Category Thoughts Along the Way

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

On the Feast of the Epiphany

Steve Beckham 9 Comments

I sat down under the food court canopy 

at the Big Box store

and paused before eating

the Big Box hotdog

which everyone agrees is the best of all hotdogs.

I paused to ask that it would be blessed to my body,

blessed and not cursed.

I paused to recall the Day of Diagnosis,

to think through once again the fat portfolio

of foods and ingredients I must no longer ingest,

to recite to myself the litany of

common, ordinary, everyday, ingredients

in all their varied and marvelous, delicious, 

featured or hidden forms

that my body reacts to in dizzying ways.

I paused to speculate that I might be taking a risk

by biting into this Big Box hotdog.

I paused to remember other recent 

times when I had crossed the line

for I am allowed some small indulgences 

once in a while,  

if I do not eat or drink too much,

if I first take the elixir that dulls the reaction,

if I use it sparingly,

only once in awhile 

on a special occasion,

such as a Feast Day.

I was prepared.

And so was the hotdog:

one stripe of deli mustard, one stripe of ketchup,

a generous spill of perfectly cubed sweet onion,

all nested warm and waiting in my hands,

an elegantly beautiful and aromatic still life.

The sausage stretched  

beyond the snug embrace of its bun

and as the skin snapped 

with the pressure of my teeth in that first small bite

and flavors washed across my tongue

my eyes were opened

and I could taste and see the goodness

and in the goodness was remembrance.

I remembered my grandfather’s wheat fields in Kansas.

I remembered driving all night through the desert,

to get there in time to help with harvest.

I remembered wondering if the bread

in the sandwiches my mom packed in my lunch for school

maybe, just maybe, had some small taste of wheat from our farm.

I remembered when the corral by the barn was turned into a turkey pen. 

I remembered the multitude of those fearsome beasts

—have you seen them up close when you’re only 4?—

milling about in angry close quarters

and me being sternly but unnecessarily warned

to not get too close.

I remember thinking my grandfather, 

who I knew as a quiet and gentle man,

must also have a fearsome side

because those turkeys would give him 

a wide circle of respect when he waded into their midst.

And I remembered thinking at the next Thanksgiving

as Mom put our turkey in the oven,

that I hoped it was the big nasty gray one that had stalked me along the fence.

And I remembered all the early morning milking

on my other grandfather’s dairy farm in Arkansas,

in the years before he and my uncle switched to beef cattle.

I remembered them hooking up the machines in the pre-dawn cold

to the cows that would take them

and milking the others by hand.

I remembered churning butter on the porch

from the cream we had skimmed that morning,

then later picking fresh sweet corn, tomatoes, okra and string beans.

I remembered feeling rooted to the land because everything on the table 

came from the fields and garden around us.

And mindful of the flavors in my mouth I remembered other sacred meals.

I remembered eating an almost inedible chicken in the jungle in Colombia,

barely sheltered from the rain in a poor couple’s lean-to.

I remembered finding the will to be honestly grateful 

for this god-awful chicken because to them it was the richest

gift of gratitude they could bestow.  And I remembered 

feeling so unworthy of that gratitude because we had given them

so little.  Some vitamins.  Some antibiotics.  A few sutures.  Some sulfa powder.

A prayer.  A little hope.

But the wound in the man’s leg had healed and he could work again.

So we were invited to share in a meal of their one and only chicken.

I remembered eating delicious, mysterious, robust greens in Tanzania,

greens cooked in oil, with a side of ubiquitous peanut butter and some bits of meat.  

I remembered how the women of the clinic and the village

had worked for hours to prepare the meal, 

how it was delicious and filling, 

how a little went a long way.

I remembered how it seemed

both mysteriously wonderful and not mysterious in the least

that the boisterous crowd of us all fit around one small picnic table

and the whole night was lit by lanterns, starlight and laughter.

And I remembered sharing tortillas and rice and beans

with migrants in Tijuana 

as they told me about the hazards of a life lived on two sides of the border,

of how hard it is to hold family together when your lives 

are laid across borders, of how hard it is 

to work and pay the bills when the work is on one side 

and the family is on the other, 

of how easy it is to end up on the wrong side because of a lapse in paperwork.

I remembered my soul being fed by their sadness and their tenacity

as we shared tortillas and beans and rice.

And I remembered, also in Tijuana, 

my friend the surfer-priest pushing a bowl of mariscos soup away from him 

because he saw a baby shark’s fin in it.

I remember him saying “I made a deal with sharks.  

I don’t eat them and they don’t eat me.”

And I remembered barbecued ribs shared with a brother

as our motorcycles cooled in the shade of giant redwoods.

I remembered the brewpub owner/entrepreneur 

who gave us those ribs the night before and told us 

to save them for the redwoods 

because they would taste better under the trees, 

the same generous man 

who took us into his home for the night

and treated us at his brew pub to the best jambalaya we had ever had,

who, next morning, set us on the road 

with a breakfast of smoked salmon and kale smoothies,

who did all this so graciously and casually 

even though he didn’t know a thing about us

except that we were friends of his friend.

And I remembered 

the overpriced New York airport hamburger split three ways in 1974,

and Cervelle au Beurre Noir in Paris,

and a hundred nights of gourmet meals in Boston,

and freeze-dried meals beside high Sierra lakes,

and Mexican food on the way to Death Valley,

and my Aunt Roberta’s fried chicken and fried okra,

and my Mom’s lutefisk and potatis korv at Christmas,

and my Dad’s prime rib and steak and lobster.

On the Feast of the Epiphany 

Under the food court canopy of the Big Box store

I tasted and I saw

and there was remembrance

of flavors, and places, and persons.

I tasted and I saw the goodness.

I saw that the plastic table under the food court canopy

where I was mindful of each slow bite of my Big Box Hotdog,

this table anchored to its polished concrete floor

was sitting on the same earth as every table

or carpet or blanket or tent floor or towel or spot of ground,

where I have ever been fed.

I saw that my life has been 

one continuous communion

at one great and continuous table

where the foods have been a memorable delight

whose flavors are still fresh on my tongue,

but the true sustenance was in the companions.

O taste and see.  And remember.

I Will Make You Fishers (of/for/on behalf of) People

Steve Beckham 4 Comments

Mark 1:14-20

Note: Yesterday I read a terrific reflection by Diana Butler Bass based on this same text. In that reflection she took the phrase that has typically been translated as “the kingdom of God” and retranslated it as “the commonwealth of God’s mercy and justice.”  This is, I think, by far the best shorthand understanding of what Jesus was describing and what the original Greek text was trying to convey with the phrase basilea tou theou.  So I appropriated it. After reading DBB’s reflection I went back into my own manuscript to change the kingdom of God to the commonwealth of God’s mercy and justice.  

(singing) “I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men.  I will make you fishers of men if you fol-low me.” 

How many of you learned that song in Sunday School oh so many years ago?  It was a good way to remember the story of Jesus calling Peter and Andrew and James and John who just dropped everything and went with Jesus when he invited them to follow him.  Our Sunday School teacher or pastor always made of point of reminding us that we are invited to follow Jesus, too.  

That song and the gospel text come with a promise—the promise that Jesus will make us “fishers of men” if we follow him.  Well, it used to say “men.”  Which was never really accurate since the Greek word in the Mark is anthropon, which really means humans.  Or humanity.  Basically all people in general.  But singing “I will make you fishers of all people in general” takes some of the bounce out of the music.

This happy little song reminded us in a very simple way that Jesus wants us to be “fishing” for people which we usually understood as a kind of recruitment evangelism.  The unstated understanding is that there is supposed to be something really magnetic—one might even say charismatic— about us as persons filled with the Spirit, as people who love Jesus, as people who find joy and comfort and strength and wholeness in our communities of faith— that we are imbued with a grace so graceful that it makes others want to jump into our boat and join the party.  In other words, Jesus was calling us to be the bait that would bring others into the nets of the church, or get them to jump into the boat with us, where they, too, might come to believe in Jesus and be saved.  

But what if we got it wrong?   Or maybe we didn’t get it wrong so much as we misplaced the emphasis.  Or maybe we just failed to fully understand what Jesus was asking of us.

Historically we—and by “we” I mean the Church—we have focused on believing in Jesus and on trying to convince others to believe in Jesus.  And that’s not a bad thing.  Far from it.  But “believe” is a tricky word for us in our time and in our culture.  For us, “believe” is often a head word.  We use it to describe what we think or, sometimes, what we feel.  On Sunday mornings we recite a Creed that restates the important things we believe about God.  But I think that for too much of our history our belief has stayed mostly in our heads.  And in our churches.  We crafted a whole religion around what we believe when what Jesus has been inviting us into is a whole new way of living—a whole new kind of life, a whole new way of being in the world, a whole new way of being human.  And being whole.

Did you notice in the beginning of today’s gospel what Jesus asks people to believe in, what he asks them and us to trust?

“Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’”  (Mark 1:14-15, NRSV)

That’s how the New Revised Standard Version translates it.  But I think Eugene Peterson’s translation in The Message better captures the power and urgency of what Jesus is saying:

Jesus went to Galilee preaching the Message of God: ‘Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message.’”

Change your life and believe the message.  

Jesus calls us to believe that God’s realm, God’s commonwealth of justice and mercy, God’s ethics, God’s way of life… is here.  It’s do-able.  It is in reach.  And how do we get there?  We follow him.  Jesus will lead us into that way of living and being.  Our eyes and hearts and minds are opened to the kingdom of God not by believing certain things about Jesus,  but by following him.

There is only one time in all the Gospels where Jesus asks anyone to believe in him—and even that is open to interpretation and translation.

In John 14:1 after Jesus has told his disciples at the last supper “where I’m going you cannot follow” and Peter objects that he will follow him anywhere, Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God.  Believe also in me.”  But that could also be translated as “Trust God and trust me.”  In fact, Eugene Peterson in The Message Bible translates that passage as “Don’t let this throw you.  You trust God, don’t you?  Trust me.”

Now it’s true that Jesus does say a number of positive things in the gospels, particularly in John, about people who believe in him—or trust him—and the narrative of the Gospel of John talks a lot about believing in Jesus.  But when Jesus, himself, is proclaiming the good news, he is not out there announcing that people should believe in him.

One time in all the gospels he says, “Believe in me.”  Twenty-two times he says, “Follow me.”  Twenty-two times.  The fact is, it’s not until his disciples have been following him for quite a while that they begin to really believe in him as the Son of God, as the Messiah.  

We in the church have tried for so long to persuade people to believe in Jesus. Maybe we should focus more on inviting them to follow Jesus—with us, of course—and trust that belief will come in due time.

Follow me.  Live the way I live.  Learn to see the way I see and think the way I think. And love the way I love.

And as we think about what Jesus is saying here about believing and following, it is important to remember that all this comes at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. This is the gospel written with the Jewish uprising against the Roman Empire clearly in the background.  This is the gospel where Jesus is a nonviolent revolutionary who appropriates the empire’s language to announce his own Good News, his own declaration of victory.  This is where Jesus issues the invitation to enter into a new kind of kingdom. 

When Jesus proclaims that the kingdom of God is in reach, he is not speaking metaphorically.  He is calling for a spiritual transformation, but that is just the beginning because Jesus is also calling for social, political and economic transformation.  The commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy does not operate by the same rules as the empire.

Jesus calls out to these Galilean fishermen and says, “Follow me, and I will make you become (literally) fishers of people.”  The translation here is a little tricky because the preposition is implied.  It could be “I will make you become fishers ofpeople,” or “fishers for people,” or even “fishers on behalf of people.”  But any way you translate it, Jesus is issuing a not-so-subtle invitation to Peter and Andrew and James and John to throw off the yoke of Rome.

In The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition, K.C. Hanson explained that Simon, Andrew, James and John were only semi-independent.  The Galilean fishing industry was very tightly controlled by the Roman Empire.  Caesar owned every body of water in the empire.  Fishing was state-regulated.  Fishermen had to pay a hefty fee to join a syndicate.  Most of what was caught in the Sea of Galilee was dried and exported at a regulated price and heavily taxed, and it was illegal to catch even one fish outside this system.

So how does it sound now… “Follow me and I will make you Fishers for people.”? Especially when you remember that this is in the context of Jesus proclaiming that the Basilea, the commonwealth of God’s mercy and justice is happening now? 

“I will make you Fishers for People.  For your fellow human beings.  Not just for the empire.  Not just for the elite, the wealthy, the powerful, the 1%. 

And of course Jesus uses a fishing metaphor to issue this commanding invitation because he’s talking to fishermen.  

If he was talking to the builders at Sephora what would he have said?  “Follow me and I will teach you to build for the people.”  What would he say to you?  To the artist, “Follow me and paint the vision of God’s realm.”  To the doctor and the nurse and the therapist, “Follow me and heal broken bodies and souls.”  To the educator, “Follow me and help awaken minds and hearts to the wonders of God’s creation and the beauty of what God is doing in the world.”  

Debie Thomas wrote, “To all of us: ‘Follow me and I will make you…” This is a promise to cultivate us, not to sever us from what we love.  It’s a promise rooted in gentleness and respect—not violence and coercion.  It’s a promise that when we dare to let go, the things we relinquish might be returned to us anew, enlivened in ways we couldn’t have imagined on our own.”

Follow me, said Jesus.

Follow me and I will make you the you that you were meant to be

for the good of all God’s people.

Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that this is a miracle story.  These Galilean fishermen don’t drop everything and “immediately” follow Jesus because of their extraordinary courage.  They do it because of who it is that calls them.

Jesus makes it possible for them.  Jesus captivates them with his vision and his presence and his words…and the Holy Spirit.  In the same way Jesus can make it possible for us.

Last week we took time to remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, a man who clearly followed Jesus as he led and inspired others to keep reaching for that better reality called the kingdom of God—the commonwealth of God’s mercy and justice.  In a speech at Riverside Church in New York City, exactly one year before he was assassinated, he said this:

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain . . .Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world.

Maybe it’s time to take it again from the top…

The Good News, the Triumphant Announcement of God:

The wait is over.  The moment is ripe… Time’s up!  The Reign, the Realm, the Kingdom of God, the Dominion of God—the commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy—is within reach.

So change your direction, change your mind, change your life…

And trust that good news.

Believe it.

The Blessing of Ritual and the Ritual of Blessing

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Luke 2:22-49

Welcome to the Sunday of Colliding Traditions!  Today, December 31, is the seventh day of Christmas—seven swans a-swimming—and also the first Sunday of Christmas.  And in the secular calendar it’s New Year’s Eve.

People throughout the world have all kinds of interesting rituals and traditions for welcoming in the new year.  Meri and I have a tradition of eating shrimp on New Year’s Eve.  It seems to work for us, so I was glad to learn that a number of Asian cultures think eating shrimp on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day brings good luck.  Other cultures, however, think eating shrimp brings bad luck because shrimp swim backward—away from the good fortune that’s heading your way.  The same goes for lobster.  

In Ecuador people set fire to effigies at midnight on New Year’s Eve.  These effigies  are stuffed with paper containing brief descriptions of bad situations people want to escape or undesirable things or even photographs of things they would like to be rid of.  And it’s important that the effigy be burned completely or the bad situations will return.  

In the Philippines people try to use as many round things as possible as they celebrate the new year—round food, round clothing, round candies.  The round things represent coins so this ritual is a way to encourage the New Year to bring them greater wealth.

In Denmark people save up old plates all year then hurl them against the front doors of their friends’ houses on New Year’s Eve in a ritual that is supposed to bring good fortune. I have no idea how or why that’s supposed to work.

In Spain people begin to pop grapes into their mouths as the clock begins to strike 12.  The goal is to get 12 grapes into your mouth—one with each chime of the clock—to ensure good luck for every month of the new year.

Buddhists in Japan literally ring in the new year, not with 12 chimes of the clock, but by ringing a bell 108 times.  They believe this ritual banishes all human sin.  In Japan it is also considered good luck to be smiling or laughing as you enter the new year.

In Germany many people enjoy a traditional meal of Silvesterkarpfen (New Year’s Carp) on New Year’s Eve.  It is considered good luck to keep a scale from the carp in your wallet throughout the year to bring wealth and good fortune.  But be careful that the scale doesn’t slip out when you reach for your cash because removing the scale removes the good luck.

In Mexico, Bolivia, Brazil and other parts of Central and South America, the color of your underwear is very important on New Year’s Eve.  Red or pink is for those who hope to find love in the new year.  Yellow or gold ensures prosperity.  Green is for hope and white is for peace.  If you want to really ensure that this charm works, make sure your New Year’s skivvies are brand new.

Rituals and traditions shape us.  Even the odd ones.  Especially the odd ones. They tell us who we are and where we fit in the world.  Joseph Campbell said that in our rituals we enact and participate in our myths, the central and formative stories that shape us as a people. When you participate in a ritual, he said, “your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.” 

“When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.”  Forty days after his birth, Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple in accordance with the rituals and tradition of their people.  Mary came for the rite of purification which required the sacrifice of a lamb or, if the family could not afford a lamb, two turtledoves or young pigeons were offered.  Jesus, as a first-born child, was being presented to be consecrated to God.  Both these rituals were in keeping with Torah, the holy teachings that define what is required of the people of the covenant.  These rituals help define what it means to be Jewish. 

Luke is reminding us here that Jesus was Jewish.  Luke reminds us that the life of Jesus was shaped and enriched from the very beginning by rituals and traditions that were part of the covenant of his people.  He reminds us that Jesus grew up in a house where it was understood that they lived in a special relationship with God and with the people of God, a relationship that came with both blessings and obligations.

In addition to the rite of purification and the rite of dedication which Luke refers to here in passing, Luke also gives us a more specific example of another Jewish tradition, the tradition of blessing.

Luke tells us that about an old man named Simeon who was righteous and devout, and that the Holy Spirit had revealed to Simeon that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.  When Simeon saw Jesus in the temple, he understood that God’s promise to him had been fulfilled.  “Guided by the Spirit,” Simeon took the baby Jesus in his arms and praised God for keeping the promise.

The words Simeon spoke here have been part of my own formative tradition.  We used to say them or sing them in the old King James language at the close of almost every worship service when I was growing up:  “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.”

When I was a boy those words sounded like magic.  Listening to them, repeating them, I began to fall in love with the music and richness and power of language.

Simeon gave thanks to God that he had lived to see God’s salvation with his own eyes.  And as he spoke his thanks, he also spoke words of blessing over the child.  

As he gazed at the baby in his arms he had a vision of the child’s future.  He said that the baby would become a light for revelation to the gentiles, that he would become the glory of Israel.  He told Mary that her son was destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and that he would be a sign that would be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many would be revealed.  Then, as he lifted his eyes from the face of the baby to the face of his mother, he saw something of her future, too.

Frederick Buechner captured this moment in all its tenderness and heartbreak: “What he saw in her face was a long way off, but it was there so plainly he couldn’t pretend. ‘A sword will pierce through your soul, he said.

“He would rather have bitten off his tongue than said it, but in that holy place he felt he had no choice. Then he handed her back the baby and departed in something less than the perfect peace he’d dreamed of all the long years of his waiting.”

Simeon wasn’t the only person to speak a blessing over Jesus that day.  Anna, an aged widow who was also a prophet was also in the temple and when she saw the baby Jesus, “she began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”

Anna and Simeon spoke words of blessing over the baby Jesus.  They looked into the future on his behalf and spoke what they saw for him.  With their words they set a course for him, or at the very least described their hopes for him.

We seem to have lost the tradition of blessing.  We still have the word, but we seldom have the words.  We say “God bless you” or even just “bless you” as if that was the whole thing when it is barely the beginning of a real blessing.  We have lost the art of speaking goodness to and for each other, of using our words to call up goodness and identity and destiny into the present moment and project them into future.   

I wonder what might happen if we began this new year with a blessing.  What kind of healing and wholeness might we bring to the world if we learned to speak our hopes for each other and acknowledge the gifts we see in each other?  

I invite you to try an experiment this New Year.  I invite you to learn how to bless.  I invite you to bless your children, your home, your loved ones and your friends.  I invite you to speak goodness into the world.

So… I’ll go first.  Receive a blessing, a benediction:

As this old year ends, your pains and frustrations will be transformed into wisdom. You will see a way forward with unfinished business. Fear and anxiety will have no hold on you.  Throughout this new year, you will walk in the path of peace and joy.  By your calm presence, you will be a blessing to all around you, and especially to those who are troubled in mind, heart or spirit.  You will shine with the love of Christ and carry with you the peace of God which passes all understanding.  You will walk in the Way of Jesus and speak goodness into the world in his name.

Amen.

Metanoia: The Revolution of Change

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Mark 1:1-8

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

That sounds so simple, straightforward and clear, doesn’t it?  If you just pick up your Bible and read it, there’s nothing shocking here.  Nothing surprising.  It even sounds kind of innocent.

But how would you hear it if I were to tell you that this simple opening sentence is, in fact, one of the most subversive and seditious sentences ever written?  What does it sound like when you learn that this simple opening sentence, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” is a shot across the bow of the Roman Empire, that it subversively twists the empire’s own language of dominance to launch an ongoing insurgence against both Rome and the temple establishment?  How innocent does it sound when you learn that, in fact, the entire Gospel of Mark, which was written during the dangerous and dark days of the Jewish uprising against Rome, that it was written to be a manifesto to guide the followers of Jesus in nonviolent revolution.

The emperor Augustus was fond of calling himself, Divi filius, son of a God, and subsequent emperors held onto the title.  It was stamped on Rome’s coins so no one would forget.  So to call Jesus the Son of God was to usurp the emperor’s title.

Christos, Christ, literally means ‘the anointed one.’  It was the Greek version of messiah.  Rome’s emperors were anointed when they were raised to the rank of princeps, so the emperor was sometimes referred to as “the anointed one.”  In Jewish lore it was believed that Messiah, the Anointed One, would throw off Rome’s oppressive rule and lead Israel to a new era of independence.  So to call Jesus Christos was yet another treasonous claim in this subversive opening statement.

Even the term “good news” was appropriated from the empire.  The Greek word, euangelion, which we sometimes translate as gospel, was a word that was particularly important  to the cult of the divine emperor.  When an heir to the throne was born it was announced as “good news,” euangelion.  When he came of age another euangelion proclaimed the “good news” throughout the empire, and his eventual accession to the throne would be declared as “good news” in every corner of the empire.  But the euangelion, the “good news” which people heard most often was the “good news” announcement of military victory.  In the first century Roman world, euangelion, “good news,” had become a synonym for victory.

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God.  The beginning of the victory of Jesus, the Anointed One, the Son of God.  When you begin to understand the social and political implications these words had as Mark was writing them, probably somewhere in Galilee while the Jewish uprising against Rome was nearing its disastrous climax, they lose their “once-upon-a-time” innocence and begin to sound more like a defiant declaration of resistance.  Which is exactly what they are.

So, the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is a declaration that the revolution is under way.  It is an announcement that, in Jesus, God is challenging all the coercive forces that oppress and distort our God-beloved lives in this God-beloved world. 

This is the good news of Jesus.  

But Mark, the writer telling us this story, doesn’t start with Jesus.  He reminds us that the story started before Jesus.  Long before Jesus.  He reminds us that Advent, before it was a season in the Church calendar, was a long season of history, centuries of waiting for Emmanuel to come.  He reminds us that during that long Advent of history God would speak through the prophets from time to time to remind the people that the covenant and promises that God had made with Abraham and Sarah and with Moses and with David had not been forgotten.  The prophets would remind them that God was with them in their times of trouble, and the day was coming when God would be with them more powerfully and personally and concretely than they dared to imagine.  

Mark reminds us that “the beginning of the good news of Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God”—that this story had its real beginning long before Jesus arrived.  “As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,” he writes, to remind us that even though Jesus is the title character of his story, he’s really not entering the stage until the second act.  The stage has to be set.  The way has to be prepared.

Even the announcement has to be announced. To give the prophetic voice extra weight, Mark gives Isaiah a preamble from Malachi and simply refers to them both as Isaiah because who said it is not as important as what is being said:

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,

                  who will prepare your way;” – that’s Malachi–

         “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

                  ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

                  make his paths straight” –that’s Isaiah.

But it isn’t Jesus whom the prophets are announcing.  Not yet anyway.  Not here.

First, there is one last prophet we need to hear from: John, the Baptizer, dressed like Elijah and living off the land out in the wilderness where he can listen to God without distractions.  John the Baptizer who wants to be sure we’re ready, really ready for Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God.  So he prepares the way by “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” and announcing—wait for it—that someone even more powerful is coming. 

Repentance.  It’s not something you would think would draw a big crowd.  But Mark tells us that “people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.”  He must have been some kind of preacher, that John.

Repentance.  In English it’s a plodding and ponderous word filled with regret and contrition.  Repentance is a stinging backside, bruised knees and hunched shoulders.  Personally, I would like to ban the word and replace it with the Greek word: Metanoia.  

Metanoia is climbing out of a dank hole into the sunlight.  Metanoia is being freed from the nasty habits that ruin your health and suck the life out of your wallet.  Metanoia is putting on new glasses with the right prescription and realizing that you had only been seeing a third of the details and half the colors in the world.  Metanoia  is shoes that fit right, have cushy insoles, perfect arch support, and take the cramp out of your lower back.  Metanoia is thinking new thoughts and behaving in new ways.  Metanoia is a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of life, a new direction.  

John came proclaiming a baptism of metanoia.  And to make sure the idea really stuck with people, he gave them an experience to go with it.  He dunked them in the river.  “There.  You were dry, now you’re wet.  You were going down the wrong road, now you’re on the right one.  You were dusty and crusty, now you’re clean.  You’re changed.  You’re new.  And just in time, too.  Because the One we’ve been waiting for is coming.  I’m just the warm-up band.  I dunked you in water.  He’s going to marinate you in the Holy Spirit.”

A voice cried out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord!”

Or…

A voice cried out! “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord!”

There is no punctuation in the ancient languages.  So the translators try to make sense of it for us.  Is it a voice in the wilderness calling us to prepare?  Or is it a voice calling us to prepare a way in the wilderness?  Isaiah has it one way, Mark has it the other way.

Either way the message is clear: this is a time to prepare.

Sue Monk Kidd wrote about how one year during Advent she decided to visit a monastery for a day to help put herself in the right frame of mind for a meaningful Christmas.  As she passed one of the monks she greeted him with, “Merry Christmas.”  He replied, “May Christ be born in you.”  His words caught her off guard and she found that she had to sit with them for a long time.  As she pondered what the monk had said, she realized that Advent is a time of preparation and transformation.  A time of metanoia.  It is a time, she wrote, “of discovering our soul and letting Christ be born from the waiting heart.”

What kind of metanoia do you need to open the path for Christmas, to make way for Christ to be born anew in your waiting heart?   

Sometimes it feels like we are still wandering in the wilderness.  Which star do we follow to find our path through a wilderness of political and social friction?   What signs will guide us through a wilderness of violent rhetoric and violent acts?  How do we prepare the way forward when the world keeps erupting into war and no side is entirely innocent?  What language will reach the hearts and minds of those who find progress threatening so they choose to be obstructive or destructive? 

Sometimes it has seemed that the way of Christ, the way ahead is not clear.  Except for this: the way of Christ is the way of love.  Love God. And love our neighbors as ourselves. 

It’s hard to love our neighbors when political tensions and social issues divide us. It’s hard to stand together when so many things try to pull us apart.  

But this, too, is part of our Advent.  This is part of our wilderness where we hear the voice cry out, calling us to prepare the way of the Lord.  This wilderness of dysfunction is where we are called to prepare the way for Christ be born in the waiting heart.  This is where we are transformed.  This is our metanoia.

When we were all isolated during the pandemic, people often talked about what they would do “when things get back to normal.”  Maybe this Advent, this Prepare the Way of the Lord time, this metanoia time is a good time to ask ourselves what our new normal should look like. 

Maybe this would be a good time to sit down together and talk about what being apart taught us about being together.  Maybe this would be a good time to share our hopes and dreams and visions of what Christ is calling us to do to make life richer and fuller and more manageable for everybody.  Maybe this is a good time to make a new path through the wilderness, a time for collective metanoia, a time to discover all the little ways we can work together to make the kin-dom of God a reality on earth as it is in heaven.

Let This Voice, Too, Be Heard

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Part 1:  Gloria In Excelsis

In the beginning was the Word,

And the Word was with the Voice

And the Word was the Voice

Who spoke all things into being.

And the Voice said, “Let there be light!”

And the Word became light,

flooding Nothing with a boundless energy

springing from a love of simply being

at one with the Voice in the speaking of all things.

And the Voice breathed 

a deep Sigh of joy 

filled with wordless Word,

blowing through the light 

which illuminated Nothing 

with a bright, soundless harmony 

of love between the Voice

and the Word and the Sigh.

And the Voice said, “Let there be a place, and places,

swirling in infinities, dancing through spaces,

where We might listen to the echoes of the Word,

where We might hear the singing of the Sigh,

where laughter and joy and love may be heard,

where Our longing and Our loneliness may have a place to cry.”

And the Word became a matter of matter, the stuff of stuff,

filling Nothing with Something,

with many things full of life in ice and light,  

in plasma, gas and rock, in enough things made enough,

balanced in ellipses, blown into lines of time

to resonate and hum with light––

the Word made music in the spheres:

a spatial choir, a universe to sing apart its part,

to choose its universal notes and in its choice

to be another voice.

And the Voice said, “Let this voice, too, be heard.

By the power of the Sigh,

Let this voice, too, proclaim the Word.”

Part 2:  Et In Terra

In the time when time was still new

In a warmer sphere, 

a few degrees askew,

wild with seething seas, yet lifeless and austere––

a still unfinished  place 

which sustained its sweet blue note in the canticle of space––

the Singer and the Lyric and the Music descended

and that place’s lifeless life was ended.

And as the Sighing Spirit hovered just above 

an ocean of potential,

the Voice cried, “Let us have a place to stand!”

And the Word dove down into the depths

of the vast, pervasive waters

and spoke the word of rising to the bottom of the sea.

And with fire and trembling,

by the power of that command,

the Word created land.

Terra firma.  Terra incognita.

Continents and islands. Peninsulas and strands.

Yawning canyons, rolling hills and towering peaks.

Flats, steppes, deltas, frozen wastes,

secluded coves and barking sands.

Clay and rock and grit and minerals and dust.

Glass and jewels and metals.

Chemicals and rust.

And the laughter of the Voice

reverberated in the earth

as the Spirit broke the waters

and the Word gave Terra birth.

And the Spirit hummed a lullaby

above the seething swell

as the shaping Word reshaped each sound

and inlet, molded every fjord and bay

let each volcano have its way

and rang the mountains like a bell.

And the Voice said, “Let this new voice, too, be heard.

By the wind of the Spirit,

Let this voice, too, proclaim the Word.”

Part 3:  Pax

And when the land had risen from the seas,

standing bare and moist and lifeless

in the fecund, warm and fertile breeze, 

the Voice said, “Let there be voices which do not 

merely echo or harmonize with notes already sung.  

“Let there be life which springs from Our Life but sings its own song.

Let there be piping reeds to whistle in my Wind,

Let there be  whispering flora, bushes, shrubs and grasses

with the sibilant sound of masses 

humbly bowing down in praise.

Let there be stout, hearty trees

to stand against the Holy Breeze,

banging limb against percussive limb

so that in their rhythmic beating,

in their rooted yearning, in their upward reaching,

in their gratitude for living,

their aptitude for giving,

they too, their green and vegetative voices raise

in their own unique, prolific hymn.

Let them sing along 

in their own time, in their own song.

“And let there be the sound of small, scuttling things,

and trilling voices lifted high on wings,

and the sounds of a large, stalking, deep, roaring throat,

and lamenting, lupine barks and howls,

the trumpeting of tusk and trunk, the rumble of heavy feet,

burrowing growls, a soft, sustaining bleat,

and the quack and honk of things afloat.

Let there be sweet, aquatic voices singing from the deep,

insectile chirps, amphibious burps,

and gentle things that murmur music in their sleep.”

And the Word sang shapes into the soil and sea

and the Holy Sigh blew Life and song into the shapes, 

so that by the Voice and Word and Breath 

all these voices came to be.

And the Voice said, “Let these, too, be heard.

By the Spirit and the force of Life,

Let all these singers, too, proclaim the Word.”

Part 4:  Ecce Homo 

When the earth was filled with nearly every kind

of Life in nearly every state of animation

and nearly ever sound that animal or plant could make

had been added to the score,

The Voice, the Word, the Song

did something that would change the heavens and the earth forevermore.

Inherent in this new creation was a calculated chance

that this newest voice might be so absorbed 

in the singing of itself that it could, it might

create a dissonant disharmony,

an awkward, arrhythmic antiphony

in the very heart of the dance.

But also, there was hope, a more than even possibility,

that of all the creatures swimming in the sea

or gliding through the skies or burrowing or slithering

or in one way or another moving on the land,

there was hope that this one might not merely hear each harmonizing note

and repeat it all by rote—

there was, there is, a hope that this unlikely creature just might

understand

the reason why the song began.

So, with every hope but also every apprehension

the Voice said, “Let us make a man

and woman, in our own image–– Voice and Word and Breath.

And let us hope they learn to sing

the song of Life and not the song of death.”

And that, of course, is the source of all the tension––

that the all-creative Voice 

gave us such a powerful choice.

So the Word assembled dust and clay

and the Breath of creation had its way

and we became 5 billion voices

with God only knows how many choices.

Still, when we are our better selves,

when we are not lost in pursuing our own aims, no matter how absurd,

we still can hear the Song sung over our making––

We hear the Voice that sings, “Let this voice, too be heard.

By the Will that gave this creature will,

Let this voice, too, proclaim the Word.”

Part 5:  Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus ad erit

We were made to appreciate

sounds deeper than the ear can perceive,

music only the heart and soul can hear,

melodies only the discerning mind can believe.

We were made to contemplate 

sounds tuned only to the spirit’s ear.

And you, beloved friend and sibling in the Sight,

when you finally escape from all the sound which is merely noise,

when you find that quiet place where you see the Song and hear the Light,

when you follow the winding way of the Word, blown by the Breath of Making

and you stand on the precipice, poised

to fall out of death and into love…

listen closely,  and somewhere beneath

the chattering of your teeth,

behind your trembling and shaking, 

you will hear the meaning of your life.

We make music to draw us into creation’s deeper symphony.

We sing because it is our pathway to the all-sustaining Song.

We love because it is our only way to embrace the original Lover

whose Voice and Word and Breath created us to be the beloved other.

And, though so often we get it wrong,

we are still invited, always summoned, forever encouraged–– made–– to sing along,

to tune our voices to the Holy resonance,

to learn the way out of our mangled dissonance 

and into that divine harmony 

that is patient and kind,

that bears all things, believes all things and hopes all things,

that seeks to sing you into your right and healthy mind,

and make you, too, a voice that out of joy and love forever sings.

In the rest between the notes, 

in the break before each glorious chord,

in the space between the stops,

be still and know

the Touch of the Breath

which lifts you as the Voice sings  to you,     

over you,       

about you:

“Let this beloved child be heard. 

By my Love which loved you into life,

Let your voice, too, proclaim the Word.”

Hidden Talent

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Matthew 25:14-30

“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them;  15 to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. At once 16 the one who had received the five talents went off and traded with them and made five more talents.  17 In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents.  18 But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.  19 After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.  20 Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’  21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’  22 And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’  23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’  24 Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not scatter, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’  26But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I did not scatter?  27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest.  28 So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. 29 For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.  30 As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

I saw a video of a painting not long ago that was simply mind-boggling.  The painting, called Getting Old, is by the Spanish artist Sergi Cadenas who has developed a technique that allows him to paint multiple images on the same canvas so that if you view the painting from one angle you see one thing but if you see it from a different angle, you see something completely different.  For instance, in Getting Old, when you view the left side of the painting you see a portrait of a young woman, but as you move to the right you see her age.  And when you come all the way to the right side of the painting, you see her as an old woman.  In another one of his paintings, you see Marilyn Monroe morph into Albert Einstein as you move from left to right.  What you see in his paintings depends entirely on where you are standing. 

Sometimes the parables of Jesus are like that.  Mark Allen Powell once talked about how his students in different countries interpreted the Parable of the Prodigal Son very differently.  When he asked his students, “Why did the prodigal have nothing to eat?”  His students in Tanzania replied, “Because no one gave him anything.” To them the idea that no one would give a hungry person something to eat was a shocking moment in the story.   His students in St. Petersburg in Russia replied, “Because there was a famine in the land.”  They still had a cultural memory of the famine of World War II, so that was the element of the story that stood out to them.  His American students said he had nothing to eat Because he wasted his father’s money.  That’s the thing that stood out most to them.  All those things are in the text of the story, but people heard the same story very differently because of their history, their culture, and their location.

“How you hear a parable,” said Barbara Brown Taylor, “has a lot to do with where you are hearing it from.”  It’s like a Sergi Cadenas painting: what you see depends on where you’re standing.

I think when it comes to this parable, which we usually call the Parable of the Talents, most of us have been standing in the same spot and hearing it or seeing it pretty much the same way all our lives.  We hear it primarily as a stewardship parable and an allegory.  The Master, who represents God, gives each of us certain gifts and resources and capabilities—talents—each according to our abilities.  We’re supposed to use our talents—our resources, gifts and abilities—to build up the church and further the kingdom of God.  Someday, either when Jesus returns or when we meet our Maker, there will be an accounting, and you surely do not want to be the “wicked and lazy slave” who just buried your talent in the ground.

There are some real strengths in hearing the parable this way.  We can focus on those first two slaves who apparently have a high opinion of their master and want to follow his example.  We can put our talents to good use.  We can put our abilities to good use.  We can multiply and enlarge them.  We can follow the master’s example, and in the end, we can be praised and rewarded for doing so. 

That raises the issue of how we see and understand God and God’s generosity, and that is always a good thing for each of us to spend some time thinking about.  

You’ll notice that at the beginning of the parable the Master doesn’t give the slaves any instructions as he doles out the money, nor does he give any warnings about consequences.  The actions the slaves take depend entirely on how well they know the master and what they think about him.  And what they think is expected of them.

It’s the same for us.  The action we take or fail to take with the gifts and resources God has placed in our hands depends entirely on how well we know God, how much we trust God, how we see God, how we understand God, how much we love God.  

The first two slaves seem to have a positive opinion of their master and act accordingly.  They follow his example. The third slave regards his master as “a harsh man” and something of a thief, and so acts accordingly.  

So how do you picture God?  What kind of God are you responding to as you use the talents that are at your disposal?  Are you responding in trust to a benevolent God of grace and generosity or are you responding in timid fear to a God of harsh judgment?  Or are you just obliviously toodling along in life and not giving much thought to either God or your gifts?

God gives us talents and resources to help make God’s kin-dom a reality on earth as it is in heaven and to build up the church as the nucleus and example of that new reality.  You’ve been blessed so you can be a blessing.  

And I suppose I should stop right there and ask you to get out your checkbooks and pass around sign-up sheets so you can volunteer for various ministries, because what I’ve said so far is pretty much the bottom line of good stewardship, and it’s always good to be reminded about good stewardship.  

As I implied earlier, however, there is another way to hear this parable.  There is another place to stand so that we see the story differently, but to get there we need to move our ears and minds into a very different time and place. 

If we’re going to try to hear this parable the same way the original listeners heard it as they sat at Jesus’ feet 2000 years ago, one of the first things we need to know is that a talent was an enormous amount of money.  One talent was equivalent to twenty years’ wages.  So, there’s a bit of shock value right at the beginning of the story.  

A man going on a journey summons three slaves.  He gives the first one of the equivalent of 100 years’ wages.  He gives the next one 40 years’ wages.  The third one gets 20 years’ wages.  It’s tempting to try to calculate what that would be in our money in our time, but it’s really kind of pointless because the other differences between their culture and ours and their economy and ours are just too vast for the numbers to really have any meaning.  Just know that we’re talking about a lot of money.

The next thing we need to know if we’re going to try to hear this story the way Jesus’ audience was hearing it is that most people in the first century Mediterranean world had a “limited good” understanding of everyday economics.  

Recent research by Bruce Malina, Richard Rohrbaugh, Will Herzog, Amy-Jill Levine and others has shown that Palestinian Jews in the first century believed that there was only so much of the pie to go around.  So, if someone had a great deal of the worlds goods it meant that someone else had been deprived.  Or ripped off.  Honorable people did not try to get more and those who did were regarded as thieves, even if their means were technically legal.  According to Malina and Rohrbaugh, “Noblemen avoided such accusations of getting rich at the expense of others by having their slaves handle their financial affairs. Such behavior could be condoned in slaves, since slaves were without honor anyway.” [1]

In Torah, Jews are expressly forbidden to charge interest to other Jews[2] although Deuteronomy says that interest may be charged to a foreigner.  Here again the wealthy used their slaves to bypass the law, making loans to the poor, even fellow Jews, at interest rates anywhere from 60% to as high as 200%.  According to Will Herzog,[3] the poor would put their fields up as security and when they couldn’t pay the exorbitant interest, the wealthy would take their land.  So those first century people gathered around Jesus listening to this parable would probably assume that this is the way the wealthy master and his two slaves doubled their money.

The slave who buried his Master’s talent in the ground, on the other hand, was actually acting in accordance with Jewish law and custom.  The Talmud states that this is the safest way to safeguard someone else’s money.  As for the suggestion the master makes that he should have left the talent with the bankers so it could have at least made some interest, that idea would be regarded with suspicion because it might violate Torah if the bankers were generating interest from fellow Jews.

So, for those listening to Jesus on that long-ago day, the master who is wealthy enough to hand his slaves such staggering amounts of money must be a crook, because how else would he ever come by so much wealth?  He gives his money to his slaves to invest because that’s what rich people do to sidestep Torah and avoid getting their own hands dirty.  

Two of the slaves embrace this economic scheme wholeheartedly and manage to double their master’s money.  If you’re in the crowd listening to Jesus, you’re going to assume that they did this on the backs of the poor.  

So how do we hear this parable now?  And what do we do with it?  What does it mean for us if the third slave—the one the master calls wicked and lazy, the one who hid the talent in the ground—what does it mean if the third slave is really the hero of the story? 

What if, when he says, “Master, I knew you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed,” –what if he’s simply calling his master out and telling the truth?  What if Jesus is simply saying, then and now, this is how the system works, folks; this is what the money people do?  This is why the CEO makes 300 times what the assembly line worker makes.

Will Herzog, Amy-Jill Levine, Malina & Rohrbaugh and others have pointed out that, especially in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus was often using parables to highlight the disparities, inequities and injustices of the political and economic systems of his time…and ours.  

And yes, the third slave is punished.  His talent is taken away and given to the one who has ten.  Even though he does the right thing, according to the Talmud, he’s thrown out “into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  

How do we understand that? What does it mean that the good guy gets punished? Does it help to remember that a few days after telling this story, at least in Matthew’s chronology, after turning over the tables of the money changers, and after standing up to both political and religious authorities, Jesus, himself, is thrown to the “outer darkness” of crucifixion and death and then buried like the third slave’s talent.  

So how do you hear this parable now?

Do you hear it as a call to stewardship?  Do you hear it as a call to take stock of the gifts God has entrusted to you, a call to evaluate how you have been using those gifts?  That’s still a perfectly good way to hear it.

Do you hear it as an invitation to consider how you have been thinking about and seeing God and how you respond to your picture of God?  

Do you hear this parable as an invitation to take another look at how our economic systems work—to look at who benefits and who gets the shaft, and what role you play in all that?

Is it possible that Jesus is giving us a snapshot of the abusive way business-as-usual works in this world so that we can see how vital it is to be part of the better way, the Way that Jesus called the kingdom of heaven or kingdom of God? 

Could this parable be an invitation from Jesus to embrace a life, an ethic, a way of being that is based on cooperation and not merely on competition, a life that mirrors God’s generosity instead of the world’s incessant drive to grab onto more and more of everything?

Could it be that Jesus is telling us a cautionary tale to show us how desperately we need to immerse ourselves in the beloved community, the congregation dedicated to grace and generosity, because the world of business-as-usual won’t think twice about eating us alive?

So maybe this is a stewardship story after all—just not the one we expected.

There is more than one way to hear it.  There is more than one face to see in this painting.

And that is just so Jesus.

Regardless of how you hear it, how are you going to respond to it?

If you’re wondering about what you should do with your talents, the wonderful gifts that God has placed in your hands, I suggest that it’s much safer to “bury” them in the beloved community, the family of faith, the congregation that is trying to live in the Way of Jesus, than to risk them with business as usual.  Ironically, if you bury your gifts in the Beloved Community, that will actually put them to work, because in this fertile ground they will grow and produce much fruit.

In Jesus’ name.  

[1] Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, p. 149

[2] Exodus 22:25 and Deuteronomy 23:19; 23:20

[3] William Herzog, Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed.

I Believe

Steve Beckham 1 Comment
I believe in the Mystery beyond us,
the One Who Is,
the Maker who imagines all things into existence,
the Impulse of Intent who turns quantum possibility into tangible reality,
the Love in whom we live and move and have our being,
endlessly revealed in microcosm and macrocosm,
visible in all that is.

I believe in the Mystery among us,
The Christ,
The nexus and intersection of Spirit and matter,
alive and vibrant in, with and under all things seen and unseen,
the Word of Creation who came to us as one of us,
revealed most fully in Jesus of Nazareth
in whom the fullness of the divine was pleased to dwell,
who, at the cost of his own life,
confronted coercive power with nonviolence,
greed with generosity,
oppression with liberation,
pain with healing,
and death with resurrection and new life.

I believe in the Mystery within us,
the Spirit who guides us into all truth,
the breath of life in every breath,
the wind who lifts the wings of our creativity,
the warm scent of goodness who entices us deeper
into the divine vision of who and what we are meant to be,
the relentless wind of evolution who transforms us in body, mind and spirit,
the cleansing breath of wisdom who opens our eyes,
and renovates our understanding,
the yearning who draws us together in the beloved community,
the whispering ache who opens our hearts with compassion,
the deep breath of grace exhaled in forgiveness,
the sustaining breath who moves us to care for each other
and to live in harmony with all Creation,
the gasp of wonder who inspires us to live in gratitude.

Out of Love for the Truth

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

John 8:31-36

“Out of love for the truth and from a desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place.  Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence by letter.  In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.”

This was the introduction to the 95 Theses which Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Wittenberg University Chapel on Wednesday, October 31, 1517.   We sometimes think that nailing the 95 Theses to the door of the church was an act of rebellion, and in retrospect it was powerfully symbolic.  But it was actually a normal practice.  The church door served as a kind of bulletin board for the academic community.  If you wanted to propose a debate, that’s where you posted the notice, along with the propositions you wanted to discuss.

Luther didn’t intend for the 95 Theses to be a manifesto for rebellion.  He had no idea that his challenge to the practice of selling indulgences would spark a revolutionary movement that would sweep across Europe leading to enormous changes in religion, politics, education, and everyday life, but once that movement started, he gave himself to it body and soul because he was committed to the truth of the Gospel and the love of Christ. 

The truth quite literally set him free from the heavy-handed authority of Rome—the Pope excommunicated him—but the truth also bound him to the proclamation of salvation by God’s grace through faith and to the authority of God’s word in the scriptures.

Out of love for the truth and from a desire to elucidate it…  

According to the Gospel of John, when Jesus was on trial before Pontius Pilate, Pilate then asked him, “What is truth?”  

In some respects that seems like an almost ridiculous question.  We know what truth is.  We learn about truth almost as soon as we learn to talk.  Sadly, that’s also when we learn to lie, because we learn pretty quickly that the truth may reveal things that we would prefer to keep hidden.  We learn very early on that sometimes truth has consequences that we would like to avoid, and that those consequences might be unpleasant or even painful.  

Truth, the dictionary tells us, is the true or actual state of a matter.  Something is true when it conforms with reality.  To put it another way, reality determines what is true.

Truth means that my desires or imagination do not have the final word in determining what is reality and what is not.

There are twenty-seven verses in the gospels that contain the word truth.  Twenty-one of those verses are in the Gospel of John where truth is not only a central theme, it is anchored in and identified with the person of Jesus.  In John 1:14 we read, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”  Three verses later, John puts aside the figurative language of the Word to make it clear who he is talking about: “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

When Jesus sat discussing theology with the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s Well, he told her that “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.”  In chapter 14, not long after he has told Thomas that he, himself, is “the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of truth” and in chapter 16 he tells his disciples that “when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”  In chapter 17, as he prays for the disciples, Jesus asks that they would be sanctified and consecrated in truth.

“For this I was born,” Jesus told Pilate, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

In today’s Gospel reading from chapter 8 of John’s gospel, we see a hint that some of those who were listening to Jesus were unsure about continuing to follow him.  Some scholars think that this passage may hint at some tension between Jewish and Gentile believers or between Judean and Galilean followers of Jesus in the community where this gospel was written, and John, the writer, is calling both sides back to the middle ground of the truth found in the person and teaching of Jesus.  

“Jesus said to the Judeans who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word—if you remain faithful to my teachings—then you are truly my disciples.  And you will come to know the truth.  And the truth will set you free.”  When they protested that they were descendants of Abraham and had never been enslaved by anyone—apparently they forgot about their own history with Babylon and Egypt—Jesus went on to make it clear that he was talking about the truth setting them—and us—free from our slavery to sin.

But how does the truth set us free from sin?  

Martin Luther defined sin as the state of being curved in on the self.  Sin is when I put my preferences, my desires, my ideas, my plans, my goals above and before everyone and everything else.  Sin is me, me, me, me, me taken to the extent that it harms or disenfranchises or marginalizes or disempowers or diminishes or neglects you, you, you, you, you.  Sin creates a false reality, an illusion centered on my desires, my fears, my imagination—the way I want things to be.  And that illusion is seductive and captivating.  It ensnares.  It enslaves.  It makes me believe that I am the center of the universe, that what I think or believe or even just what I want very, very badly to be true is what is real.

Truth disabuses me of that illusion.

Once again: Truth means that my desires or imagination do not have the final word in determining what is reality and what is not.

We are currently struggling through a time when truth is endangered in our culture.  There’s nothing new about that.  People have always preferred to put their own spin on facts that confront their biases or preconceived ideas.  People throughout history have taken refuge in denial when events or outcomes don’t fit the way they wanted things to happen or give them the results they wanted.  What’s new is how widespread this devaluation of the truth has become.  

When lies and spin become so prevalent that they begin to undermine any common understanding of basic facts, the world becomes a more dangerous place.  When people refuse to accept observable facts, when there is no longer the common cultural ground of truth based on fact, then there is no longer a starting point for discussion or compromise.  There is no way to move past confrontation and opposed binary positions that divide us.  When people lift up conspiracy theories and “alternative facts” as justification for their actions or opinions then we stand on the precipice of political violence. 

Sadly, we have seen too many clear examples of that in the last few years.  It has become the sin of our society.

Sin convinces me that I stand apart from the rest of humanity.  But the truth, the fact, is that I am deeply and intimately connected to the rest of humanity and, in fact, to all of creation.  Standing apart is an illusion.  Rugged individualism is a destructive myth—destructive because it undermines and negates the relationships that keep us alive in every sense of the word.

“We must all overcome the illusion of separateness,” said Richard Rohr.  “It is the primary task of religion to communicate not worthiness but union, to reconnect people to their original identity ‘hidden with Christ in God’ (Colossians 3:3). The Bible calls the state of separateness ‘sin.’ God’s job description is to draw us back into primal and intimate relationship. As 1 John 3:2 reminds us, ‘My dear people, we are already children of God; what we will be in the future has not yet been fully revealed, and all I do know is that we shall be like God.’”

As followers of Jesus, we are called to live in the imitation of Christ.  We are called to observe what God is doing all the time and everywhere and then do the same.  We are called to be generous because God is generous.  We are called to be creative because God is creative.  We are called to embrace diversity because God revels in diversity so much that no two things are exactly alike in the entire universe.  But above and beyond everything else, we are called to love.  Because God loves.  God is love.  And, as Richard Rohr has said, God does not love us if and when we change.  God loves us so that we can change.

That is grace—the grace that makes us whole, the grace that heals us, the grace that reunites us, the grace that saves us.  

Claim it.  Revel in it.  Believe it.  Embrace it.

It’s the truth…and it’s the only thing that can set us free.

Whose Side Are You On?

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Matthew 22:15-22

Whose side are you on?

Do you lean right, or do you lean left?

Do you favor autocracy or democracy?

Are you a Republican or a Democrat?  

Do you favor the Freedom Caucus or the Moderates?  

Are you aligned with the Progressives or the Conservatives?

Are you Pro-Life or Pro-Choice?

Do you support the separation of Church and State or are you a Christian Nationalist?

I don’t know about you, but these kinds of questions make me wary.  These are loaded questions.  Binary questions.  Sorting questions.  These are questions with an agenda.  These are questions that are designed to make you reveal if you are friend or foe.  

Right now, the big sorting question in much of our country is are you pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian.  Are you sympathetic to the people of Israel who have suffered so much pain and loss, so much death and destruction from the sudden and vicious attack by Hamas?  Or are you sympathetic to the six million Palestinian refugees of Gaza who have lived for decades under the oppressive thumb of Israel and are now being bombed into submission?

Whose side are you on?

Loaded questions.  Gotcha questions.  These binary questions are designed to sort you into one camp or another and they are as old and merciless as politics.  

In today’s gospel lesson, we get a terrific example of a political sorting question calculated to get Jesus in trouble one way or another. The really fascinating thing about it is that two political factions who usually wanted nothing to do with each other came together to ask this question.  That’s how much they wanted Jesus out of the way.  That’s how much they wanted to discredit him.

After buttering him up with a comment about his impeccable impartiality they drop their bomb, their loaded question:  “Is it proper to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”  

The particular tax they’re asking about is the poll tax, a tax of one denarius per year levied on every adult man and woman in the empire.  This tax had been instituted by Tiberius not long before Jesus was born as part of his overall reform of Rome’s taxation system and its specific purpose was to pay for the occupation and administration of Rome’s conquered territories.

The Herodians were big supporters Herod Antipas and Herod Antipas was a big supporter of Rome, so the Herodians were all in favor of the tax as a way to help pay for what they saw as the many benefits of being part of the empire—decent roads, improved trade, aqueducts, heavy-handed law and order, and so on.  

The Pharisees, on the other hand, were not supporters of their Roman overlords and not at all happy about the tax that paid for these conquerors to dominate them and every aspect of their lives in their own homeland.  One of the things that they found particularly objectionable, though, was Roman money.  

Roman currency was not just money, it was also a reminder that Rome had complete control of the economy.  It was also political propaganda. On one side of the Roman denarius was a portrait of the emperor, Tiberius, so every coin was a reminder of who was in charge.  The other side of the coin depicted a seated woman in the role of Pax, the goddess of peace, a reminder that Rome kept the peace.  

To devout Jews like the Pharisees, the images stamped on these coins represented a kind of idolatry.  But worse than the images was the inscription on the coins: Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus, Pontifex Maximus.  

The coin proclaimed not only that the emperor was the son of a god, but also the high priest of the empire’s religions.  All of the empire’s religions.  Including theirs.

When the Pharisees and the Herodians team up to ask Jesus their loaded question, they think they have him trapped.  If he says, “No, it’s not right to pay this tax,” he’ll make the Pharisees and a lot of others in the crowd happy, but he’ll be guilty of sedition against Rome and the Herodians won’t waste a minute bringing it to Pilate’s attention.  If he says, “Yes, it’s perfectly fine to pay the tax,” then he’ll disappoint the crowd and give the Pharisees ammunition to discredit him.  

But instead of falling into their binary yes or no trap, Jesus exposes it.  He makes it clear that he is aware of their bad intentions.  He makes the crowd aware that there is no sincerity or honesty in their tricky question.  And just as they tried to entrap him with a question, he snares them and reveals their malice and antagonism with a question:  “Why are you trying to trap me, you hypocrites?”  

Jesus could expound on the theme of hypocrisy and attempted entrapment, but like all good rabbis, he knows a teaching moment when he sees one.  “Show me the coin used for the tax,” he says.  It seems clear that he doesn’t have one.  That’s an important detail that should not be overlooked. 

Jesus does not have the coin.  But someone does.  Someone, maybe one of the Herodians, hands him the silver denarius, and Jesus, holding it up for all to see, asks, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”  “Caesar’s,” they reply.  

I imagine this was a tense moment.  I can imagine him holding that coin in his hand, evaluating the stamped metal portrait in his palm for a long moment before he hands the coin back to whomever gave it to him and says, “Then give back to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

When they heard this, the text says, they were astonished, so  they left him and went away.

What exactly was Jesus saying?  What does it mean to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s?  On the face of it, it sounds simple.  On the face of it, it sounds like another simple binary division, like we can divide life into two compartments: on one side of the line are the things that belong to God, spiritual things, and on the other side of the line are secular things.  Like government.  Or economics.

It seems simple, but it’s not.  It is, in fact, immensely complicated.

“Give back to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” doesn’t sidestep the tricky tax question.  Instead, it requires us to do some serious thinking.  Philosophical thinking.  Theological thinking.  And practical thinking.  It requires us to live with difficult questions and never settle for pat answers.

What really belongs to Caesar?  Does his own likeness?   Genesis tells us that we were created in the image and likeness of God, so in that sense, isn’t Caesar’s own likeness something that, in the end, belongs to God?  Does the silver in the coin that bears his picture belong to Caesar?  He may be in possession of it or exercise some control over its distribution, but isn’t God the one who brought both the silver and the man depicted into being?  Long after Caesar has been gathered to his ancestors, the silver will pass to other hands and be melted down for other uses and only God will know where it is.  When all is said and done, doesn’t everything belong to God in whom we live and move and have our being?

“Give back to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” also has a practical side.  The coin that’s used to pay the tax in question is a perfect symbol of empire’s dominance.  

With the emperor’s likeness it proclaims his singular sovereignty.  With its depiction of the goddess Pax, it proclaims the empire’s definition of peace, a peace obtained and maintained by violence and force.  With its inscription that asserts the divinity of the emperor and affirms him as Pontifex Maximus, it declares the empire’s control of religion.  And the fact that this silver denarius is the standard day’s wage throughout the empire makes it the symbol of the empire’s vast economic power.  It is, in and of itself, a statement.  It says, “If you’re going to participate in the economy, you are participating in empire.  If you buy or sell anything, you are participating in empire.  When you go to the market to buy olives and flour and oil and fruit and lentils, the basic necessities of life, you are going to have to compromise your religious principles because you are going to use the empire’s coin to do it.”

And this is where it is important to remember that Jesus did not have the coin.

Jesus did not have the coin.  

What side are you on?  In a world that confronts us with so many binary choices, how do you decide where to stand?  Is there a side where you can stand like Rabbi Jesus, a side where you can not carry the coin of someone else’s dominance?  

In this time of yet another tragic war when the world seems to be insisting that we make another binary choice of Israel over Palestine or Palestine over Israel, is there a side that does not make us buy in to one dominance over another?

Yes, there is.  And Rabbi Irwin Keller describes it movingly in his poem, Taking Sides.

Today I Am taking sides.

I am taking the side of Peace.

Peace, which I will not abandon
even when its voice is drowned out
by hurt and hatred,
bitterness of loss,
cries of right and wrong.

I am taking the side of Peace
whose name has barely been spoken
in this winnerless war.

I will hold Peace in my arms,
and share my body’s breath,
lest Peace be added
to the body count.

I will call for de-escalation
even when I want nothing more 
than to get even.
I will do it
in the service of Peace.

I will make a clearing
in the overgrown 
thicket of cause and effect
so Peace can breathe 
for a minute
and reach for the sky.

I will do what I must
to save the life of Peace.
I will breathe through tears.
I will swallow pride.
I will bite my tongue.
I will offer love
without testing for deservingness.

So don’t ask me to wave a flag today
unless it is the flag of Peace.
Don’t ask me to sing an anthem
unless it is a song of Peace.
Don’t ask me to take sides
unless it is the side of Peace.[1]

© Irwin Keller, Oct. 17, 2023

[1] https://www.irwinkeller.com/itzikswell/taking-sides?fbclid=IwAR36yqnCTwLI015qTgRrPYpZT9OKwHkBdnHrW2H5lWbLnUeNlYn9nGUqalA

A Guest at the Banquet

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Matthew 22:1-14

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying:  2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.  3 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come.  4 Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’  5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business,  6 while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them.  7 The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.  8 Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.  9 Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’  10 Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. 

11  “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe,  12 and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless.  13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’  14 For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Fredrich Wilhelm I, the king of Prussia in the early 18th century, had a hot temper and a short fuse.  He would often walk unattended through the streets of Berlin and if people saw him coming they would try to make themselves scarce, because if anyone displeased him for even the slightest of reasons he would thrash them with his walking stick.  One day an unlucky man who didn’t see him coming in time attempted to slide into a doorway to avoid the crotchety king but King Fredrich spotted him before he could escape.

“You,” called Fredrich Wilhelm, “where are you going?”

“Into the house, Your Majesty,” replied the nervous man.

“Into the house?  Your house?” asked the king.

“No,” replied the poor man.

“Why are you entering it, then?” asked Fredrich Wilhelm.

The unfortunate man, afraid he might be accused of burglary, decided to tell the truth.  “I’m trying to avoid you, Your Majesty.”

Fredrich Wilhelm scowled. “To avoid me?  Why would you want to avoid me?”

“Because I fear you, Your Majesty.”

And that’s when King Fredrich just lost it.  He started to beat the poor man’s shoulders with his walking stick as he shouted, “You’re not supposed to fear me!  You’re supposed to love me!  Love me, you scum!  Love me!”

Sadly, I think a lot of people imagine that God is something like Fredrich Wilhelm—hot tempered with a short fuse, and ready to punish us for the slightest of “sins.”

I thought about that imagery as I revisited the ways we have traditionally interpreted the parable in this week’s gospel reading.

This parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew is notoriously challenging.  You will find problems and loose ends and pieces that just don’t fit just about any way you approach it.  David Lose said, “This parable seems just plain nasty. Not so much because it’s difficult to interpret – it is to some degree – though mostly, I think, because we don’t like what it says—but rather because of the indiscriminate violence in the passage.  What are we to make of it?”[1]

As with so many of Jesus’ parables, we have traditionally interpreted this story of the wedding banquet as an allegory so we have assigned traditional identities to the characters. 

In most traditional interpretations, the king who gives the banquet represents God and the bridegroom, the son, represents Jesus.  

In one traditional interpretation, the original invited guests who turn down the invitation represent the people of Israel, and the people brought in off the streets represent the Gentiles who are ushered into the feast when Israel turns down the invitation.  

In another traditional interpretation, the invited guests who refuse to come and abuse the messengers represent the Pharisees, and the street people who take their place represent the new Christian community, those people first hearing and reading Matthew’s gospel.

There is yet another interpretation—David Lose calls it the “Lutheran” interpretation—which  doesn’t dwell on those who decline the invitation or the street people who take their place at the banquet.  This interpretation focuses, instead, on the gracious generosity of the king who issues the invitation in the first place, first to the invited guests, then in opening it up to “everyone they found.” 

In all these interpretations, the wedding robe is understood to be God’s grace which clothes us in the imputed righteousness of Christ.  The guest who is thrown out into the outer darkness for failing to wear a wedding robe is understood to represent someone who refuses to accept God’s gift of grace. That’s pretty much how I always heard this parable preached or taught.  

These interpretations works well enough up to a point, but they also have some glaring problems.  So let’s look at some of those problems, the things we tend to gloss over if we keep hearing this story the same way we’ve always heard it before.

Let’s start with the son, the guest of honor at the banquet.  If this son of the king is Jesus—in this story being told by Jesus—he is oddly passive.  The son does nothing.  He does not deliver the invitation or announcement of the feast.  He does not supply the wedding robes which, in traditional interpretations represent being clothed in his grace.  He does not intervene on behalf of the guest being ejected into the outer darkness.  He is utterly and completely passive.  In fact, he is entirely in the background.  

Would Jesus have described himself that way?  Is that how you understand Christ?

What about the idea that those who first receive the invitation represent the Jews, the people of Israel, and the street people who take their place at the banquet are the Gentiles who would later dominate the church?  In this interpretation, the people of Israel reject God’s invitation, so God destroys them.  On one level, it’s easy to see how this makes a kind of historical sense. You could interpret the slaves delivering the invitation as the prophets.  You could argue that the destruction of the city is an allusion to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.  But remember, the first people hearing or reading this account in Matthew were Jewish Christians, probably living in Syria.  There is even good evidence that the Gospel of Matthew may have been originally written in Hebrew.[2]  The people hearing this story in the Jewish Christian community of Matthew’s gospel still thought of themselves as Jews, as the people of Israel, but Jews who had received Jesus as their long-awaited Messiah.  Would they be likely to hear this as a story about God’s rejection of Jews and acceptance of Gentiles in their place?  More importantly, this interpretation leads all too readily to antisemitism—and has historically been used for that purpose.  Would Jesus, a Jew, be likely to tell a story with such a theme even if it wasn’t the main theme?

If we choose an interpretation that focuses primarily on God’s grace, then what do we make of the king’s violence?  If grace is our theme, what are we to make of the king ordering one of the guests to be bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth simply because he didn’t wear a wedding robe, especially since we are given no reason for why he’s not wearing one?  And what do we do with that last line—”many are called but few are chosen”—when it seems like the many are staying at the banquet and the few, the one, really, is being chosen for a brutal exit?

If we take any of these traditional approaches, I think we might miss something else that’s going on in this parable.  

There is a very similar parable in Luke 14.  It’s also a parable of a great banquet, but it is told as a much milder story.  In Luke’s telling, the host is a merely a man, not a king.  The invited guests make excuses, but no one is punished for not coming, except that they don’t get to share in the feast and celebration.  In Luke’s version there is no violence.  There are no wedding robes.  No outer darkness.  But in this banquet story in Matthew, those are the precisely things that Jesus is using to make a point.  So what, exactly, is the point he is trying to make?

If we listen more closely to this parable in Matthew, we can hear overtones that are clearly political.  The host is not just a man, he’s a king.  That means that the invitation to the banquet carries a lot of weight.  It is, in fact, a kind of command appearance.  The noted English Biblical scholar, Richard Baukham, put it this way:

“The attendance of the great men of the kingdom at the wedding feast of the king’s son would be expected not only as a necessary expression of the honor they owe the king but also as an expression of their loyalty to the legitimate succession to his throne. Political allegiance is at stake. Excuses would hardly be acceptable, and the invitees (unlike those in the Lukan parable) offer none. To refuse the invitation is tantamount to rebellion(italics mine). In refusing it, the invitees are deliberately treating the king’s authority with contempt. They know full well that their behavior will be understood as insurrection. This is what they intend, and those who kill the king’s messengers only make this intention known more emphatically. The king responds as kings do to insurrection (v. 7).”[3] 

So… we have a king whose kingdom is in open rebellion.  In response to his envoys being killed he launches an all-out attack and destroys the rebellious city.  Because that’s what kings do to rebellious cities.  Meanwhile, the feast is all prepared and must go ahead.  The king has to save face.  He has to show his political strength and force.  The aristocrats who were invited are out, so he turns populist.  He brings in people off the street.  This is right out of the Roman playbook—using bread and circuses, to pacify the masses.  But when the king sees one poor schmo who isn’t conforming to the dress code, he has him booted.

And now we’re back to Fredrich Wilhelm I.  Capricious.  Thin-skinned. Hot tempered.  Short fused. 

Is that how we see God?  

More importantly, since Jesus is the one telling this story, is that how Jesus saw God?

I don’t think so.

Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew we hear Jesus describing God as a patient, tolerant and nurturing parent.  He says, “Your Father in heaven makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (5:9).  “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (6:8)  “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Fatherfeeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (6:26)  “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” (10:29)  Even when Jesus is totally exasperated with the Pharisees and Scribes he says, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.”  He tells them they won’t be first in line, but he doesn’t say they’ll be excluded or thrown out.

Does that sound like the king in this parable?  Or is Jesus trying to tell us something else here?   

Is there a way to hear this parable where we hear Good News?  Is there a way to hear this short story by Jesus where we Gentile Christians don’t get a version of Good News that’s just cheap grace at someone else’s expense?  As Debi Thomas put it, “— not the mingy Good News that secures my salvation and my comfort at the expense of other people’s bodies and souls — but rather, the Good News of the Gospel that is inclusive, disruptive, radical, and earth-shattering. The Good News that centers on the Jesus I trust and love.  What would it be like to look for Jesus and his Good News in this story?”[4]

A few years ago, the essay by Debi Thomas that I just quoted completely changed the way I see this parable.  In her essay in Journey with Jesus she wrestled with all the difficulties in this parable and then arrived at a solution unlike any I had ever seen or read before.  

What if the king represents all the powers that be in this world, the powers that insist we conform to their norms—religion, politics, the boundaries of society—the powers that rise up to crush anything or anyone that steps too far out of line, powers that reject and eject those who don’t wear the garment of conformity?

What if all the people in this parable are just that?  People.  In all their stratified layers—the aristocrats and wealthy, the privileged who get the embossed invitations to everything that’s good in life—and then everybody else—regular people who go about their lives making do but who every once in a while get a fabulous break because the original guests are no-shows.

What if Jesus is describing the system as it was, and as it is?  What if he’s describing the way the world works, with its hierarchies of wealth and levers of power, with its violence and struggles for control and its pressures to create and maintain business as usual?

And then, what if the “God” figure in this parable is the guest without a wedding robe?   What if Jesus is the one who refuses to wear the wedding robe, the garment of conformity?  What if Jesus is making a statement and saying, “I refuse to play along.”

When the king asked “Friend how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” the guest was speechless.  When Jesus stood before Pilate, he was speechless, too.[5]

What if the way to the real celebration was to opt out of the coerced party hosted by the powers that be?  What if the way in to the full celebration of life requires you to refuse to wear the clothes of conformity, to let yourself be bound hand and foot and thrown into the “outer darkness,” just as the way to Christ’s resurrection was through the cross and the tomb, just as the way to eternal life is through death?

What if Jesus is the guest being forcefully ejected from the party?  What would that mean for us as followers of Jesus?

Would you be willing to take off your robes of privilege, position, power and wealth to follow him into the outer darkness?   Would I?

Many are called.  Few are chosen.

[1] In the Meantime, Pentecost 19, A Limited Vision, David Lose.net

[2] Was the Gospel of Matthew Originally Written in Hebrew?,  George Howard, Bible Review 2:4, Winter 1986

[3] Parable of the Royal Wedding Feast, Richard Baukham; Journal of Biblical Literature, Fall, 1996, p.484

[4] The God Who Isn’t, Debi Thomas, Journey With Jesus, October 11, 2020

[5] Matthew 27:12-14