignore this teaching of Jesus, to just forget he ever said it, or find ways to explain it away.  In fact we do that a lot.  Ignore the parts we don’t like.

We might say that Jesus is setting up an impossible ideal here that forces us to admit our sin and brokenness so that we admit our need for God’s forgiveness and grace. David Lose calls that the “Lutheran option.”  It’s good, sound theology as far as it goes, but it lets us off the hook.  It keeps us from taking these new rules of engagement that Jesus gives us seriously or thinking that they could actually be applied.

Another way to dismiss these difficult expectations is that we could just say that Jesus is being idealistic and naïve.  

Actually, that’s one thing we absolutely can NOT say.  Jesus, and the people listening to him were far from naïve.  They were well-acquainted with the frustration of not responding to undeserved violence, aggression and oppression,  but they were also were painfully aware of the cost of revenge and retaliation.  

In the year 6 CE, when Jesus was about 10 years old,[1] Roman authorities installed a new governor over the province of Judea.  When this new governor, Coponius, tried to impose new taxes on the region, including the new Census tax which everyone in the empire was required to pay, a large rebellion broke out led by Judas the Galilean.  The rebellion spread until Quirinius, the governor of Syria stepped in to impose order.  You may remember Quirinius from Luke’s Christmas story in chapter 2.  Under Quirinius’ orders, Roman soldiers razed the city of Sepphoris, a rebel stronghold just a three miles from Nazareth where Jesus grew up.  After Sepphoris was burned to the ground, the Romans rounded up Judas and two thousand Galileans and crucified them.  

This example of Roman authority and order maintained by violence was still fresh in the memories of the people gathered with Jesus on that hillside by the sea.  I think it’s safe to say that the Galileans listening to Jesus, those people living under the watchful eyes of their Roman overlords and their wealthy collaborators, heard his words a little differently than we hear them twenty centuries later.

It’s important for us to understand that Jesus was not calling oppressed and abused people to be doormats, to simply roll over passively and take whatever abuse was being dished out.  When Jesus said, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also;  and if anyone takes away your coat, give them your shirt, too,” he was teaching his followers a way to do radical non-violent resistance.  

In his book Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa, Jesus’ Third Way, Walter Wink pointed out that when Jesus said to turn the other cheek he wasn’t talking about a fistfight, he was talking about a backhand slap that was the normal way of admonishing inferiors.  As Wink explained, “Masters backhanded slaves; husbands, wives; parents, children; men, women; Romans, Jews. We have here a set of unequal relations, in each of which retaliation would be suicidal. The only normal response would be cowering submission.

“It is important to ask who Jesus’ audience is. In every case, Jesus’ listeners are not those who strike, initiate lawsuits or impose forced labor, but their victims (“If anyone strikes you…would sue you…forces you to go one mile…”). There were among his hearers people who were subjected to these very indignities, forced to stifle their inner outrage at the dehumanizing treatment meted out to them by the hierarchical system of caste and class, race and gender, age and status, and as a result of imperial occupation.”

Wink goes on to explain that, odd as it may sound, in the body language and social ritual of the first century, turning the other cheek would be a way of asserting equality in the relationship and maintaining one’s dignity.  A backhanded slap was a gesture of rebuke or punishment directed at someone of lower status.  Striking the other cheek would require the use of an open hand which would be seen in their society as acknowledging equality.  The open-handed slap was the way one Roman or patrician challenged someone of equal status.

When Jesus tells his followers to give their shirt if someone takes their coat, that, too, is a kind of nonviolent resistance based on public shaming.  If you owed a rich person money and were unable to pay, the law would allow him to take your coat as collateral against the loan.  Giving your shirt, too, would dramatize how unfair the law is and how heartless your creditor is for taking advantage of such a law.  Most men wore nothing more than a simple shirt or tunic belted at the waist under a coat or robe. Making a creditor take his shirt in addition to his coat would leave a man standing in the street in his loincloth but it would shame the creditor whose impatience and greed would leave someone so exposed.

Luke doesn’t include this, but in Matthew’s rendition of nonviolent resistance Jesus says, “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.”  The Roman law of impressment said that a Roman soldier could order a Jew to carry his heavy pack, but only for one mile.  At the end of the mile, Jesus says to go another mile  if you are the Jew impressed into this service, because by going the extra mile you assume control of the situation.  You assert a measure of equality and preserve your dignity, and you just might get the soldier in trouble with his superiors if they’re paying attention.

When Jesus tells us to confront violence with nonviolence, he invites us to be creative.  In 2020, the racist right-wing group The Proud Boys tore down the Black Lives Matter Banner at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington D.C. and spray painted racist and violent graffiti on the church.  The church sued the Proud Boys, a group that Wikipedia describes as “an American far-right, neofascist militant organization” and won a judgment of $2.8 million in damages.  When the Proud Boys refused to pay, the court awarded control of the Proud Boys’ trademark to the church which effectively stripped them of their name.  The Proud Boys can no longer use their name or trademarked logo without permission of the church.  The church “turned the other cheek” and won an important symbolic victory in the process.

With his guidance on how we should treat each other, Jesus is inviting us into a new world, a world that has very different values and operates on laws that are contrary to what we’re used to.  The world Jesus invites us to inhabit is grounded in shalom, a peace based on respect and on recognition of our mutual humanity.   In this world we realize that striking back when we’re struck merely perpetuates or accelerates the cycle of violence.

This doesn’t mean that we give evil and aggression a free pass.  WE are still called to confront evil when we see it and speak out against injustice.  But we do not fight violence with violence. Instead, we meet evil and aggression with creativity and love, a creativity that either defuses the evil or shows the world what it really is, and a love that remembers that the aggressor or perpetrator is also someone who God loves.

The people who live in this world of shalom know that forgiveness breaks all the patterns of cause and effect that prolong and propagate disharmony between persons and peoples.   

The people who live in this world – this world that Jesus calls The Kingdom of God, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness—the people who live in this world know that love is not just a means to an end or a nicety of life, but love is the source and goal of life itself.  It is the fountain from which morality and justice flow naturally like waters from a spring.  The people who live in this Realm of God know that the reason we fail so often to establish a healthy morality without moralizing, the reason we fail so often to establish restorative justice without the soul-damaging poison of retribution, is that we have failed first to love.

So is this a new set of commandments Jesus is giving us?  Or is it a promise?  Are these laws?  Or is this an invitation?

These instructions from Jesus sound almost impossible when we hear them from the standpoint of everyday life and our culture’s instinctive response.  But they sound very different when you hear them as a promise of how life can be.  They sound very different when you hear them as an invitation to develop new instincts and live a different kind of life.

You are invited to live in the Realm of God’s love, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness, where people love their enemies and do good even to those who hate them.  Where they respond to curses with blessings.  

If we can live as a citizens of this different world, our reward will be great and we will be children of the Most High, for God is just as kind to the ungrateful and the wicked as to those who are trying to not be ungrateful and wicked.  

That’s the world we are invited into.  That’s the way we are asked to live.  It isn’t easy.  We fail often.  But, forgive and you will be forgiven. 

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven;  give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

That’s the promise.  And you are invited.  Starting now.

In Jesus’ name.

[1] Scholars are uncertain about the year of Jesus’ birth, but both Matthew and Luke note that Herod the Great was still alive when Jesus was born.  Herod died in 4 BCE.

Speaking Blessing in a Dystopian World

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 6:17-26, Matthew 5:1-11

Elon Musk posted a meme this week on X in which he referred to the poor as “a parasite class.”  According to Bruce Wilson,  who writes on authoritarianism and Christianity, Musk’s philosophical guru, Curtis Yarvin, has “joked” that the poor should be melted down into biodiesel.[1]  Jesus, on the other hand, says that the poor are blessed and the kingdom of God is theirs.

The late Tony Campolo, one of my spiritual heroes 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.”  I find myself returning to his words over and over again lately as I try to maintain my own sense of direction and purpose in these early days of an administration that seems intent on dismantling and destroying so much that is good and helpful and life-sustaining in our country and in the world—systems and programs that so many people, especially the economically disadvantaged, rely on just to exist in a world where the price of mere subsistence keeps going up.

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 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 in our culture.  Now more than ever.

Jesus preaches the Beatitudes in both Matthew and Luke.  Matthew’s version is longer and more poetic and spiritual.  Luke’s version is shorter, pithier and more pointed.  But in both versions Jesus was proclaiming a vision of the kingdom of God that completely subverts the common understanding of who God favors and how the world works.  

The disciples and crowd listening to Jesus were living in a world where it was generally accepted that the wealthy and powerful and forceful people of the world were the blessed ones, the ones God favored.  A lot of people still believe that today, whether they admit it or not.  But no, Jesus told them, you who are poor, youare the blessed ones.  The kingdom of God is for you.  You who are hungry, you are the blessed ones.  You will eat your fill.  You who are brokenhearted and weeping, you are the blessed ones.  Life will turn around and you will laugh.  

In Luke, Jesus goes on to say that all those who are commonly thought of as blessed are actually just a breath away from trouble and disappointment.  Woe to you who are rich.  You already ate your piece of the pie.  Woe to you who are full.  Tomorrow you’ll be hungry.  Woe to you who are laughing.  You’re not immune to tragedy.  You will mourn and weep.

The Jewish crowd listening to Jesus was very familiar with the language and meaning of blessing.  It was an important part of their life and culture.  In Judaism, a blessing was a proclamation intended to bring more of God’s presence and goodness into the life of the one being blessed.  It could be used to give vision, guidance and confidence.  Parents pronounced blessings on their children.  The people in the crowd were all familiar with blessings, but no one had ever blessed them the way Jesus was blessing them.

When he preached about the kingdom of God, Jesus was helping the people imagine a new world of compassion, justice, integrity and peace.  He started by helping them to reimagine themselves, to see themselves as blessed.  I wonder sometimes how much of the divisiveness, anger, greed and general dysfunction we are experiencing today arises from the fact that we have forgotten how to bless each other—how to imagine and pronounce a positive vision and future for each other.  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.

In Red Letter Christian, Tony Campolo said, “Perhaps because our culture and politics have gone so off course, with values so contrary to those of Jesus, more and more people intuitively recognize that his vision of God’s kingdom—a  new world of compassion, justice, integrity and peace—is the Good News they’ve been searching and waiting for.”  

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 transformative.  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 others.

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 running on empty.  Blessed are those who feel like they have nothing to give.  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, the kingdom is theirs.  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.  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 draws close to 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 those who struggle with the rent.  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.  The earth is theirs.

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 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 they have been forgiven.  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 those who are battered or imprisoned because they protest against all the things that dehumanize people and oppress people.  Blessed are those who are persecuted for doing the right thing.  The commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy is theirs.

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.

In Jesus’ name.

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

Do Not Be Afraid

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Luke 5:1-11

What would it take for you to walk away from everything?  What would move you to walk out of your life and into a whole new existence with no guarantees and no clear idea of what kind of life you were about to begin?

The story of Jesus calling the fishermen, Peter, Andrew, James and John, is in all three synoptic gospels, but Luke’s telling of the story is significantly different from Matthew and Mark’s version.  In Mark and Matthew the story we get is pretty bare bones:  Jesus is walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee when he sees Peter and Andrew and James and John fishing.  Jesus says, “Follow me,” and they do.  They drop their nets and follow.  Just like that. And all the blank spaces and unanswered questions are left to our imagination.  

The gospel writers each have their own reasons for telling the story the way they do.  Mark moves quickly past the fishermen because in Mark, Jesus is always on the move—”on the way” is the expression Mark uses.  There are demons that need casting out and people to be healed and all of it happens on the road.  Also, the writer of Mark gives the impression that he’s not all that fond of Peter and the others, so he moves past them pretty quickly.  

Matthew doesn’t spend any more time than necessary on Jesus recruiting the fishermen because there is Torah waiting to be reinterpreted by Jesus and five sermons to be preached and besides, everybody already knows that story.  

Luke, though, Luke is a storyteller.  Luke thinks the details are important.  Luke likes the narrative to flow smoothly.  

Matthew and Mark give the impression that Jesus was more or less a stranger to Peter and the others when he called them to follow, a dynamic that makes their following him look all the more miraculous.  In Luke, though, we see that Jesus and Peter had crossed paths before.  Jesus had already been teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum, so Peter had heard him there.  And Jesus had been to Peter’s house where he healed Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever.  This makes it easier to understand why Peter doesn’t object when Jesus helps himself to Peter’s boat and tells him to push off a little bit from the shore to create a little space between them and the crowd.  

In Luke’s telling of the story, Peter had already seen Jesus cast out demons and heal people, both at the synagogue and at his own house.  And he had also been listening to Jesus teaching the crowd while he cleaned his nets.  So now, there they were, just the two of them, Peter and Jesus in Peter’s boat while Jesus finished speaking to the crowd.  

Can you imagine what Peter was feeling?  Sit still with it a moment and imagine yourself sitting next to this teacher who speaks with authority in the synagogue, who makes Torah and the Prophets come alive, this exorcist who speaks to demons and casts them out, this man who can heal with a touch of his hand, this man, Jesus, sitting next to you in your boat while the water gently laps against the sides.  

And now he tells you to head out into deep water and let down your nets.   And you hesitate.   You’re tired.  You tell him you worked all night and didn’t catch so much as a sardine.  But it’s Jesus telling you to do this, so you drag on the oars and row out to deeper water.  You figure you’ll humor him.  You’ll drop your nets in the water and after they’ve sat there a few minutes you’ll pull them back up and row home for some overdue sleep.  

But when you start to pull up your nets, they’re heavy.  So heavy you’re afraid you’ll lose your grip.  And as you pull the net closer to the surface you see the water boiling with fish, so many fish that you know you won’t be able to lift them into the boat by yourself.  You yell out for your partners to come help you, and the four of you work hard, feverishly, until your muscles ache and you’re covered in sweat.  And when it’s all over you’ve filled two boats with so many fish that they’re close to being swamped.  

And that’s when you stop.  And you look at Jesus…who is holding you in his steady gaze.  And you suddenly realize that you are in the presence of holiness, that something…someone transcendent is there in your boat with you and all those fish.  And all you can think of is how unworthy you are, how unclean and imperfect you feel in the presence of this man, Jesus, who radiates wholeness and goodness.  You realize that he sees you, he really sees who and what you are in a way that makes you see yourself through his eyes, and it brings you to your knees.

And then he says the only thing that could put you on your feet again.  Do not be afraid, he says, in a voice that dissipates all anxiety.  Do not be afraid.  From now on you will be catching people.

“When they had brought their boats to shore,” Luke tells us, “they left everything and followed him.

They left everything.  Have you ever thought about what that entailed, what all that ‘everything’ included?  Fishing in first century Galilee was a cash-intensive business and usually involved whole families.  In the Roman world, Caesar owned every body of water, so Caesar owned the lake they fished in and all the fish in the lake.  That meant that you had to pay Caesar for a license to catch his fish in his lake.  It was illegal to catch even one fish without that license.  Since the lake was in the territory controlled by Herod Antipas, Antipas administered the collection of fees, which included a tax to pay for his management services.  The actual management was done by a broker/tax collector who would grant your license, collect your license fees and also collect the tax on your catch.  Your catch would be processed—salt dried or pickled—by a separate business, a fish processor who charged a percentage of the catch.  And there was another tax on the processed fish as it was sent to market through the broker.  Boats were expensive and were often leased with monthly payment plans.  Nets were in constant need of repair.  In good seasons you might hire extra help.  To cover all these expenses it was common for two or more families to join together in a syndicate.  That seems to be the case that we see with the Yonah family and the Zebedee family in the gospels.  All of that financial obligation and responsibility and all the people whose lives were supported by the business, all of that was part of the ‘everything’ that the fishermen left behind to follow Jesus.

Do not be afraid.  

In Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor wrote, “The only real difference between Anxiety and Excitement was my willingness to let go of Fear.”  When you hear Jesus say, “Do not be afraid,” it’s like an exorcism.  Something lets go of you… and you let go of it.  And that’s when all bets are off and the future is wide open.  

Do not be afraid.

The story of the miraculous catch of fish is only in Luke.  There is a similar story in the epilogue of the Gospel of John, but it appears at the end, not at the beginning.  In both instances, though, the astonishing bounty of fish helps to motivate Peter to follow Jesus or, in the case of John’s gospel, to get back to work of showing people the kingdom of God.

Luther Seminary Professor Rolf Jacobson said that the miraculous catch of fish is an example of the holy breaking into our mundane everyday world.  It is that, but it seems to me that it might be more accurate to see this as an example of Jesus helping people to look up from the mundane everydayness of the world to see that it is already holy, to see that they have been surrounded by holiness their entire lives, to see that they live and move and have their being in a world that is infused with God’s presence, God’s provision, God’s love in every small detail.

As I read the gospels, sometimes it seems like Jesus was walking through a different world than the rest of us.  What he was teaching all those people on the shore while Peter mended his nets was how to see and how to live in that different, healthier, more whole world, the world as he saw it, a world of goodness and kindness and loving connection, a world he called the kingdom of God, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy.  He was living all day every day in that holiness, that all-pervasive Presence of the Holy One.  He embodied it.  With this astonishing catch of fish, he helped Peter and the others understand that God would take care of them, he helped them see that there was a possibility for another way of life, a different kind of life altogether, and he was opening the door for them to step into it.

So they left everything.  And followed him.  To begin the work of making the kingdom of God an everyday reality on earth as it is in heaven.  To catch people—to capture their imaginations and teach them to see the world Jesus sees.

That’s the work the followers of Jesus have been doing for more than two millennia now, and there’s a long list of people from Augustine and Ambrose to Albert Schweitzer and Martin Luther King and millions whose names are unknown who have left everything and faced every danger to proclaim Christ’s vision of the kingdom and to show us what it looks like in action.  

It’s work that never ends because there will always be Caesars who want to own everything and make the rest of us pay just to be alive.  There are always those who want to erase the good work we’ve done and the good work we’re planning because they think that it weakens the iron grip of their control… or even simply because it undermines their Social-Darwinist understanding of how the world works.  There are always those who don’t like mercy and kindness because they see life as a competition and not as a cooperative venture.  There are always those who think that some lives are more worthy than others, that some people are intrinsically more valuable and some are intrinsically worthless, so there will always be a need for us to remind them that, as Jesus sees us, every last one of us is a beloved child of God.

When Caesar tries to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion, the followers of Jesus remind the world that God’s loving embrace includes everyone and rejoices in their differences and talents.  When wealthy, ambitious, Caesar wannabes try to tarnish the reputation of helpful people and organizations like Lutheran Social Services, the followers of Jesus remind them that we encounter Jesus, himself, in serving the hungry, the unhoused, the differently abled, the dependent and the immigrant.

“In Judaism,” said Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, “faith is not acceptance but protest against the world that is in the name of the world that is not yet but ought to be.”  It’s the same for the followers of Jesus.  Christ is calling us to leave the boat of mundane habit and self-protection to step onto the path of active, activist faith, to be the light that shines faithfully as we push back the gathering darkness of the world that is and show the way to the world that is not yet but ought to be. 

Do not be afraid.  

Priorities

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 4:21-30

At one time or another, I think we’ve all wanted something from God.  I think we’ve all had that one thing we wish God would do for us.  Or maybe even a list of things.  Or maybe, in a moment of doubt, we’ve just wanted God to show us some small sign to reassure us that God really is with us and on our side.  

A lot of these wishes, especially the smaller ones, go unspoken.  But when we’re honest with ourselves—and with God—I think almost all of us have that something we’d like to see God do for us.  I know I would like to have my hearing back.  And my hair.

I suspect that there was something like that going on in the hearts of the people who came to hear Jesus when he preached in the synagogue at Nazareth.  They had heard great stories about their hometown boy who had wandered off into the world to became a prophet—stories about healings and exorcisms.  They had heard that he spoke with authority, eloquence and wisdom.  So when his hometown people came to hear him speak in his hometown synagogue, it was only natural that they brought their hopes and expectations—their unspoken wish lists—with them.  And when Jesus read that well-known, passage from Isaiah that starts with The Spirit of the Most High is upon me, it probably raised their expectations even higher.

They knew that passage from Isaiah.  I’m sure many of them were silently saying the words with him as Jesus read them.  God has anointed me to proclaim good news to those who are poor.  God sent me to preach liberation to those who are held captive and recovery of sight to those who are blind, to liberate those who are oppressed.  To proclaim the year of the Most High’s favor.  They knew those words.  And the way Jesus was speaking them, it must have sounded like a proclamation he was making about himself.  And then, as if to remove any doubt, the moment he sat down to teach he said Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

He owned the prophecy.  He claimed it.  

Luke hints at the buzz of excited conversation rippling through the synagogue.  People’s hopes were high, but so was their caution.  Hard to believe this is Joseph’s son. There was always something different about that boy.Remember that time he got separated from the caravan coming home from Jerusalem?  But look at him now!

Luke doesn’t tell us everything Jesus said as he was teaching that day in the synagogue in Nazareth, but it’s clear from Luke’s account that after a positive and congenial start, Jesus said something that upset them.

Maybe he criticized the way they understood and interpreted Torah and the prophets.  Maybe he said something about their failure to fully embrace the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness in their community.  Maybe he suggested that God wanted them to help make the kin-dom of God a reality on earth as it is in heaven, and that the Spirit could empower them to do it.  Maybe he criticized their lack of imagination or their unwillingness to take any risks on behalf of what God was trying to accomplish.  Maybe he criticized them because their hearts and minds were so full of their own cherished hopes and wishes but also their fears and self-protection that they couldn’t take in God’s invitation to help create a healthier, saner world.

Maybe the thing that upset them was that he told them that the miracle shop was closed for the day, that he wasn’t going to do any exorcisms or healings.  It was the Sabbath, after all, and doing works of power—healing, exorcisms, that kind of thing, was better left for another day if wasn’t urgent, which was more than a little ironic, really, when you remember all the other times in other places where people got upset with Jesus for doing exactly that—healing and casting out demons on the Sabbath. It’s weird that they got upset with him for obeying the law.  

Richard Rohr says that if you don’t deal with your own anxiety, disappointment and pain you’re going to end up spilling it all over  everyone else. And isn’t that just human nature in a nutshell.  Seems like some people are always looking for a reason to get upset.   

Jesus watched their expressions change as the shadow of disappointment and irritation fell across their faces.  He could see that his criticisms didn’t sit well with them.  He could see that they were starting to formulate their own criticism of him in response.  So he beat them to it. Of course you’ll all quote me this proverb, “Doctor, cure yourself!” and you’ll all say, why won’t you do the things here in your hometown that we heard you did in Capernaum!?

We shouldn’t be too hard on the people of Nazareth.  I think we might have felt the same way.  Don’t we deserve a few miracles, too?  Come on, Jesus, this is your hometown!  We knew you when!  You’re one of us!

Jesus was a master at reading the human heart.  He could hear all the words that weren’t being said.  He could feel their sense of entitlement.  So he reminded them that neither he nor God were bound by their expectations.  He reminded them that there were times and stories in their own history when their prophets brought the power of God’s benevolence to “outsiders,” even though there were plenty of needs and wish lists right there at home.  

Truly I tell you, he said, no prophet is accepted in their hometown.  But I speak truth to you all, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were closed three years and six months, and there was a sever famine over all the land.  Yet, Elijah was sent to none of them, rather to Zarephath in Sidon!—much detested Sidon!—to  a widow woman.  And there were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

And that was the spark that set them off.  They felt they were being disrespected.  It was a slap in the face!  Jesus had offended their sense of privilege.  He was one of them, after all.  If anyone had a right to experience whatever amazing power of God was working through him, they did.  They should come first.

And here’s the thing—Jesus was not telling them that he didn’t love them or that God didn’t love them.  Jesus was not telling them that God wasn’t going to meet their needs.  He was just reminding them that God had already set an agenda, and that God’s agenda was his agenda, too.  He was reminding them that long ago God had spoken through Isaiah to tell them that those who were hurting the most would be attended to first.  

He was reminding them that his mission was to proclaim good news to the poor in a world designed to perpetuate poverty.  He had come to proclaim freedom for political prisoners and prisoners of war.  He had come to bring recovery of sight for those who had lost their ability to see the truth.  He had come to bring liberation for those whom life had backed into a corner and were having the life squeezed out of them.   That was his first order of business.  

They didn’t like to hear Jesus telling them so bluntly that their particular wishes and needs were not God’s top priority.  It confronted their sense of privilege, so they exploded in rage.  They shoved him out to the edge of town and were going to throw him off the cliff.  

And that’s when, finally, a small miracle did happen, though I doubt if they saw it that way.  He stopped them from doing something that would have scarred their consciences and damaged their souls for the rest of their lives.  He passed through the midst of them and went on his way, leaving them standing there as the anger and adrenaline seeped out of them.

Diana Butler Bass has suggested that maybe there were some in that angry crowd who had not lost their minds in rage and that maybe these people helped clear a way so he could “walk through the midst of them,” and be on his way.  I really like to think that’s what happened.  I find hope in that—the idea that even when the whole world is going crazy and pushing us to the edge of the cliff, there are still some sane and concerned folks helping to make a pathway through the madness.  I need to believe that’s true.

We love to be told how much God loves us.  We love to be reminded of all the ways that God has provided for us and is looking out for us.  And we usually don’t mind being told that God loves others, too, although we sometimes bristle when we’re told that God loves and cares for people we don’t much like.  Anne Lamott said, “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

And that might have been part of the problem in Nazareth, too.  The god in their heads, the god in their hearts, the me first/us first god ran headlong into the God of their scriptures when Jesus began teaching them what that beloved passage from Isaiah really means.  God’s favor does not privilege home or nation, but it does prioritize those who are hurting most.  Whoever they are and wherever they’re from.

We all want to hear good news.  But the ones who need it most are the poor.  We would all like to be set free from one thing or another, but the ones who need it most are those who are really being held captive.  We all would like to see the world more clearly.  But the ones who need it most are the ones who are blinded in one way or another.  We all would like more autonomy, more real freedom and justice in one way or another.  But the ones who need it most are people who are actually oppressed and marginalized. 

When George Floyd was killed in May of 2020, protestors responded with demonstrations to bring attention to the alarming number of black people being killed in incidents that highlight the racism inherent in much of American life.  The slogan Black Lives Matter began appearing at protests and on social media.  When that slogan, Black Lives Matter, first appeared, a lot of white people responded on social media and elsewhere with All Lives Matter.  

All Lives Matter.  Well, yes, that’s true.  Of course all lives matter.  But that’s beside the point.  All Lives do Matter, but it isn’t All Lives who are dealing with profiling and bigotry and discrimination.  It isn’t All Lives dealing with the heritage of neighborhood redlining that creates ghettos and a kind of economic bondage that perpetuates poverty.  It isn’t All Lives who need to have The Talk with their children about how to stay safe and come home alive if you get pulled over by the police because your tail light is out.  Saying Black Lives Matter is necessary because Black Lives have too often and for too long been treated as if they don’t matter.  We can’t say All Lives matter until we’ve made it clear that Black Lives are included in the All.

Today, we also could be, and maybe should be saying Immigrant Lives matter.  And Gay Lives matter.  And Trans Lives matter.  Because these are also people who are often treated as if their lives don’t matter.  

Many white people reacted negatively to Black Lives Matter because they were reacting from the blindness of White Privilege, and it upset them to have someone suggest that such a thing as White Privilege even exists.  They may be quick to point out that their lives don’t feel privileged, that they have had their struggles, too.  And what they say is true, but it’s beside the point.  White privilege doesn’t mean your life hasn’t been hard.  It just means that the color of your skin isn’t one of the things that has made it hard. 

When Jesus had finished reading that powerful passage from Isaiah, The Spirit of the Most High is upon me.  God has anointed me… he followed the reading by saying Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.  Literally, in your ears. 

Those last three words are so important.  

In your hearing.  In your ears.  Are we still hearing him?  

He was announcing that he had come to restore vibrance and equity to our world, and inviting us to participate.  He was announcing that he was going to start where his attention and love and transformative power were needed most.  If we are his followers, then we have the same mission.  In our baptism we have received the Holy Spirit, too.  If we stand with Jesus then we, too, should say, the Spirit of the Most High is upon me.  Upon us. God has anointed us to proclaim good news to those who are poor.  God is sending us to preach liberation to those who are captives and recovery of sight to those who are blind. God is calling us to liberate those who are oppressed.  God is calling us to announce that now is the time of God’s favor; the kin-dom of God, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness is within reach.

I think it’s fair to say that the current political climate makes our job more difficult. The restorative love of Christ is needed in so many places and so many ways.  

It may not look like it, but now is the time of God’s favor.  Now is the time to change the world—and our current circumstances simply illustrate just how desperately and thoroughly the world needs to be changed.  Now is the time for love to be liberally applied in a culture that has been stewing in anger, division and outright hate.  Love is the antidote.  Now is the time for us to love the world and our nation with patience and kindness.  Now is the time for us to love without arrogance or rudeness or irritability or hidden self-serving agendas.  Now is the time for us to speak truth to power in love.  

Now is the time of God’s favor, the time for liberty and justice and fairness for all…starting with those who need it most.

In Your Hearing

Steve Beckham 5 Comments

Luke 4:14-21

I was fortunate to have Dr. Timothy Lull as one of my advisors in seminary.  Tim drilled it into us that, because the things Martin Luther did and said in his ministry were always in response to real world situations—a  habit Luther learned from Jesus who was also always addressing real world situations—our ministry, and especially our preaching, should always speak to what is really happening in the world and in the Church.  Tim had a saying to help us remember this:  The world sets the agenda.

The world sets the agenda.

Well this week the world gave us a very full agenda.  So much agenda that it borders on chaos.  At a time like this, it’s tempting to preach something benign about how much God loves us, then step to the side and wait for this time of transition to pass.  It’s tempting.  But that is not our calling as followers of Jesus.  The world sets the agenda, yes.  But Christ speaks to that agenda.

So here is a not brief enough glance at the agenda the world gave us this week.

Monday was Martin Luther King Day.  It’s always inspiring to take time to remember Dr. King’s work for civil rights and to hear again his prophetic words of vision, hope, liberation and aspiration.  It’s a day to embrace our diversity and see how our differences are gifts that make us stronger as a people and as a nation. It’s a day dedicated to helping us remember our better angels, a day to recommit ourselves to the principle that all persons are created equal and to reaffirm our goal of establishing greater equality and equity in our nation because, as Dr. King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  

Monday was also Inauguration Day and President Trump began his new term in office with a flurry of Executive Orders.  The Washington Post said he “flooded the zone.”  With one order, he declared a state of emergency at our southern border and authorized federal troops to patrol the border.  He initiated new immigration raids and authorized Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to invade churches, schools and other places of sanctuary while searching for undocumented immigrants.  He also shut down the Biden Administration’s asylum program, dashing the hopes of immigrants waiting in line in Mexico for their applications to be legally processed.  

But the President was just getting started, and before the day was out he would have issued a variety of other executive orders to set Project 2025 in motion.  One order ended Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs in all federal institutions.  In another order with the cumbersome title of Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth in the Federal Government he said this: “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.  These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” 

On Tuesday, the President attended the National Prayer Service at Washington National Cathedral.  It was a beautiful interfaith worship service with speakers from several different faith traditions culminating in a thoughtful and grace-filled sermon by Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde.  In that sermon, she talked about our need for true unity.  “Unity,” she said, “is a way of being with one another that encompasses and respects our differences, that teaches us to hold multiple perspectives and life experiences as valid and worthy of respect.  That enables us in our communities and in the halls of power to genuinely care for one another.  Even when we disagree.”  

It was a carefully crafted sermon, respectful, powerful, and deeply rooted in the teaching and ministry of Jesus.  This was especially true at the end of the sermon when she addressed the President directly saying, “Let me make one final plea. Mr. President.

“Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. And we’re scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families – some who fear for their lives. And the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants, and work the night shifts in hospitals, they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues … and temples.

“I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.

“Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being; to speak the truth to one another in love. and walk humbly with each other and our God. For the good of all people in this nation and the world.”

Mr. Trump and Vice President Vance were clearly not pleased with Bishop Budde’s sermon, and . . .  

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump demanded an apology from Bishop Budde.  When Time Magazine asked her about the president’s demand for an apology, she said bluntly, “I’m not going to apologize for asking for mercy for others.”

Also on Wednesday, our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Bishops of Region 1 issued a joint statement in response to the President’s executive orders on immigration.  In that statement they said, “We believe that every human being, regardless of their country of origin or legal status, is created in the image of God and has inherent dignity and worth. This foundational truth compels us to approach the issue of immigration with compassion and a commitment to the common good.  Scripture repeatedly instructs us to love our neighbor and show the stranger hospitality. God commands the people of Israel, “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34). . .The Lutheran tradition emphasizes both mercy and justice. Justice requires everyone, including immigrants, to be treated fairly and equitably. While upholding the rule of law is important, it must not be done in ways that dehumanize or exploit vulnerable people.”  They had a great deal more to say and I invite you to look online for their full statement.

On Thursday, while unhappy MAGA extremists continued to demonize and even threaten Bishop Budde, another Episcopal priest, closer to home, brought a measure of grace and healing to those who have lost so much in our recent wildfires.  Father Mel Soriano performed a Blessing of the Ashes in Altadena at the site of the home he and his husband, Stephen had lost to the Eaton fire.  Raising his hands over the ruins of his neighborhood he said, “Let love rise once again from these ashes. Make the bonds of family and community stronger than ever. Though the fire has consumed 

businesses, worship spaces, parks, and homes, the fire has not taken away hope. The fire has not taken away kindness. The fire has not taken away your presence among us. For we know you are here beside us on this Camino. We entrust our future into your hands, knowing that you make all things new. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.”  

On Friday, the Church responded to the world’s agenda once again as the ELCA bishops of Region 2 issued a joint statement addressing Mr. Trump’s Executive Order on sexuality.  Their statement was prefaced by Galatians 3:28: In Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female, for in Christ you are all one.  “Dear friends in Christ,” they wrote, “This week the President of the United States declared there are only two genders: male and female. We write today to say something which we would not think needed to be said: The president does not get to dictate human gender classification. The law does not get to dictate gender classification. Even the apostle Paul, almost two thousand years ago, knew that human-imposed definitions, such as ethnicity, social class, oppressor’s titles or gender were not valid. Because of the unifying work of Jesus Christ, all human labels no longer apply.”  The Bishops’ statement had much more to say including selected quotes from the ELCA social statement on human sexuality.  Again, I encourage you to find their statement online and read it for yourself.

And now, here we are on Sunday, and I think it’s God’s own sense of serendipity, or maybe God’s own sense of humor, that the week that began with edicts restricting the language of sex and gender should end, and a new week begin, on Reconciling in Christ Sunday, the Sunday when we celebrate Christ’s wide, inclusive love of Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer persons and the wonderful ways they enrich the Church.  I think it’s also the work of the Holy Spirit that while last week began with an unrestrained rollout of the President’s Project 2025 agenda, this week begins with Jesus announcing his agenda as recorded in our gospel text in Luke.

“When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

         “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

                  because he has anointed me

                           to bring good news to the poor.

         He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives[1]

                  and recovery of sight to the blind,

                           to set free those who are oppressed[2],

         to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

The poor receive good news.  Prisoners of war and prisoners of circumstances are released.  People’s blinders are removed to open up their vision and understanding.  People in dire circumstances are set free.  Now is the time.

After he read this passage from Isaiah, Jesus rolled up the scroll.  Luke tells us that “the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him” when he said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  

Fulfilled in your hearing.  What an interesting phrase.  The Greek actually says in your ears.  Is Jesus telling them that he is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s messianic prophesy?  It’s usually understood that way.  But could he also be telling them—telling us—that this is our mission, our agenda, too?   

Christ’s agenda is our agenda.  His mission has come to us as the body of Christ. The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, given to us in our baptism.  The Lord has anointed us to create a world, a culture that is good news for the poor.  The Lord has anointed us to liberate those who are held captive by all kinds of circumstances in all kinds of bondage.  The Lord has anointed us to open the eyes of those who can’t see the truth or those who have lost their vision of a better, more hopeful world and more joyful life, those whose vision is distorted by others who filter what they see through biased lenses.  The Lord has anointed us to set people free from dire circumstances and oppressive language and systems that don’t want to allow them to be their true selves.  Today.  Now is the acceptable time.  The right time.

The world is setting the agenda.  It’s trying to steamroll people into rigid conformity.  Personally, I don’t find that very compatible with the agenda of Jesus. 

So, which agenda will you choose?  Which agenda will be fulfilled in our hearing  . . . in Jesus’ name?

[1] αἰχμαλώτοις – the word specifically refers to prisoners of war or political prisoners

[2] τεθραυσμένους– literally ‘those who are choked,’ persons in dire circumstances or living under oppressive foreign rule