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Nobody Here But Us Chickens

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

Luke 13:31-35

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like a mother hen.  

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

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

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

But we won’t let him.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That Reasonable Voice

Steve Beckham 4 Comments

Luke 4:1-13 (NRSV)

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

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

         ‘Worship the Lord your God,

                  and serve only him.’” 

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

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

and

         ‘On their hands they will bear you up,

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

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

————-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     This mission of yours, is it really worth it? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One does not live by bread alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hard Stuff

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Luke 6:27-38

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

Love your enemies.

Do good to those who hate you.  

Bless those who curse you.

Pray for those who abuse you.

Turn the other cheek.

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

Give something to everyone who asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Jesus’ name.

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

Priorities

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 4:21-30

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

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

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

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

He owned the prophecy.  He claimed it.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those last three words are so important.  

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

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

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

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

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

In Your Hearing

Steve Beckham 5 Comments

Luke 4:14-21

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

The world sets the agenda.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

         “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

                  because he has anointed me

                           to bring good news to the poor.

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

                  and recovery of sight to the blind,

                           to set free those who are oppressed[2],

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So What?

Steve Beckham 5 Comments

Luke 3:15-22

So.  This is the Sunday when we observe that one thousand nine hundred ninety-five years ago, give or take, Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River.  And I confess that on this Sunday when wildfires are still raging across Southern California, when our eyes are still watering from the smoke in the air, when our vision is still blurred with tears for all the homes and land destroyed and lives lost, when our hearts are still breaking for friends and family—for all the people who have had to evacuate, who have had to flee in terror as fire roared toward them—I confess that my first response to the baptism of Jesus in this week of catastrophe on a Sunday when the fires are still raging and homes and lives are still in peril–my first response to the baptism of Jesus is: so what?

So what if Jesus was baptized?  So what if a voice from heaven proclaimed him as the divine, beloved child of God with whom God was well pleased?  What does that have to do with me?  With us?  How does that help us at a time when our neighborhoods are on fire and our lives are filled with fear and anxiety and desperation?

One thousand nine hundred ninety-five years ago, more or less, Jesus was baptized.  What does this mean?  Where is the good news in that ancient fact in the face of the very real and present danger we are facing right now?

Where is the Good News?  

Well maybe—stay with me here– maybe it’s right where it has  always been.  Maybe it’s right in front of us, in the water and in the Word.  

The baptism of Jesus is depicted in all four gospels.  Sort of.  The Gospel of John alludes to baptism of Jesus but never actually describes him being baptized.  My favorite version of the Baptism of Jesus is in the Gospel of Matthew.  In Matthew, Jesus has no sooner waded into the water when John and Jesus start arguing.  That’s just so human.  In Matthew’s telling of the story, John didn’t want to baptize Jesus.  Matthew tells us that John “would have prevented him.”  It didn’t feel right to John.  It didn’t feel appropriate.  For him to baptize Jesus seemed upside down and backwards.  “I need to be baptized by you!” he tells Jesus.  

I need to be baptized by you.  That’s an interesting choice of words.  It implies that John thought he was lacking something that Jesus could give him.  What could that be?

Jesus finally persuaded John to go ahead and baptize him when he said, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”  Basically, Jesus was telling John, “let’s go ahead with this because it’s the right thing to do.”

Why is it the right thing to do?  John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin[1].  But Jesus didn’t have any sin that he needed to repent of, did he?  So why was it the right thing for him to do?  How did his baptism “fulfill all righteousness”?

Preachers like to use the baptism of Jesus as a springboard to talk about the meaning of our baptism and the gifts that baptism bestows on us.  I’ll admit that that’s what I’ve preached about on this Sunday for many, many years.  But this year I think something else needs our attention.

Don’t get me wrong.  It’s always useful to take some time to remember our baptism and think about what it means and how we are living out our lives in the covenant of baptism.  But this year, as fires rage around us and life seems perilous and precarious, I have found myself thinking about the baptism of Jesus a little differently.  This year I find myself wondering what it meant for him.  What was he showing us?  What did he want us to see?  What did he want us to learn?

The word “baptism” comes from the Greek verb baptizein which means “to dip,” or “to plunge or to immerse.”[2] When we are baptized, the water that is poured over us is a sign that we are immersed into the life and love of the triune God, that we are plunged into the eternal perichoresis, the eternal circle dance of love that flows between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  But Jesus was already fully immersed in the life and love of the Trinity, so what did plunging into the water signify for him?  What was he immersing himself in?

I can’t help but think that what baptism signified for Jesus was not his immersion into the life of God, but his immersion into the life of humanity.  

With the Holy Spirit descending like a dove and the voice from heaven proclaiming that Jesus is heaven’s divine and pleasing child, it’s easy to get so caught up in the divinity of Jesus that we overlook how very human this moment is.  Jesus was already immersed in his divinity.  Here at the river, with water up to his chest, he was plunging into his humanity.

Jesus immersed himself into an existence where water is a necessity of life that can cleanse you and sustain you and quench your thirst, but it can also flood your home, sweep away your crops and livestock and drown you.

Jesus immersed himself into a life where fire can refine metals and give you light in the dark and warm your home and bake your bread and cook your meals, but it can also burn down your house and ravage your fields and orchards.  It can obliterate whole cities. It can burn you with the worst kind of pain.  And it can kill you. 

Jesus immersed himself into a human life in a body that was strong and beautiful, a body that could embrace the warm comfort of companions and smell the sweet and uplifting aromas and taste all the delicious flavors and see all the beautiful horizons and hear the music of the birds, a body that could feel joy and compassion and tenderness.  But it was also a vulnerable body, a body that could be wounded and injured,  a body that could smell the stink and feel the sharp edges and experience all the not-so-pleasant sensations of the world, a body that could feel anxiety and fear and pain.  A body that, in the end, could die.

Jesus immersed himself into all that it means to be human, the good and the bad. His baptism was more than an act of divine solidarity; it was a validation of deeply human unity.  He was showing us that he was one of us.  

But he wasn’t just immersing himself in us.

One thousand nine hundred ninety-five years ago, or thereabouts, Jesus was immersed in the waters of the Jordan, a river whose waters had been evaporated from the seas and transported in clouds before falling on the hills as snow and rain, a river that swept minerals and seeds and soil down from the mountains to enrich the land below, a river that carried away the effluent of people, cattle and animals as it flowed past villages and fields and farms and towns, a river filled with life and with a life of its own.  Jesus was immersed not only into the life of humanity, but into the life of the world itself, the life of the planet. 

And maybe that’s the Good News, on this Sunday when fires are still endangering our lives and so many things we hold dear are in jeopardy.  Maybe the Good News for us in the baptism of Jesus is that Christ is immersed in our lives and we are immersed in the life of Christ, but also that Christ is immersed in the life of the world.  Maybe, if we open our eyes and minds and hearts, we can trust that Jesus is with us, in, with and under all our heartbreaks and joys, our fears and our relief.  Maybe we can learn to trust him and hear his voice speaking a word of promise from Isaiah: 

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and the rivers will not overwhelm you.  When you walk through fire you shall not be burned and the flame shall not consume you… for I am the Lord, your God…you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you.  Do not be afraid, for I am with you.”[2]

[1] Matthew 3:11

[2] Isaiah 43:2, 4, 5

When the Men Are Silent

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”  But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ­–Luke 1:28-29

When I was seven years old my parents sat me down and said, “We are moving to California.”  I was much perplexed by their words.  I mean, I understood all their words… individually… as words.  I even understood their words as they had assembled them together in that sentence: we are moving to California.  It conveyed coherent meaning to me.  But that was the problem.  

There was too much meaning in those five words strung together like that. They were heavy with meaning.  They meant that I would be saying goodbye to life as I knew it in Kansas City, Missouri, saying goodbye to my best friend Dennis who lived right next door and all my other friends and cousins and Daniel Boone Elementary School and the woods where we played and fireflies in the backyard in the summer and sledding down the little hill in front of our house in the snow in the winter and a million other things that were crowding into my seven year old mind all at once.  

Mom and Dad tried to make it sound like it was good news.  Beaches!  Disneyland!  New Friends!  Are there any scarier words in the world for a kid than “New Friends?”  Worse, while I was still feeling the shock of their words, still being perplexed and wondering in my seven-year-old mind if maybe I had somehow caused this terrible thing to happen, I realized that things were already in motion and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it.

“Greetings, highly favored one, the Lord is with you.”  When I read that Mary was perplexed by the Angel Gabriel’s words I can’t help but wonder if she wasn’t feeling something like what I felt that day when my parents told me that my life was about to change completely and utterly.  Perplexed is a pretty tame translation for the word that’s in Luke’s Greek text.  Perplexed sounds like she was a bit puzzled, perhaps a little confused.  Diatarasso, the verb in the original text means she was distressed, disturbed, disoriented and deeply troubled by the angel’s words.  

Mary apparently knew that the ones who are highly favored by the Lord, those whom the Lord was with, were not folk who tended to have quiet, easy, uneventful lives.  The Lord tends to use the “favored ones” to get things done.  The Lord tends to move them around like chess pieces.  If an angel shows up to tell you that you are favored by God and that God is with you, hold on to your wallet and make sure your passport is up to date.  It means that God has plans for you.  Mary may have only been a teenager, but she was smart and she knew the stories about those whom the Lord favored.  So she pondered what sort of greeting this might be and waited for the angel to say more.  What was God up to?  What was God planning to do with her?

After a long moment of Mary saying nothing, Gabriel cleared his throat.  He had a message to deliver.  God had given him a script and told him not to deviate from it.  So he launched back into his speech.  It’s a nice speech, a very formal speech, the kind of speech you’d expect from an archangel on a mission from God. 

He told her she would conceive—in her womb, just in case she was uninformed about where conception happened.  He told her that the child would be a boy and that she was to name him Jesus.  He would be great.  He would be called the Son of the Most High.  The Lord would give him the throne of David.  His kingdom will have no end.

Up to this point Mary had been silent, but now she interrupts.  “How can this be,” she asks,  “since I am a virgin?”  She’s got some moxie, this young woman.  She’s not afraid to stop an archangel in the middle of his spiel and say, “Excuse me, but you’re forgetting one very important technicality.  I don’t know how it’s done with angels, but for humans there’s a part of the process missing in your plan here.”

“Ah, yes,” says the angel.  “I’m coming to that.”  And he resumes his recitation.  He told her that the Holy Spirit would initiate the pregnancy, that the power of the Most High would overshadow her, so the child would be holy.  He told her that her relative, Elizabeth, who was getting along in years and had never had children was now pregnant because nothing is impossible with God.  And with that Gabriel reached the end of his script and stood there waiting for a response.

Finally Mary has a chance to speak again.  Our translations soften the impact of her words, I think.  “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” That’s how it reads in the NRSV and our other English versions are in the same dynamic range.  They sound so docile compared to the force of the words in the original language.  Even the Latin toned it down from Luke’s original Greek where there are hints of both fierceness and resignation in her words that don’t come through in the niceties of our translations.

The first thing she says is rather startling, especially if you remind yourself that she is saying it to one of the seven archangels who stand at the throne of God.  The first thing she says, literally translated, is, “Look.”  She invites the angel to really see her.  “Look,” she says, “the slave girl of the Lord.  It will happen to me according to your word.”

“Look at me, angel, before you vanish back to heaven.  Really pay attention for a moment to the one who is highly favored, the Lord’s slave girl. Yes.  It will happen just as you have said.  How could it not?  I am a slave in heaven’s hierarchical eyes. Who am I to argue with God?  But before you go, see me.  And think about how your visit will change my life.  See me, and think about what it will cost me because the Lord is with me. Think about what it means to be the slave girl of God, even if the slave agrees to play her part.”

Then the angel departed from her.  The language is abrupt, so the departure probably was, too.  I wonder if the angel left so quickly because he suddenly realized that his announcement had been more than a little coercive.  Nothing in his message even hinted that Mary had any choice in the matter.  Maybe he realized this and was a bit embarrassed by his own imperious manner. Or maybe not.  Maybe he was just done.  Who can tell with angels?  They’re not like us.

The angel departed, and not long after that, Mary departed to see her relative, Elizabeth and her miraculous pregnancy.

Now here’s an interesting thing.  Have you ever noticed that in the original Advent, that time building up to the birth of both John the Baptizer and Jesus, the men in the story are silent?  Well, Gabriel talks a lot, but he’s an angel and everything he says is a message from God. Otherwise the male voices are almost entirely silent. 

Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband doubts Gabriel when Gabriel tells him he’s going to be a father so late in life, so Gabriel makes him mute for the entire time of Elizabeth’s pregnancy.  Joseph is visited by an angel a few times in Matthew’s gospel, but Joseph never speaks. The women, though,  the women speak powerfully and prophetically.  

Elizabeth silences the gossipy busybodies of her community saying, “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.”

When Mary comes to see her, Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit and blesses Mary with words so powerful that they have become embedded in the beads of the rosary and engraved on the psyche of our faith for all generations. “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” And then she affirms Mary for agreeing to her role in God’s plan: “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”   

Elizabeth speaks in the tradition of the five women prophets of the Hebrew Bible, Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Noadiah, and the unnamed prophetess mentioned in Isaiah 8.  She speaks in the strength of Judith, the conviction of Tamar, and joyful mirth of Sarah. 

Moved by her words and stirred by the Spirit, Mary begins to sing a prophetic song full of joy and power to proclaim the work of God. Young, poor, unmarried and pregnant, she becomes a prophet.

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,  for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.”  She rejoices that God isn’t transforming the world through the rich and the powerful, but instead is working through the poor, the humble, the disenfranchised and marginalized—through her and people like her. 

She sings of things to come as if they are already accomplished, a proleptic vision of God remaking the world from the bottom up.  “Prophets,” writes Barbara Brown Taylor, “almost never get their verb tenses straight, because part of their gift is being able to see the world as God sees it — not divided into things that are already over and things that have not happened yet, but as an eternally unfolding mystery that surprises everyone, maybe even God.”

“The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung,” said Dietrich Bonhoeffer.   She sings of a sweeping change in the social order, a change so radical that her Magnificat has been regarded as politically dangerous in places where despots and tyrants have tried to maintain control.  It was banned in India during British rule.  When Guatemala was ruled by a military junta in the 1980s they outlawed her Magnificat, and it was outlawed again during the “dirty war” in Argentina when the mothers of disappeared children began papering the streets with posters of her song.  When you’re trying to rule people with an iron fist you can’t have them singing about power being overturned.

“He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  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.”

In a time when her own land and her own her own people are burdened by the yoke of Rome, she sings of God’s faithfulness:  He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

Mary sings an overture for the work of her son, The Son of the Most High.  She sings to proclaim God’s vision of justice.  She sings to remind us that we are called to share the vision and to share the work of making God’s commonwealth of justice and kindness a reality on earth as it is in heaven.

Look.  See the slave girl of the Lord.  An angel speaks to her and she is much perplexed.  But she is not silenced.  She sings the song of Advent, the song of God’s revolution.

When the men are silent, the women sing.  And their songs change the world.

The Light of Hope

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

The Light of Hope

Luke 21:25   

There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.  People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.  Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.  Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

  Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees;  as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.  So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.  Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.  Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

 “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life and that day does not catch you unexpectedly,  like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.  36 Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Four years ago on the first Sunday in Advent, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 270,000 Americans had died from Covid 19.  That was 270,000 empty seats at the Thanksgiving table, enough people to fill every seat in Dodger Stadium five times.  By the end of December, that number had climbed to 350,831[1].  All in all, in the first four years of the pandemic more than 1.2 million Americans died.  Thanks to vaccines, increased awareness and improved health practices, only 43,360 people have died from Covid in the US this year.  But that is 43,000 reminders that the virus can still be a deadly threat.

Because of general economic disparity in our country, 47.4 million people live in households experiencing food insecurity.  17.9% of households with children under 18 were food insecure in 2024.  That’s actually a huge improvement over four years ago when 56% of such households were food insecure, but it still represents 14 million children who are at risk of going to bed hungry every night in a country that has more than enough resources to ensure that everyone has enough to eat.[2]  And sadly, it almost goes without saying that rates of food insecurity are higher  among people of color and in single-parent households headed by women.

Because of the high cost and shortage of housing, more than 25% of renters in California spend more than 50% of their income on housing, and more than 160,000 experience homelessness on any given night.

On the other side of the world, Israel’s war against Hamas has degenerated from a justifiable defense into genocide in Gaza and the violence has expanded into Lebanon.  Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine has become more dire as Russia has deployed a new nuclear capable hypersonic missle.  

Turning back to home, here in the US we are living in a time of political tension and uncertainty which our recent election has exacerbated as we brace ourselves for what comes next.

In so many ways and for so many of us, this is a grim and precarious time.  The words of Isaiah ring in us like a bell:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,

          so that the mountains would quake at your presence—  

          When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,

          you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.[3]

Like the people of Israel in Isaiah’s day, we find ourselves crying out in fear and frustration.  O God, why won’t you do for us the kinds of things you did in the past?  Where’s our parting of the sea?  Where is our manna falling from the sky?   Where is our just and prophetic leadership?  Where is the “righteous Branch for David” that Jeremiah promised, the one who will “execute justice and righteousness in the land?”[4]

This feels like a grim and precarious time.  But then, it was a grim and precarious time for the people of Judah when Jeremiah spoke that promise.  It was a grim and precarious time when Isaiah begged God to break open the heavens and come down.  The people of the covenant were suffering under the harsh oppression of Babylon.  They wanted the same kind of divine intervention that so many of us are longing for right now.

It was a grim and precarious time when Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives and shared his apocalyptic vision of the temple’s destruction with his disciples. The people were chafing under the harsh and authoritarian governance of Rome.  And it was a grim and precarious time for Jesus, himself,  and for his disciples, even though at that moment the disciples seemed obtusely unaware of just how much danger they were facing.

As we read the story in the synoptic gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, Jesus is telling his disciples about the coming time of turmoil just days before Judas betrays him and he is crucified.  And it’s also a very perilous time when the writer of Mark, the earliest Gospel, records all this.  Biblical scholar Ched Myers has suggested that Mark was writing his account during the Jewish revolt against Rome, the rebellion that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.  There is a haunting and prophetic prescience when Jesus says,

“But in those days, after that suffering,

         the sun will be darkened,

                  and the moon will not give its light, 

         and the stars will be falling from heaven,

                  and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”

Luke expands on Mark’s words and broadens the reach of the calamity when he writes:

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.  People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.   

These words of Jesus take on new weight on the first Sunday of Advent when you think of them being spoken during a time of violent political oppression, a time when any hint of opposition to the empire’s political or social order is quickly and decisively squashed.  These words have a sharper edge when you think of them being written down and preserved while the streets of the city are filled with the noise and bloodshed of battle between Roman soldiers and Jewish partisans, or when you think of the followers of Jesus being tortured and persecuted by the agents of the empire.  

Beware.  Stay alert.  Stay awake.  The advice Jesus gives is practical.  Keep your eyes open.  Don’t fall for false messiahs and conmen.  Don’t make yourself crazy trying to figure out God’s timetable because only God knows.  It’s going to be a bumpy ride.  There will be trying times.  Stay awake.

Advent is a time for pragmatism and preparation. 

Advent is a time to walk into the turmoil and the pain of life with your eyes wide open.  In an age and a season when it is all too easy to live in denial, when we would love to jump straight to Christmas, Advent calls us to take a hard look at the world around us.  Advent calls us to see the world as it really is, to see ourselves as we really are, to open our eyes to things that we maybe don’t want to see, to listen to things we might prefer not to hear.  Advent calls us to be realistic…about the world and about ourselves. 

In 1952, as the Korean War was dragging on and the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was becoming more intense, William and Annabeth Gay wrote a haunting and profound hymn that, to my mind, perfectly captures the spirit of Advent for our age.  The title that Annabeth gave it is Carol of Hope, but you might know it by its first line which is how it’s titled In most hymnals, a line that sounds anything but hopeful:  Each Winter As the Year Grows Older.[5]

Each winter as the year grows older, 

we each grow older, too.  

The chill sets in a little colder; the verities we knew

seem shaken and untrue.

When race and class cry out for treason, 

when sirens call for war, 

they overshout the voice of reason and scream till we ignore

 all we held dear before.

Yet I believe beyond believing that life can spring from death,

that growth can flower from our grieving, 

that we can catch our breath

and turn transfixed by faith.

So even as the sun is turning to journey to the north,

the living flame, in secret burning, 

can kindle on the earth

and bring God’s love to birth.

O Child of ecstasy and sorrows, O Prince of peace and pain,

brighten today’s world by tomorrow’s,

renew our lives again;

Lord Jesus, come and reign!

Advent calls us to be realistic about the shadow side of life, to mark where we’ve not only grown older but colder, to notice where the verities we knew seem shaken and untrue.  Advent calls us to identify those voices that overshout the voice of reason so we can be more attentive to reason and to the Prince of peace and pain.  

But Advent doesn’t simply ask us to dwell in gloom and shadows.  Advent also calls us to bring light—four lights to restore brightness and health to a self, a nation, a world stumbling in murky clouds of doubt and fear—four lights to prepare the way for the true light of Christ. 

And the first light is Hope.

“Genuine hope is not blind optimism,” said Jürgen Moltmann.  “It is hope with open eyes, which sees the suffering and yet believes in the future.” And perhaps Barack Obama was thinking of Moltmann when he said, ““Hope is not blind optimism. It’s not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It’s not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.”

Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us.

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for,” wrote Barbara Kingsolver. “And the most you can do  is live inside that hope.  Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”[6]

On this first Sunday of Advent, as we begin a new year in the calendar of the Church, we light the candle of Hope.  If the sun is darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars seem to be falling, light the candle of hope.

If we are suffering now because of politics and war and the erosion of truth and trust, Saint Paul reminds us that, “suffering produces endurance,  and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,  and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”[7]  “If we hope for what we do not see,” he said, “we wait for it with patience.”[8]

So if it looks like the sun has been darkened and the moon won’t shine and the stars are falling and the world is more or less metaphorically ending, in the spirit of Advent, let’s be realistic and honest about it.  Let’s stay awake and aware.  And then let’s light a candle of Hope.  Because Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us.

May the God of hopefill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hopeby the power of the Holy Spirit.[9]

[1] CDC National Center for Health Statistics;  2020 Final Death Statistics: Covid 19 as an Underlying Cause of Death vs. contributing Cause

[2] Food Research and Action Center https://frac.org/news/usdafoodsecurityreportsept2024

[3] Isaiah 64:1-2

[4] Jeremiah 33:14-16

[5] Each Winter As the Year Grows Older, William Gay, 1920-2008;

  Tune: Carol of Hope, Annabeth Gay, 1925-2020;  Evangelical Lutheran Worship, #252

[6] Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

[7] Romans 5:4-5

[8] Romans 8:25

[9] Romans 15:13

Out of Love for the Truth

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

John 8:31-36

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

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

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

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

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

According to the Gospel of John, when Jesus was on trial before Pontius Pilate he stated, “For this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”  In response, Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”  

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

Truth, the dictionary tells us, is the true or actual state of a matter.  Something is true when it is in conformity with reality.  We say a thing is true when it is a verified or indisputable fact.  The truth reflects actuality or actual existence.  When we say a thing is a basic truth, we mean that it is an obvious or accepted or provable fact.  

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

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

When Jesus sat discussing theology with a Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s Well, he told her that “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.”  This suggests that truth is a vital element in our connection to God.

In chapter 14, not long after Jesus has told Thomas that he, himself, is “the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of truth” and in chapter 16 he tells his disciples that “when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”  In chapter 17, as he prays for the disciples, Jesus asks that they would be sanctified or consecrated in truth.

“For this I was born,” Jesus told Pilate, “and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:37)

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

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

But how does the truth set us free from sin?  

René Girard would suggest that truth sets us free from endless mimetic rivalries which are always based in falsehood, fantasy or desire.  Sin is the endless stream of little contests and competitions that we create against each other which escalate, eventually, into big and violent contests.  Truth can free us from this because truth has no bias.  Just as God is the ground of all being, truth is the ground of reality, the neutral acknowledgment of the way things are.  Sin wants to create a different reality or to act as if life is happening in a different reality with different rules.

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

Truth disabuses me of that illusion.

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

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

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

Sadly, we have seen clear examples of that lately.  It has become the sin of our society fed by the polarity of our politics.

The proliferation of misinformation and outright lies in our political and social conversation has become so common and problematic that our ELCA Conference of Bishops recently issued a joint statement to address the problem. These are the opening lines of their statement:

We know that the power of truth is greater than the power of deceit.

We, the members of the Conference of Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, speak with one voice to condemn the hateful, deceptive, violent speech that has too readily found a place in our national discourse. We lament the ways this language has led to hate-fueled action. We refuse to accept the ongoing normalization of lies and deceit. We recommit ourselves to speaking the truth and pointing to the one who is truth. 

We refuse to accept the ongoing normalization of lies and deceit.  We recommit ourselves to speaking the truth.   To do otherwise is sin.

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

“We must all overcome the illusion of separateness,” said Richard Rohr.  “It is the primary task of religion to communicate not worthiness but union, to reconnect people to their original identity “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). The Bible calls the state of separateness ‘sin.’ God’s job description is to draw us back into primal and intimate relationship.”

As followers of Jesus, we are called to live in the imitation of God.  We are called to observe what God is doing all the time and everywhere and then do the same.  We are called to be generous because God is generous.  We are called to be creative because God is creative.  We are called to embrace diversity because God revels in diversity so much that no two things are exactly alike in the entire universe.  But above and beyond everything else, we are called to love.  “Love,” said St. Paul, “does not rejoice in unrighteousness, it rejoices in the truth.” (1 Cor 13:6)  Untruth is corrosive to love.  Lies and deception undermine and chip away at love until it disappears.  But truth reinforces love and makes it stronger.  There’s a reason we talk about “true” love.

We are called to love because God loves.  God is love.  Richard Rohr has said, God does not love us if and when we change.  God loves us so that we can change. That is the essence of grace—the grace that makes us whole, the grace that heals us, the grace that reunites us, the grace that saves us and leads us into the truth.  Truth is where all grace begins.

At the conclusion of their statement, the ELCA Bishops gave us some good practical advice to help us ensure that our lives, thoughts, speech and actions are anchored in grace and truth:

We find courage in our collegiality and implore the members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, as well as our partners and friends, to join us as we:

  • Pledge to be vigilant guardians of truth, refusing to perpetuate lies or half-truths that further corrode the fabric of our society.
  • Commit to rigorous fact-checking, honoring God’s command to “test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
  • Reject the use of humor that normalizes falsehood, remembering that our speech should “always be gracious” (Colossians 4:6).
  • Boldly advocate for the marginalized and oppressed, emulating Christ’s love for the least among us.
  • Courageously interrupt hate speech, standing firm in the knowledge that all are created in God’s image.
  • Lean in with curiosity, engage with those who think differently and “put the best construction on our neighbor’s action” (Luther’s explanation of the Eighth Commandment).
  • Amplify voices of truth.

Emboldened by the Holy Spirit, may we resist deception and lift up the truth that all members of humanity are created in the image of God.

On this Sunday, we celebrate a Reformation began with the words, “Out of love for the truth…”.  May we resist the sin of deception and live with a commitment to truth that continues to reform and refresh our faith, our lives and our world.  In the name of the Way and the Truth and the Life.

Whatever We Ask

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

Mark 10:35-45

“Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be a slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

There was an interesting picture that popped up here and there on social media a few years ago.  It was a picture of a middle-aged man washing dishes in a restaurant kitchen, which isn’t all that unusual, except in this particular picture, the man who was washing the dishes was Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Jon Bon Jovi, the front man for the very successful rock band, Bon Jovi. 

Back in 2011 Jon and his wife Dorothea wanted to do something to help hungry people, but they didn’t want it to be just another food pantry or soup kitchen.  Food banks and soup kitchens do good work, but they also tend to isolate poor people from everyone else or spotlight them—and not in a good way.   

Jon and Dorothea decided to open a restaurant where payment is optional so that folks who cannot afford a restaurant meal can dine right alongside those who can.  They called their restaurant JBJ Soul Kitchen and it has now expanded to three locations.  

The menu at JBJ has no prices.  You select what you like and are encouraged to make a suggested donation, but if you are unable to donate, you are invited to participate in what they call “volunteer opportunities,” which usually means working in the kitchen in one way or another.  When he’s not on tour, Jon Bon Jovi himself often stops in to volunteer as a waiter or cook or dishwasher.  

During the pandemic, as you might imagine, JBJ Soul Kitchen had to change its ways of operating.  In an interview in 2020, Jon said, “Due to the pandemic, we couldn’t have any volunteers work.  But we still had mouths to feed.  So Dorothea and I worked five days a week for two months before we went to Long Island and opened a food bank that fed 6,000 people a month there.”  

Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be a slave of all.

There is a YouTube channel where, every night of the week, you’ll find one of the richest, most successful women in the world sitting on her bed in her pajamas reading a children’s book.  The very famous  lady in her PJs is none other than Dolly Parton, and her YouTube program, Goodnight with Dolly, is targeted toward preschoolers, because children who have someone read to them on a regular basis develop their own reading skills earlier and more easily.  

Dolly understood that not every parent has free time to sit and read with their kids, especially single parents.  And not all parents read well enough, themselves, to provide their kids with that important head start.  In fact, that was the case with Dolly’s own father who started working while still very young and as a result never learned to read or write.  So Dolly Parton decided that, in honor of her father, she would help as many kids as possible develop those very necessary pre-reading and early reading abilities.

Goodnight with Dolly is the newest venture in Dolly Parton’s long-time campaign for literacy.  In 1995, she launched the Imagination Library in Sevier County, her home county in East Tennessee, to inspire a love of reading by giving one free children’s book every month to every child in the county from age two until they start school.  With the help of local community partners, the Imagination Library has now spread throughout the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Ireland.  Nearly two million kids are now registered in the Imagination Library, and the organization has given away more than 254 million books.  Even so, there are still kids who haven’t been reached.  So Dolly Parton sits on her bed in her pajamas and reads to the kids whose parents aren’t available or aren’t able to read to them.

Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be a slave of all.

The Disciples James and John came to Jesus and said, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”  When he asked them what that might be, they said, “Let one of us sit at your right hand and one at your left when you come into your glory.”  

It’s interesting that Jesus didn’t chastise them even a little for asking something so audacious.  He simply told them that they didn’t really understand what they’re asking.  He hinted at the ordeal he would soon endure when he asked them,  “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”  They answered just a little too quickly:  “We are able,”  and it seems pretty clear that they didn’t really know what they were signing up for.

We shouldn’t be too hard on James and John.  To their credit, they really did have faith.  They truly believed that Jesus really could give them what they wanted.  They believed that he would soon “come into his glory.”  They just didn’t understand what that meant.  It didn’t occur to them that he was talking about the cross.

A lot of us have come to Jesus at one time or another saying, “I want you to give me whatever I ask of you.”  A lot of people have thought that this is really the essence of praying.  Jesus, please give me what I ask for.  And a lot of us have asked at one time or another to be put in positions of authority and prestige—right seat or left seat, either one is okay as long as we have a seat next to the throne. . .or at least at the table.  We want that position that gives us the authority to fix all those things that other people are messing up.  We have ambition.

Jesus didn’t rebuke James and John for their ambition.  But the other disciples did.  So Jesus had to remind all of them of what he had been saying all along.  You want to be a leader?  Fine!  Good!  Now, can you be a servant?

Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.

When Boris Baranov was appointed to the position of Shift Supervisor at the powerplant where he worked, he was given significant authority over some of the plant’s operations.  Along with that authority, of course, came some extra responsibilities.  Boris never dreamed, though, that saving most of Europe from becoming a nuclear wasteland would be one of those responsibilities.  But that’s exactly what happened one day when something seriously malfunctioned during his shift at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, the powerplant where Boris worked. 

On April 26, 1986 one of the four reactors at Chernobyl exploded releasing 400 times more radioactive fallout than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Two workers were killed instantly.  Another 29 would die from radiation burns or poisoning over the next few months.  

All the fires were extinguished within six hours, but now there was a risk of an even larger explosion—an explosion that would be many times more devastating.  

Several days after they thought that everything was under control, they discovered that the reactor in unit 4 had continued to melt down. Below the reactor was a thick concrete slab and below the slab was a large pool of water which was normally used to cool the reactor.  

The core of the badly damaged reactor was now melting its way through the concrete slab.  If it were to reach the water, it would create an gargantuan steam explosion with a force of 3 to 5 megatons.  The enormous cloud of radioactive steam and ash that would have risen into the wind from that explosion would have made much of Europe uninhabitable for 500,000 years. 

To prevent the explosion, the water under the reactor had to be drained, which could only be accomplished by manually turning the right valves which were in the basement.  That would have been simple enough except that the basement was flooded with radioactive water from putting out the fires.  

Boris Baranov, the shift supervisor, Valeri Bespalov, the senior engineer, and mechanical engineer Alexei Ananenko volunteered to wade into the flooded basement and turn the valves.  Their brave and selfless act of service saved millions of lives.

Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be a slave of all.

There’s nothing wrong with ambition.  Jesus didn’t rebuke James and John for their ambition.  He even affirmed that they would, in the end, drink from his “cup” and be immersed in his “baptism.”  But he wanted them to understand that ambition for ambition’s sake can lead to responsibilities you’re not prepared for, challenges you haven’t even begun to imagine.  

James and John wanted to be great, to sit in positions of prestige and authority.  And in the end, in a way, they got what they asked for.  According to tradition, after ten or twelve years proclaiming the gospel in Palestine alongside his brother John and the rest of the disciples,  James took the gospel to Spain.  In the end, when he returned to Jerusalem, he was killed by Herod Agrippa.  

John, according to tradition, took the gospel to Ephesus where he had a long life serving others and teaching them the way of Jesus.  James and John found direction for their ambition.  But along the Way they had to learn a very hard lesson. 

Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be a slave of all.

In a matter of days now, we will have a very important national election.  The votes you cast in this election will be among the most important votes of your lifetime.  I cannot tell you whom you should vote for, but I will ask you to consider this:  who, among these candidates, has a history of seeking power out of sheer ambition, and who has a record of public service?  Who is seeking power for the sake of having power, and who is seeking a more powerful way to serve?  

Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be a slave of all.  Please bear that in mind as you vote, then vote accordingly. . . and prayerfully.