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Wrestling With God

Steve Beckham 5 Comments

Genesis 32:22-31; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8

Sooner or later you have to face the music.  If you don’t, it just gets louder.  

After stealing his brother Esau’s birthright, Jacob ran away to Paddam-Aram in Mesopotamia because Esau had threatened to kill him.  In Paddam-Aram, Jacob went to work for his Uncle Laban, his mother’s brother, and married Laban’s two daughters, Rachel and Leah, his cousins.  Which was a thing people did in those days… and still do in some places.  I’m looking at you, Alabama.

Jacob worked for Laban for twenty years, but Laban had this nasty habit of cheating him.  For instance, Jacob wanted to marry Rachel, the cousin who, according to Genesis, was graceful and beautiful, the one he had fallen in love with.  Uncle Laban said, well, you can marry Rachel after you’ve worked for me for seven years.  So Jacob worked for Laban the required seven years and Laban gave him a big, traditional wedding.  But when he removed the veil from his blushing bride on his wedding night, Jacob discovered that Laban had tricked him.   Instead of being married to Rachel, he was now married to Leah, his other cousin, the one who, according to the text, had lovely eyes.  So there was that.

Jacob was not at all happy about the switch and let Laban know it.  “Not a problem,” said Laban.  Just work for me for another seven years and then you can marry Rachel, too.  So Jacob worked for Laban another seven years and this time really did get to marry Rachel.   

Jacob ended up staying with Laban for twenty years, but after twenty years they had had enough of each other.  Whatever trust Jacob and Laban had had for each other had eroded, and Laban’s sons felt like Jacob was somehow cheating them out of their inheritance because he had developed a tricky little breeding program that resulted in him owning more livestock than their father owned. 

So Jacob decided that it was time to go back home.  He packed up his wives, his children and his livestock and headed for Canaan, hoping that his brother, Esau, might have forgotten about the stolen birthright, or at least maybe cooled off a bit in the twenty years he had been gone.

As Jacob, with all his family and servants and flocks and baggage drew near to Edom where Esau was living, he sent messengers ahead to tell Esau that he was coming.  The message he sent was a kind of humble brag with an implication that he could make it worth Esau’s while if Esau could bring himself to forgive and forget the whole birthright business.  “Thus you shall say to my lord, Esau,” Jacob told the messengers.  “Thus says your servant Jacob, ‘I have lived with Laban as an alien, and stayed until now; and I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, male and female slaves; and have sent to tell my lord, in order that I may find favor in your sight.’”

Esau sent the messengers back with a simple message of his own:  I’m coming to meet you.  Actually, what the messengers said to Jacob was, “Esau is coming to meet you… and he has four hundred men with him.”  

By now Jacob and his retinue had come to the ford of the Jabbok river, a kind of point of no return. He knew that he either had to face his brother now or turn around and keep running forever.  He sent his wives and children across the river, then stayed on the other side to pray.  And this is where Jacob’s story gets abruptly strange.

The text simply says, “Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”  Who was this man?  Where did he come from?  Who started the fight?  Genesis doesn’t tell us, but Jacob figured it out.  When the night of wrestling was over, when the stranger had let him go and blessed him, as Jacob was limping away he named the place Peniel, saying, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”

Jacob wrestled with his conscience.  Jacob wrestled with his history.  Jacob wrestled with his guilt and shame.  Jacob wrestled with his fear.  

And Jacob wrestled with God.  Jacob wrestled with God then limped away with a new name:  Israel. Wrestles with God.  Jacob limped away with a new identity, a new understanding of himself…and of God.

Have you ever wrestled with God?  Have you ever sat up late into the night trying to come to terms with your own life?  Have you ever lost sleep because your mind won’t let go of questions about evil and injustice?  Have you ever lain awake with your own grief wondering where God is or how God could have allowed such pain?  Have you ever tried to distance yourself from the consequences of your own actions but God keeps putting them in front of you?  Have you ever felt like God has just been giving you a smackdown that’s making you limp through life?

I’ve wrestled with God in all these ways at one time or another.  I think most of us wrestle with God or at one time or another… one way or another.   I think that’s part of being human.  And I think it’s how God helps us get rid of the false gods we carry in our heads—the Santa Clause god, the Zeus god, the Rambo god, the God-is-All-About-Me god.  

These days I tend to wrestle with God through the scriptures.  This wrestling has both deepened my faith and challenged it.  I’ll give you an example, but you may not like it.  You may even think I’m a heretic.

Our second reading for this 19th Sunday after Pentecost in Cycle C of the Revised Common Lectionary comes from 2nd Timothy.  I will confess to you right here and now that I don’t particularly like the Pastoral Epistles.  I don’t like it that they are pseudepigrapha—works written under the signature of the Apostle Paul but really authored by someone else.  It doesn’t help that they were written well after the apostolic era, very late in the first century or early in the second, but if that objection was going to cause me to completely ignore them then I would also have to ignore the Gospel of John for the same reason, and I’m not going to do that because I love the Gospel of John.  

The thing that I dislike the most is that the letters to Timothy reassert Patriarchy with a capital P and relegate women to silence.  This is completely contrary to St. Paul who lifted up the ministries of women like Junia, Priscilla, Lydia, Chloe, Euodia, and Syntychae and considered them his partners in the Gospel, even calling Junia an apostle.  

I dislike the tone of these epistles.  I dislike it that they spill all kinds of words about behavior and rules and say precious little about faith.  I don’t care for the subtext of us versus them, which hints at a binary, rigid, closed, and legalistic community rather than the grace of the open arms and heart of Jesus.  

And finally, I have a particular bone to pick with how 2 Timothy 3:16 gets mistranslated so often because that mistranslation reinforces the sin of bibliolatry—creating an idol of the Bible.  Here is what the Greek text of 2 Timothy 3:16 says in a simple word-for-word translation:  all writing God-breathed and beneficial for teaching, for correction, for discipline and with justice. 

Did you notice that the word “is” isn’t in there?  The New Revised Standard version says, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof… etc.”  The NIV says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting… etc.”   But Richmond Lattimore, the late, great Greek scholar translated it this way: “All God-breathed writings are useful for teaching, correction, reproof… etc.”  

Remember, every translation is an interpretation.  It makes more sense to me to read this the way Lattimore translated it because his translation means that we have to sit down together with the words of the Bible and think about which parts are God breathed—divinely inspired—and which parts are perhaps not, and what does that mean for us as people of faith.  It makes more sense to me because when those words were written nobody had yet decided which writings would be considered as holy scripture and which would not.  The formation of the canon was still a few centuries in the future.  And even if the writer was referring to the writings of the Hebrew scriptures, which seems most likely, we should remember that the rabbis were constantly engaged in discussing which parts of the Tanakh were “God-breathed” and which were simply beneficial, useful writings, or even writings to be preserved because of their cultural importance, like Esther or Song of Solomon, neither of which even mentions God.

We wrestle with God when we wrestle with the scriptures.  And just as with Jacob at the Jabbok, it is always God who starts the wrestling match.  I told you all the reasons I don’t much care for the Pastoral Epistles.  But I keep wrestling with them.  I keep wrestling with them because in some way they convey the word of God—there is something in there that God wants me to learn or come to terms with.  These books of the Bible present an obstacle for me, but faith, as Richard Rohr says, is not for overcoming obstacles, it’s for experiencing them… all the way through.

The parable of the widow and the judge in today’s Gospel reading, Luke 18:1-8, is another piece of scripture I wrestle with.  When the writer of Luke sat down to write, scholars think he had a copy of Mark’s gospel, a document with assorted sayings of Jesus, and a collection of Jesus stories and parables that none of the other gospel writers had.  This story of the widow and the judge most likely comes from that unique Lukan material since it doesn’t appear in any of the other gospels. 

There are hints that Luke, himself, didn’t quite know what to do with this parable, but he felt it should be included.  He sandwiches it in between Jesus talking about the Parousia—the End Times and Second Coming—and the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.  

The parable of the widow and the judge sounds authentic.  As Amy-Jill Levine says, it sounds like a Jesus story, but as she also notes, there is something about Luke’s introduction that doesn’t quite fit.  He seems to be domesticating a story that’s more than a little disturbing, especially if you take away Luke’s opening.  In other words, “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart” doesn’t really capture the punch of this story.  And once again, it doesn’t help that many of our translations soften the hard edge of the original language.

How does it sound to you when you hear it this way?  “In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and had no regard for other people.  There was a widow in that city and she kept coming to him and saying, ‘Avenge me against my adversary.’  He didn’t want to at the time, but later he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God or respect other people, on account of the trouble this widow causes, I will avenge her so that in the end she won’t beat me up.”

“Avenge me against my adversary.”  That’s what it says in the Greek, and that has a lot more edge to it than, “Grant me justice against my opponent.”   “I will avenge her so that she doesn’t beat me up.”  That’s what the Greek says.  It uses a phrase borrowed from boxing and it has a lot more punch to it than “I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.”

If we listen to the force of the original language, the widow is not seeking justice, she is seeking revenge.  The judge isn’t making an unbiased ruling in her favor in order to see justice done, he is being coerced with a threat of violence.  So… is this really a parable about our need to pray always and not lose heart?  Or is something else going on here?

In Luke 12:57-59, Jesus advised that one should try to settle things before going to court because the judge might rule against you and you could end up in prison.  The people who first heard Jesus tell this story knew that judges were not always fair, that courts could not always be relied on for justice.  In this parable, Jesus gives an example of what can happen if one fails to settle things out of court.

“The parable proper,” writes Amy-Jill Levine, “ends with the judge’s decision and so it ends as a story about corruption, violence, and vengefulness.  Stereotypes of judges and widows both fall.  Justice is not clearly rendered.  Has the widow made the judge ‘just’ by convincing him to rule in her favor, or has she corrupted him?  What would the widow’s opponent think?   What do we think?”[1]

Luke closes the frame around the parable in a way that reinforces his opening.  “And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says.  And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?  Will he delay long in helping them?  I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.  And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” 

There was no punctuation in the original Greek texts, no quotation marks or commas or periods; those are all inserted by translators, so knowing where Jesus leaves off and Luke begins is a little ambiguous.  How do we hear the text if the last words that Jesus uses to close the story are, “Listen to what the unjust judge says.”  Period.  The end.  How do we hear it if we take out Luke’s framing altogether?  Is it possible that this is really a cautionary tale about unvarnished human nature and unmitigated self-interest?

What if Jesus ended the story of the vengeful widow and the corrupt judge with, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

When we wrestle with God through the scriptures, we may not always end up in a comfortable place.  We may end up limping away…but we will be limping toward a new understanding of ourselves and of God.  

[1] Short Stories by Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine, p.235

Image Credit: Jacob Wrestling With God, Jack Baumgartner, giclée prints available at http://www.baumwerkshop.com

Between the Lines

Steve Beckham 10 Comments

Luke 17:11-19

You know how you can read something a hundred times and on the one hundred and first time something will pop out at you that you never really saw before?  Every week I read through the lectionary texts in several different translations and I always read through the Gospel text in the original Greek.  This week, something in the opening line really jumped out at me:

On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus passed through between Samaria and Galilee.  

That is such a curious way for this story to begin.  Where, exactly, is this space between Samaria and Galilee?   On the map Samaria and Galilee butt right up against each other.  There is and was a border that separated the two territories.  There was also a very pronounced social, cultural and religious line in the sand separating the Jews of Galilee from the Samaritans of Samaria, a line of intense historical animosity.  So what is the writer of Luke trying to tell us when he says that Jesus was passing between Samaria and Galilee?

As he entered a certain village, ten men with leprosy approached him but kept their distance and shouted, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  Jesus looked at them and said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed of their skin disease.

In Biblical times, leprosy was a catch-all term for a variety of skin diseases, especially those that created whitish patches of scaly skin such as atopic dermatitis or plaque psoriasis.  White, scaly skin can also, however, be one of the first symptoms of true leprosy, what we now call Hansen’s disease, so in an age before microscopes,  diagnostic tests and bloodwork, it made some sense to assume the worst when those scaly patches appeared.  

The book of Leviticus dictated that persons with such as skin disease had to live outside the town.  The leper laws in Leviticus required them to tear their clothes and mess up their hair to make themselves more easily identifiable, and they were required to wear a cloth mask or veil that covered from the upper lip to the chin.  They were also required to carry a bell or wooden clapper and to cry out “unclean, unclean” to warn people not to get too close, because the law required them to keep a safe distance from everyone else.  The Talmud said that the minimum safe distance was 6 feet, two cubits, on a normal day but 150 feet if it was windy.

These men with a skin disease begged Jesus for mercy from a distance.  Their plea had to be loud enough to travel across the space between them and Jesus.

Jesus healed them, but he didn’t lay hands on them.  He couldn’t.  They were required by both religious and civil law to keep their distance, and in this particular instance, Jesus observed that law, too.   The text doesn’t say anything about him praying for them.  He simply said, “Go show yourselves to the priests,”  which is what Torah required if they were healed.  Their healing happened in the space between them and Jesus.

On the face of it, this looks like a simple, if somewhat unusual, story about healing.  There is also the noteworthy gratitude of the one man who returns to thank Jesus and prostrates himself before him in an act of worship, so it can also a story about gratitude.  But when we look closer, I think there is more to it than that.  

I think that Luke is maybe trying to tell us something about the power and importance of betweenplaces, those places and times when we are in neither one place or the other but on the edge or verge of both.

Luke tells us that Jesus was passing through between Samaria and Galilee.  Jesus is in a borderland, an in-between space that is both Galilee and Samaria, and at the same time really neither one.

The ten men with the skin disease were also in a between space.  They were husbands, fathers, brothers living at a distance from those they loved most in order to keep them safe.  They were living on the outskirts of the village, living on the margins of the community in that space where the village ended and the wilderness began.  More relevantly, they were also living in that thin space between life and death.  

Because their disease had excluded them from all other society, they formed their own small community, Jews and Samaritans bound together by their common affliction in a space where the cultural animosity and antagonism of Jew versus Samaritan was not only irrelevant but could threaten their survival.  

Every border, every territorial boundary, no matter where it is, is a testament to conflict.  It is a reminder that at some point in history one group of people behaved aggressively against another group of people.  Every border is a monument to our human failure to make peace with our differences, a testimony that the space between us is often filled with anger and fear.

When borders are rigidly drawn and vigorously enforced, they sharpen the divide and highlight the differences between the people on one side or the other.  They intensify the “otherness” of those who are not from our side of the line, and that, in turn, can stimulate suspicion and fear. When borders are porous and less strictly enforced, however, they become a zone of cross-pollination and fusion between cultures, a place where ideas and feelings are shared, a place where transformation is possible.

The borderlands, the between spaces, are places where meaningful change is apt to happen.  

Twenty years ago, Stuart Kauffman, a researcher in theoretical biology and complex systems, proposed a new theory to explain how organisms and systems adapt and become more complex.  He called his theory Adjacent Possible Theory or “APT-ness,” and he has suggested that the “adjacent possible” is such a powerful dynamic that it could be considered the fourth general law of physics.  

Adjacent Possible Theory suggests that at any given moment there is a space of untapped potential around every complex system—around every organism, around every person, around every institution.  That field of untapped potential in the adjacent possible is actually a new field of energy that powers change and transformation. 

In other words, you are surrounded by an energizing halo of possibility.

Think about your living room. Most of us have the same furniture, placed in the same spots, for years at a time. When the house gets crowded on game days or holidays, you know where people are going to end up, what the traffic flow is going to be like, where there are going to be “traffic jams,” where the favorite spot to hang out always is.

Kauffmann’s law of the “adjacent possible” says real change takes place when you re-arrange the current configuration of things, opening up a new possibility for movement and matter.  Rearrange your living room furniture, and see what happens.  Without adding even one new chair or table, the whole feeling of the room is changed. People move about the room differently. They interact with others in new groups. The energy in the room flows in a new configuration. All that just by moving the furniture.

The Adjacent Possible, that halo of possibility is particularly potent in between spaces because the between space is adjacent to two or more differing realities or paradigms and draws energy from both.  The “furniture” tends to be in flux.

In many ways the Church is in an in between space.  We are in a time, a space, where we are no longer what we were but what we will be has not yet been revealed.  The culture is moving us to the margins.  We are in a space of transformation, the realm of the Adjacent Possible.  The good news is that there is energy in that space, the energy to be made new.

In the original Greek text of Luke’s story of the healing of the ten men with the skin condition, there are three different words for the healing that takes place.  The first word is katharizo.  It means “to be cleansed.”  Catharsis.  This is what the 10 men experience as they leave Jesus to go to the priests.

The second word is iathei.  It means “to be changed to an earlier, correct, or appropriate state.”  To be restored.  This is what the one grateful Samaritan experienced.  He saw that he was restored.

The third word is sesoken, the active indicative form of sozo.  It is often translated as saved, but it also means to be made well or whole.  This is the word Jesus speaks to the Samaritan who bows before him in praise and gratitude and he says, “Your faith has made you whole.”  

As a church and as a people, we are standing in an in-between place.  We are in the borderland of the Adjacent Possible, surrounded by a halo of possibility for transformation.  

If we open our eyes, our minds, our hearts to encounter Jesus in this in-between place, if we ask Christ for his healing mercy, then we, too, can experience cleansing, restoration, and transformation.   We, too, can be made whole.

We are standing in a halo of possibility… and God is doing a new thing… in Jesus’ name.

Image: Ten Lepers by James Christensen

A Song of Faith

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4;  Psalm 37:1-9; Luke 17:5-10

In January of 1949, Pete Seeger sat down at the piano with his friend, Lee Hays, and plunked out a song he was working on.  Hays liked it and they massaged the lyrics together.  A year later, they recorded the song on Charter Records with their group, The Weavers.  They only sold maybe a thousand copies and never got any airplay, but that didn’t surprise them because Seeger and Hays were both blacklisted by the McCarthyism craziness that was making life impossible for so many artists and others.   People suspected that the song had some kind of communist message because, as Seeger said, “In 1949 only ‘Commies’ used words like ‘peace’ and ‘freedom.’  

Somehow the song made its way down to South America where it became fairly popular and local groups created different versions of it. Twelve years later, Peter, Paul and Mary recorded it and it became a top-ten hit.  The next year, 1963, Trini Lopez recorded a version with a Latin vibe that landed at number 3 on the charts.[1]   

Suddenly the song was everywhere.  People were singing it in coffee houses and cocktail lounges.  Folk groups were singing it at Hootenannies.  Teenagers who only knew four guitar chords were singing it in church.  I know, because I was one of them.  

The song was originally titled, “The Hammer Song,” but is more commonly known by its first line: “If I Had a Hammer.”  

I thought of that song this week when I was reading our first reading from Habakkuk because the first line of the chorus is  “I’d sing out danger, I’d sing out a warning…”  That’s exactly what poor Habakkuk had been trying to do as the mighty Chaldean army drew ever closer to Jerusalem.  He saw his beloved nation beset from without by forces bent on conquest and colonization, and beset from within by denial and corruption.

I think we’ve all felt like Habakkuk at one time or another.  His words are so honest, his feelings so raw, his anger so palpable, and he doesn’t buffer any of it with any false piety.

O LORD, how long shall I cry for help,

                  and you will not listen?

         Or cry to you “Violence!”

                  and you will not save?

         Why do you make me see wrong-doing

                  and look at trouble?

         Destruction and violence are before me;

                  strife and contention arise.

         So the law becomes slack

                  and justice never prevails.

         The wicked surround the righteous—

                  therefore judgment comes forth perverted.[2]

Many scholars think that Habakkuk was a temple prophet, a Levite who also served as one of the temple musicians.  If so, he spent his days singing and composing psalms of praise for worship.  But now songs of praise and worship aren’t speaking to him anymore…or speaking for him.  He’s angry with God.  He sees the world falling apart.  He sees that his society is corrupted.  He sees that the enemy is coming and his country won’t be able to withstand them.  He feels like God isn’t paying attention.  So instead of a psalm of praise, he composes a song of rage and lament.  He sings out danger.  He sings out a warning.

In his frustration with God, Habakkuk finally says, “You know what?  I’ve said all I can say. I’m just going to go up in the tower and wait and watch.  You’ve heard my complaint, God, so what do you have to say about all this?”

Habakkuk stood in the tower and waited for God to respond.  I can’t help but wonder if another song came into Habakkuk’s mind while he was up there waiting and watching on the rampart.  He surely would have been familiar with Psalm 37, a psalm which tradition says was written by King David when he was an old man.  The answer God finally gives Habakkuk seems to resonate with that Psalm 37’s advice: 

Do not fret because of the wicked;

                  do not be envious of wrongdoers,

         for they will soon fade like the grass,

                  and wither like the green herb.[3]

When God finally spoke to Habakkuk, God gave him neither advice nor a pep talk.  Instead, God gave Habakkuk a task list. Habakkuk recorded God’s instructions by adding another verse to his song:

Then the LORD answered me and said:

         Write the vision;

                  make it plain on tablets,

                  so that a runner may read it.

         For there is still a vision for the appointed time;

                  it speaks of the end, and does not lie.

         If it seems to tarry, wait for it;

                  it will surely come, it will not delay.

         Look at the proud!

                  Their spirit is not right in them,

                  but the righteous live by their faith.[4]

Remember the vision.  Write it down.  Make it visible.  Make it plain and simple so that even someone running by can grasp it.  The righteous will live by faith.

When life seems precarious and frustrating, it’s tempting to worry if our faith is going to do us any good.  When the world seems to be trying to tear itself apart, it’s tempting to wonder if I have enough faith to fix even one small piece of it.  But God tells us to keep moving toward the vision, the new reality, the kin-dom that God is working to create.  God reminds us that even when it looks like God is absent, God is not only present but is deeply engaged in the process of making things new.  God tells us, “Don’t worry about having enough faith.  It’s your faith that’s telling you there is a problem.  Start with that.”

Theologian Joy J. Moore of Luther seminary said, “Habakkuk speaks to me.  I hear him saying, ‘I have enough faith to believe that things aren’t right, things are not the way they’re supposed to be—and enough faith to watch and see what you’re going to do, God.’  In days like these, I need those words.”

In days like these we all need those words.  Write down the vision.  Keep it in front of you.  Make it simple so even someone in a hurry can read it and carry it with them.    

While they were on their way to Jerusalem, Jesus had reminded his disciples that there were consequences for wounding or misleading others.  In the next breath, though, he told them that they needed to be generous with forgiveness.  “If someone sins against you seven times in one day but repents seven times then you must forgive them seven times.” Forgiving so freely must have sounded like an insurmountable challenge to the disciples because they responded by saying, “Increase our faith!”[5]

I think we’ve all had that moment too.  We’ve all had our Habakkuk moment where we wonder if God is seeing the wrongs that we’re seeing and we’ve had our disciple moment when we have felt that if we just had more faith we could maybe live in the healing and mending way that Jesus is asking of us.

But what is faith?  Is it belief?  Is it power?  Is it obedience?  Is it humility?  Is it quantifiable?

“If you had faith the size of a mustard seed,” said Jesus, “you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”  What is he saying behind the hyperbole?

Faith equals trust said Martin Luther.  “Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favor that you would stake your life on it a thousand times.”  

Faith is confidence.  Faith is acting on your trust and confidence that God is faithful and trustworthy.  Paul Tillich said that faith, when you see it, will look a lot like courage.

Faith isn’t just a feeling.  Faith isn’t even just believing.  Faith is doing what God has asked us to do, being bold enough and courageous enough to participate in what God is creating.  Faith isn’t quantifiable.  It’s not a noun, it’s a verb.

Faith isn’t interested in accolades and trophies, because faith is motivated by love and captivated by hope.

“Who among you,” said Jesus, “would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’?  Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’?  Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?  So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”

Jesus may have said this tongue-in-cheek—it’s unlikely that any of his disciples had any slaves—but his point was clear.  “When you’ve done all that you’re ordered” then you’ve done what you were supposed to do. 

We try to keep people from stumbling and pick them up when they do because that’s our job—as  followers of Jesus and as a decent human beings.  We forgive and keep on forgiving because Jesus told us to, and because we know that forgiveness is the starting point for healing and restoration of relationships.  Faith isn’t interested in accolades and trophies, because faith is captivated by the vision of the kin-dom of God.

Sometimes we sing the song of Habakkuk because the brokenness of the world just seems so overwhelming.  Sometimes we are reluctant to take on the work of embracing God’s vision, of building the kin-dom, because we feel ill-equipped, like we just don’t have the tools.   

In his autobiography, How Can I Keep From Singing, Pete Seeger talked about the message of The Hammer Song.  “The message,” he said, “was that we have got tools and we are going to succeed. This is what a lot of spirituals say: we will overcome. I have a hammer. The last verse didn’t say ‘But there ain’t no hammer, there ain’t no bell, there ain’t no song, but honey, I got you.’ We could have said that! The last verse says ‘I have a hammer, and I have a bell, I have a song.’ Here it is. ‘It’s the hammer of justice, it’s the bell of freedom, the song of love.’ No one could take these away.”

We have the tools we need to fix the world.  We have the vision of God’s kin-dom.  We have the hammer of justice and the bell of freedom.  We have the song of love between our brothers and our sisters and our non-binary siblings all over this land.

We just need to have faith…and even the littlest bit of faith is enough to change the world.

[1] Hammer Recalled;  Richard Harrington, The Washington Post, Feb. 1, 1983

[2] Habakkuk 1:1-4 (NRSV)

[3] Psalm 37:1-2

[4] Habakkuk 2:1-4

[5] Luke 17:1-10

The Works of Grace

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Luke 16:19-31

One bright afternoon in heaven, three people showed up at the Pearly Gates at the same time. St. Peter called the first person over and said, “What did you do on earth?” “I was a doctor,” she replied.  “I treated people when they were sick and if they could not pay I would treat them for free.”  “That’s wonderful, Doctor,” said St. Peter. “Welcome to heaven, and be sure to visit the science museum!”  Then he called the second person over.  “What did you do on earth?” he asked.  “I was a school teacher,” he replied.  “I taught educationally challenged children.”  “Oh, well done!” said St. Peter.  “Go right in!  And be sure to check out the buffet!”  Then St. Peter called over the third person.  “And what did you do on earth?” he asked.  “I ran a large health insurance company,” said the man.  “Well, you  may go in,” said St. Peter.  “But you can only stay for three days.”

Some people think that the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is about heaven and hell.  And in a way, maybe it is, but not in the obvious way.  Like all good parables, this story where the poor man is comforted after death and the rich man is left languishing alone in Hades is another one of those Jesus stories that should make us stop and rethink what we believe and what role that belief plays in our lives.

We Lutherans and many other Protestants are big on Grace.  This was Martin Luther’s big breakthrough after all—the understanding that we don’t earn our salvation, but that God’s love, God’s grace is what saves us. 

When I was in confirmation class many, many years ago, our whole class was required to memorize Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—  not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”  The Lutheran curriculum we were following wanted to make it crystal clear that being saved was entirely dependent on God’s grace.  For most of us at that age, being saved simply meant that you get to go to heaven when you die, and no one suggested that there might be richer or more nuanced ways to understand it.

So Grace, we were taught, is your ticket to heaven and the only way in.  The formula was pretty simple.  You might do all the nice and good things it’s possible to do in the world, but that won’t get you into heaven because no matter how good and nice and helpful you are, you’re still going to sin.  You can’t help it.  It’s part of human nature.  And sinful people can’t go to heaven, because no sin is allowed there.  But, if you believe in Jesus, then God will forgive all your sins!   You get a free pass.  You get Grace with a capital G.

The problem with our Protestant theology of Grace is that too many people stopped with that overly simple middle-school understanding.  Too many people came to believe that all they have to do is accept Jesus into their hearts as their personal Lord and Savior, and that’s it.  Done.  

This truncated understanding can lead to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace,” a belief that what you do or don’t do doesn’t matter because God will forgive you for Christ’s sake simply because you say you believe.  This is like setting off on a thousand mile hike and stopping after the first 20 yards.  At best, “cheap grace” leads to a very shallow personal theology and a me-centered spirituality.  At worst it lays a foundation for an “anything goes” way of life with no sense of accountability. People who believe in this kind of “cheap grace” can sometimes do atrocious things, or leave very necessary things undone, and still think of themselves as “saved.”  

Many of us cling to the gift of grace promised in Ephesians 2:8-9, and rightfully so, but too many of us stopped reading too soon;  we failed to read on through verse 10 where it says,  “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (NRSV) 

I particularly like the way the New Living Translation renders verse 10:  “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”

We are saved—rescued, healed, made whole, restored—by grace through faith.  But “through faith” doesn’t just mean that we intellectually accept the idea of grace.  Real faith opens our eyes to God’s grace at work in our lives and the world around us.  Real faith moves us to embody and to enact God’s grace.  Real faith moves us to do the good things God planned for us long ago.  If we don’t do those good things, then faith becomes nothing more than a security blanket of wishful thinking to wrap around ourselves on dark nights of doubt and fear.  As the Book of James says, “we are shown to be right with God by what we do, not by faith alone… For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.” (James 2:24-26)

One of the themes in Luke and Acts is the presence and work of the Holy Spirit, and yet Luke doesn’t let us “spiritualize” things that put us on the spot.  The examples of the “work of the Spirit” in Luke and Acts, especially as that work plays out in the ministry of Jesus, are practical, concrete, and challenging.  As much as we might want to spiritualize the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, it’s tough to explain away its central message, especially in light of what Jesus has to say about wealth and poverty throughout the entire Gospel.  

The Gospel of Luke emphasizes that the status of the rich and poor is reversed in the kingdom of God.  In the opening chapter of Luke, Mary sings, “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;  he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” (1:46-55)

 In the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled,” and then “woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” (6:20-25)

Luke makes it clear that “the poor” receive special attention in the ministry of Jesus and in the kingdom he is announcing. When he stands up to preach in the synagogue in Nazareth, he reads from the scroll of Isaiah,  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” (4:18)

When John the Baptist is in prison and sends one of his disciples to ask Jesus if he really is the one they’ve been waiting for, Jesus says, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them.” (7:22)

When he is a dinner guest at the home of a Pharisee, Jesus tells his host and others, “Don’t invite all your friends to your banquets, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.” (14:12) – because that’s who is invited to God’s banquet (14:21).

When the rich young ruler asks Jesus how he can inherit eternal life he is told to go sell all he has and give it to the poor. (18:18-30)

In Luke’s gospel Jesus makes it clear that having “treasures in heaven” is not just about piety; it is also about selling possessions and distributing wealth to the poor. (12:33; 18:22) 

In Luke’s gospel, conversion doesn’t just mean accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior or asking Jesus into your heart. When Zacchaeus the tax collector is befriended by Jesus, he gives half of his possessions to the poor and repays anyone he has defrauded four times over.  

Concern for the poor is a central part of the ministry of Jesus, but it wasn’t invented by Jesus.  Jesus himself stresses that it is the commandment of Torah.  In Deuteronomy, Moses states: “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.  You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.  Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, “The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,” and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing; your neighbor might cry to the LORD against you, and you would incur guilt.  Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.  Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” (Deut. 15:7-11)

This parable of the rich man and Lazarus raises important questions.  We’re not told that Lazarus did anything particularly noble or good.  He was just poor.  So why is he carried away by angels to be nestled and comforted in the bosom of Abraham after he dies?   We’re not told that the rich man did anything particularly horrible, he’s just self-centered.  So why is he in anguish in the flames of Hades after he dies?

Lazarus benefits from the default of grace.  He is a descendent of Abraham, so he is included in God’s covenant with Abraham.  He hasn’t done anything to remove himself from the covenant so he will spend eternity “in the bosom of Abraham,” enjoying companionship with others who have kept the covenant.

The rich man, on the other hand, removed himself from the covenant when he failed to “open his hand” to the poor and needy neighbor on his doorstep.  He failed to even see Lazarus, much less see their kinship in the covenant of Abraham and the covenant of humanity.  Instead of using his resources to help Lazarus, he used them exclusively to feed his own appetites. He is condemned to live forever in the burning loneliness that he, himself, created.  By focusing only on himself during his life, he created a great uncrossable chasm which now separates him forever from the companionship of eternity. 

“Some people, we learn, will never change,” says Amy-Jill Levine.  “They condemn themselves to damnation even as their actions condemn others to poverty.  If they think that they can survive on family connections—to Abraham, to their brothers—they are wrong.  If they think their power will last past their death, they are wrong again.”[1]

There is a sad “too-little-too-late” moment at the end of this short story by Jesus.  The rich man, realizing that there is no reprieve for him, asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his five brothers so they don’t end up “in this place of torment.”  Abraham reminds him that Moses and the prophets have already warned them, and the rich man replies, “No, Father Abraham!  But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent!”  Abraham says simply, “If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.”

“We are those five siblings of the rich man,” wrote Barbara Rossing.  “We who are still alive have been warned about our urgent situation… We have Moses and the prophets; we have the scriptures; we have the manna lessons of God’s economy, about God’s care for the poor and hungry.  We even have someone who has risen from the dead.  The question is: Will we—the five sisters and brothers—see?  Will we heed the warning before it’s too late?”[2]

[1] Short Stories by Jesus, p. 271, Amy-Jill Levine

[2] Working Preacher.org; Barbara Rossing, Commentary on Luke 16:19-31, September 25, 2016

No One Can Serve Two Masters

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 16:1-13

“There was a certain rich man who had a manager handling his affairs. One day a report came that the manager was wasting his employer’s money.”[1]  That’s how one of the most confusing and challenging of all the parables of Jesus begins.  

A rich man discovers that his manager is squandering his assets, so he decides to fire him and insists on a final accounting so he can audit the manager’s books.  The manager, realizing that his future is suddenly not too bright, decides to curry favor with the people who are in debt to his boss by reworking the books in their favor.  To everyone’s surprise, the boss admires the manager’s shrewdness.  Even more surprising, Jesus tells his followers that they could learn a thing or two from the crooked manager.  

So what do you think Jesus is trying to tell us here?

Before we dive too deeply into this odd story, I want to say a word about parables in general.  As I mentioned, this is one of the most confusing and challenging of all the parables,  but frankly, all of Jesus’s parables should challenge us if we’re listening to them properly.  If we think we have found an easy explanation for a parable, we’re probably short-circuiting its power.  Parables are supposed to stick with us and needle us and make us ask ourselves tough and touchy questions.

“What makes the parables mysterious, or difficult,” says Amy-Jill Levine, “is that they challenge us to look into the hidden aspects of our own values, our own lives.  They bring to the surface unasked questions, and they reveal the answers we have always known, but refuse to acknowledge.  Our reaction to them should be one of resistance rather than acceptance.”[2]  John Dominic Crossan says that a parable “shatters our complacency” and forces us to look outside of our comfortable assumptions about life.  Robert Funk said that a parable asks us to “cross over” into the kingdom, the mysterious land that Jesus is trying to evoke for us and in us. 

“A parable,” says Thomas Moore, “is the opposite of a gentle teaching story.  It confronts us, asking us to change our way of seeing things.  It turns conventional ideas upside down.  Its very point is to make us uncomfortable.”

So think about this parable of the dishonest manager again.  Who do you side with?  Who in this story are you inclined to like?  Who are you inclined to dislike?  Is there someone in this story you maybe identify with?  The rich man who discovers that his manager is squandering his assets?  The manager, himself, who cooks the books when he finds out he’s getting the sack?  The debtors who have their debts reduced, who, by the way, don’t object even a little bit to what the manager is doing?

Would it surprise you to learn that the people who originally heard this story in the first century—people listening to Jesus tell it or listening to it being read from Luke’s gospel—those original listeners probably didn’t feel any sympathy for any of these characters.

The common belief in their world was that there is only so much good stuff to go around.  If someone was wealthy, it was usually assumed that they had accumulated their assets by cheating someone else out of theirs, or by flat-out stealing.  So the people who originally heard this parable would not have felt any sympathy for the rich man whose assets have been squandered and who ends up with a reduced payback on the loans he’s made.

But what about the debtors?  Well, did you notice that the commodities they owe are in really large quantities?  The first borrower owed 800 gallons of oil.  This isn’t some poor schmo who borrowed a cup of oil to do a little cooking and keep the lamps lit for an evening.  Same with the guy who has borrowed the wheat.  He owes a thousand bushels of wheat—that’s 60 thousand pounds of wheat.  So, who borrows these kinds of goods in such large quantities?  Commodities traders.  Or merchants.  And people didn’t generally have a high opinion of them, either, because they marked up the prices on everything they sold as much as the market would bear, and with daily necessities like oil and wheat, the market would bear a lot, especially since the empire was the biggest customer for those things.  

There is also another important economic dynamic in the background of this parable that the original audience would have been well aware of but that we wouldn’t know about just from reading of Luke’s text.  Remember, Jesus was a Jew and most of his audience were Jews.  They would have assumed that the characters in the parable were Jews, too.  There were very clear laws in the Torah, in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, that prohibited charging interest.[3]  The Jewish Virtual Library[4] sums up those laws this way: “The prohibition on interest is not a prohibition on usury in the modern sense of the term, that is, excessive interest, but of all, even minimal interest.  There is no difference in law between various rates of interest as all interest is prohibited.”

All interest on loans was prohibited.  And yet we know from abundant records that wealthy landlords in Jesus’ day were often loan sharks.  Since charging interest was prohibited, they created ways to charge interest without it looking like they were charging interest.  Most often they did this by rolling the interest into the principal.  New Testament scholar William Herzog says that the hidden interest rates appear to have been about 25% for money and 50% for goods.  The rich man’s manager would probably have also been taking his own cut of the profits on top of that 50%,  and then on top of all that there would be taxes owed to Rome.  And all those costs got passed down the line to the eventual consumer.

The upshot of all this is that when the crooked manager cuts the oil merchant’s debt from 800 gallons to 400, he is extracting his boss’s interest so that the oil merchant now owes something closer to what he actually borrowed.  Same thing with the wheat merchant, although the crooked manager doesn’t give him quite as big a break.

By reducing the debts of the oil and wheat merchants, the manager is bringing their debt more into conformity with the law—with Torah.  This is why the rich man who made the original loans can’t be seen to complain about it.  It would expose his own violation of the law.  So he smiles, takes his lumps, and admires the shrewdness of his former manager. 

So what does Jesus want us to get from this parable?  When you have all the information, none of the characters comes off looking like a role model.  It’s true that the crooked manager did a small good deed, a bit of a mitzvah, for the two merchants, but giving them a break was all about his own self-interest, and he gave his former boss the shaft in the process.  

 “If you’re not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with your own?” said Jesus. That question sounds like it’s directed at people like the dishonest manager.  But biblical scholar Barbara Rossing has suggested that Jesus might really have someone else in mind with that question.  She suggests that he’s talking to the the wealthy landowners of this world, that he’s  talking about being faithful to what rightfully belonged to the peasant farmers who were being financially squeezed into giving up their land by people like the rich man in this parable.  

When we read this parable it’s tempting to ask ourselves, “How does Jesus want me to judge these people?”  But maybe what Jesus is really asking us to evaluate is the economic system they’re all trapped in.

Even the most benign economic systems create a kind of bondage.  In this parable Jesus was painting a portrait of common economic practices that trample on the poor, practices that lock them into bearing the heaviest load of a debt-driven economy in which the bondage of financial obligation rises all the way up to the bankers at the top.  And, of course, the Empire gets its cut.

It’s not all that different for us in today’s world.  Almost all of us live with some degree of debt—car loans, mortgages, credit card debt, student loans.  According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as of June 30 of this year, household debt in the U.S. reached an all-time high of $16.15 trillion.  That’s up from 15.6 trillion last year.  According to Debt.org, that averages out to $90,460 of debt per person.  

Credit card balances this past year saw their largest year-over-year percentage increase in more than twenty years, and aggregate credit limits on cards saw their largest increase in over ten years.  All this debt is a major contributing factor to the top-heavy disparity in wealth distribution in this country, a system in which the gap between rich and poor keeps getting wider while the middle continues to shrink.

In this parable, Jesus was telling his followers—telling us—to pay attention to the world’s economic dynamics, to pay attention to how the game is played.  He’s telling them, as Professor Matt Skinner said, “You either play the system or the system plays you.”[5]  

“No one can serve two masters,” said Jesus. “For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.”   If we’re not careful, money can become a kind of religion.  But it’s a religion that enslaves.  So pay attention.  Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends.  And keep an honest eye on who you’re serving, because no one can serve two masters.

[1] New Living Translation

[2] Amy-Jill Levine; Short Stories by Jesus, Introduction, p. 3

[3] Exodus 22:25, Leviticus 25:35, Deuteronomy 23:20

[4] JewishVirtualLibrary.com, Usury

[5] Matt Skinner, Sermon Brainwave #862, Luther Seminary

The Joy of (Re)Connecting

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Luke 15:1-10

So this one time, some Pharisees and religion teachers were getting all cranky because Jesus was having way too much fun with the wrong crowd.  Tax collectors and known sinners—you know, those people who color outside the lines where the religious boundaries are concerned—these kinds of people kept coming to listen to him and he didn’t shoo them away or disrespect them or anything. On the contrary, he would welcome them and invite them to join the discussion!  Sometimes he would even break bread with them.  Basically, he treated them like they were all old friends at a reunion.

This didn’t sit well with the holier-than-thou guardians of propriety.  They didn’t think associating with “those people” was appropriate for a well-known rabbi, especially one with such a growing following.  They thought he should be setting an example for the rabble.  Well, he actually was setting an example, it just wasn’t the one they wanted him to set.   So they were grumbling about him.

Jesus overheard all their crabby comments, of course.  He thought about calling them out on their snooty attitude, but what good would that do?  It would just make them defensive and even more stand-offish when what he really wanted was for them to loosen up and join the party.  So he tried to reframe their thinking with a couple of hypothetical scenarios.

“Suppose a guy has a hundred sheep,” he said, “and one of them wanders off and gets lost.  “Won’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the wilderness to go search for the one that is lost until he finds it?  And when he finds it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders.  And when he gets home, he will call all his friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep!’  It’s like that.  There is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people.

“Or how about this—suppose a woman has ten silver coins on her necklace and she loses one.  Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and get down on her knees to sweep under furniture until she finds it?  And when she does find it, she’ll call all her neighbors and friends and say, ‘Rejoice with me!  I’ve found my lost drachma!  It’s just like that!” said Jesus.  “There is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents!”     

Now I am absolutely sure that some of the people listening to Jesus spin these hypotheticals were chuckling, and I am just as sure that some of them were scratching their heads because there is some obvious craziness in these little stories.  Leave ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness while you go off searching for one?  Who would do that?  And sheep don’t repent.  Coins don’t repent.  And is it really repentance?  The sheep didn’t do anything to help himself be found—he didn’t wander home all sheepish about being lost.  The silver coin didn’t roll itself over to rejoin the other nine coins on the necklace. 

Or are these stories allegories maybe?  Is the shepherd God?  But does God leave ninety-nine obedient sheep at risk in the wilderness to go find the one that’s lost?  Maybe.  But that does raise questions, especially if you’re one of the ninety-nine.  

So maybe God is like the reckless shepherd who puts everything at risk to find the one lost sheep. Maybe God is like the woman who drops everything and lights a lamp and cleans house until she finds that lost silver drachma.  Maybe.

Or maybe something else is going on here.  Sheep and coins don’t repent—at least not the way we usually understand repentance.  They don’t apologize.  They don’t have a change of mind or a change of heart.   

But what if Jesus is giving us a new definition of repentance?  What if repentance is not about clearing some kind of moral bar?  What if it’s not about moral rectitude or moral correction?  What if repentance is about being brought back to where you fit in God’s grand design, being brought back into the community and communion?  What if repentance is about crossing all those artificial barriers we put up between each other, those barriers that divide us into opposing camps?

Maybe repentance is about being brought back together.  Maybe it’s about reconnecting.[1]

That would explain this other thing.  Did you notice how many times Jesus mentions joy in these two little stories?  Five times!  The shepherd carries the sheep joyfully! He calls out to his neighbors to Rejoice with me!  Jesus says there is joy in heaven when a lost sinner is reconnected with the community.  The woman who finds her lost coin calls out to her neighbors Rejoice with me!  And once again, Jesus says there is joy in the presence of the angels when even one lost sinner is reunited with companions.  It’s all about the joy!

Jesus wanted the Pharisees to understand that they were missing out on the joy!  He wanted them to understand that there is joy in making connections with people you might ordinarily be reluctant to associate with.  There is joy when we step out of our clique or private club to go out and meet the wider world.  

Matt Harding is a guys who knows all about that.  

Matt was living the dream.  He was working as a Video Game Developer, creating new games for Activision, one of the biggest companies in the business.   He was kicking around ideas for a new game with his team one day, when somebody suggested, “Let’s do a ‘shoot ‘em up’ game.  Those are very popular.”  Matt said sarcastically, “Sure.  How about Destroy all Humans?”[2]  Matt was being facetious, but the boss liked the idea and gave the game a green light. And that’s when Matt quit.  “I didn’t want to spend two years of my life writing a game about killing everyone,” he said.  

Now Matt had time on his hands, and a fair bit of savings, so he decided to see the world.  One day in Saigon, Matt was in kind of a goofy mood so he did this funny little dance in front of a restaurant, which his travel buddy caught on video.  It gave them a good laugh, so they decided that they would do this everywhere they were going on their trip around the world. 

When they got home, they cut together all these fun little clips to create a three minute video of Matt dancing in all kinds of interesting places all over the world.  And that would have been the end of it, except that Matt’s sister uploaded the video to this new thing called YouTube™.     

Dancing Matt became an internet phenomenon almost overnight.  So Matt decided to go out into the world and do it again, only this time he would invite people to dance with him.  And dance they did.  Over a period of about 15 years he recorded and posted six Dancing Matt videos which have brought joy to people all over the world.  (You can find all of them at www.wheretheheckismatt.com.) 

When NPR asked Matt what he had learned as he danced through the world, he said, “Here’s what I can report back: People want to feel connected to each other. They want to be heard and seen, and they’re curious to hear and see others from places far away. I share that impulse. It’s part of what drives me to travel.”

In her TED talk about Vulnerability, Brené Brown said, “A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people.  We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong.  When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to.  We break.  We fall apart.  We numb.  We ache.  We hurt others.  We get sick.”

Right now our country is in a grumbling mood…and so is much of the rest of the world.  We’re not functioning as we were meant to.  We have found too many ways to separate ourselves from each other.  We have turned too many people into “those people,” the ones we don’t want to be seen with. As a result, we’re missing the joy.  We’re missing the celebration.

We need to repent, not with apologies or penance, but by reconnecting.  We need to find our way back into where we fit in God’s grand design, into community and communion.  We need to bring ourselves back together.  And maybe even dance with strangers.  Because that’s where the joy is.

[1] Special Thanks to Prof. Matt Skinner and Sermon Brainwave for this perspective.

[2] Destroy All Humans is in its 7th version and is available on multiple platforms.  Clearly there’s money in nihilism.

How Far Will You Go?

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 14:26-33

When I was 19, my best friend, Mackay, and I decided that it would be all kinds of fun to ride our bicycles from Long Beach, California to Ensenada, Mexico.  And so one sunny morning in June, we set off pedaling down the Pacific Coast Highway with sleeping bags, a 2-person tent and a few other necessities strapped to our bikes. 

The hills of Laguna slowed us down a bit more than we had anticipated, but it was still too early for lunch when we reached San Clemente, so we decided to push on and have lunch in Oceanside.  But at the south end of San Clemente, we ran into a very big obstacle that we hadn’t planned on.  Camp Pendleton Marine Base.  

We knew we wouldn’t be able to ride through Pendleton on the freeway, but we thought we could ride through the base on the old highway, which, according to our maps, still ran alongside the freeway.  The very nice Marine guard at the entrance to the base told us that that was not going to happen–  because the old highway was long gone.  

After some begging and pleading and a few choruses of “Gosh, We’ve Ridden All This Way,” he got on the phone and managed to get permission for us to ride through the base.   He sketched out a map for us and gave us very strict instructions to stay on the route he had outlined for us,  making it clear that straying off that route could have grave consequences, including but not limited to death, dismemberment or being imprisoned.  

An hour and a half later, we were utterly lost on a winding dirt road when a very perturbed Marine in a jeep came roaring up to us and asked us what the H-E-DOUBLE-Q we thought we were doing.  He also told us that we were perilously close to a live-fire range, then threatened to throw us in the stockade or make us enlist or both before finally deciding to guide us down to the southern end of the base.  He sent us off with a warning that if we ever set foot or bicycle tire on the base again there would be dire consequences unless, of course, we were in a Marine uniform.  

We had lost a lot of time on the confusing roads of Pendleton, so we powered through Oceanside and into San Diego without stopping for lunch.  Then came the ordeal of getting through San Diego on surface streets which proved to be far more complicated and took much longer than we had planned.  And just so you know, not even the military had GPS yet in those days, so we were at the mercy of outdated gas station roadmaps.  

The sun was getting ready to call it a day by the time we crossed the border into Tijuana.  We grabbed a couple of tacos from a taco cart then raced the sun for the last 14 miles to Rosarito Beach where we camped for the night.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.  The ride from Rosarito to Ensenada on the old road up across the mountain—the only way bicycles were allowed to go—was a challenging but beautiful ride.  After a night in Ensenada, we turned around and headed for home.  

We spent the night at Rosarito Beach again, had a good breakfast at the cantina, then set out for the border.  We made good speed and got to Tijuana at about three in the afternoon which gave us plenty of time to make it to Silver Strand State Beach in San Diego where we planned to pitch our tent for the night.

And that’s when we ran into another obstacle we hadn’t planned on.  There were three long lines of cars waiting to cross the border into California.  We rode our bikes up between the lines of cars to the state line expecting that the border guard would just wave us through—after all, where would a couple of guys on bicycles hide anything?   But the guard at the border wasn’t having it.  He gave us a lecture about trying to cut the line then told us to go all the way back to the end of the line.  Two hours later after standing in the heat astride our bikes and breathing exhaust fumes from all the cars, we finally got back to the border where the same guard just waved us across without even asking for our I.D.   

At that point, we pulled over to the side of the road and took stock of where we were and what lay ahead of us.  We were exhausted, hot and sweaty.  Our legs were trembling and aching.  We didn’t even want to think about trying to get through Pendleton again.  What we wanted most was a good shower, a long, cold drink and a good meal. What we wanted was to be home.  

The bicycle ride that we had thought would be all kinds of fun had turned out to be all kinds of challenging.  Our stamina had evaporated in the exhaust fumes and unrelenting sunshine while we waited at the border.  We were fresh out of  possibility.  Our ride was over.  We made our way to the airport and, grateful for small miracles, managed to snag seats on a flight back to Long Beach.  

“Who would build a tower without first figuring out how much it’s going to cost?” asked Jesus.  “What king would go to war without first figuring out if he has a chance of winning?”  Who would ride a bicycle to Ensenada without making sure that they could actually get there and back?

Luke tells us that large crowds were traveling with Jesus as he made his way toward Jerusalem.  They had been watching him heal people.  They had been listening to him as he taught them about the kingdom of God and how radically different it is from the kingdom of Caesar.   The crowd was drawn to him.  They liked him.  They liked the different world he described, the better world that he told them is possible.  A lot of them were probably wondering what it might be like to be part of his inner circle—to be his disciple.

But there’s a big difference between being a fan and being a disciple.  

Jesus wants to make it clear to the crowd that becoming a disciple means putting him and the kingdom of God first.  Jesus wants them to understand that  becoming a disciple means you join him in making the kingdom of God a reality on earth as it is in heaven.  And Jesus wants us to understand that the other kingdoms of this world are going to resist you when you do that.  

The kingdom of family may be perfectly happy for you to be a fan of Jesus, even for you to embrace some of the things he teaches.  But they may not be so happy when you start giving away time and resources that they feel they have a claim to.  “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple,” said Jesus.  And no, he didn’t mean a disciple has to have some kind of intense animosity toward family, but he did mean that you, as a disciple, have to be willing to turn away from them, to let them go, when what they want is trying to pull you away from where Jesus is leading you.

The kingdoms, the empires of this world will resist you when you become a disciple of Jesus and set to work in earnest to make God’s reign a reality in your life and in the world.  

The kingdom of consumerism will sneer at you for not having the newest, shiniest, most fashionable, most advanced everything—clothes, gadgets, house, car or whatever when you, as a disciple of Jesus, learn to be satisfied with what you have and to give away what you don’t really need. 

The kingdom of capitalism will call you a socialist or maybe even a communist when you, as a disciple of Jesus, insist that those who have more should contribute to the well-being of those who have less.  When you remind them, as Jesus did, that God did not intend for the bountiful resources of the earth to enrich only a few, they will call you a radical and try to silence you.

The empire of power will oppose you when, as a disciple of Jesus, you call for liberating the oppressed and setting the captives free.  When you, as a disciple of Jesus, insist that all people are equal and beloved in God’s sight so the opportunities and benefits of life together in a civil society should be equal, too, regardless of race or gender or color or sexuality.  They will call you a trouble-maker and try to put a stop to you…one way or another.

“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple,” said Jesus, and those people in the crowd, especially the wannabe disciples, knew he wasn’t just using hyperbole.  They knew that the cross he was talking about wasn’t a metaphor.  He was telling them there would be a real cross with real nails and real pain…because when you try to establish the kingdom of God in the midst of the empire of coercive power, coercive power will try to stop you.  Brutally.  

If you want to be my disciple, then stop and think about what that might cost you says Jesus.  There’s no shame if you can’t go that far.  There’s no shame if you just want to follow in the crowd and listen from a safer distance.  But you should know, eventually that won’t be enough.  

Eventually the Word of God will bring you to a place where either you will summon up the stamina and will to finish the ride… or call it quits.  Eventually either the vision of the kingdom of God will become all-consuming for you, or you will dismiss it as a nice but unobtainable ideal—or maybe some kind of prize in the afterlife if you are nice enough to qualify.

Traveling with Jesus sounds like all kinds of fun.  And it does have its rewards.  There are healings along the way.  He’s a marvelous teacher and the kingdom he envisions is beautiful.  He loves you and isn’t shy about making that known.   Jesus loves the crowd… but not everyone in the crowd is ready to go all the way to discipleship.  

Lots of people can ride a bicycle.  Comparatively few can ride it all the way to Ensenada and back.

How far will you go?

Entertaining Angels

Steve Beckham 6 Comments

Hebrews 13:1-2, 15-16; Luke 14:7-14

“Let mutual love continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”  (Hebrews 13:1-2, NRSV)

“The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor.  Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks.”  (Luke 14:12, The Message)

These texts this week reminded me of Eric.  I think about him a lot.  Eric showed up one Sunday night when we were doing Stories, Songs and Supper.  He stood at the church door and asked what was happening as he saw people gathering, greeting each other, laughing, and we told him, “It’s a thing we do called Stories, Songs, and Supper.  We share a meal then sing a bunch of old familiar songs, then someone tells a story, then we sing a little more.”  We invited him to come in and join us.  So he did.

I was pretty sure he was homeless, although to be fair, his clothes were neater and cleaner than most of the other unhoused people who came to the church.  Eric had a gift of gab and while we were eating he told us a bit about himself.  That’s when he told us that this dinner was special for him because it was his birthday.  So we all sang Happy Birthday to him.  After supper, he helped to clear the tables, then joined us in the sanctuary for the singing and storytelling. 

Eric showed up for worship the next Sunday morning and also joined in our Adult Education class.  He joined in with one of our small groups in the volunteer work they were doing with Lutheran Social Services.  In almost no time Eric became an important member of our little family of faith at Gloria Dei.

 “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,” we read in Hebrews, “for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

Well,  Eric was no angel…but then again, maybe he was.  In ancient times the word angel had a double meaning.  It could refer to a supernatural being who served God, or it could simply mean a messenger.   Eric was, in and of himself, a message to us—a gift to us all at the little church with a big heart.

We learned a lot from Eric.  We learned a little about life on the streets.  We learned more than we wanted to know about our neighbors’ attitudes toward the unhoused.  We learned how the police and the justice system in our city respond to those who are experiencing homelessness.  We learned about our own attitudes toward those living rough.  Most of all, though, we experienced an energy and vitality that’s been missing since he left us.  All this because we welcomed one gregarious man into our party on his birthday.

“The next time you put on a dinner,” said Jesus,  “don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor.  Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks.  You’ll be—and experience—a blessing. They won’t be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God’s people.” (Luke 14:12-14, The Message) 

“You will be—and you will experience—a blessing.”  Eric taught us just how true that is.

Jesus loved sharing meals with people.  Think about all the stories in the gospels that involve eating!  Jesus distributed food to multitudes.  Jesus dined with Simon the Tanner and Zacchaeus.  And, of course, there was that last Passover meal with his disciples.  After the resurrection he broke bread with the Emmaus travelers and cooked fish on the beach for the disciples.  Jesus shared a table with Pharisees even though some Pharisees had criticized him for sharing a table with “the wrong kind of people.”  “This fellow eats with tax collectors and sinners!”  There are so many Jesus stories that revolve around eating that some have suggested that his primary work was organizing dinner parties. 

Sharing the table—issuing a wide and inclusive invitation—this was one of the ways Jesus embodied the kingdom of God. 

“The gospel,” wrote Rachel Held Evans, “doesn’t need a coalition devoted to keeping the wrong people out.  It needs a family of sinners, saved by grace, committed to tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors, and shouting, ‘Welcome!  There’s bread and wine.  Come eat with us and talk.’ This isn’t a kingdom for the worthy, it’s a kingdom for the hungry.”

In the earliest days of what we now think of as the Church, many—maybe most—groups of Jesus followers were dinner-party groups—they organized their fellowship and worship around sharing a table, and everyone brought what they could to the banquet.  We see hints of this in 1 Corinthians 11 when St. Paul chastises the Corinthians for bringing their divisions to the table, but even more sternly for failing to make sure that the have-nots were included in the celebration when the haves were feasting.

“When you meet together,” he wrote, “you are not really interested in the Lord’s Supper.  For some of you hurry to eat your own meal without sharing with others. As a result, some go hungry while others get drunk.  What? Don’t you have your own homes for eating and drinking?  Or do you really want to disgrace God’s church and shame the poor? What am I supposed to say? Do you want me to praise you? Well, I certainly will not praise you for this!” (1 Cor 11:20-22, NLT)

The practice of early Christianity was centered around the table.  When it worked it was egalitarian, transformative, and beautiful.  When it didn’t it descended into another bad example of classism.  But the evidence suggests that most of the time and in most places it worked.  

The table of Christ was the one place in their world where they were all equal.  It was the one place where it didn’t matter if you lived in a mansion or sheltered under the eaves of the town hall.  It was the one place where it didn’t matter if you were a slave or a free person.  It was the one place where it didn’t matter if you were male or female—at least not in those earliest days of the Jesus followers.  

At the table of Christ, all were equal and all shared in what was brought to the supper—but most especially, all shared in the bread and the wine of Christ’s presence.

In his book The Forgotten Creed: Christianity’s Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism, Stephen J. Patterson has recovered what is believed to be the earliest baptismal creed of the Jesus followers:

“For you are all children of God in the Spirit.

There is no Jew or Greek,

there is no slave or free,

there is no male and female;

for you are all one in the Spirit.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because St. Paul quotes this creed in his letter to the Galatians with a slight twist at the end.  Instead of saying “for you are all one in the Spirit,” Paul writes, “for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

“The creed’s basic claim,” writes Patterson, “is that baptism exposes the follies by which most of us live, defined by the other, who we are not.  It declares the unreality of race, class, and gender: there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female.  We may not all be the same, but we are all one, each one a child of God.” 

In Journey With Jesus this week, Dan Clendenin described how a friend of his daughter wanted to invite everyone in her church to her wedding but the budget wouldn’t allow it.  So instead of having a fancy wedding meal for just a few family and close friends, they got the police to block off the main street in downtown Waco, Texas.  Guests danced in the streets and ate ice cream from a Baskin Robbins ice cream cart.  The wedding cake was under the gazebo in the park and they cut small pieces so everyone could get a taste.  The groom, a pastor, had worked a lot with homeless people and many of them showed up for the wedding,  then helped to clean up the streets afterward.  The little African-American girl who lived next door to the bride brought her mother and her grandfather along to the wedding.  The grandfather quickly became the center of attention as he danced to the street music and soon the college girls were lining up to dance with him.  Passers-by strolling on the street were invited to join in the party.  And everyone was welcomed as an honored guest.

This is what the kingdom of God looks like.  A celebration that’s open to everyone.

It’s a family of sinners, saved by grace, tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors, and shouting, “Welcome!  There’s bread and wine.  Come eat with us and talk.

This is what the church of Jesus is supposed to be about:  radical hospitality.   

A kingdom for the hungry.

So let mutual love continue. 

But don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers.

Who knows… they just might be angels.

image © Hyatt Moore

Bent Out of Shape

Steve Beckham 7 Comments

Luke 13:10-17

Here’s a quick recap of today’s Gospel lesson.  One Sabbath day Jesus is teaching in the synagogue when he sees a woman who has been bent over double for 18 years.  Jesus calls her over to and says, “Woman, you are released from your weakness.  He lays his hands on her, and instantly she stands up straight, and starts praising God.  But not everybody is happy about this. Now the leader of the synagogue is the one who is getting all bent out of shape.  He thinks healing and/or being healed on the Sabbath is a violation of the law.  “Now is not the time,” he says.  “Come back some other day.”

Why is it that no matter what good thing you’re doing or trying to do, somebody is going to get bent out of shape about it?

When the whole country was bent out of shape with the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to straighten things out with a whole package of programs called The New Deal.  This package included the Works Progress Administration to provide jobs in a country where 24.9% of the workforce was unemployed and those lucky enough to have kept their jobs had seen their income cut by 42.5%.  The New Deal package also included Social Security to provide a guaranteed minimum income for retired workers or those too disabled to work.  

The well-off people of Roosevelt’s own social class opposed the New Deal.  They said that it was Socialism and un-American.  They said that putting people to work with the WPA would put the government in competition with private industry.  Other critics, like Huey Long, said the New Deal  didn’t go far enough or do enough.  Voices from a number of quarters said it was too expensive for a country suffering through a depression.  “Now is not the time,” they said.

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to champion the interstate 

highway system, his critics called it “another ascent into the stratosphere of New Deal jitterbug economics.”  People who were concerned about the stability of the post-war economy said that the country simply could not afford it.  “Now is not the time,” they said.

When President John F. Kennedy declared in his State of the Union address in 1962 that we were going to go to the moon and take on other ambitious goals “not because they are easy but because they are hard” and because they would “organize and measure the best of America’s energies and skills,” he summed up his challenge by asking, “If not now, then when?  If not us, then by whom?”

“If not now, when?  If not us, then who?”  

I can imagine Jesus saying that to the synagogue leader who is upset with him for healing the woman who had been bent over for 18 years by “a spirit of weakness.”  

“You hypocrites!” he says. “You’ll untie your donkey on the Sabbath, you’ll let your ox out of its stall on the Sabbath and lead it out for water, but you don’t think this daughter of Abraham,  your sister, should be released from her bondage on the Sabbath?  What, 18 years bent over in pain isn’t long enough for you?  Now is not the time?  Well, if not now, when?”

“This woman, a daughter of Abraham,” he said “has been held in bondage by Satan for eighteen years.  Isn’t it right that she be released, even on the Sabbath?”  

Held in bondage by Satan.  The implication of what Jesus was saying was that anyone who would oppose her being freed from the “spirit of weakness” that had been keeping her bent over would be collaborating with Satan.  

There’s something evil about prolonging someone’s pain when you have the means and opportunity to provide relief.  

There’s something evil about prolonging someone’s bondage when you have the means and opportunity to set them free.  

More than 100 million people in this country are now dealing with some degree of medical debt.[1]  62% of those with medical debt had medical insurance when the debt was incurred but found that their insurance did not cover the expensive treatment, meds or procedures they needed.  Some will experience bankruptcy because of medical debt.  Some will lose their homes.  All of them are in bondage to a for-profit medical system.  But when we talk about Medicare for all or some other form of universal health care like the kind every other industrialized country in the world provides for their citizens, the insurance companies all say in unison, “We can’t afford it.  The economy won’t sustain it.  Now is not the time.”  

There’s something evil about prolonging someone’s pain when you have the means and opportunity to provide relief.  

There’s something evil about prolonging someone’s bondage when you have the means and opportunity to set them free.  

We seem to be perpetually caught between factions that want to bring healing to our over-heating planet and forces who are worried about the costs and the changes that would come with fixing the problems we have caused.   As we talk about funding new infrastructure for producing renewable energy, as we talk about ways to make more electric vehicles and make them more affordable so we can reduce the pollution that produces global warming, as we talk about more mass transit, there is a chorus of voices saying, “It’s too expensive.  The economy won’t support it.  The technology is not all there yet.  Now is not the time.”

When we talk about how we can address the lingering and malignant nastiness of racism, and antisemitism, we run headlong into people who want to remove the books and curricula that teach about these things from libraries and schools.  They don’t want their children to feel bad about the way their forbears treated people who were different from themselves.  They don’t want their children to know about our legacy of slavery, and they really don’t want them to know how de-humanizing and violent slavery really was.  They don’t want them to know about Jim Crow laws and segregation.  They don’t want them to know about all the ways that racism is still making life difficult to impossible for people of color.  “They’re just children,” they say.  They’re too young to be exposed to those things.  Now is not the time.”  

Well if not now, when?  If they don’t learn about the ugly hate and violence of our shared past, how will our children know not to make the same horrible mistakes in the future?  How will they understand the hate and violence they still see today?  

And what about the Black children and Brown children and Jewish children and Muslim children who are still living with the challenge of all that racism.  The redlining may be gone on the map but the neighborhoods it created linger on along with their diminished opportunities and services and quality of life.  These children of God have been held in bondage for centuries.  Isn’t it right that they be released?  Isn’t it right that they be freed from the things that have bent their lives out of shape?  Isn’t it right that in the name of Jesus and in the name of our common humanity we should stretch out our hands and help them stand up straight…even on the Sabbath?  If not now, when?  If not us, then who?

How will our children understand how destructive and wrong it is to treat others as something less human, something less than children of God, something less than their siblings in Christ if they don’t learn about it when they’re still young enough to have some empathy?  How will they understand the brokenness of the world they are inheriting from us if we don’t teach them about the mistakes we made?

Yes, they will feel bad about it.  Yes, it will make them sad.  That’s the point.  That’s how they will be moved to do better.  

Those who don’t want to see us address racism and antisemitism and all the other destructive and violent isms that are tearing our country and our world apart try to disparage and belittle those of us who are trying to create awareness and change things for the better.  They try to dismiss us by saying we’re “woke.”  They say it like it’s a bad thing.  

Do you know what woke means?  It’s a term that originated in the Black community.  Woke means you are awakened to the needs of others.  Woke means you are well-informed, thoughtful, compassionate, humble and kind.  Woke means you are eager to make the world a better place for all people.  Woke means you are aware of the systems we live in and how they can produce unequal opportunities and outcomes.

Jesus told us to be woke.  He told us repeatedly to stay awake.  Jesus told us to read the signs of the times.  Jesus told us to pray for God’s reign of love and respect to become a reality on earth as it is in heaven.  

Jesus himself ran headlong into that all-too-human propensity to defend the status quo.  He was continually challenged by people who were upset because he didn’t play by the rules.  “There are six days of the week for working.  Come on those days to be healed, not on the Sabbath.”  But Jesus didn’t think anyone should have to wait for healing or to be set free from bondage.  Not even on the Sabbath.

Today’s Gospel tells us that the things Jesus said to the synagogue leader shamed his enemies.  Nobody likes to be shamed.  But sometimes that’s what it takes to humble us.  Sometimes that’s what it takes for us to learn.  Sometimes that’s what it takes to wake us up.

There is so much that needs the healing, freeing and restoring touch of Christ in our world.  There are so many who need to be freed by the love of God.  When we follow Jesus, we are choosing to do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”  When we follow Jesus, we are choosing “to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills” for the healing of our communities and our world.  When we follow Jesus we are choosing to let the shame of our history teach us to follow a more generous and loving Way through our present time and into the future.  When we follow Jesus we are choosing to help a society that is bent out of shape to stand up straight.  

If not now, then when?  If not us, then who?

[1] Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2022

Context

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Note: This is a transcript of an extemporaneous sermon

Jeremiah 23:23-29; Hebrews 11:29-12:2; Luke 12:49-56

I confess I hardly know where to begin today.  The three readings that we have this morning are the kind of texts that are very easy to take out of context and twist them to whatever end someone wants.

In the first reading, Jeremiah is calling out the false prophets.  He was speaking at a time when the false prophets were telling the people of Israel and the political powers that be that they didn’t have anything to worry about from the approaching Babylonians because God was going to save them.  And Jeremiah was saying, No, that’s not how it’s going to happen.  You haven’t listened to God’s warnings, you’re completely unprepared, and that’s just not how it’s going to happen.  He reminds them that the Word of God is like a fire or a hammer that can smash through the rock of our denial.

And then we come to the lesson from the letter to the Hebrews.  It starts off with this wonderful remembrance of all these heroes of faith, people who stayed faithful.  The passage starts off talking about how they were rewarded for their faith.  Some of them were given kingdoms. Some of them made great accomplishments.  But then it quickly turns and talks about martyrdom.  

It’s so easy, sometimes, to think of ourselves as martyrs when things are not going our way.  Or when we find ourselves facing forces or circumstances in the culture or in life that put undue pressure on us, especially if it happens because of our faith.  We forget that that letter was written at a time when people really were being tortured for their faith.  Hebrews was written probably around 63 or 64 CE, when Nero was the emperor—Nero, who would light his garden parties by putting the bodies of Christians on poles and lighting them on fire as human torches—Nero, who executed Paul by beheading and Peter by crucifying him upside down—Nero, who sent Christians to the arena to fight wild animals without any weapons.

And then come the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel:  “You think I came to bring peace?  No, I came to set the world on fire and I wish it was already kindled. I have a baptism to be baptized with and I am under such anxiety until it is complete.”  He was on his way to the cross.

At the beginning of that chapter, chapter 12, Luke tells us that thousands of people were now following him.  Thousands.  And you know Jesus walked among that crowd and listened to every single way that people were misunderstanding him.  And every single misplaced expectation.  So he talks about division.  And I don’t think he’s saying this with any kind of forcefulness or bravado.  I think he is lamenting.  I think he understands that the world is going to be pretty hostile to those who truly follow what he’s been saying about proclaiming the reign of God and working to see it established nonviolently.  

And I think it breaks his heart to say those words.  Father will be pitted against son and son against father.  I remember the first time I talked to my dad about going to seminary when I was about 15 years old.  I remember he said, “It’s a good thing to have religion, but don’t go overboard with it.”  

These texts that we have this morning, as I said, can so easily be pulled out of context and used the wrong way.  When I first read these texts this week, I couldn’t help but think about how a White Christian Nationalist preacher might use these texts.  

You could use this text where Jesus talks about division, for instance, to make it sound like he’s endorsing that, like we’re supposed to be splitting ourselves apart from each other.  You could use what Jeremiah is saying about the false prophets because it’s oh so easy to think that the people who are saying what we don’t like are the false prophets, instead of the ones who are speaking the Word of God.  And as I said, with martyrdom, it’s so easy to think of yourself as the martyr. We have romanticized martyrdom in our world today.  This is why terrorist groups talk about martyrdom and the possibility of martyrdom when they’re recruiting.  It just sounds so glorious. 

On Wednesday, Diana Butler Bass published a piece in her online group called The Cottage, where she shared that she’s extremely worried because there’s been an increasing amount of rhetoric from a certain quarter of our society about civil war, especially after Mar a Lago was searched by the FBI early this week.  There were thousands of posts saying it’s time for civil war, thousands of posts with a headline that said lock and load.  And the scary thing is that the people who are saying this don’t stop to think about what that really means.

It means violence.  And bloodshed.  It means misery and suffering.  It means crashed economies.  It means poverty and hunger.  It means destruction.  It’s not going to be like the last time.  There won’t be some dividing line between North and South.  No, it will be between you and your next door neighbor.  It’ll be right outside your door…or maybe inside your house…if it’s a thing we allow to happen.

One of the things that we are called to as faithful people is to be faithful to Jesus and to be faithful to what the scriptures are actually saying, to keep them in context and use them in context.  But also to speak to a society that is taking them out of context, to remind them of what they’re really saying when they say things like, “It’s time for a civil war.”  To remind them that what they’re saying is that it’s time for bloodshed…and destruction and violence and pain and suffering beyond their imagination.  If they talk about the words of Jesus saying, “But look, he’s calling for this division!” it’s our job to say, “No, he’s lamenting the ways we divide ourselves from each other because of the way we interpret our faith.”  

Jesus was just so prescient when he talked about our division.  So prophetic.  There are 40 church bodies in North America, in the US and Canada that call themselves Lutheran.  There are 45,000 church bodies in the world that call themselves Christian.  And all of them have separated themselves from some other church body at some point in history.  

The message of Jesus is that we are supposed to build bigger tables, not higher walls.  We’re supposed to open our doors wider, not close them against people who disagree with us on minor things.   The message of Jesus is that we’re supposed to embrace each other with love, not take adamantine stands against each other because of the way interpret a few words here and there.

As I said, I don’t know where to begin this morning, because if these three scriptures that we have this morning tell us anything, they tell us that we have enormous work ahead of us in a dangerous time.  They tell us that this is a time to really and truly be faithful to the gospel of love, to the gospel of Jesus Christ that embraces everyone.  They tell us that this is a time to speak truth for the sake of the reign of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.  Amen