Category Thoughts Along the Way

Thoughts, musings, opinions and a general sorting out of sorts.

A People Possessed

Steve Beckham 5 Comments

Luke 8:26-39; Mark 5:1-10

So, one day Jesus decided to take his disciples on a little trip across the lake.  Why?  Because that’s where the Gentiles and Hellenized Jews lived—you know, those “other” people—and Jesus wanted them to know about the kingdom of God, too.  He wanted his disciples to understand that the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness is not just for Judeans and Galileans.  It’s for everyone.  So they set out across the lake. But no sooner had their boat touched the shore than they were accosted by a naked demon-possessed man who apparently already knew who Jesus was.  “When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, shouting, ‘What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?  I beg you, do not torment me.’”  

Just to be clear, there is no record of Jesus ever tormenting anyone, although he has been known to make people uncomfortable with very pointed questions—the kind of questions that can make your soul itch.  So maybe that’s what the demoniac was afraid of.

Jesus paused the exorcism and asked the demon his name.  “Legion,” said the man, “for many demons had entered him.”

Legion.    In a Jewish story that was written in Greek, that Latin word sticks out like a bowling ball on a tennis court.  Legion.  It had only one meaning in their world at that time—a  division of Roman soldiers.  And that gives us a clue that, while this is an exorcism story and a miracle story, it is also a political story—a story about how the oppressive practices of the Roman occupation drove this poor man insane and caused his community to live under a cloud of fear.  

Living under a system where the Romans and the local nobility and the wealthy got the first and the best and the most of everything and got richer on the backs of the poor people who did all the work and took all the risks was more than this poor soul could take.  He didn’t dare to speak out against the multiple injustices that shadowed their daily life because doing so would bring swift and brutal punishment from the soldiers who patrolled the streets, punishment that would be directed not only at him but also at his neighbors.  With no safe outlet for his rage and his pain, he turned them inward on himself.

The late Paul Hollenbach put it this way: “The tension between his hatred for his oppressors and the necessity to repress this hatred in order to avoid dire recrimination drove him mad. He retreated to an inner world where he could symbolically resist Roman domination.”  By casting out the demon, said Hollenbach, Jesus “brought the man’s and the neighborhood’s hatred of the Romans out into the open, where the result could be disaster for the community.”[1]

This is not just a story about how Jesus brought peace to a tormented man in ancient times, it is also very much a story for us in our time.   In an editorial remembrance of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark who were killed last week in a political assassination, ELCA pastor and author Angela Decker wrote, “American democracy, borne in slavery, enriched in colonialism and genocide, tested in ill-advised overseas wars, is now writhing and twisting, beset by internal illness and self-inflicted wounds.”[2]

If that assessment seems too harsh, consider these events from just this month:

  • On June 8, disregarding the authority and advice of Governor Newsome and Mayor Bass, President Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell “riots” which were, in reality, mostly peaceful protests against the administration’s continuing raids on undocumented immigrants by Immigration and Customs officers. On June 10, the president deployed 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles in violation of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution and the Posse Comitatus Act which forbids the use of the military for domestic law enforcement.  On June 17, he deployed an additional 2,000 National Guard troops.  According to The Guardian, these troops “have told friends and family members they are deeply unhappy about the assignment and worry their only meaningful role will be as pawns in a political battle they do not want to join.”[3]
  • On June 10, New Jersey Congresswoman LaMonica McIver was arrested and indicted for interfering with ICE officers who were arresting Newark Mayor Ras Baraka outside a federal immigration detention facility in her state.  Both Congresswoman McIver and Mayor Baraka were there as part of to their official duties.
  • On June 13, United States Senator Alex Padilla was wrestled to the floor and handcuffed by security officers when he tried to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question at her press conference.
  • On June 17, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is also a candidate for mayor, was arrested by ICE agents at a Manhattan immigration court while escorting a defendant out of the courtroom.  He had come to the court in an effort to observe hearings and promote legal services for immigrants.
  • On June 14, Flag Day, Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were shot and killed by a man posing as a police officer.  Their assailant then drove to the home of State Senator John Hoffman and shot him and his wife, Yvette.  Fortunately, they survived.  Later that same day, the president would watch a poorly attended military parade while more than five million people attended No Kings protests all across the country to protest the policies of his administration.
  • June 12 marked the 9th anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub mass shooting in Orlando, Florida in which 49 people were killed and another 68 were injured.
  • June 17 was the 10th anniversary of the racially motivated killing of 9 people who were attending a Bible study at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.  
  • In a related note, as of June 20, there have been 37 mass shootings in the US this month alone, bringing the total to 199 so far for the year.

Now add on to all of that the rising international tensions which threaten to involve us, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine and the increasingly violent conflict between Israel and Iran—which as of yesterday afternoon with the bombing of Iran ordered by President Trump now actually does involve us—and  it’s no wonder that politics is having a profoundly negative effect on our collective sense of well-being and our understanding of who we are as a people. 

According to the American Psychological Association, political polarization and a seemingly endless series of national crises have become a significant source of stress for the American people and that stress is taking its toll.  Seventy-seven percent, nearly 8 in 10 adults, report that worrying about the future of our country has become a serious source of anxiety causing symptoms that range from insomnia to depression.  Forty-one percent, nearly 2 in 5 adults, have considered moving to a different country.   

As I read the Gospel for this week with all these things echoing in my heart, I couldn’t help but think that we, the good old US of A, we are the demon-possessed man. We are the man made crazy by fears and anxieties and bigotry and scapegoating.  We are the man howling among the tombs and battering ourselves with blind rage and unreasoned hatreds.

We are the man with a hopelessly divided mind, made bipolar and schizophrenic by a cacophony of opposing inner voices—entrenched political parties with no common ground—conservatives vs. liberals and ne’er the twain shall meet even in the cause of common sense, putting our party identity and our ideology ahead of everything else that’s supposed to define us, making even our faith subservient to our chosen place on the ideological spectrum. 

We are so blinded by the ideological lenses we wear that we see only what we want to see. And since our biases rarely completely align with or truly resonate with the Gospel, our cognitive dissonance creates the first and most stubborn degree of our madness.

Oh, we have our moments of clarity.  But then the rage wells up in us and we explode in violence.

For most of us the violence doesn’t go beyond rhetoric and posturing, but words and attitude can open the door for those who would turn it into horribly tangible violence, death and destruction.

Even among the most enlightened among us, our suppressed  racism, or our discomfort with sexualities that are different from our own, or our anxieties about other religions—all these things creep out in unguarded words or microaggressions, or, most often, simply in awkward silence—a failure to speak, a silence which gives permission to the violence that is always waiting to happen.  We breed the craziness.

We cloak our prejudices in our religions or our patriotism. We project our own disquiet, our own fears and anxieties and hatred onto the most vulnerable and marginalized, scapegoating them with some reasonable sounding rationale to support our bigotry and give us permission to treat them horribly.  We are so blinded by our own warped and fearful reasoning that we can’t see children of God standing right in front of us—especially if the color of their skin or their language or their religion or their sexuality isn’t the same as ours.

We are caught in an epic struggle between love and hate, a struggle that is almost entirely of our own making.

Can you see that if you’re not actively and passionately on the side of love then you are at least passively on the side of hate? 

Can you see that if you are not actively generating the transformational light of cultural metanoia—a radical change of heart and mind—then you are passively brooding in a moonless night of cultural assumptions?

And can you see that we are not just the bedeviled man raving among the tombs?  We are also the craven townspeople afraid of our own shadows, afraid to stand against the madness even as we recognize the insanity of our own inconsistencies.   We penalize the voices that cry out against injustice.  We lock them up and bind them with chains, both real and metaphorical, even though we know, deep down, that silencing them will not bring us peace.

And even when God works a miracle and restores one of us to our senses we respond with more anxiety because that is just so different from our usual experience, and because anxiety has become our go-to reaction for almost everything.

Can we find a way out of all this madness?

Can we learn how to put aside our politics, our ideologies, our biases and prejudices?  Can we learn how to silence the less savory internal voices of our childhood, our inclination for self-protection, our fear of the “other,” our anxiety about a constantly changing world—can we put aside our own demons long enough to see the person in front of us as someone who God deeply loves and cares for?

Can we learn to see each other the way Jesus sees us? 

Instead of a woman with an unsavory reputation, can we learn to see a daughter of God who has been beaten down by the world and had to make desperate choices in order to survive?  Instead of an unhoused nutjob venting his rage on the corner or among the tombs can we learn to see a son of God bedeviled and enslaved by the legion insanity and heartlessness of the world around him?

Can we learn to see that in Christ we are all children of God, that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, gay or straight or trans or bi—no documented or undocumented?   No us or them?

Can you see that we are all going to have to learn to see differently?

No, we can’t afford to be stupid. No we can’t afford to be blind to real threats.  But can you see that first we are going to have to learn to recognize and deal with the real threats that arise from our own hearts and minds and souls?

Can we learn how to stop listening to all the voices that divide us and pit us against each other? Can we find the heart to switch off the news channels and radio voices and web feeds and political voices that want to tell us how awful or dangerous those other people are, who want to tell us that “they” are not the real “us”?

Can all of us, each of us, muster enough humility to have at least one “come to Jesus” moment so he can remove the lenses of our preconceptions and cast our demons into the sea of God’s love?

Can you see that the only way out of our madness is for us to learn to love our neighbors with the love of Christ?  Can you see that the love exemplified and perpetually renewed by Jesus—whether you know that’s where it comes from or not—is our only hope of ever being able to sit down with each other calmly and in our right minds?

If we can learn to see each other the way Jesus sees us, then maybe we can live to see the promise of Isaiah 32 fulfilled:

Then everyone who has eyes will be able to see the truth,

                  and everyone who has ears will be able to hear it.

         Even the hotheads will be full of sense and understanding.

                  Those who stammer will speak out plainly.

         In that day ungodly fools will not be heroes.

                  Scoundrels will not be respected.[4]

Hasten the Day, Lord Jesus.

[1] Hollenbach, P.; Jesus, Demoniacs, and Public Authorities; 1981, JAAR, p. 573; quoted in Meyers, Ched; Binding the Strong Man, p. 192

[2] Minnesota Star Tribune, June 19, 2025

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/12/los-angeles-national-guard-troops-marines-morale

[4] Isaiah 32:3-5, Contemporary English Version

The Big Fish of Civil Disobedience

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

John 21:1-19

The Gospel of John comes to a very satisfying conclusion at the end of Chapter 20.  In that chapter, the resurrected Jesus encounters Mary Magdalene by the empty tomb.   In the evening of that same day he appears to the disciples who were huddling in fear in the upper room.  Jesus greets them with a benediction of peace and breathes on them to bestow the Holy Spirit which will empower them for the work that lies ahead.  A week after that, he appears to Thomas to address his doubts.  The final words of chapter 20 feel like a conclusion:  “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.  But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” 

The end. 

Except it’s not.

Just as you’re about to close the book, the narrator starts up again in chapter 21 saying,  “After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he showed himself in this way.”  And what comes next is a fishing story.  Which is a little strange since fishing is not mentioned even once anywhere else in the entire Gospel of John.  

The final chapter of John, chapter 21, is a bit odd in a number of ways.  There is a general consensus among scholars that this chapter was added to the gospel at a later date, some say as much as 20 years after the original ending.  Since John was the last of the gospels, most likely written sometime around 90 CE depending on who you ask, that would mean that this epilogue was written sometime around 110 CE or thereabout. 

This epilogue, this fishing story, is not a story meant to inspire evangelism, although it has often been preached that way.  It’s not a story meant to affirm and reinforce the bodily resurrection of Jesus, although it has often been preached that way, too.  This is a story about civil disobedience.

So what was going on in the world and in the communities of Jesus people around that time that made it feel necessary to add this chapter?   And why does this chapter take them so suddenly back to Galilee?  And why are they going fishing?

To answer these questions, we need to revisit a little bit of history.

Jesus began his ministry in Galilee and that’s where he called his first disciples.  The writer of John seems to assume that we already know that Peter and Andrew and James and John were fishermen who fished in the Sea of Galilee before meeting Jesus.  John assumes we already know the story of how they dropped their nets and left their boats when Jesus walked by and said, “Follow me and I will teach you to fish for people.”  But if we didn’t know those stories from Matthew, Mark and Luke, we would not learn them from John because John’s gospel hasn’t been at all interested in fishing.  Until now.  In the epilogue.

Fishing was an important industry in the empire and it was heavily controlled.[1]  By law, the emperor owned every body of water in the empire and all the fish in those waters. Every last one of them.  It was illegal to fish without a license and those licenses were expensive.  Most fishing was done by family cooperatives who pooled their money to buy the license and the boats and nets.  You could make a living but you wouldn’t get rich because about 40% of the catch went for taxes and fees.  And you were probably making payments on the boat, too.  After the fish were caught they would be carted or carried by boat to a processing center where the fish would be salted and dried or pickled, except for the large fish.  I’ll come back to the large fish in a moment. 

The most important processing center on the Sea of Galilee was just down the road from Capernaum in the town of Tarichaea.  The Hebrew name for that town was Magdala Nunayya, which means Tower of Fish.  Just a side note here: Magdalameans tower, so Mary Magdalene means Mary the Tower, which tells us something about her status among the apostles.  Herod Antipas wanted to curry favor with the emperor Tiberias, so in the year 18 CE he established a city three and a half miles away from Tarichaea which he named Tiberias in honor of the emperor.  

Herod built piers and fish processing facilities then invited people from all over the empire to come live in Tiberias and work in its fishing industry.  Gentile pagans flocked to the town looking for employment on the Sea of Galilee which these newcomers now called the Sea of Tiberias.  Almost overnight the Jewish family coop fishing businesses that had sustained people like Peter and Andrew and James and John found themselves in stiff competition with state-sponsored foreign fishermen from all over the empire, and the wealthy fish-processing town of Tarichaea/Magdala Nunayya began rapidly losing money to Herod’s processing plants in the city of Tiberias.  

One of the consequences of all this was that opposition to Roman occupation and Herod’s administrative oversight began to intensify in Galilee, and Tarichaea became a hotbed of resistance. Eventually, that resistance became a revolt and a full-blown war.

In the year 70, the Roman general Titus completely leveled Tarichaea.  The Galilean fishing industry would have been completely destroyed, but the people of the city of Tiberias took an oath of loyalty to the emperor, so they were allowed to continue catching and processing fish in the Sea of Tiberias.  That same year, Titus sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple but the resistance to Rome’s heavy-handed power never entirely melted away.  The fishing community of Galilee continued to harbor a core of that resistance that core of the resistance movement.

All of this is in the background of Chapter 21, this epilogue to the Gospel of John.  This chapter was written about 80 years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and for most of those 80 years Rome had been at war with the Jews which meant they were also at war with the Christians because as far as Rome was concerned, the Christians were just another Jewish sect, a sect which the Roman Senate had declared to be an “illegal superstition.”  That declaration opened the door for persecution of Christians under Nero and Domitian and later emperors.  

So back to the original question: what was going on in the world and in the communities of Jesus people around that time that made it feel necessary to add this chapter?   In the year 112, Pliny the Younger who was serving as governor of Bithynia and Pontus wrote to Trajan, the emperor, and asked, “I have some people who have been accused of being Christians.  What do you want me to do with them?”   Trajan wrote back and said, “Well, don’t go hunting for them, but if someone is accused of being a Christian, just ask them to renounce their faith, take an oath of loyalty to the Emperor, and offer sacrifices to the gods of Rome.  If they do that, let them go.  If not, execute them.”  

This was not an easy time to be devoted to Jesus—not that it had ever been easy.  But now, if a neighbor publicly accused you of being a Christian you had a very hard choice to make.  On top of that, the seemingly endless war that Rome was waging on Jews who showed the least bit of activism kept popping up in hot spots, and as far as Rome was concerned Christians were just another kind of Jews, which, to be fair, was often true since many Christians were Jews who followed Jesus.  On top of all that, these early Jesus people had expected Christ to return at any minute to overthrow the Empire of Rome and replace it with the kingdom of God, but that had not happened yet.  The original Apostles were all gone to their reward and the People of the Way were losing hope and direction.  What do we do?  How do we continue?  How do we live in the life-giving Way of Jesus in the face of an oppressive and dehumanizing Empire?

Chapter 21 acknowledges the presence of the empire right away.   After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias.  Only the Gospel of John refers to the Sea of Galilee as the Sea of Tiberias.  That name is used nowhere else in the New Testament.  That’s the empire’s name for this body of water.  It’s a reminder that the Emperor claims ownership of this sea which plays such a large role in the story of our faith.  The emperor is in the story.  But the writer of this chapter is telling us right from the top that even where the empire claims sovereignty, Jesus shows up to challenge that claim with a quiet but firm counter claim.   

“Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.”  This naming of the disciples is a roll call of the companions of Jesus who established Christ-following communities throughout the empire.  This is a reminder to all those followers of Jesus and his apostles that we are all in the same boat even if the empire claims to own the sea.  

So they go fishing all night.  But they don’t catch anything.  Frustrating. Disheartening.  And doesn’t life in the church feel just like that sometimes.  You do everything you know how to do and you get bupkis. 

And that’s when they spot Jesus standing on the beach, waiting for them.  They don’t recognize him right away.  People usually don’t recognize the risen Christ right away. The disciples don’t recognize him until they follow his instructions, drop their net on the right side of the boat and then haul in so many fish that they can’t even lift the net into the boat.  That’s when they recognize him.  

When they got to the beach they found Jesus cooking some fish and bread over a charcoal fire and he invited them to breakfast.  It’s easy to go right past that, but it’s important not to miss it.  Jesus is already cooking a fish.  Jesus already has one of the emperor’s fish.  Jesus is engaged in an act of civil disobedience.  And he’s about to make it an even bigger act of civil disobedience.  “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught,” he tells them.  So Simon Peter hauled the net ashore and found it was full of large fish.  A hundred fifty-three large fish.  

A hundred fifty-three fish is impressive.  But the thing that would have been really impressive to the first people who read or heard this story was that they were large fish.  Regular fish were sent to the processor to be processed.  Large fish, however, were wrapped and put on ice and shipped off for the tables of the wealthy and nobility and even for the emperor, himself.  Large fish, the emperor’s large fish, were not for consumption by common fishermen on the beach.  But Jesus has other ideas.  “Bring me some of the fish you have caught and come have breakfast.”

Jesus is making a statement.  The sea does not belong to the emperor.  The sea belongs to God.  The fish do not belong to the emperor.  The fish belong to all God’s people.  In God’s economy the first and biggest and best of the world’s abundance does not automatically go to the wealthy and powerful. In God’s economy the abundant provision of the earth is for everyone. Jesus appropriates the emperor’s fish, large fish fit for the emperor’s own table, and creates a feast for his disciples, for the people who did the hard work of fishing. 

After a nice reunion breakfast of roasted fish and bread, Jesus turned to Simon Peter and said, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”  The word “these” makes Jesus’ question hauntingly ambiguous.  Does he mean more than these friends of ours, these other disciples?  Does he mean “these things?”—do you love me more than your boats and your nets and your life as a fisherman?  What are “these”?  Maybe it’s all of the above.

Jesus asks Peter this “do you love me” question three times, and in the Greek text there is an interesting play on words using two different words for love, agape and phileo.  Jesus asks Peter if he loves him with an agape love, the decisional, self-sacrificing love that puts the needs of the beloved first.  Peter responds with phileo,the deep bond of brotherly love and friendship.  Both words mean love and scholars note that they were often used interchangeably, but they’re not exactly synonyms and subtle nuances in meaning can flavor a conversation the way subtle differences in spices can change the flavor of a stew.  There is tension in this conversation between Peter and Jesus, and that tension is emphasized by the subtle differences in the words each one uses for love.

Jesus repeats the question a second time and Peter repeats his answer.  But the third time, Jesus asks the question differently, using the word for love that Peter has been using:  “Simon son of John, do you love me like a brother?”  That stings.  Peter feels hurt, and you can feel the heat when he says, “Lord, you know everything.  You know that I love you.”  

This tense dialogue with Peter, with its play between agape and phileo, echoes a moment from the final teaching Jesus shared with his disciples on the night he was betrayed.   As he sat at the table relaying his parting thoughts he said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another (agape) as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (philon).  You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (John 15:12-14)  

That was the same night when Peter denied Jesus three times.  Now, Jesus asks Peter three times to affirm his love and friendship, and three times he commands Peter to lead and care for those who will follow in the Way of Christ.  Feed my lambs.  Shepherd my sheep.  Feed my sheep.  With these words, Jesus reinstates Peter as a disciple.

Jesus wasn’t just speaking to Peter.  Jesus was speaking to all his followers in every age.

Do you love me?  Feed my lambs.  Shepherd my sheep.  Take care of people.  Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God.  Help the helpless and stand with the hopeless.  Protect the vulnerable.  Feed the hungry.  Protest injustice.  Embrace diversity, equity and inclusion, even if it breaks the rules of empire.  

Follow me.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.  The risen Jesus speaks these words to Peter as both a challenge and an invitation.   That challenge and invitation extends to anyone willing to follow Christ and be a disciple of the Way.  That challenge and invitation extends to you and to me.  And sometimes the abundant life in Christ and the feast of love and joy requires a little civil disobedience. 

[1] Hanson, K.C., The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition; Biblical Theology Bulletin 27 (1997), 99-111.  

In, With, and Under

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

It’s a simple thing.  You take a bit of bread and a sip of wine.  But it’s not just bread and wine.  It is nutrition for the soul where spirit and matter intersect.  Christ is in the bread.  Christ is in the wine. You are taking Christ into yourself.  The body of Christ becomes your body and you become part of the body of Christ. The blood of Christ becomes your blood and your blood flows through the body of Christ. You are being empowered and equipped to be Christ’s hands and feet and eyes and ears, to speak Christ’s love and forgiveness and grace.  In that bit of bread and taste of wine you are united as one with all the others who have shared in this sacrament in every age. In that bit of bread and that taste of wine you are drawn back to that last supper that Jesus shared with his disciples.  In that bit of bread and taste of wine you are also being drawn into tomorrow.  

This is the eucharist, literally “the good gift,” the sacrament of communion.  This is the sacrament that signifies our unity as followers of Jesus.  And ironically, sadly, it has been the pivot point of many of Christianity’s most intense  disagreements. 

Over the centuries church leaders and theologians have excommunicated each other over their different understandings of just exactly how Jesus is present or if Jesus is present in that bit of bread and taste of wine.  Ulrich Zwingli, the Swiss reformer said that Christ isn’t really present.  The sacrament, he said, is only a “remembrance.”  Martin Luther insisted that Christ truly is present “in, with, and under” the bread and the wine.  Legend says he was so adamant about this that while arguing with Zwingli he carved it into a table top: “corpus meum est”—“this is my body.”   Luther and Zwingli excommunicated each other.  And the Pope excommunicated them both.  Calvin later said that Christ is present, but only spiritually.  No one was quite sure what to make of that.

And I think all of this makes Jesus weep.

One of the very first social boundaries that Jesus crossed was the boundary of table fellowship. The Pharisees criticized him roundly for it.  In their day, who you ate with was important. Table fellowship determined your social status.  It had implications beyond that.  In a culture where the ideas of “clean” and “unclean” or “acceptable” and “unacceptable” were important social constructs that could have serious implications for how your life was going to go,  who you shared a table with and who invited you to their table was a huge thing.  Dining with the right people could open doors and make your reputation.  Dining with the wrong people could close those doors and besmirch your name even if you had done nothing wrong.  So when the Pharisees talk about Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners, it’s not a compliment; it’s an accusation.  But Jesus did it to make a point.  In the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness, everyone is welcome at the table.  In the kingdom of God everyone is “acceptable.”  Everyone.

On the night he was betrayed, even Judas was at the table.  Even his betrayer received the bread and wine.  Levi the tax collector sat beside Simon the Zealot.  Simon Peter the Galilean fisherman sat beside Thomas the builder.  They’re not mentioned by name, but it’s probably safe to assume that Mary Magdalene was there, and Joanna, and Mary, his mother.  The point is, there were people gathered around that table who might not have been acceptable in the “polite” company of the Pharisees, or maybe even in each other’s company if Jesus wasn’t there as their host.

When Jesus breaks the bread and begins to pass it around the table, I can’t help but wonder if he isn’t looking at the faces of all his friends as he says, “this is my body.”   Is he, maybe, thinking, “You—this eclectic group who would never in a million years have come together on your own, you all together, each of whom would be an outcast somewhere—you, this companionship—this is my body.  You people sharing this bread are the ones who will carry on my Christ-ness, my Christ presence in the world.  Take me into yourselves the way you take in the bread and the wine.  Take in my teaching, my way of being, my love, my spirit, my grace, my unity with God, my way of seeing—swallow me whole so you can be my hands and feet and voice, so I will still be present in the world.”

True faith is a continuing metanoia and metamorphosis, and God gives us examples in everyday life.  Seed is buried in the earth then sprouts up green to stand in the sun and ripen with heads of grain which are crushed and ground.  They change in form to become flour, which changes in form again when bound with water then changes in form yet again when baked to become bread.  

We come to the Way of Jesus as individuals.  As we take up the work of Christ we are changed in form.  Our habits, impulses and priorities change.  We are infused with the Holy Spirit. We are bound together in the water of baptism, then baked into a community through life and service together. 

This is my body.  For you.

That same night, we’re told in John’s gospel,  Jesus had washed their feet.  “You call me Teacher and Master,” he said.  “And you’re right, I am.  But if I, your Master and Teacher have washed your feet, you should wash one another’s feet.  And in case you’re a little slow on the uptake, what I’ve just done was to give you an example.  I want you to serve each other.  More than that, I want you to love each other.  I’m giving you a new commandment: you must love one another just as I have loved you.  That’s how people will know you’re my disciples—if you have love for one another.”

And these things, too, are in that bit of bread and that sip of wine.  

The call to serve is there—in, with and under the bread and the wine.   Love is there—in, with and under the bread and the wine.  Grace and forgiveness are there—in, with and under the bread and the wine. The Word of Creation is there—in, with and under the bread and the wine.  

Christ is there—in, with, and under the bread and wine—the way Christ is present in all of Creation.

Life in all its fullness is there in a bit of bread and a taste of wine if you open your heart and mind to take it in.

Unresolved Melody

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

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

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.

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