Page 34 of 35

The Light Side of Lent

Steve Beckham 5 Comments

“Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle.” -James 1.17 (The Message)

Lent came early for me this year, its deep, contemplative shadow absorbing some of the shine of Christmas, Epiphany and Transfiguration, not dimming those shining feasts, exactly, but certainly making them stand out in starker contrast so that I could examine more of their details, looking past the sheer brightness of the revealed Christ to see the very human Jesus who is often overshadowed by all that incandescent divinity, obscured under the heaviness of all that light. You have to look through some pretty dark lenses and filters if you’re going to see what’s happening on the surface of the sun.

What happened was this: on the 5th day of Christmas I learned that in a deep and dark precinct of my body, a place where, literally, the sun don’t shine, a gang of cells had become rebellious, mutating and multiplying according to their own whim instead of according to their ordained function. In other words, cancer. If it had its own way, this gang of cells would take over everything, never realizing that in doing so they would destroy themselves by contaminating and collapsing the little universe in which they live and move and have their being, namely me.

Ah, but even in the valley of the shadow there are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light; even the cross has to stand in the light to throw a shadow. I am blessed to live in a time when there is a potent tool to suppress the cellular rebellion inside me. And get this… that tool is—are you ready?—light! Light is quite literally saving my life. In the 2nd week of Epiphany I began my own little Lent. Every day for 40 days (really, 40 days!) I go to a clinic and lie down on a table under a linear accelerator which bombards me with a stream of photons. Photons. Particles of light! It works like this: the rebellious cells can’t stand the photons, the light. They wither and die. But the healthy cells adapt. “And this is the judgment,” says John 3:19, “that the light has come into the world but some love darkness because they are up to no good.”

Oh, the metaphors! Oh, the analogies! One could riff on all the cancerous business of contemporary culture or personal failings for all 40 days of Lent and still barely scratch the surface. But let’s not. Yes, there are devils and beasts in the dark hollows of our personal wildernesses, but there are also angels. See Mark 1:13 if you don’t believe me.

So here is Lent–forty days to shine a little light on what ails you. Forty days to shine some light into the darkness of your duffle and see if anything slithers away. Forty days to lay out your laundry in the sunshine and maybe dispose of some of those old attitudes and ideas that never did fit quite right on a child of God. Here is Lent—a good gift of a season full of shadows, but shadows that testify to the presence and power of the Light.

Note:  My 40 sessions of radiation therapy will be complete on Tuesday, March 17, the Feast of St. Patrick. 

Make Believe

Steve Beckham 6 Comments

It’s only a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sea, but it wouldn’t be make believe if you believed in me.—Paper Moon, 1933

Make believe. Those two words have been sticking in my head ever since I read this excerpt last week from Wishful Thinking by Frederick Buechner:

“You make believe that the tasteless wafer and 
cheap port are his flesh and blood. You make believe that by
 swallowing them you are swallowing his life into your life and 
that there is nothing in earth or heaven more important for 
you to do than this.
 It is a game you play because he said to play it. ” Do this 
in remembrance of me.” Do this. Play that it makes a difference. Play that it makes sense. 
If it seems a childish thing to do, do it in remembrance that 
you are a child.” Continue reading “Make Believe” →

The Unintentional Tyranny of the KJV

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

The other day we were having some back and forth on Facebook about Bible translation issues in response to an article I re-posted on my wall from http://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/articles-and-resources/deliberate-mistranslation-in-the-new-international-version-niv/ about some of the agenda-driven translation choices in the NIV. One problem not mentioned in the article, though, “afflicts” nearly all translation teams and is, I suspect, mandated by Bible publishers. That problem, and it has enormous implications, is the perceived obligation to not stray too far from the King James Version, especially in the most familiar passages. This is not because the KJV is a particularly good translation. In many, many ways, it is not, and for a fuller understanding of why, I strongly recommend the book God’s Secretaries by Adam Nicolson. But for all its faults as a translation, the KJV has been, for generations, The Bible; for some denominations, it is still the only translation allowed.

As a pastor who usually preaches the lectionary texts, I quite frequently find it necessary or useful to single out a particular word or phrase in the text and talk about translation choices—choices which may have significant impact on the theology and application that arises from the passage. In this week’s gospel, there’s a wonderful case in point from Matthew 11:29-30.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” That’s the NRSV translation and it hews closely to the KJV though the language is updated. “Meek” becomes “gentle” and “ye” becomes “you,” and so on, but it still says what the KJV says.

Now, putting aside the fact that if you’re preaching or teaching this text you should probably spend a moment talking about what a yoke is unless you’re in a rural community where horses and mules are still used, the real translation issue here is that the Greek word zygon, which has been translated as “yoke” ever since it appeared that way in the KJV, has another meaning. It can also mean a balancing scale, the kind used in the marketplace to weigh something.

So here’s an alternate translation from the Greek. “Come alongside me all who are weary and burdened. Take up and use my scale and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my scale is kind and my burden is insignificant.”

Translating it this way makes the passage less about “pulling our weight” one way or another or letting Jesus help us bear the great load of life that weighs on us all, and more about the freedom and peace we find when we set aside our need to be constantly judging and evaluating both others and ourselves. It can also be heard as an invitation to lay down the burden of the criticisms and judgments others have leveled at us and, instead, let Jesus do the evaluating. This fits, too, with the earlier part of the text where Jesus takes the crowd to task for their cynical and critical attitude and their failure to simply accept him for who he is, as he is.

So you can see how the choice of how to translate even one word may make a difference in how a passage is understood and interpreted. The theology that arises from thinking we are called to put ourselves in Jesus’ harness and pull whatever load he would have us bear is not bad theology, but it’s quite different from the theology of finding rest for your soul by putting down the burden of criticism and judgmental thinking.

Another example of a passage where a significant difference in theological understanding depends on translation choices is one that Biblical literalists like to quote a lot: 2 Timothy 3:16-17. The NRSV renders it this way: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” Once again, this echoes the KJV: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for…”

From a translating standpoint, there are two primary problems with this passage. The first is the choice to translate pasa graphei as “All Scripture.” In particular, the choice to translate graphei as “Scripture” (with a capital S) is a choice that was driven by a pre-decided theology. The word graphei, in its most common use, simply means “writings.” “Scripture” is a very weighted word; it implies that the writings in question are in some way holy or sacred. To the translating team addressing this passage in the early 17th century, this seemed entirely appropriate. In their minds there was no question that the work they were translating was, in fact, Holy Scripture, so it is natural that they would assume the original writer intended something similar, especially since in verse 15 he had reminded the recipient, Timothy, “from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” But even referring to “sacred writings” in one verse doesn’t necessarily justify the leap to “All Scripture” in the next.

What we don’t have here is any concrete idea of what, exactly, the writer regarded as “sacred writings,” though we can make some good guesses. We do know that the early church made significant use of many books of the Tanakh (the Jewish Bible), particularly Genesis and Psalms. We know that the prophetic books, particularly Isaiah and Jeremiah were often used and quoted. One thing we have to bear in mind, however, is that when this letter to Timothy was written, nobody had decided which books could officially be regarded as “Scripture.” It would more than 250 years before serious discussions of the canon of scripture began in earnest. The Church, itself, would not be well-enough organized to find substantial commonality of doctrine for such discussions to be productive until after the Council of Nicea in 325 CE. And while the Rabbis who began meeting and teaching at Jamnia some time around 90 CE did have long and interesting discussions about which books “defiled the hands,” their way of saying they were to be considered holy, they came to no conclusions about an official canonical list for the Jewish Bible, although they universally agreed that Torah was to be considered supreme among all writings.

So back to the translation issue at hand: “All Scripture is inspired by God.” Bearing in mind that nobody had yet decided what was and what was not Scripture when this was written, is there another way to translate it? Let’s look at a literal word-for-word translation of the original Greek. Where there is more than one translation choice for a word, a second option is offered in parentheses. “All writings God-breathed and beneficial for teaching, for refuting error, for correction (or restoration), for instruction (or discipline) in righteousness…” Did you notice that “is” isn’t there? That’s the second important translation issue with this passage, and where you decided to put that little word “is,” which isn’t in the original but has to be inserted somewhere to make a sentence that makes sense in English, can make a pretty significant difference in how the verse is read and understood.

Here’s how the great Greek scholar Richmond Lattimore translated this passage: “Every writing that is divinely inspired is also useful for teaching, for argument, for correction, for education in righteousness…” Every writing that is divinely inspired. Every God-breathed writing. That’s a long way from “All Scripture is divinely inspired.” One translation presumes that the reader and the community of faith will discern which writings are and which are not “God-breathed.” The other implies that the canon of Scripture is clearly defined, known to all and, since it is God-breathed, not to trifled with.

Interestingly, that canon, itself was redefined in 1647 at the Westminster Convention of Reformed Churches, nearly 4 decades after the King James Translation was completed and published. They eliminated the books commonly known as The Apocrypha, reducing the total number of books to 66. They did this, of course, without the consent or participation of the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches or even, for that matter, the Lutherans. So, apparently, “All Scripture” can be redefined if a large enough group of the same theological persuasion agrees to do so.

It’s interesting to me that the theological descendants of those who prefer that King James or King James-ish translation, the theological descendants of the ones who were quick to discard a whole collection of books that didn’t fit their particular qualifications, are the ones who tend to be more often literalist in their reading of the Scriptures and lean more toward Fundamentalism in their theology. It makes sense, of course, if you believe that the question of divine inspiration is settled and put to bed. But if you translate that same passage another way, if you read it to mean that one of our jobs as people of faith is to discern if, when and how a writing is inspired, it leads to an entirely different understanding of how we encounter, understand and apply the Word of God in our communities and our lives.

Since its publication in 1611, the Authorized Version Commissioned by His Majesty King James has imposed a quiet and subtle tyranny over all subsequent translations. In doing so, it has also powerfully shaped the theologies of English language readers, Americans in particular. I think it could be argued that not all of that theological shaping has been for the best.

The Penalty For Neglect

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Thoughts Along the Way…

For the past 2 years our congregation has been enjoying a Sunday morning Adult Ed class called Occupy the Gospels. It has been an enlightening and stimulating study and discussion that has taken all of us who participated into a deeper level of understanding of why each gospel is so different from the others and just what each of the gospels is all about. We’ve done a close reading of each gospel examining such questions as who was it originally written for, what kinds of stresses and pressures were they dealing with in that community, why does Jesus say things one way in this gospel but differently in another gospel, and so on.

If you’re going to call yourself a Christian, a follower of Jesus, an apprentice of Jesus, it’s important to be deeply familiar with what Jesus said and did. In his tract How Christians Should Regard Moses, Martin Luther suggested that we are not really properly equipped to understand the rest of the Bible unless we first come to a clear understanding of the gospels.

One advantage of doing a close reading together in a group is that very often others will spot things you haven’t seen before or ask questions that hadn’t occurred to you. I honestly couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve been through the gospels, but in our class together I was frequently seeing new things or seeing them from a different perspective than I had before. And sometimes that new little thing I saw would sit with me for weeks and make me rethink a lot of other things about my faith and my understanding of my faith.

Here’s a case in point. The 25th chapter of Matthew has always been important to me. I’ve even sometimes called myself a “Matthew 25” Christian. This chapter is the only place in the gospels where Jesus, himself, describes the final judgment, where the “sheep” are separated from the “goats,” and the criteria are not at all what a lot of people expect. He doesn’t say a word about what you believe or don’t believe. There is no mention of whether or not you accepted him as your personal Lord and Savior or invited him into your heart or any of those other popular ideas that some people think are the doorway to being “saved.” Nope. Nothing like that at all. No statement of creed. No tally of church attendance. Not a bit of it. Instead, the final exam is all about one thing and one thing only: how well did you take care of people who were in need?

34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

A few years ago I realized that the “sheep” in this text, the people who did these good things and are being rewarded and inheriting the kingdom, are quite surprised to find that they are, in fact, the Grand Prize Winners! They didn’t know that by taking care of those in need they were also taking care of Jesus, himself. They just did it because it was the right thing to do.

Rereading this text in our class a few weeks ago, though, I was suddenly hit between the eyes by yet another little epiphany. Words I had read maybe hundreds of times before suddenly hit me in a way I just had not thought of before. And this time it was the flip side of the coin. This time it was the “goats,” who got my attention– you know, the ones who did not feed the hungry or visit the sick or give a drink to the thirsty, the ones who ignored those in need, or worse, went out of their way to do nothing for them.

41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink…

These are the words that hit me like a ton of bricks: “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” I confess, I’m not real big on the idea of Hell and eternal punishment. I like to think that God’s grace trumps everything in the end. On the other hand, the punishment motif crops up several times in the Gospel of Matthew, so in this gospel, at least, it is kind of unavoidable. But seeing that the “goats” get punished wasn’t the thing that arrested me. It was that they were being consigned to a punishment prepared for the devil and his angels. In other words, the failure to take care of those in need is not merely a “failure” or sin of oversight. It is something far worse. It is evil. If the punishment is the measure of its severity as a sin, then the failure to care for those in need is demonic.

I think the ramifications of this are huge. Jesus, as I read it here, is saying that any actions on our part that deprive those in need of food, water, clothing, shelter or medical care, actions that deprive the imprisoned of hope and comfort, actions that alienate the stranger– such actions are evil, even demonic; the punishment is the measure of the crime.

At our little congregation, the little church with a big heart, we have much to be proud of in the ways we have fulfilled the positive side of this equation. We have been wonderfully generous in feeding, clothing and providing for those in need. Our benevolence is extraordinary, and I am so proud, as their pastor, of this congregation’s generosity in spirit and in practice. I know and trust that we will keep up the good work that leads us into God’s presence.

But think about those “goats.” As you read the headlines or watch the news, as you watch what our elected officials are voting for or against, what they are funding or not funding, remembering that they do all this in our name as our representatives, think about those “goats.” Think about the final exam as Jesus describes it. Think about how Jesus sees it. Are we on the road to inherit the Kingdom? Or are we stumbling toward that place prepared for the devil and his angels?

Pro Gloria Dei

Pastor Steve

A Quiet Place

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Thoughts Along the Way…

I stood there on a beautiful green hillside, standing just at the edge of the shade made by a canopy erected for the occasion, my guitar slung over my shoulder, my fingers on the strings poised to play. But no music came to my fingers. I had led the procession up the hill from the hearse, carrying my service book, walking ahead of the pall bearers who carried that beautiful walnut casket, a work of art with its satin finish, carrying within it the mortal remains of an even more beautiful and complex work of art, God’s own handiwork, God’s baptized child, our friend and companion on the journey, John.

The casket was settled gently on the stand above the grave. The pall bearers removed their white gloves and took their places amid the others gathered for the words and rites that would commend our John’s life into God’s hands and commit his body to the earth. As Sandy, John’s widow, had requested, I was going to play something on the guitar, some music to speak to our souls before the words to speak to our hearts. So there I stood with my guitar, ready to play, people looking at me, some expectantly, some with peace, some with encouragement, some with a plea or yearning for something I could only guess at, and all I could think about for a moment in that moment was the noise.

Huge earth movers were shaping new hillsides for new graves a few hillsides away, their giant diesel engines growling across the landscape. Just beyond them a crew in a helicopter was doing something undoubtedly important to the power lines held aloft on their giant towers that always look to me like the Martian monsters from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. C.S. Lewis once described the Kingdom of Hell as The Kingdom of Noise. I think that’s a pretty apt description. This was supposed to be a quiet, peaceful moment in a quiet, peaceful place where we could all let a bit of gentle music and words of promise carry us to the edges of our own deep wells of thought and feeling. But how could I begin to cut through all that noise? What is an acoustic guitar against the growl of earth movers and the whopping of a helicopter?

I must have looked as if I was waiting for a signal, and maybe I was. Sandy looked at me, smiled and nodded, and I realized in that moment that if this was not going to be the quiet place in the world that I was hoping for, that I thought it should be, that I had expected, then I was going to have to find a quiet place in me. The music would have to come from a quiet place in me and I would have to trust that somehow the quiet would be powerful enough to cut through the noise.

I closed my eyes and listened. Blest Be the Tie That Binds was flowing from my fingers, and when I looked up, I could tell that others could hear it, too. The melody then rewove itself into Just As I Am and as I played, unconscious of my playing, I let those notes full of grace speak to my own heart. Without a pause my fingers moved into Simple Gifts, the old Shaker tune that promises us that “When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we will not be ashamed, to turn, to turn ‘twill be our delight, till by turning, turning, we come round right.”

Somehow, the quiet cut through the noise. Somehow the melodies of unity, grace and simplicity pierced the wall of mechanized cacophony that had seemed so overwhelming. Somehow people heard it all the way to the edges of the crowd. “Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit,” says the Lord. And in all truth, the Spirit was my amplifier in that moment.

I won’t pretend to tell you that the music wafting from my guitar carried everyone to a place where they were prepared to truly hear the power and truth of all those words of hope and promise we speak as we lay our loved ones to rest. But it carried me to a quiet place where I could speak those words with faith, confidence, and something akin to joy.

So very, very often the world seems to be doing its very best to bury our better, deeper thoughts and feelings in a coffin of noise. So very, very often the thing we need most, long for most is simply a quiet place to think and feel and, depending on the situation, speak aloud to ourselves where it is quiet enough to hear our own voices. Sometimes we desperately need to get away to a quiet place. But since the world won’t often let us do that, we need to find that quiet place inside us. There is strength there. There is beauty there. There is power and grace and love there. And music.

Pro Gloria Dei,

Pastor Steve

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the Anniversary of a Dream

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

It was on this date in 1963 that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of thousands and in a singular moment of grace planted the seeds of a profound change in our nation and our culture. The seeds he planted in that speech have grown over the years; we see the fruit of that change everywhere in our country.

While he had in other places and other contexts described the evils of segregation and violence against persons of color, on this occasion he did not use the moment simply to catalogue these injustices. Instead, he shared a vision of what this nation could and should be. He did not say, “I stand here before you to denounce an evil.” Instead, he submitted his voice to the spirit of prophecy and announced, “I have a dream.”

That day, within living memory for many of us, we heard what I believe was truly a word from God proclaimed by a prophetic voice, and in that prophetic moment we were given a vision toward which we could move. The work is by no means done. The vision is by no means completely realized, but we are a better nation, a better people, less divided by the accidents of race and color than we once were. We still have a long way to go, but thanks to the vision, to the dream announced to us that day, we often see the children of former slaves and the children of former slave owners together at the table of good will, and for a new generation it is no longer even a thing of wonder, but a commonplace occurrence not worthy of comment. Thank God.

I was thinking about all this in the context of this political season which has been particularly rancorous. The tools of critical thinking and analysis have languished as candidates are presented in caricature and complex issues are condensed into soundbites. Anger and animosity have been openly encouraged by those who seek or broker power. Negativity and blaming have fanned the flames of discontent. Insinuation, innuendo and outright falsehood have been deployed freely and truth has suffered even more than usual as lines have been drawn which have too often bruised or severed the bonds of friendship and even family. Adamantine opinion has short-circuited courtesy. All have sinned and fallen short of what could be a glorious national conversation.

On this anniversary of Dr. King’s speech as we recall this pivotal moment in our history, it is good for us to remember the tremendous power of lifting up a positive vision. It is always, in the long run, far more powerful than simply denouncing the evil we think we see.

I want to believe that we can still work our way through our differences by holding up our common vision and reminding each other of our better intentions. We have the language of those better moments alive in our heritage. We do not need to reinvent it, only to reclaim it.

I like to think that even in our disagreement about how, exactly, things should work, we do really still believe that all are created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights which include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I like to think that somewhere beneath all the rhetoric we do all still believe that we, the people, established and ordained this nation’s governmental structure and codified it in our constitution in order to, among other things, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. I like to think that we give more than lip service to the idea of liberty and justice for all. I want to believe that, when all is said and done, we do still understand that ours is a government of the people by the people and for the people— that within and underneath all the talk about “the government” we are describing not only “the people” as an anonymous collective but real individual persons, fellow citizens who are doing their best to serve as they have been elected, called or employed and who are subject to the same laws and expectations. I want to believe that we understand that the institutions that we established through the processes of our government were not created to be our nemesis but are, rather, tools of our own making to accomplish our mutual goals. I want to believe that we all understand that the individual rights we have guaranteed to each other can only be fully enjoyed in the context of mutual responsibility and support.

We are, under God, still one nation. We are still fulfilling the dreams and hopes of visionaries who came before us. We are not, each of us, in it for ourselves or by ourselves; we are in it together for each other. We did not stand up every morning in school and assert our individual rights, though we understood them to be guaranteed by our mutual code of law. We did not stand up every day in school and announce that this already is a nation of liberty and justice for all; we stood up and pledged that we would strive to be such a nation together. We pledged allegiance to a hope and a vision. We pledged allegiance to a dream, a future reality that will always be still in the making.

When the World Won’t Go Away

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

When the World Wont’ Go Away

Mark 6.30   The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.  31 He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.  32 And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.  33 Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.  34 As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things….

Mark 6.53   When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat.  54 When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him,  55 and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was.  56 And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed. 

———————————————————

There are a lot of nuggets we could look at this morning in our gospel lesson from the 6th chapter of Mark. We could talk about the disciples’ enthusiasm as they return from their first mission. We could  look at the parts of the chapter that are cut out of the middle of this morning’s text— how Jesus uses the disciples to feed 5000 with  a few loaves and fish.  Right after that, also pulled out of this morning’s chapter and saved for another day is the story of Jesus walking on water.  There’s a lot in this chapter we could talk about.

I was planning to focus on those words, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile.” I was planning to talk about how important it is when you’re doing the hard work of ministry to take a retreat now and then, even if it’s a mini retreat.  I was going to talk about how even when you plan your retreat with the best intentions and take steps to protect that sacred time alone with Jesus, the world can run ahead of you and be waiting for you when you get there.  As people who bear the compassion of Christ we need to remember that even in our retreat places we will probably run into the world’s great, never-ending hunger in one way or another because even today the people of our world are like sheep without a shepherd.

Sheep without a shepherd. That’s actually a veiled political statement in Mark’s gospel, and it would be worth a conversation some time to talk about the Messianic promise hidden in that terse little phrase and how no emperor, no appointed governor, no high priest, and nobody we elect can ever fill that slot— it’s a space created by God to be filled by God—  by Emmanuel, God with us.

I was going to talk about what to do when the world won’t go away, about how Jesus still finds time to go up to the mountain to pray. I was going to use this time and this text to talk about Gloria Dei’s Strategic Planning Team and how we are now thinking of ourselves as the Mission Discernment Team because we’ve realized that our very first and most important job is to take time to listen to Jesus, to listen to the Spirit, and carefully to try to discern what Christ is calling us to be as a congregation, where Christ is calling us to go, what Christ is calling us to do. We realize that when we know more about that we can get on with the business of strategy, but if we don’t know where Christ is calling us to go, then even if we do a meticulous job of planning we’ll be planning a trip to nowhere.  And we realize, of course, that the Spirit may change our plans midstream.

Things happen that change your plans. That, too, is a lesson from today’s gospel. The disciples never do arrive at Bethsaida. The wind fights them all night. They make no headway at all, stuck in the middle of the lake until Jesus gets in the boat with them— and that’s worth noting— we don’t make any headway until Jesus gets in the boat. Notice, too, that when they give up on getting to Bethsaida and pull ashore at Genessaret, Jesus seems perfectly okay with that. And there’s a crowd waiting there, too.

I was going to touch on all those things this morning. I was going to talk about how the need of the world is always there and it’s our job in Christ to meet that need, but that it’s also important to take a break. I was going to talk about how to take a deep breath and get on with it when the world won’t go away.

And then the world did something worse than simply not go away. On Friday morning the insanity and anxiety of the world exploded in our faces once again with horrifying violence in a mass shooting in Aurora, CO.

I confess that part of me wants to use this moment to talk about our nation’s love affair with guns and what it says about us that so many followers of the Prince of Peace have such a passion for these lethal instruments of mayhem. I would like to raise the question about why it is that so many followers of Jesus, persons of genuine faith, resist efforts to more effectively register and control these instruments which are, quite simply, designed for killing. I would like to tell you about my own experience with guns, about the death of my friend, Dennis, when we were only 12 years old, about the death of Meri’s Uncle Orren.  I would like to ask how many times we have to live through Aurora and Seal Beach and Columbine before we insist on some kind of stronger preventive action.

But now is not the time to start a conversation that would almost surely be divisive and the fact is, we have bigger questions in front of us because of Aurora.  The wounds of our own grief over what happened here in Seal Beach only 10 months ago are reopened for many of us this morning. I suspect that many of you feel the way I do this morning— not so much like a disciple of Jesus, full of adrenaline for our mission— but like one of those sheep without a shepherd.

I want to share with you an article that appeared yesterday in the Huffington Post. It’s entitled An Open Letter to All Who Suffer From the Shooting in Aurora. It was written by Pastor Meghan Johnston Aelabouni, the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Fort Collins, Colorado.

You don’t know me. I’m a pastor at a Lutheran congregation 65 miles north of you, in Fort Collins. You may have your own pastor, or rabbi, or imam. You may not believe in God. But I am also your neighbor–and like many of your neighbors in Colorado and across the country, my heart breaks for you today.

We, your neighbors, may not have been in that movie theater, but we could have been. It could have been our children, our friends. We want to share words of sympathy, but we know no words can erase what has happened to you, as you grieve for the dead and wait in hospitals for news of the injured. What words we do share may bring little comfort.

I am only one of many voices who will speak to you, and about you, in the days to come. As a pastor, a parent, and a neighbor, here is what I want to say.

To the victims, the survivors, and their loved ones: I am so sorry. I cannot imagine the terror of being inside the theater in those deadly moments, or the anxiety of not knowing at first whether someone you loved was among the victims. I pray for the hospital staff and emergency personnel who continue to treat your wounds, and I pray for your healing. And for those who have received the worst possible news, the news of death, my head bows in sorrow.

In the coming days and weeks, you will probably encounter well-meaning people who will say to you, it is all part of God’s plan, even if we don’t understand it now. Everything happens for a reason. If these words are helpful for you to hear, I’m glad. But if these words tear at already-raw places in you and fill you with anger or despair, please know this: not all people of faith believe these things. I do not believe them.

The God I know in Jesus Christ does not use natural disasters or human-caused massacres to reward some and punish others. I believe God is able to reach into sin and death and pull out healing and life; this is a different thing from engineering tragedy for a so-called greater purpose. The God I serve and proclaim to others does not cause or desire human suffering.

I also suspect many of you, like us, may be asking why. Why did this happen? The media and the justice system will do their best to answer this question in the literal sense, trying to determine why James Holmes apparently entered a movie theater and began shooting at random. In a sense, however, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, because even if we get a “why”–an explanation from the shooter, or a more comprehensive understanding of the circumstances that comes with time–these answers will still not be enough.

In its deepest sense, the question “why?” is not a request for a logical explanation; no logical explanation will justify or make sense of what is indefensible and senseless. It is a cry of the heart, an expression of grief. It is a cry as ancient as it was new again this morning. In the Bible, it is “Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more” (Jeremiah 31:15).

As a person of faith, I say to you: there is holiness in grief, in tears and in anger. In the refusal to be comforted, there is the understanding that these bullets have torn a rent not only in individual lives but also in the fabric of life itself, in an understanding of community as it ought to be. Such refusal proves that we have glimpsed and can imagine a better way of being together in the world. The fact that this event is one of many tragedies and episodes of suffering around the world doesn’t diminish its magnitude; in many ways, it makes it sadder.

One of the twelve dead in the Aurora shooting was aspiring Colorado sportscaster Jessica (Ghawi) Redfield. On June 5, after she had narrowly missed being present at a similar shooting at a Toronto mall, she blogged about the event, asking, “Who would go into a mall full of thousands of innocent people and open fire? Is this really the world we live in?”

Is this the world we live in? Yes. And no. It is a world in which evil and tragedy erupt with shocking frequency and brutal intensity. It is a world in which, despite our attempts to separate “good people” from “bad people,” the truth in writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s words stands: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.”

And yet, this is also a world in which immense kindness and compassion can wash over us in times of greatest need. For those whose trust in humanity has been shattered today: as you remember a young man bursting into a place of supposed safety and turning it into a place of destruction, may you also remember communities, places of worship, neighborhoods and individuals bursting into this situation with love and support. May these times testify not to the power of evil to destroy community, but to the greater power drawing a community together to stand with one another. I call that greater power God; but whether or not we share the same faith, let us share that commitment to life and love that render hatred and evil ultimately powerless.

In the end, whatever his motives, Mr. Holmes will have neither the first nor the last word. Nor will I. That honor belongs, I believe, to the indestructible love of God. It belongs also to Jessica Redfield, whose life was ended, but whose witness was not destroyed:

“we don’t know when or where our time on Earth will end. When or where we will breathe our last breath…every moment we have to live our life is a blessing.”

To Jessica and our beloved dead: rest in peace, and may perpetual light shine upon you.

One of my heroes, Fred Rogers— we all knew him as Mr. Rogers— Fred Rogers once wrote, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers— so many caring people in the world.”

Look for the helpers. When tragedy erupts, when violence explodes in our faces, look for the helpers. In fact, as followers of Jesus, we are called to be the helpers. We are the ones called by God to wade into the mayhem to help. It is our hands God uses to care for the wounds. It is our voices God uses to speak comfort. It is our arms God uses to embrace. It is our shoulder that God uses to receive the tears of those who weep.

In his address to the nation in the aftermath of this horrible violence, President Obama said, “If there is anything to take away from this tragedy, it’s the reminder that life is very fragile. Our time here is limited and it is precious. And what matters most at the end of the day is not the small things; it’s not the trivial things, which so often consume us and our daily lives. Ultimately, it’s how we choose to treat one another and how we love one another.”

Ultimately, what matters is how we treat one another, how well we love one another. That means that we who follow Jesus, who try to love the world as he loved and loves the world, will always have our work waiting for us. We are the helpers. We are the ones who carry the compassion and love of Christ into the heart of disaster. The world is still full of sheep without a shepherd. There will always be disasters. There will always be insane acts of violence. The world won’t go away. It is always there, reaching out with its hungers and its needs. And yes, as we do this work of Christ and reach out to the world’s never-ending hunger, sometimes we need to take a break. But if the world suddenly explodes even when you’re trying to take that break, then stop, take a deep breath, and find a way to love it.

In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

God Knows

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

God Knows.

Samuel (God Hears) in the night hears the Voice, but the prophet child is given a choice: to volunteer and fulfill God’s vision or go back to sleep and let the elision of dreams bypass this turning point that leads to a future where he will anoint a giant-slaying shepherd king. Could he imagine such a thing is waiting in that whispered Call that wakes him in that holy hall where he lies on a cushion in the dark in front of God’s own holy ark?

Nathanael (God’s Gift) sitting under his tree, when Phillip calls him to come and see the Messiah, the one they’ve all been awaiting, could continue with his contemplating. In fact, we see that he’s debating: could any good thing come from such a place? Would Messiah have a Nazarene face? But when Christ tells Nathanael he’s seen him before, they have to peel him off the floor. He came on a lark, on a whim, on a bet, now he’s told, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Stick around, there’s more to see. You’ll see it all…just follow me.”

Strange that a God so all-pervasive is rarely coercive, more often persuasive; we see that God is omnipresent, but, by and large, it’s not unpleasant. And that’s odd, because ubiquity means God knows my iniquity. God is there when I flare through the roof. God is there when I’m cold and aloof. When I’m being greedy or being stupid or under the influence of Cupid or killing my pain or my appetite—God sees it all, all the wrong and the right. God sees the better moments, too, the nicer things we say and do, the little generosities that we hope outweigh our atrocities.

God, the All-Present, the Ground of All Being, is also, then, the Ever-Seeing. God, not bound by time or dimension, looks past my posture and pretension to see what I cannot see in advance, to call my name and give me a chance to become what only God can see: the person I was made to be.

Get Used To The Water

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Get Used To The Water

Jesus’ birth is described in only 2 books of the New Testament: Matthew and Luke. His baptism, on the other hand is talked about in six books: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts and Romans. The Scriptures place more emphasis on his baptism than on his birth. Brian Stoffregen suggests, “Perhaps that should be a clue for us. Perhaps we should not only give greater emphasis to Jesus’ baptism but also our own baptisms. Should we not publicize baptismal anniversaries of our members as we do birthdays and wedding anniversaries?”

James R. Edwards (The Gospel according to Mark) makes this important point: “As the inaugural event of Jesus’ public ministry, the baptism tells us not what Jesus does but what God does to him” [p. 34].

Baptism is not about what we do. It’s about what God does. It’s not about my decision for God, it’s about God’s decision for me. God tears open the barrier between heaven and earth, God alights on me, possesses me and fills me with the Holy Spirit, it’s God’s voice that declares, “This is my child.” The only decision I can make is to get out of God’s way, to stop resisting God and to receive the gift that God has been trying to give me all along, the gift of my true self as God has always intended me to be. And even that decision is not entirely an act of my will; I come to that point of decision because God has enticed or nudged or shoved or dragged or persuaded or gently led me to that point. 

 There is an important difference between John’s baptism and Christian baptism which is often–too often–overlooked. John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance and a washing away of sin. Christian baptism is about receiving the power of the Holy Spirit and a initiating a special relationship with God. 

 Baptism, from the Greek word baptidzo, means to dip under, to dye, to immerse, to sink, to drown, to bathe, to wash. When we are baptized we dip under the surface of religion and into the depths of faith. We are dyed the color of Christ. We are immersed in the life and love of God. We sink down into the depths of God’s compassion. We are drowned in the death of Christ so that we might be raised into his eternal life. As St. Paul says in Romans 6.5: For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” We are bathed in God’s cleansing grace. We are washed in the the flowing waters of new creation.

 Writing about baptism in Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott writes: “Christianity is about water: ‘Everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.’ It’s about baptism, for God’s sake. It’s about full immersion, about falling into something elemental and wet. Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain and tanks and fonts, you agree to do something that’s a little sloppy because at the same time it’s also holy, and absurd. It’s about surrender, giving in to all those things we can’t control; it’s a willingness to let go of balance and decorum and get drenched…. In the Christian experience of baptism, the hope is that when you go under and you come out, maybe a little disoriented, you haven’t dragged the old day along behind you. The hope, the belief, is that a new day is upon you now. A day when you are emboldened to take God at God’s word about cleanness and protection: ‘When thou passeth through the water, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.’”

 Baptism is not a one-time event. It is a way of life. Baptism is not fire insurance. We don’t baptize babies so that if, God forbid, something awful should happen they won’t go to hell. We baptize them so that they can be immersed from the very beginning in a life where they are always seeing and experiencing the presence of God, ideally within the family of faith–within the community of all those sisters and brothers who have also been given what St. Paul calls “a spirit of adoption.” We baptize adults because it is never too late to begin that new life as God’s child, never too late to become a new creation, never too late to receive that “spirit of adoption,” never too late to be embraced by and enfolded into the family of faith.

 There is always that hope, that desire, to be new, to start over, to be whole. Crosby and Nash in their song, Lay Me Down say it this way:

Somewhere between Heaven and Hell
A soul knows where it’s been
I want to feel my spirit lifted up
And catch my breath again 
Lay me down in the river
And wash this place away
Break me down like sand from a stone
Maybe I’ll be whole again one day

Baptism is all about God’s amazing grace, but it is not a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card. In fact, if you’re living out your baptism, it just my put you in jail.  Martin Luther King, Jr., Dietrich Bonnhoeffer, Daniel Berrigan, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Perpetua, the 285 Muslim converts–including children–who were arrested in Iran last year, the 42 Ethiopian Christians arrested in Saudi Arabia on December 17… Baptism put them in jail. 

Romans 8:15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!”  16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,  17 and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Baptism may call us to suffer with those who suffer for the sake of Christ. Baptism may call us to suffer with our brothers and sisters who suffer. We are God’s children. The heirs of God’s dominion. Baptism brings us not only privilege and blessings, it brings responsibilities. We have joined the family business–God’s family business. We have a job to help realize God’s vision for the world, to transform the whole world so that God’s justice, God’s shalom, God’s idea of equity and equality, God’s generosity and God’s compassion are the standard and norm “on earth as it is in heaven.” Sometimes that means we have to stand up to the powers and forces in this world that are in opposition to God’s vision. But baptism can give us the strength to do that, too.

Some of you no doubt remember how during the civil rights marches the authorities  in Birmingham tried to stop the marchers with fire hoses. Martin Luther King, marching at the front, felt the full force of those hoses. When he spoke about that later, he said that he and the other marchers had a common strength that gave them the courage and the power to keep going.  He put it this way, as “we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were a Baptist or some other denomination, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water.”

Brett Blair wrote, “You and I know the water. All of God’s children know the water. We share by our faith this common symbol, this initiation, this rite, this power of God over the deep and often raging chaos of life. We know water!”  All over the world baptism unites us. We are children of God… and it’s a very large family. That means that no matter what we’re facing, we never face it alone. We have Christ. We have our Abba. We have the Holy Spirit. And we have a whole world of brothers and sisters.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Rosh Hashanah Reflections

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Reflections on the New Year
Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of a new year in the Jewish calendar. Traditionally, this marks the beginning of ten days of reflection during which one thinks back on one’s life of the past year. Appropriately, this time of reflection culminates on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I think this is a wonderful way to approach new beginnings of every kind, so I am unabashedly borrowing this tradition from my Jewish brothers and sisters. I need a fresh start right now and God has seen fit to provide me with a great one.

This has been a year of significant experiences, many of them “blows” of one sort or another.

  • This time last year I was “downsized;” my position at Trinity Lutheran in Ventura was eliminated due to budget difficulties. This led to a prolonged, unintentional sabbatical.
  • Two days before Christmas my wife, Meri, broke her ankle and had to have surgery to repair it. Christmas was improvised accordingly.
  • Not long after that, I had a nasty bout (there are no good bouts) of Meniere’s Disease which resulted in significant hearing loss. I now have hearing aids. My Meniere’s, it turns out, was triggered by allergies; I was found to be allergic to dairy, yeast and eggs, which meant I had to make some serious changes in my diet. I lost 40 pounds I shouldn’t have been carrying around anyway.
  • My father-in-law, a man I admired greatly and loved deeply, died suddenly and unexpectedly a week after Easter.
  • Two weeks later my own father, who had seemed to be pretty healthy except for a nagging pain in his side, was diagnosed with advanced Pancreatic Cancer. He died only a few weeks after that.
  • In August, our daughter gave birth to twins and Meri was hired as a full-time lecturer on the faculty of Cal State, Fullerton!
  • As I write this, we are preparing to move so I can begin my new call as pastor of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, a warm-hearted congregation in the town where I grew up.

One doesn’t have a year like that without experiencing some profound internal changes. Oddly, the overall effect has been, for me, tranquilizing. One might think that it’s merely reflexive numbness, but that’s not it at all. I still feel the sharp edges of things gone wrong. I still feel the “high” of the joyful moments, too. But the feelings are somewhat tempered now, balanced by a new kind of perspective. The rational “analyst/observer” part of my mind is stronger and my emotions don’t carry all the momentum of the moment. I find myself smiling a lot and and saying, “Well, that’s just life.” Meri calls it “the Valium of experience.”

I am more grateful for what is. I still see things that I want to change, things that need to change, but I realize that lasting, positive progress in human nature and human institutions can take years, even generations to accomplish. I still have my part to play in making the world a better place, but I realize I’m just one clarinet in the never-ending symphony.

I am relieved to be traveling more lightly. I am more patient with those who are reading the world by a different light. I am more curious about what they are seeing and why.

I feel much freer. At the same time I find that I cherish my family ties, bonds and relationships in a deeper, quieter, stronger way.

I am much more aware of my own mortality. That doesn’t depress me, it enlivens me. It opens my eyes to what a precious gift life is. I find myself tearing up sometimes at the sheer beauty of moments with my family, even when we are all exhausted from the relentless demands of feeding-changing-burping-rocking the twins and tending the toddler. I am awestruck by the wit, wisdom and resilience of my sleep-deprived daughter and her steadfast, rock-solid husband. I am humbled by my son’s creativity, work ethic humor and intelligence, by the way he still makes time for family. I continue to be moved, grateful, surprised, amused and challenged in a good way by my brilliant, loving wife, and I realize more powerfully than ever before that those promises we made to stick with each other through everything life throws at us are a gift I will keep unwrapping until death parts us.

I have learned that it’s not about me. It’s about us. I knew that before, but it’s a lesson that requires homework. This year I got a lot of homework.

Jesus said, “I came that you might have life to the fullest.” He didn’t say that we would like all of it. We can, however, find meaning in all of it. We can learn from it. We can let it inspire us. Life, this part of it anyway, is brief. Savor every drop of it. Even the bitterest bites. We’re supposed to mix the agave syrup with the cocoa. We’re supposed to share the ingredients. It’s the only way we get the full-course meal.

In the last rites of Bokononism, the fictional religion created by Kurt Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle, one of the things the dying person says is, “Lucky me. Lucky mud. Think of all the mud that didn’t get to sit up and look around.” I say that to myself a lot these days.