Tag Bible

The Light of Hope

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 24:36-44

“When the end of the world comes,” said Mark Twain, “I want to be in Kentucky.  They’re twenty years behind on everything.”

Our Gospel text for this first Sunday in Advent, the first Sunday of a new church year, comes from a section near the end of the Gospel of Matthew that centers on the coming of the Son of Man. The fragment we read this morning comes hard on the heels of Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple with the implication that this will be the beginning of the “end times.”  The disciples, of course, want to know more.  “Tell us, when will this be,” they ask, “and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

The answer Jesus gives to “when will this be?” is “God only knows.” 

This section of Matthew and its parallels in Mark and Luke are sometimes called “the little apocalypse.”  The word apocalypse comes directly from Greek and only drops one small syllable on its way into English.  Apokalypsis  in Greek becomes Apocalypse in English.  The literal meaning is “an uncovering” or “unveiling.”  It originally meant a disclosure, a revelation.  

The word can also describe a particular kind of literature.  That’s the first meanings in Merriam Webster’s dictionary:

one of the Jewish and Christian writings of 200 b.c. to a.d. 150 marked by pseudonymity, symbolic imagery, and the expectation of an imminent cosmic cataclysm in which God destroys the ruling powers of evil and raises the righteous to life in a messianic kingdom.

Webster also gives what it calls the “Essential Meaning”:

a great disaster : a sudden and very bad event that causes much fear, loss, or destruction.

In more common usage, apocalypse is often used as shorthand for “the end of the world.”

From disclosure to disaster.  That’s quite a shift in meaning—although it makes sense.  When things that are covered up are suddenly revealed it often creates a lot of anger and instability.  

I’ve often wondered why we are so fascinated with the idea of The Apocalypse, the End of the World.  What is it about the human psyche that wants to immerse itself in “end of the world” thinking and stories?  And why has our interest in this topic been growing? 

If you take a look at Wikipedia’s list of Apocalyptic films, it paints an interesting picture.  Before 1950, there were only 4 apocalypse movies.  The first one was a Danish film made in 1916 called, prosaically enough, The End of the World.  And then we went fifteen years before anyone made another apocalyptic movie.  That one was a French film made in 1931, also titled The End of the World.  American filmmakers got into the Apocalypse business in 1933 with Deluge from RKO Pictures, and then the Brits took a turn in 1936 with a United Artists picture called Things to Come, written by H.G. Wells.  So in the whole first half of the 20th century, only 4 apocalyptic movies are listed.  Four.  

And then they stopped.  That’s probably because the whole world was at war in the 1940s.  People were living through an apocalypse, and they wanted their movies to give them hope, to tell them there was a brighter day coming, that there would be a time of rebuilding.  

Apocalyptic films reappeared in the 1950s, but they were still sporadic enough that it would be stretching things at that point to call them a genre.  From 1950 to 1959 there are eleven apocalypse movies on Wikipedia’s list, but things would pick up significantly in the 1960s.  

From 1960 to now there have been 378 apocalyptic movies. That’s 378 films about the end of the world in a period of 65 years.

So back to the original question: why are people so fascinated by apocalypse?  Why is there such a big market for dystopia and humanity’s grand finale? 

I don’t know what the social psychologists would say about that, but I do know what Biblical scholars and theologians say.  They tell us that apocalyptic literature appears—and movies are a form that—when a people is oppressed, under great stress, and experiencing persecution, or when the world in general becomes so dystopian that problems seem unsolvable.  

The Book of Ezekiel, with its strange visions and imagery, appears during the time of the Babylonian conquest of Judah to give hope and courage to captive and enslaved people who had seen their nation not just defeated but destroyed.  The Book of Daniel was written to give hope and courage to the Jewish rebels fighting against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the cruel Greek Seleucid ruler who desecrated Yahweh’s temple by setting up an altar to Zeus and sacrificing a pig on it.  John’s Apocalypse, which we call the Book of Revelation, was written to give hope and courage to followers of Jesus in Asia Minor who were being oppressed and persecuted by Rome.

Hope and courage for people in dire straits.  That’s what all the ancient apocalypses are really all about when you wade through all the fascinating imagery.  They use imagery as a kind of code because the people writing them and reading them are living in dangerous circumstances.  If the empire is breathing down your neck, it’s not safe to say “The Emperor is a gluttonous, greedy, selfish pig who bullies the people and forces nations to hand over the best of everything while the rest of us are sucked dry.”  So instead you write about a harlot who sits on seven hills.  You can’t say that the emperor is a monster, so you write about a monster, a dragon with seven heads, and trust that people will read between the lines.

The writers of the apocalyptic works in the Bible, and the Holy Spirit who guided them, never intended to be giving a coded timeline of the end of all things.  That’s not why they were written.  They were written to give a simple clear message:  “Hang in there.  Yes, these are scary times.  But God is on your side. Nasty empires and oppressive regimes don’t last forever.  They either exhaust themselves, or somebody conquers them, like when Darius the Mede brought new management to Babylon; or enough people finally get tired of their rubbish and rise up to throw them out on their ear, like the Maccabees did with Antiochus Epiphanes; or they overindulge themselves to death and collapse from internal squabbling and rot.  That’s what happened to Rome.  Once more for emphasis: Hold on to hope.  Have courage. God is on your side.  And God wins in the end.

This “little apocalypse” from Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels is radically different from other apocalyptic writings in one major point.  Other apocalyptic writings—those included in the Bible like Daniel and Revelation, extra-biblical books like 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra, and the apocalyptic pamphlets that circulated throughout Palestine during the Jewish war—all focused on the basic universal apocalyptic message: hang tough, God is with you, hope and courage, fight the good fight.  But this homily from Jesus has one important departure from the formula.  Ched Myers and other scholars suggest that Jesus is telling his followers to abandon the temple.  He is telling his followers to resist, but not to join in the rebellion.  He urges them not to be led astray from their path of nonviolent resistance by charismatic leaders with messianic claims, and patriotic swords and spears.

Jesus calls us to a different pathway of apocalypse.  This is not the pathway of Judas Maccabeus picking up his sword to fight the Greeks.  This is not the pathway of Simon bar Giora, claiming to be the new King David as he leads guerilla bands in surprise attacks.  This is not Mad Max with a sawed-off shotgun.  

Jesus is telling his followers that armed rebellion is not the pathway to the kingdom of God.

 The pathway of Jesus is the Way of nonviolence.  The way of critiquing the bad by doing the better.  The rebellion is not the kingdom. But the kingdom is a rebellion…done a different Way.

In the gospels, the kingdom of God, as it is embodied by Jesus, is revealed to us as a nonviolent rebellion against business as usual, economics as usual, politics as usual, government as usual, and religion as usual.  It is also very much a rebellion against rebellion as usual.  The entire mission of Jesus in the gospels is, in its way, an apocalypse.  A revealing.  It pulls back the veil to show us the serious flaws in our ways of doing things.  It critiques the bad by giving us a vision of the better.  

It reminds us that the day will come in God’s own good time when, as Isaiah promised…

Out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

                  and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations,

                  and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

         they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

                  and their spears into pruning hooks;

         nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

                  neither shall they learn war any more.

O house of Jacob,

                  come, let us walk

                  in the light of the LORD!

Yes, in a way Jesus does predict the end of the world.  The world as it is  ends when it is gradually, nonviolently reimagined and replaced heart by heart, mind by mind, one person at a time until the commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness becomes our everyday reality on earth as it is in heaven.  How’s that for an apocalypse?

Advent is the time when we remember that Isaiah’s hope, that ancient hope, is our hope.  Advent is a time when we light the candle of hope to remind us that Jesus has called all of us to walk in the light of the Lord.  It is a time when we remember that just as Jesus came to teach us the Way of love and truth, the Way of cooperation and companionship, the Way of kindness and justice, he will come again when the time is right to remake and renew the world.  

When will that be—the Second Coming of Christ?  God only knows.  The only thing we can know for certain is that each day brings us one day closer.  As St. Paul says, “You know what time it is.  Now is the moment for you to wake up.  For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers;  the night is far gone, the day is near.”  

Salvation—our remaking as a whole and healthy world—is  closer to us now that it was when we got up this morning.  So watch.  And hope.  And be ready.  In the meantime, O house of Jacob, O house of Jesus, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.  

Of Sadducees and Tricky Questions

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 20:27-38

Jesus had finally arrived in Jerusalem.  Luke tells us in chapter 20 that Jesus was teaching in the temple every day.  A sizeable crowd gathered around him to listen as he taught about the kingdom of God,  but the scribes and temple authorities were continually trying to trip him up.  “So they watched him,” writes Luke, “and sent spies who pretended to be honest, in order to trap him by what he said and then to hand him over to the jurisdiction and authority of the governor.” (Luke 20:20)  

With that kind of framing from Luke, it’s natural to assume that the Sadducees in today’s gospel text have come to Jesus with a “gotcha” question.  “Teacher,” they ask, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.  Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless.  Finally the woman also died.  In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”

In order to really understand what’s going on in this little dialogue between Jesus and the Sadducees, it’s probably helpful for us to understand more about who the Sadducees were and what levirate marriage is.

The Sadducees were a conservative Jewish sect whom the Romans had placed in charge of operating the Temple.  They were well educated, well connected, often wealthy and they focused on maintaining the well-organized and efficient operation of the Temple as a way to safeguard their elite status and positions of power.  They believed in free will, that each individual has complete control over their own destiny and choices, and they rejected any notion that fate or divine intervention played any kind of role in our lives.

In religious matters the Sadducees accepted only the written Torah as authoritative and rejected the oral traditions and rabbinic interpretations that the Pharisees considered authoritative.  They also entirely rejected the supernatural.  They did not believe in angels, demons, resurrection or any kind of afterlife with rewards and punishments because none of those things were mentioned in Torah.  They believed that when the body died the soul died with it.

Levirate marriage—the Hebrew word for it is Yibbum—is pretty much exactly what the Sadducees describe in their question to Jesus.  Deuteronomy 25 spells it out this way: “When brothers reside together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage and performing the duty of a husband’s brother to her,and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.”

While the whole thing sounds pretty misogynistic to our ears—the woman is still treated more or less as property after all—this practice actually had some very real benefits for the widow in their frankly patriarchal culture.  Levirate marriage ensured that the widow remained financially supported and that she remained connected to her husband’s family.  It protected children and safeguarded their family identity and inheritance rights.   It provided an heir for the deceased man which allowed his name and legacy to be carried on, and it promoted cohesion and continuity within the clan by keeping wealth and property in the family.  And to be fair, either the widow or the brother-in-law could opt out of the arrangement with a ritual called Chalitzah which is also described in Deuteronomy 25, although there was a certain amount of shame attached to doing that.

As I said earlier, the question that the Sadducees ask Jesus sounds like a “gotcha” question, especially since Luke has flat-out stated that the Temple authorities “were trying to trap him.”  But Diana Butler Bass has suggested that there might be another way to hear their question.

What if these Sadducees are being sincere in their question?  What if these men who did not believe in life after death were asking Jesus about the resurrection because they were afraid that maybe, just maybe, there really is more to come after we die?  What if they’re afraid because their whole tradition has taught them not to believe that, but now they have questions and their tradition has no answers?  

That’s a precarious place to be when you’re living through a time of turmoil and uncertainty, when the Empire might suddenly decide there has been one too many subversive acts and it’s time to break out the swords and spears.  Theirs was a precarious and disquieting belief, a belief without hope or comfort, in a world or culture where at any given moment and for the flimsiest of reasons, death could be waiting just the other side of the door.

The way you hear the Sadducees’ question can affect the way you hear Jesus’ answer.  If you hear him responding to just another “gotcha” question, he might actually sound a bit snarky in his response.  But if he is responding to a sincere question that rises out of their fear of death, then he sounds like a good pastor addressing their fears with comfort and understanding as he explains a theological mystery. “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.  They can’t die anymore. They are like the angels.  They are children of God!”  

And then, to bring it home, he gives them an argument from the Torah, the one part of the scriptures they trust.  He gives them an example from Exodus: “The fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed in the story about the bush.  He speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.  He speaks of God not as God of the dead but of the living.  For to God all of them are alive.”

The big problem for the Sadducees is that they had decided in advance what they would and would not hear, what they would and would not read.  They had eternal questions but their tunnel vision would not even let them read their own favorite sources in a more expansive and comforting way.

Because they would only read Torah, the Pentateuch—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy—they couldn’t hear the jubilant voice of Isaiah saying, “Your dead shall live; their corpses shall rise.  Those who dwell in the dust will awake and shout for joy!  For your dew is a radiant dew, and the earth will give birth to those long dead.”[1]  They were deaf to the voice of Ezekiel saying, “Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves and bring you up from your graves, O my people!”[2]  They never heard Daniel saying “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”[3]

The Sadducees didn’t have a problem with their Bible.  They had a problem with the way they were reading their Bible.  They were missing the best parts!  They were missing the promises and the good news!  And they were missing those things because they thought they already knew what it said.  They thought they already knew which parts were most important.

That can happen to any of us.  Our assumptions can cause us to miss things that are life-changing.

I get Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations from the Center for Action and Contemplation in my email every morning.   I usually read it, but sometimes, if it looks like something I’ve seen before, I just discard it.  When I opened Friday’s meditation, I noticed right away that it was about the beatitudes.  Well, I’ve read the Beatitudes in English and Greek and preached on them for 30 years.  I’m pretty familiar with the Beatitudes.  I was about to drag the meditation to the electronic bin when my eye caught the word Aramaic.  

This post, this particular meditation, was written by Elias Chacour, a Palestinian Arab-Israeli who is the former archbishop of the Melkite Greek Catholic church in Palestine.  Bishop Chacour had things to say about the Beatitudes that I had never read or heard before, and taking time to read what he said has given me a whole new way to understand them.

“Knowing Aramaic, the language of Jesus,” he wrote, “has greatly enriched my understanding of Jesus’ teaching. Because the Bible as we know it is a translation of a translation, we sometimes get a wrong impression. For example, we are accustomed to hearing the Beatitudes expressed passively: 

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied. 

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. 

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. 

 “’Blessed’ is the translation of the word makarioi, used in the Greek New Testament. However, when I look further back to Jesus’ Aramaic, I find that the original word was ashray, from the verb yashar. Ashray does not have this passive quality to it at all. Instead, it means “to set yourself on the right way for the right goal; to turn around, repent; to become straight or righteous.”  

“When I understand Jesus’ words in Aramaic, I translate like this: 

Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you who are hungry and thirsty for justice, for you shall be satisfied. 

Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you peacemakers, for you shall be called children of God. 

“To me this reflects Jesus’ words and teachings much more accurately. I can hear him saying, “Get your hands dirty to build a human society for human beings; otherwise, others will torture and murder the poor, the voiceless, and the powerless.” “Christianity is not passive but active, energetic, alive, going beyond despair…. 

“Get up, go ahead, do something, move,” Jesus said to his disciples.”[4]  

When we take away our preconceived notions of what we think the scriptures are supposed to say, when we let new voices inform our reading, it can be life changing.

Life is eternal.  Love is immortal.  So ashray!  Get up, go ahead, do something, move!  In Jesus’ name.

[1] Isaiah 26:19

[2] Ezekiel 37:12-14

[3] Daniel 12:2

[4] Daily Meditations, Center for Action and Contemplation; Friday, November 7, 2025

Burning Down The World

Steve Beckham 4 Comments

Luke 12:49-56

“I have come to throw fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!”  Wow!  This is not “Jesus meek and mild” talking.  This is Jesus under stress.  This is Jesus who sees the cross bearing down on him.  This is Jesus impatient with everyone misinterpreting and misunderstanding him or just plain being dense.  This is Jesus on fire!    

Where did that idea—Jesus meek and mild—where did that idea even come from anyway? Is Jesus gentle?  Often.  Is Jesus compassionate?  Absolutely.  Always.  But meek and mild?  Not in my Bible. 

“I came to set the world on fire and how I wish it was already blazing!”  From the very beginning of his ministry Jesus has been announcing that the kingdom of God, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy, is arriving.  A new reality is breaking into the old world order.  

Jesus did not come to maintain or reinforce the status quo.  He came to show us the heart of God and to share God’s vision of the world as God intended it to be.  He came to transform the world by transforming us. 

Jesus knew that life would be difficult for those who choose to follow him.  He knew that living in the stream of God’s love, proclaiming the radical equality and openness of God’s kindness, freely offering mercy and forgiveness, standing up for the oppressed, speaking for the voiceless, standing in solidarity with the poor and marginalized—he knew that this would create friction in a world that operated by other standards.  He knew that sometimes that friction would begin at home.

Jesus was a realist— he knew that the alternate and better reality he was proclaiming, his Good News initiating the reign of God, was going to cause division— not because he was unclear about it, but because this fire of transformation was going to bring a never-ending cycle of change.  And most people don’t like change.  He knew that conflict would be inevitable because God was entrusting this world-transforming, never-ending mission to everyday human beings— to us— and even on our best days, even when we’re filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit, even when we think we’re seeing and hearing Jesus as clearly as possible, we can and will find things argue about.  

The church started arguing when it was still basking in the warm afterglow of the flames of Pentecost. Peter argued with James about including Gentiles in the family of faith.  Paul and Peter butted heads over authority and practice.  Paul and Barnabas argued over whether or not John Mark could travel with them and ended up going their separate ways.  In Phillipi, an argument between two important women pastors, Euodia and Syntyche, threatened to sink the congregation so Paul had to plead with them in his letter to the Phillipians, “Please, because you belong to the Lord, settle your disagreement.”  

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?” said Jesus. “No, I tell you, but rather division!”

Jesus was so prophetic when he talked about the ways we separate ourselves from each other but I wonder if he ever imagined just how divided we would become.  There are 40 different church bodies in North America, in the US and Canada, that call themselves Lutheran.  There are 45,000 church bodies in the world that call themselves Christian.  And all of them have separated themselves from some other church body at some point in history.  Honestly, I think this makes Jesus weep.

The vision of the kingdom is that we are supposed to build bigger tables, not higher walls.  We’re supposed to open our doors wider, not close them against people who disagree with us.  The message of Jesus is that we’re supposed to embrace each other with love, not take intransigent stands in opposition to each other because of the way we interpret the Eucharist or the way we baptize or how we translate a few things here and there.

Whenever we take our eyes off of Christ and start focusing on other, lesser things— whenever we let those other, lesser things become more important than living in the way of Jesus, we end up fighting and going our separate ways.  When we get heated up about doing the right rite rightly or deciding who is and who is not acceptable in the body of Christ, whenever we start to think that we know who God does and does not like, whenever we start to think that our way is the only right way to read the Bible— whenever we start to think that following Jesus is about preserving the good old days and the good old ways instead of opening the door to the new thing that the Holy Spirit is doing,  the fire between us can flare out of control and become divisive and destructive.  

“I have come to throw fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!” said Jesus.  Here in Southern California we are all too familiar with the destruction and devastation caused by fire.  We know all too well that fire can kill and destroy.  It can turn everything to ashes, soot, and pain. 

But fire can also bring us light and warmth.  Fire can clear the ground and enrich the soil to make way for new life.  There are trees who need fire for their seeds to germinate.  Fire can cleanse and refine and temper things.  

Martin Luther reminded us that “The Word of God comes, whenever it comes, to change and renew the world.” Jesus, the living Word of God, has thrown fire upon the earth, a fire of transformation that brings a never-ending cycle of change. Change can create tension if we’re not all changing in the same way or in the same direction, and tension can generate a lot of heat— but not always a lot of light.  

Change is going to continue because Christ has brought a transforming fire to the earth, a fire that has been burning for more than 2000 years.  For two millennia Jesus has been changing us and changing the world but we haven’t always handled it well.  When we align the story of our life together and the stories of our individual lives with the story of Christ, things move forward with light and warmth and energy.  When our stories diverge, the fire between us can burn us.

“Yet they meet as well as diverge, our stories and Christ’s,” said Frederick Buechner, “and even when they diverge, it is his they diverge from, so that by his absence as well as by his presence in our lives we know who he is and who we are and who we are not.

“We have it in us to be Christs to each other and maybe in some unimaginable way to God too — that’s what we have to tell finally. We have it in us to work miracles of love and healing as well as to have them worked upon us. We have it in us to bless with him and forgive with him and heal with him and once in a while maybe even to grieve with some measure of his grief at another’s pain and to rejoice with some measure of his rejoicing at another’s joy almost as if it were our own. And who knows but that in the end, by God’s mercy, the two stories will converge for good and all, and though we would never have had the courage or the faith or the wit to die for him any more than we have ever managed to live for him very well either, his story will come true in us at last. And in the meantime, this side of Paradise, it is our business (not like so many peddlers of God’s word but as men and women of sincerity) to speak with our hearts (which is what sincerity means) and to bear witness to, and live out of, and live toward, and live by, the true word of his holy story as it seeks to stammer itself forth through the holy stories of us all.”[1]

We align the story of our life together and the stories of our individual lives with the story of Jesus.  When all is said and done it’s important to remember that the story of Jesus is a love story.  He throws fire upon the earth to burn away everything that is not love, to clear the ground and enrich the soil so the seeds of love can germinate and we can grow into “little Christs” for each other.

If there must be fire between us, let it be the fire of love.

In the name of Jesus.

[1] A Room Called Remember; Frederick Buechner

The Stranger on the Way

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Acts 8:26-40

There is an idea in Franciscan thinking called Mirroring.  Like so many Franciscan ideas it’s built on a chain of other ideas, so stay with me as I try to explain this.  

One of the things we are called to do as followers of Jesus, as people of Christ, is to reteach everything its loveliness.  We are called to reteach each other our loveliness.  

The world finds a lot of ways to tell us that we’re less than lovely and less than loveable, that we’re flawed and unacceptable in one way or another.  Even a lot of our theology does that, unfortunately.  So much of Christianity has adopted Augustine’s idea of Original Sin.  You hear it in a lot of our church language.  “We are born children of a fallen humanity.” “We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.”  To quote Richard Rohr, if you start with a negative anthropology, you’re going to end up with a negative theology. 

The Franciscans don’t ignore sin.  They just don’t think it’s the defining factor of human nature, at least not in God’s eyes.  They don’t start with Original Sin.  They start with Original Blessing.  Genesis says that God saw everything that God had made, and behold it was good.  They say that Christ has come to remind us that we were created good, and to help us recapture that goodness.  

We are, in fact, children of God.  That is such an enormous idea with such far-reaching implications that I can’t generate a complete understanding of it in my own mind.  The idea that I, Steve Beckham, born in Missouri, of limited intelligence, and sinful like everyone else, am a beloved child of God is so momentous that my mental circuitry just can’t handle it properly.  I’ll either undervalue it or overinflate my ego with it.   No one can properly process the idea that we are, in fact, children of God.  I can’t.  You can’t. 

So we need people who, little by little, mirror it to us.  We need people who reflect back to us the image of God that is in us.  We need people who show us that we’re beloved—they mirror God’s love and image to us.  They reflect the image of God that’s in us back to us.  One hopes it starts with parents when we’re babies and that it continues as we grow.  And one hopes that you are mirroring it to others.  So when you read in the scriptures that you are a beloved child of God, you’ve already got a template in place to help you believe it and process it. 

We mirror the image of God to each other to show each other our nobility, to remind each other of our worth and loveliness.  

I came upon a great example of mirroring in a letter that a woman named Erin Poulson wrote to Chadwick Boseman, the actor who played The Black Panther in the 2018 movie from Marvel Studios.  Here’s what she wrote: 

“In May 2018, I was newly Queen of Newcastle at the Georgia Renaissance Festival.  Black Panther had come out just three months before and it was on everyone’s mind.

“I was still learning how to Queen, as the shoes before me were large, and pavilion time was always a time when I felt particularly inadequate.  It was one of my insecure days when I had a young black girl and her dad come and visit the Royal Court.  I introduced myself as Queen of England and the girl said, ‘I’m a princess!!’  And then she got shy.

“I wanted her to keep talking so I said, ‘Oh, are you a Princess of England?’  She shook her head.  ‘Are you a Princess of France?’  Another head shake.  I don’t know why, I’d never done it before, but I thought I’d take a chance.  ‘Are you a Princess of Wakanda?’

“Her eyes grew so big.  Her father jumped with excitement.  And she nodded regally.

“I crossed my arms over my chest.  ‘Wakanda Forever, my Princess.  We are so honored to have you in our Kingdom!’  Now she stood a hundred feet tall, and her dad nearly trembled behind her.

“I touched Joshua Miller’s shoulder, who had been carrying on a very different conversation as King Henry, and said, ‘My dear Henry, we have a visiting guest from Wakanda!’

“Without missing a beat, his arms crossed over his chest.  ‘Wakanda forever, dear Princess!!  And welcome to England!!’

“That shy girl walked out of the pavilion with her head held high like an empress.  And I remember her dad just dancing next to her, whispering, ‘Wakanda, baby!! They know you’re from Wakanda!!  You’re royalty too!!’  

“Mr. Boseman, I’ve worked Renaissance festivals for almost twenty years now.  Since that point, I have seen dozens of black boys and girls accept themselves as royalty in a way that I’m not sure they would have before.  The doors you opened echo throughout time like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone.

“Thank you,  Wakanda Forever”

Mirroring,  reflecting someone’s essential goodness back to them can be transformative and can send ripples farther out into the world than you would dare to imagine.

In chapter 8 of the Book of Acts we read the story of the Apostle Philip who is suddenly told by the Holy Spirit to “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.”  Philip obeys this prompting of the Spirit which must feel like some kind of mad impulse and promptly heads off for that road in the wilderness.  And there he encounters one of the most unexpected characters in all the Bible.  

“Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.”

This is such a unique person, this eunuch.  He personifies all the margins of his world.  He has rank and privilege as a member of the queen’s court, but what power does he have here on the wilderness road?  And as a eunuch, where does he fit into the social structure of the world he is exploring?  He may be Jewish or a Jewish proselyte—there were Jews in Ethiopia—or he may simply have been drawn to know more about the God of the Jews.  Either way, Deuteronomy 23 states that neither a eunuch nor a foreigner is allowed in the assembly, so after all his long journey from Ethiopia to Jerusalem he wasn’t allowed inside the temple.  At best he would have had to worship from the Court of the Gentiles.  His heart was drawing him closer to God but the rules of admission were keeping him at arm’s length.

As he travels he is reading the scroll of Isaiah, reading about the sheep who is led to slaughter, about the one who is denied justice, whose life was taken away from the earth.  He is lingering over that passage when Philip approaches him and asks if he understands what he is reading.  “How can I, unless someone guides me?” replies the eunuch.  So Philip tells him who that passage is about.  Philip tells him  about Jesus. 

He tells him about travelling with Jesus throughout Galilee and Judea and everywhere else they went.  He tells the eunuch about Jesus’s confrontations with the scribes and the Pharisees because Jesus expanded his circle of friends to include “sinners and tax collectors.”  He tells the eunuch about all the trips back and forth across the Sea of Galilee so Jesus could heal and feed and preach to gentiles and include them in the community he was forming.  Philip tells the eunuch about the Kingdom of God as Jesus was building it.  The Commonwealth of God’s kindness and mercy.  The Kin-dom of God.  Philip tells the eunuch that in that Kin-dom envisioned by Jesus, there are no outsiders.   He tells the eunuch that Jesus was building a community for all the people, including and especially for those in the margins, all those who don’t quite fit in so nicely and neatly.  He tells the eunuch about their last week in Jerusalem, about the arrest and crucifixion when Jesus was the lamb led to the slaughter, silent before the shearer, when he was denied justice and his life was taken away from the earth.  That’s who Isaiah was talking about, he tells the eunuch.  And then he tells him about the resurrection.  He tells the eunuch how Jesus has given him a new life, has reflected the image of God back to him so he could see it in himself,  how Jesus has shown him that he, too, is a child of God, that he has value.  That he is loved.

As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

“What is to prevent me?”

Do you hear the eagerness in that question?  Do you hear the anxiety–the hope mixed with a realistic anticipation of disappointment?  This is a question being asked by a person who had travelled a very long way to encounter God at a place that, when he finally arrived, wouldn’t let him come all the way inside.  So now he stands at the edge of an altogether new kind of intimacy with God, the doorway to a new kind of holiness.  And he asks the gatekeeper, “What is to prevent me from being immersed in this new way of being?  What is to prevent me from diving under all the barriers that have kept me separated from God all my life?  What is to prevent me from being part of the community of Jesus?  What is to prevent me from being baptized?” 

Philip doesn’t say a word.  The Holy Spirit answers the eunuch’s question with a silence that echoes across the water and leaps across the wilderness.  Nothing!  Nothing!  Nothing, nothing, nothing is to prevent you from entering the community of Jesus!

“He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.”

Philip mirrored the imago dei to the eunuch as he told him the story of Jesus.  He reflected back to him the image of God within him.  He reminded him of something he had always known even though the world had tried to tell him otherwise, especially at the doors of the temple.  This man who spent his working life in a court of nobility was reminded that he, too, was noble, and he immersed himself in that new identity as a child of God, a prince of the kingdom.

How many times in the history of Christ’s church have we put up barriers at the font?  How many times have we made criteria for who is acceptable and welcome at the table and who is not?  How many times have we set boundaries around who is and who is not acceptable for the anointing and ordination to proclaim the word of God and the grace of Christ—boundaries that have taken generations to break down?   

How many times have we been trying to close a door that the Spirit is trying to open?   

How many times have we been focused on someone’s sin when Jesus has called us to help them find their original goodness, truth, and beauty?

The question is not about the wideness of God’s embrace.  God’s arms are always open wider than ours.  The Spirit is always running ahead of us and calling us to catch up somewhere on the wilderness road.  The question is whether we can polish our own understanding of what it means to be a child of God so it shines clearly enough to mirror the image of God back to others. The question is whether we are bold enough to trust our own nobility as baptized children of God so we more fully participate in Christ’s resurrection work of re-teaching the world its goodness, truth, and beauty.

Look, here is water.  What is to prevent us from diving in?

Something to Chew On

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

3rd Sunday of Easter

Every year there are certain things we look for in the early Spring, certain signs that tell us we are entering the season of Easter.  There may or may not be one last big snowfall in the mountains.  We may or may not get soaked by El Niño rains.  The dandelions may or may not suddenly show up in our front lawns and the lilies may or may not bloom in time for our Easter morning services.  But one thing you can absolutely count on as Easter approaches is that there will be a rash of articles showing up in our newspapers, our magazines and on social media debating whether or not Jesus actually rose from the dead.

In 1999, Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright collaborated on a book called The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions.  In an Easter season interview that same year with National Public Radio’s Chris Roberts, the two well-respected scholars summarized their very different understandings of the Resurrection.  

Marcus Borg said, “I do believe in the Resurrection of Jesus. I’m just skeptical that it involved anything happening to his corpse… The truth of Easter really has nothing to do with whether the tomb was empty on a particular morning 2,000 years ago or whether anything happened to the corpse of Jesus. I see the truth of Easter as grounded in the Christian experience of Jesus as a living spiritual reality of the present.”

N.T. Wright responded by saying, “When [the early followers of Jesus] believed in Resurrection, they were talking about what we would call some kind of embodiment. A disembodied Resurrection is a contradiction in terms…We can be completely confident on Easter day that the things we’re saying in church are true. For the very good reason that, historically speaking, it’s actually impossible to explain the rise of early Christianity without it.” [1]

I have to tell you that I really resonate with what Borg says about the truth of Easter being grounded in the Christian experience of Jesus as a living spiritual reality of the present.  Yes.  That should be the Easter experience we carry with us every single day—Jesus as a living spiritual reality alive in our own physical bodies.  

But when all is said and done, I think that Wright is right.  We must explain why the earliest Christians believed in Jesus Christ’s bodily Resurrection and risked hostility and danger to rapidly spread the message that he had been raised from the dead and appeared to them in person.  

People have had doubts about the Resurrection of Jesus from the very beginning, and one of the things I really appreciate about the New Testament is that these early witnesses to the Resurrection take those doubts seriously and meet them head on.  

The original ending of the Gospel of Mark, the earliest of the gospels written sometime around 69 or 70 C.E. during the height of the Jewish rebellion against Rome, plays on that doubt.  The gospel ends with the women finding the tomb empty except for a young stranger clothed in white who tells them that Jesus is risen and that they are to meet him in Galilee.  They run away terrified, which leaves the reader hanging, but also leaves us with the implied message that the risen Christ is out there in the world and we need to go find him. (16:8)

The Gospel of Matthew ends with the disciples doubting even as Jesus gives them the Great Commission.  In Matthew 28:16-17 we read, “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted.” 

In the Gospel of Luke when the risen Jesus appears suddenly in the midst of the disciples in the upper room, they believe they are seeing a ghost, so Jesus says to them, “’Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?  Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’  And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.  Yet for all their joy they were still disbelieving and wondering.”  To prove he is really physically, bodily there, he asks for something to eat.  Because ghosts don’t eat.

The Gospel of John, of course, gives us the story of Thomas who refuses to believe that Jesus is risen until he sees him with his own eyes and touches him with his own hands.  Thomas has become a paradigm for reasonable doubt but also for confession of the faith.  He is the one who first bows down before Jesus and says, “My Lord and my God.”

But the very earliest testimony to the Resurrection comes from the Apostle Paul, and he, too, directly addresses those who doubt.  In 1 Corinthians 15, written about 15 years before the Gospel of Mark, Paul wrote: “I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died because of our sins . . . and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day . . .  and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.  Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.  Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” 

Paul testified to his own encounter with the risen Jesus, and to the experience of a surprising number of others.  It’s almost as if he is saying, “If you don’t believe me, fine.  There are lots of others who have seen him, too.  Go ask one of them.”  

Paul goes on to speak to the doubt that some in Corinth are experiencing when he writes, “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?  If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised,  and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and your faith is in vain.  We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ . . . If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.  But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

N.T. Wright wrote, “In the New Testament Gospels’ depiction, the risen Jesus was no ghost, disembodied spirit or vision. Jesus did not have a merely resuscitated corpse but a body with uncanny new properties, yet a physical body nonetheless.”

In that resurrected body, which was the same but not quite the same as the body he died in, Jesus cooked fish on the beach for his friends.  He left footprints on the dusty road to Emmaus as he walked, unrecognized, beside his friends and opened their minds to understand the scriptures so that they could see that everything that had happened to him was in perfect continuity with what God had been doing all along.  They recognized him when he broke bread with his wounded hands.

In his resurrected body with uncanny new properties, he appeared behind locked doors and offered his wounds for inspection.  He ate a piece of broiled fish to prove he wasn’t a ghost, and in so doing, as Debi Thomas wrote, he turned their trauma into communion.

We need the Resurrection.  We need an embodied Jesus because we are embodied.  I love how Debi Thomas expressed this:  

“I know that it might be unfashionable to ‘need’ the resurrection.  Isn’t this the criticism so often leveled at Christians?  That our faith is a crutch, an opiate, a refusal to face the harsher aspects of reality?  But here, too, I will bear witness and insist that I need Jesus’s bodily resurrection precisely because I, too, am embodied.  As the ancient Psalmists and prophets so beautifully describe it, my spiritual life is inseparable from my physical one: my heart melts like wax, my throat grows parched, my bones go out of joint, my tears cover my pillow, and my groans, sighs, and moans reach wordlessly for God.  Every experience I have of the holy is grounded in my body.

“And so I need a Savior with a body like mine — a body that adores, worships, and celebrates, but also a body that fails, ages, aches, breaks, and dies.  A body that carries wounds and scars, visible and invisible, fresh and faded.  A body that is profoundly and often terrifyingly vulnerable to forces beyond my ability to mitigate or control.  A body that is, for the most part, defenseless against injury, violence, illness, injustice, and cruelty.  A body that might die — as Jesus himself died — too soon, out of season, away from loved ones, in random, inexplicable, cruelly traumatic circumstances too frightening to contemplate.  I need a God who resurrects bodies.”[2] 

I know I need Resurrection.  Ten years ago when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer I found myself confronting my mortality, especially since both my mom and my dad died of cancer.  My surgeon assured me that my chances of coming through the surgery and radiation were probably good.  Don’t you love the language doctors use once the “C” word has been spoken?  You hear the word “probably” a lot.  The point is, once the word “Cancer” has been spoken, it sharpens your focus.  Things that had been theoretical either become the life raft you cling to or they get discarded.  I realized during that time that, while I’m willing to entertain and discuss all kinds of ideas and theories about Resurrection, for me personally a psychological or philosophical understanding isn’t enough to carry the weight of my hopes and fears.  I need something with some bones in it, some skin on it.  And I’m not alone in that.

I have seen a lot of death in my decades as a pastor.  I have accompanied people up to death’s door and held their hand as they crossed the threshold.  Resurrection is what has given many of them the courage to walk peacefully and fearlessly through that door.  And Resurrection is what has given me the courage and confidence to walk through the valley of the shadow with them.

And that’s the point.  Resurrection gave the earliest followers of Jesus the courage to risk hostility and danger so they could carry on his work of proclaiming that there was a better way to live, a better way to be community, a way to live in the commonwealth of God’s kindness and justice.

Jesus was a real physical person who was tortured to death in a first-century lynching.  The state and the religious authorities colluded to crucify him, to physically destroy him and in so doing to destroy his opposition to their power.  His crucifixion was a political statement.  What they failed to see and understand, though, was that in Jesus there was a power and authority that dwarfed any power or authority they imagined they had over him.

For that reason,  nothing less than a bodily resurrection would do to nullify their violence and call their power into question.  It was his physical body they killed.  It would have to be his physical body that would proclaim their work undone.  

The resurrection of Jesus was God’s way of saying that violence will not have the last word.  Pain will not have the last word.  Fear will not have the last word.  Anger will not have the last word. Disease will not have the last word.  Suffering will not have the last word.  Death will not have the last word.

The Resurrection of Jesus was God’s way of saying that love, grace, forgiveness, kindness, hope and faith—these things will have the last word.  

The resurrection was God affirming that Life will have the last word.  

And will be the last word. 

Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

[1] The Resurrection of Jesus; Religion and Ethics Newsweekly; NPR/PBS, March 26, 1999

[2] Embodied; Debi Thomas, http://www.journeywithjesus.net; April 11, 2021

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.

Surprise!

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

“We need transformed people today, and not just people with answers.” -Richard Rohr

When is the last time you were surprised by something you read in the Bible?  When is the last time you read something in the scriptures that astonished you and made you re-think your ideas about God or life or humanity?

Most of us fall into certain assumptions about the Bible somewhere along the way.  We think of it as a collection of rules or behavior modification or just advice on how to be good.  Or we think of it as an anachronistic collection of stories that may occasionally have some relevance but that doesn’t really have that much to do with our daily lives beyond being saved.  Most of us accept that it is somehow a tool for our spiritual growth and development, but we often don’t have a clear idea of how to use it that way.  

I remember attending a graduation dinner at a certain faith-based university years ago.  Meri and I were seated next to a bright-eyed young woman, one of the graduating students, who was accompanied by her parents.  She was graduating with a high GPA in her major, Christian Education, and she had earned a certificate that authorized her to teach Bible and faith classes in her  denomination.  Her parents were justifiably proud of her accomplishments and her dad said, “Tell the pastor what you told me earlier—about what Bible means, what it stands for.”  “Oh,” she said with a big smile, “it’s an acronym:  Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, B-I-B-L-E!”  “Isn’t that great!?” enthused her dad.  I smiled and said something politely encouraging, but inwardly I was dismayed.

I’ve heard that acronym numerous times since that evening, and I’ve felt the same sense of dismay every time I’ve heard it.   Invariably it has come up in circumstances where I didn’t feel free to say, “No, that’s a horrible acronym!  That’s a worse-than-useless way to describe the Bible!”  

Let me explain.  First and foremost, the focus of the Bible is not about Leaving Earth—unless you want to say Leaving It Better Than When We Arrived.  It’s true that there is a fair amount of material that concerns our salvation.  But salvation, at least as the scriptures understand it, is about being made well, whole, complete.  And yes, rescued, but that’s the most limited understanding of the word.  Plus, it’s clear in the Bible that God intends salvation for all of creation, not just you and me.  And yes, there are some instructions to encourage and help us as we “work out our salvation with fear and trembling,” but those instructions are given so that we can all live more peaceful and healthy lives here on this earth, in the community of humanity, now.  The Bible is not about going to heaven.  It’s about how God has been working to bring heaven to earth.  

But there’s another big error in that acronym and it’s right there in the first word.  Basic.  We tend to hear “basic” as “simple.”  Some of the “instructions” seem simple at first glance, but that’s the problem.  When God does give an instruction, you’re supposed to do more than glance at it.  You’re supposed to figure out how you’re going to live it.  And living even the “simple” instructions can be more complicated than we tend to think…because we don’t think.

Take the Ten Commandments, the most “basic” instructions we’re given in the Bible.   “You shall have no other gods,” says God.  And that sounds simple enough until we start to really analyze our relationship with money or other things that are important to us. “Show me what you trust, what your heart clings to, and I will show you your god,” said Luther.  “You shall not commit adultery,” said God.  “If you look at someone with lust, you’re violating that one,” said Jesus.  “You shall not murder,” said God.  “If you’re carrying a grudge or hating someone, you’ve violating that one,” said Jesus.  And on it goes.  The “instructions” we are given may be basic in the sense that they set a baseline for us, but they’re anything but basic in terms of trying to live them. 

And that’s another problem with the acronym.  It reduces this amazing library of books and letters to a pocket guide—and one that’s pretty useless, at that.  There are whole sections of the Bible that are about how people have struggled to understand and live by the “basic” instructions God gave them.  There are sections full of songs and poems of praise or lament.  There are parables, short stories and fables.  There are histories.  There is theology—writers sharing what they had learned or come to understand about God.  There are hopes and prayers and visions.  There are heroes.  There are villains.

“This marvelous anthology of books and letters called the Bible is all for the sake of astonishment!” writes Richard Rohr in his book Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality.  “It’s for divine transformation (theosis), not intellectual or ‘small-self’ coziness,” 

I invite you to start reading the Bible in a new way.  I invite you to forget what you think it says and let it speak to you as if you’re hearing or reading it for the first time.  I invite you to open yourself to the possibility of being astonished as you allow yourself to be led by the Spirit on a journey of discovery.  The Bible…whatever you think it is, it’s not that.  It’s more.  Much, much more.

A Season of Fasting

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

One year when I was serving in the Church Relations Office at California Lutheran University we decided to put together a Lenten devotional that could be emailed in daily installments to students, faculty, staff, and patrons.  Most of the feedback was positive.  One student, however, wrote us a rather heated letter.  He was not only opposed to our Lenten devotional, he was opposed to Lent.  “There is nothing in the Bible about Lent,” he wrote.  “It is a thing made up by the church.  If it is not in the Bible, we should not do it.” 

I wrote back what I hope was a gentle letter explaining that the practice of setting aside a time for fasting and preparation before the celebration of Easter was, in fact, one of the earliest practices of the church.  I also explained that it was the Church that gathered and assembled the books into the sacred library we call the Bible, but that there was nothing like an official agreement on which books were included and which were excluded until the Council of Rome in 382 CE.  So, even though the individual books of the Bible might be older, I explained, the followers of Jesus have been practicing Lent longer than they’ve had a Bible.  

Today, Ash Wednesday, is the beginning of Lent.  There are 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday, but the season of Lent is only 40 days.  That’s because the six Sundays are not included in the fasting of Lent.  They are, though, included in the liturgical observation of the season.  We don’t sing the Gloria or the Alleluia during Lent.  In some traditions, the Alleluia is symbolically buried in a casket under the altar during this season and is “resurrected” for the celebration of Easter.

We begin our observance of Lent by marking ourselves with ashes.  Ashes have been a symbol since ancient times of grief and sorrow.  They also serve as a sign  of humility, or of repentance.  On Ash Wednesday we stand humbly before God and remember that we are both sinful and mortal.  

In Genesis, when God is escorting Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden and into a life of difficulty, God says to them, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (3:19)

Later in Genesis when Abraham is bargaining with God and trying to keep God from destroying Sodom, Abraham says, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.” (18:27)  These are the words we quote as we mark ourselves with ashes.

Job, after his trials and tribulations, finally sees God’s majesty revealed and says, I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

Jeremiah, when he’s calling the people of Judah to repent and warning them of the destruction that is coming upon them, cries out, O my poor people, put on sackcloth, and roll in ashes; make mourning as for an only child, most bitter lamentation: for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us.”

In the book of Daniel, when Daniel is preparing to ask God to intervene and show mercy for his people, he writes: “Then I turned to the Lord God, to seek an answer by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.”

Ashes continued to be used as a sign of contrition in the early church.  Tertullian (c. 160-225) included sackcloth and ashes in the rite of repentance.  Around the year 800, those who had committed serious sins were covered in sackcloth and sprinkled with ashes before they were allowed to receive Holy Communion at Easter.  Sometime around the year 1000, as Lent came to be viewed as a season of penance, the practice of strewing ashes on the head was extended to the entire congregation.

Ashes remind us that because we are mortal, our life, our strength and our help come from God.  They open the doorway into Lent,  a time when we reflect on the way of Jesus and follow his path and listen to him more closely.

Lent is a time when we renew our practice of spiritual disciplines, especially prayer and fasting. 

There are a variety of ways to fast.  The traditional practice of many has been to give up meat during this time.  It has been the practice of some to have two small meals during the day then break the fast after sunset.  Some people simply give up something they’re attached to for the 40 days:  chocolate, television, podcasts, Facebook.  You can fast from anything that’s a daily part of your life.  The idea is to set that thing aside and give its space to Christ.  For instance, if you’re giving up lunch for the 40 days, then during that lunch hour you can spend time in prayer or meditation.  

On Sundays and Feast Days we get a break from fasting.  So if you’re giving up red meat for Lent, you can still have a bite of corned beef on the Feast of St. Patrick!

This time of fasting and preparation before Easter may have originated in the preparation for baptism.  The Didcache, a Syrian manual of church practice that dates to about the year 100, instructs that both those who are being baptized and those who are baptizing should fast for one or two days before the baptism.

At some point early on baptisms became tied to Easter.  Lent, then, became a time to prepare for baptism.  The practice of this, though, was far from uniform.  In Alexandria, Athanasius required his catechumens to prepare for 40 days, studying for 3 hours each day.  In other places, though, the preparation might be as little as a a week. 

At the Council of Nicaea in 325, in addition to establishing the doctrine of the Trinity, several important matters of church order and practice were standardized.  One of the things that was decided was how the date of Easter should be determined.  While they were at it, the bishops also agreed that Lent should be 40 days leading up to Easter.  

They didn’t call it Lent, by the way.  That’s our English word from the Old English word Lencten,  for Spring.  The Eastern bishops called it Tessarakosti and the Western bishops called it Quadragesima.  Both mean 40 days.

So why 40 days?

Though the Bible as such had not been assembled yet, the bishops at Nicaea were very familiar with the texts that would eventually be included in it.  They knew that the number 40 in these sacred texts represented a period of testing, trial, judgment, or probation.  In particular they were mindful of Jesus being tested in the wilderness for 40 days at the beginning of his ministry.

The number 40 occurs 146 times in the scriptures.  Moses lived 40 years in Egypt and 40 years in Midian before God called him to lead his people out of slavery.  He stayed on Mount Sinai with God and fasted for 40 days.  The Hebrew people wandered for 40 years in the wilderness before reaching the Promised Land.

Elijah spent 40 days and 40 nights walking to Mount Horeb.  Jonah’s prophecy to Nineveh gave them 40 days to repent or be destroyed.

Forty days may seem like a long time to fast, but there was also a practical reason for it.  In the days before refrigeration and food preservation, and in times when it wasn’t easy or inexpensive to ship food from other places, this would be the time of year when supplies of some foods, especially grains, vegetables and fruits would start to run low.  Fasting for an extended period could help to stretch these supplies until the new crops, especially the early grains, began to produce.

So are you planning to take up a spiritual discipline during Lent?  Are you thinking about praying more?  Meditating more?  Giving more?  Reading a devotional?   Here’s a suggestion:  Practice the discipline of kindness.  Be kind.  Practice having a generous spirit.  

Are you thinking of fasting?  It’s a worthwhile discipline and you can learn a lot about yourself by doing it.  But if giving up chocolate or television or meat or anything like that seems like it might be too much of a challenge, let me pass along this list of Suggestions for Fasting During Lent from Pope Francis:

Fast from hurting words and say kind words.

Fast from sadness and be filled with gratitude.

Fast from anger and be filled with patience.

Fast from pessimism and be filled with hope.

Fast from worries and have trust in God.

Fast from complaints and contemplate simplicity.

Fast from pressures and be prayerful.

Fast from bitterness and fill your heart with joy.

Fast from selfishness and be compassionate to others.

Fast from grudges and be reconciled.

Fast from words and be silent so you can listen.

This is a good time to listen.  

Listen to the message of the ashes.  The message of our mortality doesn’t have to be bad news.  God has breathed life into dust and ashes.  

Listen to our history.  We are part of a very long story that is still unfolding.  

Listen to Jesus.  He has called us to renew the world…and to be renewed ourselves.

How Are You Translating?

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

For this is how God loved the world—all of it, everything: God gave God’s unique son so that everyone who trusts into him need not be destroyed but may have eternal life. For God did not send this son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be made whole through him. – John 3:16-17 (my translation)

I know.  That’s not the way your Bible says it.  It’s not the way my Bibles say it, either.  I have several.  It goes with the job.  No, that’s not the way it reads in your Bible or mine, but it is a perfectly legitimate translation from the ancient Greek text.

So how does it sound to you, this word about the Word in different words?  Does “trust into him” make you pause?  Before you mentally substituted the more familiar “believe in him” did you stop to think about the difference?  What do you mean when you say “believe?”  Is there a difference between believing as intellectual affirmation versus trusting?  Can you believe in someone but still not trust them with your life?  What’s the difference between in and into?  Subtle, that one.  But doesn’t in sound more like stasis, something settled, while into is more of an ongoing process?  Why do so many translations say condemn when the Greek word most frequently means to judge.  True, it can mean condemn, but why leap to that?  Oh, and saved.  Such an interesting, interesting word.  Sozo in Greek.  It can mean to be rescued, to be made safe, to be removed from danger, but its oldest meaning is to be healed, to be made whole.

So how do you prefer to hear it?  Heard one way it can be about God’s plan for fire insurance of the eternal kind. Heard another way it can be a message about God’s intervention to heal this world, all of us and everything else.  Which translation speaks to you?

How are you translating the world around you?  How are you translating the other people you encounter in life?  How are you translating yourself?

“Love one another as I have loved you,” says Jesus, later in the Gospel of John.  He makes it a commandment of all things.  Really loving each other involves learning to really hear each other and see each other. David Augsburger wrote, “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” To love you, I need to hear you.  To love me, you need to hear me.  We need to translate each other accurately.  To do that we each need to know something about how the other person is translating the world and interpreting their experience.

We are not looking at the world through the same eyes or hearing it through the same ears, but if, when we disagree, we stop to ask why we are seeing and hearing things so differently—if we take the first step in translating each other—then we’re taking the first steps in loving each other.  If nothing else, paying close attention to those around us can teach us all kinds of interesting things, even when they are not being particularly relational. “I learned silence from the talkative and tolerance from the intolerant and kindness from the unkind,” wrote Khalil Gibran.  And that’s love, too.