Page 10 of 34

Listen

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Mark 9:2-9; Matthew 17:1-9; Luke 9:28-36

Have you ever sung in a choir or played in an orchestra?  If you have, you’ve probably had a moment when you realized that you were, for all intents and purposes, part of one large instrument.  Your voice in the choir was like one pipe in an organ.  You were part of a single, large organic instrument comprised of many voices, all being played by the director or conductor.  It’s a wonderful experience to be part of something like that, to know that you’re part of something large and beautiful and organic which, if it’s done right, can, in its magical way, completely transport people.  It’s a humbling feeling to know that you are helping to bring this powerful yet transitory thing into the world, a thing composed only of sound, a thing that was not in the world before the conductor raised their baton and will vanish when they cut off the last note and its echoes die in the hall.  

It’s an amazing experience.  And it all works beautifully as long as everyone learns their part.  And they all follow the conductor.  And they all play or sing the same piece.  All it takes for things to start to unravel, though, is for someone to decide they’re not happy with the conductor.  Little rebellions lead to great ones.  It can start with something as minor as the woodwinds rushing the conductor’s beat.  It could end with the disgruntled first trumpet player playing Trumpet Voluntary in the middle of Mozart’s Requiem. 

That seems to be Peter’s problem when Jesus tells him what lies ahead for them in Jerusalem.  He’s not happy with the conductor.  He had been traveling with Jesus for a while now.  He had watched him feed multitudes of people.  He had seen him walk on the sea.  He had watched Jesus cast out demons and heal people.  So when Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter naturally replied, “You are the Messiah!”  It seemed like the obvious answer.  After all, who else could do all those things?  But Jesus was cautious with Peter’s answer.  In all three synoptic gospels he sternly ordered his disciples not to tell people that he is the Messiah.  “No Messiah talk.  Are we clear?”

That didn’t sit well with Peter.  And then Jesus started to tell his disciples and everybody else that he was going to go to Jerusalem to speak truth to power at the corner of Religion and Politics.  He told them that the Powers That Be were going to reject him and abuse him.  He told them that he would be crucified.  And that on the third day he would rise again.  

No one wanted to hear that.  That’s crazy talk. Peter could not bring himself to sing along with that chorus.  He would not.  He took Jesus aside and rebuked him.  

Think about that a minute.  Peter rebuked Jesus.  And apparently the other disciples were kind of half-way behind Peter on this one.  Both Mark and Matthew write that Jesus turned and rebuked Peter saying, “Get behind me, Satan! You’re not setting your mind on divine things but on human things.”

Jesus had a few more things to say to his disciples and the crowd about what it takes to be a disciple—namely, a willingness to take up the cross.  But Peter and the disciples were silent.

Peter rebuked Jesus.  Jesus rebuked Peter.

And then silence.  Six days of silence.

It’s easy to miss that.  Things move fast in the gospels.  Jesus moves quickly from one thing to the next.  The phrase “and immediately” occurs frequently in Mark’s gospel.  But not here.  

Six days later.  Six days of tension between Jesus and Peter?  Six days of anxiety for the disciples?  The gospels don’t say.  The gospels are silent.  And maybe Jesus and the disciples were, too.

Finally, Jesus decided that Peter needed a “come to Jesus” meeting.  Or a come with Jesus moment.  So he asked Peter, James and John to come with him up the mountain.

And there on the mountain they saw him transfigured—shining white and radiant, light within and light without.   They see who their teacher really is inside his humanity.  They saw Moses and Elijah, the law-bringer and the great prophet, the two most important figures in the history of their people, appear with Jesus and converse with him.  

Peter, whose default mode seems to be talk-first-think-later, babbled out, “Lord, it’s a good thing that we’re here!  Let’s make three shelters, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah…”  The gospels tell us he didn’t know what he was saying because he was terrified.  Well you would be, wouldn’t you.  

And then all of a sudden there was a cloud throwing a shadow over them.  All the brightness was dimmed.  And a voice came out of the cloud and said, “This is my Son, the Beloved.  Listen to him.”

And as suddenly as it all started, it was over.  There was no one there but Jesus.  And as they headed back down the mountain he told them not to tell anyone about what they had seen until “after the Son of Man has risen from the dead.”  

It took a lot to get through to Peter.  It took six days of silence and a hike up the mountain.  It took seeing Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah as he was shining like the sun.  It took hearing the voice of God speaking to him from a cloud saying, “This is my Son.  The Beloved.  Listen to him!” 

That’s what it took to get Peter to play the same tune and follow the conductor.

What does it take for us?

There have always been people who try to bend Jesus to their agenda instead of bending themselves to the Way of Jesus.  There have always been people who call themselves Christian who don’t seem to actually listen much to Jesus.

For a long time now we have seen a strain of pseudo-Christianity in this country and around the world that has little to do with the teaching of Jesus as we encounter him in the gospels.  It is based on triumphalism and a theology of glory.  It worships and celebrates power and ignores the call to enter the into world’s trials and suffering as Christ entered into our trials and suffering.  It walks hand-in-hand with extreme nationalism and, often, racism.  It sees baptism as a get out of hell free card and not as a way of life in the beloved community.  It has co-opted the name Christian and Christian language and symbols, but it has not learned to do justice, to love kindness or to walk humbly with God.  It has not learned to love the neighbor as oneself. 

So many, like Peter, want a militant messiah.  But that’s not the way God does things.  That’s not the way of Jesus.

Six days before their trip up the mountain, after Peter rebuked Jesus and Jesus rebuked him back, Jesus had this to say to the crowd that had been gathered around them:  “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  For what will it profit you to gain the whole world and forfeit your life?  Indeed, what can they give in return for your life?”

Jesus was not giving a recruitment speech designed to conjure the rewards and glories of conquest and victory.  He was issuing a realist’s invitation to a subversive movement where participation could have deadly consequences.  He was calling them, and is calling us still, to confront the powers and systems that diminish and oppress and marginalize and antagonize and lie to people wherever we find those powers and systems.  

Following Jesus can be dangerous.  Listening to him can put you at odds with family and friends.  It can complicate your life.  But your life will be meaningful. 

Jesus wanted to make it clear that he was not a white-horse-sword-in-hand messiah.  He wanted his disciples and everyone else to understand that his way of confronting injustice and oppression was to free people from its weight, heal their wounds, and then simply stand in front of the things that assailed them and speak the truth.  That was the music he was bringing.  That was the song he wanted the world to sing with him.  Peter didn’t like that song at all.  He wanted the White Horse and Sword Cantata.  

So six days later, Jesus took him up the mountain to show him who he was really arguing with. So Peter could see him shine like the sun.  And so he could hear the voice of heaven telling him to shut up and listen.

Sometimes we all need to be reminded that Jesus leads and we follow, that he’s the conductor and we’re the players in the orchestra and singers in the choir.  Sometimes we all need to go up the mountain to be reminded of who Jesus is inside his humanity.  Sometimes we all need to be reminded of those words from the cloud: “This is my Son.  The Beloved.  Listen to him.”  

Especially those last words.  

“Listen to him.”

Art: Transfiguration © Chris Brazelton, Artmajeur

Lifted Up

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Mark 1:29-39

“He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up.  Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.”  Two simple sentences.  And like so much of Mark’s gospel, a surprising amount of action in surprisingly few words. 

After preaching with authority on the Sabbath at the synagogue at Capernaum, then casting out an unclean spirit from a man who interrupted him, Jesus was ready for a break.  So he went to the house of his new disciples, Peter and Andrew.  It happened that Peter’s mother-in-law is sick and in bed with a fever.  They told Jesus about her right away and Jesus went in to see her.

And here is where the translation maybe is not our friend.  “He took her by the hand” sounds much gentler than what it says in the original language.  Kratésas it says in the Greek.  Kratéo is the verb.  It’s not a tender word.  It means to grasp firmly or strongly.  

He grasped her firmly and then it says he “lifted her up.”  Which is fine.  But again, something is lost in translation.  The verb Mark used is egeiro.  It’s the same word Jesus will use when he raises Jairus’ daughter from the dead and says, “Little girl, get up!”  It’s the same word the angel will use to tell the women that Jesus is not in the empty tomb because he is raised up—egeiro.  

So maybe this isn’t quite the gentle scene I had always imagined.  Maybe this is a scene full of strength and energy and power.  Jesus grasped her strongly, firmly by the hand—and hand, by the way, could mean anywhere from her fingertips to her elbow—Jesus grasped her firmly and raised her.  

And the fever left her.

And she began to serve them.

It’s tempting to get a little upset about that last part—she began to serve them.  After all, she’s just been sick with a fever.  And now here are all these guys who come traipsing into the house and because of the expectations of the society they live in, she jumps out of her sickbed to rustle up some dinner for them.  Oh, and by the way, does anybody care that it’s still the Sabbath?

Some commentators have pointed out that she would be happy to serve them because, in a culture where roles are clearly defined, she could now resume her place as matriarch of the household along with all the social currency that comes with that.

That interpretation about her immediately resuming her social position and role is all perfectly fine and no doubt played some part in her rising immediately to serve, but there’s also something going on in the language that deserves a moment of attention.  It’s a little thing.  But, as I’ve been learning, Mark often uses these subtle little things to make big points.  In this case it has to do with the word “served.”  The Greek word in question is the verb diakoneo.  It does mean “to serve” and it is often used in the context of serving food and drink, but it also has another layer of meaning, particularly in Mark’s gospel.

Here’s how Ched Myers explains it in his book, Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship—

“Peter’s mother-in-law is the first woman to appear in Mark’s narrative.  We are told that upon being touched by Jesus, “she served him(1:31).  Most commentators, steeped in patriarchal theology, assume that this means she fixed Jesus dinner.  However the Greek verb “to serve,” diakoneo (from which we get our word “deacon”)_ appears only two other times in Mark.  One is in 10:45—“The Human One came not to be served but to serve”—a context hardly suggesting meal preparation.

“Mark describes women ‘who, when Jesus was in Galilee, followed him, and served him, and…came up to Jerusalem with him’ (15:41).  This is a summary statement of discipleship:  from beginning (Galilee) to end (Jerusalem) these women were true followers who, unlike the men (see 10:32-45) practiced servanthood.”

So here is Peter’s mother-in-law—sadly we don’t know her name—but Mark identifies her service with a word that implies that there is a sacred aspect to her serving, a holiness that springs not from her sense of duty or social propriety, but from her faith.  

She is a deacon.  

In Mark’s gospel, the men surrounding Jesus are often argumentative and a little dense.  But the women, though not mentioned often, are astute and faithful.  

Astute and faithful women have kept the ministry of Jesus alive and well in this world for more than 20 centuries.  

Think of the women mentioned in the Gospel of Luke who travelled with Jesus and financially supported Jesus and the disciples.  Luke tells us that Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others provided for them out of their resources.  

Some of these women came to be called the Myrrh Bearers because after Jesus was crucified, they were the ones who went to the tomb to anoint his body.  Because they went one last time to serve him in that way, they ended up being the first ones to hear the good news of the resurrection.

Mary Magdalen was known to be particularly close to Jesus and was regarded as an Apostle by many among the early followers of Jesus until patriarchy asserted itself, suppressed her influence, and sullied her reputation in the 6th century by spreading the story that she had been a prostitute.  But it was Mary Magdalen who, according to the Gospel of John, first encountered the risen Jesus.  It was Mary Magdalen who first proclaimed his resurrection, making her the first evangelist.

Another Mary who was part of this group of women disciples, was Mary, the wife of  Cleopas.  Tradition tells us that her husband was the brother of Joseph, Jesus’ foster father, so she was Jesus’ aunt, and sister-in-law of Jesus’ mother, Mary.  She, too, was a Myrrh Bearer and is probably the unidentified person traveling with Cleopas on the road to Emmaus in chapter 24 of Luke’s gospel. That means that she was also one of the first witnesses to the resurrection.

Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward, Chuza, is someone we know a little more about.  We see her later identified in the letters of the Apostle Paul where he uses her Roman name, Junia.  In Romans 16:7, Paul says that she is prominent among the Apostles and that she knew Christ before he did.   Junia was a remarkable person, a woman disciple of Jesus who travelled with him in his ministry,  and continued in ministry as an Apostle, travelling as far as Rome for the cause of the gospel.  Some scholars have suggested that she might be the author of the Letter to the Hebrews.

Priscilla and her husband Aquila are mentioned six times in the New Testament.  Four of those times, Priscilla is mentioned first before Aquila, and it’s clear that she is a full partner in their work together for the sake of the gospel.  Priscilla and Aquila are also traditionally listed among the 70 that Jesus sent out on a mission.  Priscilla, who is sometimes called Prisca, her more formal name, was one of the first women preachers in the church.   Acts 18:24-28 tells us that she, along with Aquila, instructed Apollos in the faith.  Some scholars speculate that Prisca may be the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Phoebe was an overseer and deacon in the Church at Cenchreae.   St. Paul referred to her in Romans 16 as a deacon and a patron of many.  This is the only place in the New Testament where a woman was referred to with both of those titles. Diakonos kai prostateis.  A chief, a leader, a guardian, a protector.  St. Paul had such trust in her that he provided her with credentials so that she could serve as his emissary to Rome, and deliver his letter to them—that letter we know as the Epistle to the Romans.

Lydia of Thyatira, was a wealthy merchant of purple cloth, who welcomed St. Paul and his companions into her home at Philippi where, after listening to Paul’s teaching, she became a devoted follower of Jesus.  In doing so, she helped Paul establish the church at Philippi, the first church in continental Europe.

In that church at Philippi were two women, Euodia and Syntyche who were serving in positions of pastoral leadership.  At some point they got into a disagreement, and in his letter to the Philippians, Paul urges them to “be of the same mind in the Lord” so that their disagreement doesn’t split the church.  In calling them to unity, he notes that they have “struggled beside me in the work of the gospel.”  They were his full partners in ministry in that city.

Jesus took Peter’s mother-in-law in his firm grip and raised her up.  And she began to serve.  She became a deacon.  She began making sure things got done.  Making sure ministry happened.  And it’s the women who have been making sure things get done and ministry happens ever since.

Yesterday we celebrated the installation of a new pastor at Christ Lutheran Church in Long Beach.  If you include the long-term interim ministry of Pastor Laurie Arroyo, then Pastor Nikki Fielder is the fourth or fifth woman to serve Christ Lutheran as pastor.  Another woman, Pastor Jennie Chrien, preached at Pastor Nikki’s installation, and a third woman, our bishop, Brenda Bos, presided.  For several years now, the presiding bishop of our denomination has been a woman, Bishop Elizabeth Eaton.  Having women serve in these important roles in the church has become so normal that it’s hardly worth noting.  But it wasn’t always so.

It was only fifty-four years ago, a time still in living memory for many of us, that our denomination began to ordain women to the ministry of Word and Sacrament.  To be pastors.  On the one hand, it seemed then—and to some people it still seems—like a bold and progressive thing to do.  But when you look at the witness of the New Testament itself and what we have learned about the roles that women played in the earliest years of the church…well let’s just say that our historically recent ordination of women was shamefully long overdue.

I think of the women I’m indebted to in my ministry.  I think of my beloved spouse, Meri, who has always challenged me to look deeper than tradition in my understanding and practice of faith.  I think of all the women teachers I’ve had, like Dr. Martha Ellen “Marty” Stortz, professor of Church history, who opened my eyes to the rich goldmine of our heritage.  I think of the women scholars and writers I turn to for thought-provoking insights in theology and biblical studies, women like Debi Thomas, Barbara Brown Taylor, Rachel Held Evans, Roberta Bondi, Diana Butler Bass, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Heather Anne Thiessen, and Amy-Jill Levine.  I think of my women clergy colleagues who are so amazing and indispensable as we puzzle our way through the week’s texts and the week’s issues, and our life together in the church.

I think of the women in our congregations who make things happen.  Without whom things would not happen.  The Tabithas, the Junias, the Priscillas, the Marys, the Pheobes. The Myrrh Bearers.  The Apostles in our midst.

I think of them all.  And I am so grateful.

Jesus has grasped them by the hand and raised them up.  And they have served.  Showing the presence of Christ and proclaiming the kin-dom of God, or as Diana Butler Bass calls it, “the commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy.”  

Jesus has raised them up and we are all richer for it. 

Jesus grasped them firmly by the hand and raised them up.

Because that’s what Jesus does.

He reaches into our fevered immobility and raises us up out of the sickbed of patriarchy and our fearful status quo.  He frees us from the illness of coersive social conventions and oppressive patterns of business-as-usual so we can serve each other, so we can take care of each other and lift up others in meaningful ways that show the world what the commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy looks like and how it works.  

He raises us up so we can live together and work together, so we can use our unique abilities and gifts in a beloved community where, as Paul said in Galatians, “there is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female;” and we can add there is no longer gay or straight or queer or trans, “for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

He raises us up so we can show each other the healing love of Christ as we serve each other and work together to make the reign of God a reality on earth as it is in heaven.  In Jesus’ name.

On the Feast of the Epiphany

Steve Beckham 9 Comments

I sat down under the food court canopy 

at the Big Box store

and paused before eating

the Big Box hotdog

which everyone agrees is the best of all hotdogs.

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

blessed and not cursed.

I paused to recall the Day of Diagnosis,

to think through once again the fat portfolio

of foods and ingredients I must no longer ingest,

to recite to myself the litany of

common, ordinary, everyday, ingredients

in all their varied and marvelous, delicious, 

featured or hidden forms

that my body reacts to in dizzying ways.

I paused to speculate that I might be taking a risk

by biting into this Big Box hotdog.

I paused to remember other recent 

times when I had crossed the line

for I am allowed some small indulgences 

once in a while,  

if I do not eat or drink too much,

if I first take the elixir that dulls the reaction,

if I use it sparingly,

only once in awhile 

on a special occasion,

such as a Feast Day.

I was prepared.

And so was the hotdog:

one stripe of deli mustard, one stripe of ketchup,

a generous spill of perfectly cubed sweet onion,

all nested warm and waiting in my hands,

an elegantly beautiful and aromatic still life.

The sausage stretched  

beyond the snug embrace of its bun

and as the skin snapped 

with the pressure of my teeth in that first small bite

and flavors washed across my tongue

my eyes were opened

and I could taste and see the goodness

and in the goodness was remembrance.

I remembered my grandfather’s wheat fields in Kansas.

I remembered driving all night through the desert,

to get there in time to help with harvest.

I remembered wondering if the bread

in the sandwiches my mom packed in my lunch for school

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

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

I remembered the multitude of those fearsome beasts

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

milling about in angry close quarters

and me being sternly but unnecessarily warned

to not get too close.

I remember thinking my grandfather, 

who I knew as a quiet and gentle man,

must also have a fearsome side

because those turkeys would give him 

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

And I remembered thinking at the next Thanksgiving

as Mom put our turkey in the oven,

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

And I remembered all the early morning milking

on my other grandfather’s dairy farm in Arkansas,

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

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

to the cows that would take them

and milking the others by hand.

I remembered churning butter on the porch

from the cream we had skimmed that morning,

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

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

came from the fields and garden around us.

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

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

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

I remembered finding the will to be honestly grateful 

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

gift of gratitude they could bestow.  And I remembered 

feeling so unworthy of that gratitude because we had given them

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

A prayer.  A little hope.

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

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

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

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

I remembered how the women of the clinic and the village

had worked for hours to prepare the meal, 

how it was delicious and filling, 

how a little went a long way.

I remembered how it seemed

both mysteriously wonderful and not mysterious in the least

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

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

And I remembered sharing tortillas and rice and beans

with migrants in Tijuana 

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

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

are laid across borders, of how hard it is 

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

and the family is on the other, 

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

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

as we shared tortillas and beans and rice.

And I remembered, also in Tijuana, 

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

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

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

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

And I remembered barbecued ribs shared with a brother

as our motorcycles cooled in the shade of giant redwoods.

I remembered the brewpub owner/entrepreneur 

who gave us those ribs the night before and told us 

to save them for the redwoods 

because they would taste better under the trees, 

the same generous man 

who took us into his home for the night

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

who, next morning, set us on the road 

with a breakfast of smoked salmon and kale smoothies,

who did all this so graciously and casually 

even though he didn’t know a thing about us

except that we were friends of his friend.

And I remembered 

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

and Cervelle au Beurre Noir in Paris,

and a hundred nights of gourmet meals in Boston,

and freeze-dried meals beside high Sierra lakes,

and Mexican food on the way to Death Valley,

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

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

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

On the Feast of the Epiphany 

Under the food court canopy of the Big Box store

I tasted and I saw

and there was remembrance

of flavors, and places, and persons.

I tasted and I saw the goodness.

I saw that the plastic table under the food court canopy

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

this table anchored to its polished concrete floor

was sitting on the same earth as every table

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

where I have ever been fed.

I saw that my life has been 

one continuous communion

at one great and continuous table

where the foods have been a memorable delight

whose flavors are still fresh on my tongue,

but the true sustenance was in the companions.

O taste and see.  And remember.

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

Steve Beckham 4 Comments

Mark 1:14-20

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Change your life and believe the message.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow me, said Jesus.

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

for the good of all God’s people.

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

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

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

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

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

The Good News, the Triumphant Announcement of God:

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

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

And trust that good news.

Believe it.

The Blessing of Ritual and the Ritual of Blessing

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Luke 2:22-49

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

The Gift

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

A Moment in the Lights of Christmas

The little boy stopped in his tracks and pulled his mother’s hand tight to his chest.  His father, catching up to them, stopped and rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder.  The fog of their breath, illuminated for a moment by the streetlamp, sparkled briefly like a halo before vanishing into the crisp night air, and the boy’s wide and glistening eyes reflected a kaleidoscope of colors from countless lights on the ostentatiously decorated houses.  A passable version of Jingle Bells wafted down the street from a group of not-too-bad carolers but was soon overwhelmed by an odd assortment of recorded music pouring out of various holiday displays, some sacred, some not so much.

The thing that had stopped the boy as he skipped down the street was not the seemingly endless cascade of colored light nor one of the comical inflated cartoon characters in Santa hats, nor even the impressive electric train set and miniature Alpine village filling an entire front yard.  The thing that stopped him stone still there on the cold December sidewalk was an old-fashioned crèche, a simple manger scene.

Compared to all the other neighborhood displays the crèche was almost embarrassingly understated.  There were no shepherds or angels or magi in this tableau, just Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus.  Their figures, though, were particularly well crafted and cunningly lit.  They looked so real that one had to do a double-take to make sure that they were, in fact, sculptures and not human actors holding a pose.  The figures looked decidedly Middle-Eastern and even, if such a thing is possible, a bit dislocated in time, as if they had been transported to this sanitary American cul de sac from a dusty, distant, Palestinian past. But perhaps the thing that was most arresting was the way they looked at you if you stood just where the boy and his parents were standing.

Mary is usually depicted with her hands on her heart as she ponders her child in the manger.  Joseph is most often shown gazing at the baby.  But this scene was different.  As they stared at the tableau of the holy family, the boy, the mother, the father almost felt as if they had intruded, as if they had inadvertently stumbled into something serious and secret and would now have to be initiated into its mysteries.  Joseph seemed to be giving them a stare of careful appraisal and assessment as he looked directly into their eyes. “Are you a friend or a foe? Can you handle this?  Can you treasure this precious thing you did not ask for, this responsibility, this honor, this gift that will give you everything and also demand everything? Can you stay with him when it would be easier to walk away?” he seemed to be asking.  Mary, too, gazed intently, unblinking, into their eyes and seemed to be asking, “Do you understand the weight of this gift?  Do you even begin to understand what you have here? Do you know what is happening here? Do you know who he is?  Will you let him show you who you are?”

And then there was the baby.  How to describe this baby?  He, too, seemed to be looking straight into their souls, but in his face there were no questions.  There was instead an indescribable mix of innocence and wisdom.  There was promise and foreshadowing.  There was the shining hint of divinity and the burbling drool of humanity.  There was life, organic and messy, full of merriment and ecstasy and pain and tears and plain everydayness.  There was light, revealing, illuminating, probing, warming, piercing and soothing, burning and healing.  There was love, gentle and compassionate, fierce and yearning, ruthless and gracious. Love in all its purest shades.  Love in all its joy.  Love in all its anguish.  There was all that in that baby face and something else.  Deep in those eyes was God’s own Yes.

They stood transfixed at the crèche for what seemed like a long time—a moment out of time—one small family regarding another across and through time, still-life speaking to life in a held breath of stillness, until the not-too-bad carolers drew near and broke through the little family’s reverie with  tidings of comfort and joy that were a just a bit rushed and ever so slightly off key.

A few minutes later, without much thinking about it, the boy, the mother and the father found themselves in their car making their way home.   The father drove a little more slowly than usual as they rolled across the familiar bumps and dips of familiar streets.  The boy watched the reflections of Christmas lights dance and swirl across the windows of passing cars.  And the mother’s eyes were focused on something only she could see as she softly hummed Silent Night.

Metanoia: The Revolution of Change

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Mark 1:1-8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the good news of Jesus.  

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

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

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

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

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

         “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

                  ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

                  make his paths straight” –that’s Isaiah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let This Voice, Too, Be Heard

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Part 1:  Gloria In Excelsis

In the beginning was the Word,

And the Word was with the Voice

And the Word was the Voice

Who spoke all things into being.

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

And the Word became light,

flooding Nothing with a boundless energy

springing from a love of simply being

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

And the Voice breathed 

a deep Sigh of joy 

filled with wordless Word,

blowing through the light 

which illuminated Nothing 

with a bright, soundless harmony 

of love between the Voice

and the Word and the Sigh.

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

swirling in infinities, dancing through spaces,

where We might listen to the echoes of the Word,

where We might hear the singing of the Sigh,

where laughter and joy and love may be heard,

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

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

filling Nothing with Something,

with many things full of life in ice and light,  

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

balanced in ellipses, blown into lines of time

to resonate and hum with light––

the Word made music in the spheres:

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

to choose its universal notes and in its choice

to be another voice.

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

By the power of the Sigh,

Let this voice, too, proclaim the Word.”

Part 2:  Et In Terra

In the time when time was still new

In a warmer sphere, 

a few degrees askew,

wild with seething seas, yet lifeless and austere––

a still unfinished  place 

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

the Singer and the Lyric and the Music descended

and that place’s lifeless life was ended.

And as the Sighing Spirit hovered just above 

an ocean of potential,

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

And the Word dove down into the depths

of the vast, pervasive waters

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

And with fire and trembling,

by the power of that command,

the Word created land.

Terra firma.  Terra incognita.

Continents and islands. Peninsulas and strands.

Yawning canyons, rolling hills and towering peaks.

Flats, steppes, deltas, frozen wastes,

secluded coves and barking sands.

Clay and rock and grit and minerals and dust.

Glass and jewels and metals.

Chemicals and rust.

And the laughter of the Voice

reverberated in the earth

as the Spirit broke the waters

and the Word gave Terra birth.

And the Spirit hummed a lullaby

above the seething swell

as the shaping Word reshaped each sound

and inlet, molded every fjord and bay

let each volcano have its way

and rang the mountains like a bell.

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

By the wind of the Spirit,

Let this voice, too, proclaim the Word.”

Part 3:  Pax

And when the land had risen from the seas,

standing bare and moist and lifeless

in the fecund, warm and fertile breeze, 

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

merely echo or harmonize with notes already sung.  

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

Let there be piping reeds to whistle in my Wind,

Let there be  whispering flora, bushes, shrubs and grasses

with the sibilant sound of masses 

humbly bowing down in praise.

Let there be stout, hearty trees

to stand against the Holy Breeze,

banging limb against percussive limb

so that in their rhythmic beating,

in their rooted yearning, in their upward reaching,

in their gratitude for living,

their aptitude for giving,

they too, their green and vegetative voices raise

in their own unique, prolific hymn.

Let them sing along 

in their own time, in their own song.

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

and trilling voices lifted high on wings,

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

and lamenting, lupine barks and howls,

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

burrowing growls, a soft, sustaining bleat,

and the quack and honk of things afloat.

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

insectile chirps, amphibious burps,

and gentle things that murmur music in their sleep.”

And the Word sang shapes into the soil and sea

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

so that by the Voice and Word and Breath 

all these voices came to be.

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

By the Spirit and the force of Life,

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

Part 4:  Ecce Homo 

When the earth was filled with nearly every kind

of Life in nearly every state of animation

and nearly ever sound that animal or plant could make

had been added to the score,

The Voice, the Word, the Song

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

Inherent in this new creation was a calculated chance

that this newest voice might be so absorbed 

in the singing of itself that it could, it might

create a dissonant disharmony,

an awkward, arrhythmic antiphony

in the very heart of the dance.

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

that of all the creatures swimming in the sea

or gliding through the skies or burrowing or slithering

or in one way or another moving on the land,

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

and repeat it all by rote—

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

understand

the reason why the song began.

So, with every hope but also every apprehension

the Voice said, “Let us make a man

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

And let us hope they learn to sing

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

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

that the all-creative Voice 

gave us such a powerful choice.

So the Word assembled dust and clay

and the Breath of creation had its way

and we became 5 billion voices

with God only knows how many choices.

Still, when we are our better selves,

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

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

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

By the Will that gave this creature will,

Let this voice, too, proclaim the Word.”

Part 5:  Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus ad erit

We were made to appreciate

sounds deeper than the ear can perceive,

music only the heart and soul can hear,

melodies only the discerning mind can believe.

We were made to contemplate 

sounds tuned only to the spirit’s ear.

And you, beloved friend and sibling in the Sight,

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

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

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

and you stand on the precipice, poised

to fall out of death and into love…

listen closely,  and somewhere beneath

the chattering of your teeth,

behind your trembling and shaking, 

you will hear the meaning of your life.

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

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

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

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

And, though so often we get it wrong,

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

to tune our voices to the Holy resonance,

to learn the way out of our mangled dissonance 

and into that divine harmony 

that is patient and kind,

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

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

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

In the rest between the notes, 

in the break before each glorious chord,

in the space between the stops,

be still and know

the Touch of the Breath

which lifts you as the Voice sings  to you,     

over you,       

about you:

“Let this beloved child be heard. 

By my Love which loved you into life,

Let your voice, too, proclaim the Word.”

Hidden Talent

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Matthew 25:14-30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how do you hear this parable now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that is just so Jesus.

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

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

In Jesus’ name.  

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

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

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

I Believe

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

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

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