Tag christianity

The Hard Stuff

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Luke 6:27-38

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

Love your enemies.

Do good to those who hate you.  

Bless those who curse you.

Pray for those who abuse you.

Turn the other cheek.

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

Give something to everyone who asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Jesus’ name.

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

Do Not Be Afraid

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Luke 5:1-11

What would it take for you to walk away from everything?  What would move you to walk out of your life and into a whole new existence with no guarantees and no clear idea of what kind of life you were about to begin?

The story of Jesus calling the fishermen, Peter, Andrew, James and John, is in all three synoptic gospels, but Luke’s telling of the story is significantly different from Matthew and Mark’s version.  In Mark and Matthew the story we get is pretty bare bones:  Jesus is walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee when he sees Peter and Andrew and James and John fishing.  Jesus says, “Follow me,” and they do.  They drop their nets and follow.  Just like that. And all the blank spaces and unanswered questions are left to our imagination.  

The gospel writers each have their own reasons for telling the story the way they do.  Mark moves quickly past the fishermen because in Mark, Jesus is always on the move—”on the way” is the expression Mark uses.  There are demons that need casting out and people to be healed and all of it happens on the road.  Also, the writer of Mark gives the impression that he’s not all that fond of Peter and the others, so he moves past them pretty quickly.  

Matthew doesn’t spend any more time than necessary on Jesus recruiting the fishermen because there is Torah waiting to be reinterpreted by Jesus and five sermons to be preached and besides, everybody already knows that story.  

Luke, though, Luke is a storyteller.  Luke thinks the details are important.  Luke likes the narrative to flow smoothly.  

Matthew and Mark give the impression that Jesus was more or less a stranger to Peter and the others when he called them to follow, a dynamic that makes their following him look all the more miraculous.  In Luke, though, we see that Jesus and Peter had crossed paths before.  Jesus had already been teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum, so Peter had heard him there.  And Jesus had been to Peter’s house where he healed Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever.  This makes it easier to understand why Peter doesn’t object when Jesus helps himself to Peter’s boat and tells him to push off a little bit from the shore to create a little space between them and the crowd.  

In Luke’s telling of the story, Peter had already seen Jesus cast out demons and heal people, both at the synagogue and at his own house.  And he had also been listening to Jesus teaching the crowd while he cleaned his nets.  So now, there they were, just the two of them, Peter and Jesus in Peter’s boat while Jesus finished speaking to the crowd.  

Can you imagine what Peter was feeling?  Sit still with it a moment and imagine yourself sitting next to this teacher who speaks with authority in the synagogue, who makes Torah and the Prophets come alive, this exorcist who speaks to demons and casts them out, this man who can heal with a touch of his hand, this man, Jesus, sitting next to you in your boat while the water gently laps against the sides.  

And now he tells you to head out into deep water and let down your nets.   And you hesitate.   You’re tired.  You tell him you worked all night and didn’t catch so much as a sardine.  But it’s Jesus telling you to do this, so you drag on the oars and row out to deeper water.  You figure you’ll humor him.  You’ll drop your nets in the water and after they’ve sat there a few minutes you’ll pull them back up and row home for some overdue sleep.  

But when you start to pull up your nets, they’re heavy.  So heavy you’re afraid you’ll lose your grip.  And as you pull the net closer to the surface you see the water boiling with fish, so many fish that you know you won’t be able to lift them into the boat by yourself.  You yell out for your partners to come help you, and the four of you work hard, feverishly, until your muscles ache and you’re covered in sweat.  And when it’s all over you’ve filled two boats with so many fish that they’re close to being swamped.  

And that’s when you stop.  And you look at Jesus…who is holding you in his steady gaze.  And you suddenly realize that you are in the presence of holiness, that something…someone transcendent is there in your boat with you and all those fish.  And all you can think of is how unworthy you are, how unclean and imperfect you feel in the presence of this man, Jesus, who radiates wholeness and goodness.  You realize that he sees you, he really sees who and what you are in a way that makes you see yourself through his eyes, and it brings you to your knees.

And then he says the only thing that could put you on your feet again.  Do not be afraid, he says, in a voice that dissipates all anxiety.  Do not be afraid.  From now on you will be catching people.

“When they had brought their boats to shore,” Luke tells us, “they left everything and followed him.

They left everything.  Have you ever thought about what that entailed, what all that ‘everything’ included?  Fishing in first century Galilee was a cash-intensive business and usually involved whole families.  In the Roman world, Caesar owned every body of water, so Caesar owned the lake they fished in and all the fish in the lake.  That meant that you had to pay Caesar for a license to catch his fish in his lake.  It was illegal to catch even one fish without that license.  Since the lake was in the territory controlled by Herod Antipas, Antipas administered the collection of fees, which included a tax to pay for his management services.  The actual management was done by a broker/tax collector who would grant your license, collect your license fees and also collect the tax on your catch.  Your catch would be processed—salt dried or pickled—by a separate business, a fish processor who charged a percentage of the catch.  And there was another tax on the processed fish as it was sent to market through the broker.  Boats were expensive and were often leased with monthly payment plans.  Nets were in constant need of repair.  In good seasons you might hire extra help.  To cover all these expenses it was common for two or more families to join together in a syndicate.  That seems to be the case that we see with the Yonah family and the Zebedee family in the gospels.  All of that financial obligation and responsibility and all the people whose lives were supported by the business, all of that was part of the ‘everything’ that the fishermen left behind to follow Jesus.

Do not be afraid.  

In Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor wrote, “The only real difference between Anxiety and Excitement was my willingness to let go of Fear.”  When you hear Jesus say, “Do not be afraid,” it’s like an exorcism.  Something lets go of you… and you let go of it.  And that’s when all bets are off and the future is wide open.  

Do not be afraid.

The story of the miraculous catch of fish is only in Luke.  There is a similar story in the epilogue of the Gospel of John, but it appears at the end, not at the beginning.  In both instances, though, the astonishing bounty of fish helps to motivate Peter to follow Jesus or, in the case of John’s gospel, to get back to work of showing people the kingdom of God.

Luther Seminary Professor Rolf Jacobson said that the miraculous catch of fish is an example of the holy breaking into our mundane everyday world.  It is that, but it seems to me that it might be more accurate to see this as an example of Jesus helping people to look up from the mundane everydayness of the world to see that it is already holy, to see that they have been surrounded by holiness their entire lives, to see that they live and move and have their being in a world that is infused with God’s presence, God’s provision, God’s love in every small detail.

As I read the gospels, sometimes it seems like Jesus was walking through a different world than the rest of us.  What he was teaching all those people on the shore while Peter mended his nets was how to see and how to live in that different, healthier, more whole world, the world as he saw it, a world of goodness and kindness and loving connection, a world he called the kingdom of God, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy.  He was living all day every day in that holiness, that all-pervasive Presence of the Holy One.  He embodied it.  With this astonishing catch of fish, he helped Peter and the others understand that God would take care of them, he helped them see that there was a possibility for another way of life, a different kind of life altogether, and he was opening the door for them to step into it.

So they left everything.  And followed him.  To begin the work of making the kingdom of God an everyday reality on earth as it is in heaven.  To catch people—to capture their imaginations and teach them to see the world Jesus sees.

That’s the work the followers of Jesus have been doing for more than two millennia now, and there’s a long list of people from Augustine and Ambrose to Albert Schweitzer and Martin Luther King and millions whose names are unknown who have left everything and faced every danger to proclaim Christ’s vision of the kingdom and to show us what it looks like in action.  

It’s work that never ends because there will always be Caesars who want to own everything and make the rest of us pay just to be alive.  There are always those who want to erase the good work we’ve done and the good work we’re planning because they think that it weakens the iron grip of their control… or even simply because it undermines their Social-Darwinist understanding of how the world works.  There are always those who don’t like mercy and kindness because they see life as a competition and not as a cooperative venture.  There are always those who think that some lives are more worthy than others, that some people are intrinsically more valuable and some are intrinsically worthless, so there will always be a need for us to remind them that, as Jesus sees us, every last one of us is a beloved child of God.

When Caesar tries to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion, the followers of Jesus remind the world that God’s loving embrace includes everyone and rejoices in their differences and talents.  When wealthy, ambitious, Caesar wannabes try to tarnish the reputation of helpful people and organizations like Lutheran Social Services, the followers of Jesus remind them that we encounter Jesus, himself, in serving the hungry, the unhoused, the differently abled, the dependent and the immigrant.

“In Judaism,” said Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, “faith is not acceptance but protest against the world that is in the name of the world that is not yet but ought to be.”  It’s the same for the followers of Jesus.  Christ is calling us to leave the boat of mundane habit and self-protection to step onto the path of active, activist faith, to be the light that shines faithfully as we push back the gathering darkness of the world that is and show the way to the world that is not yet but ought to be. 

Do not be afraid.  

In Your Hearing

Steve Beckham 5 Comments

Luke 4:14-21

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

The world sets the agenda.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

         “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

                  because he has anointed me

                           to bring good news to the poor.

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

                  and recovery of sight to the blind,

                           to set free those who are oppressed[2],

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the Logos Became Flesh

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

John 1:1-18

I have a confession.  I deeply and truly love Christmas, but the sheer enormity of it leaves me flummoxed.   I’m not talking about all the shopping or all the bustle and preparation at home and at church.  I’m not even grumping about the over-the-top commercialism or all the different greeting card interpretations of the “true meaning” which can put you in a psychological sugar coma if you try to swallow them all at once.   

I’m talking about the daunting task of trying to convey a genuine and meaningful understanding of The Incarnation, the idea that the mystery we call God, the Maker of All Things Seen and Unseen, came to us as one of us—the idea that God “became flesh and lived among us” from gestation to birth to death as a particular person in a particular place and in a particular time so that we could begin to more fully understand that God is with us in all persons, in all creatures, in all creation, and at all times.

That thought, that idea, that reality that we call The Incarnation is so enormous and mind-boggling that it’s really tempting to retreat into the less cosmic halo of ideas that hover around that manger in Bethlehem, ideas like innocence and love personified and new beginnings.  Those are all good, true and valuable things.  They are meaningful parts of the package.  But the goodness, truth, new beginnings and love we see in that holy child become even more potent when we begin to truly understand what God is doing in that manger in Bethlehem.

When the early followers of Jesus began to write down their understanding of who Jesus was and what he was about, when they began to explain what they meant when they called him Christ—Christos—the anointed one, it’s clear that they saw him as something more than just a great spiritual teacher or religious leader.   You don’t have to read very far in these early writings to discover that these followers of Jesus thought there was something of cosmic importance about him.  Early on they called him the Son of God but that description didn’t seem to be enough for some of them.  It didn’t seem to fully capture the cosmic fullness of what they had experienced in Jesus the Christ.  

“He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word,” said the writer of Hebrews.[1]  “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of creation,” we read in Colossians, “for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible…all things have been created through him and for him…for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven…”[2]

Late in the first century, a writer we’ve come to know as John sat down to write his account of Jesus.  He wasn’t interested in creating just another chronicle of the life of Jesus as others had done; he wanted to explore the meaning of Jesus.  He wanted to make it clear that Jesus the Christ was not someone who could be defined, contained or constrained by geography or time or even philosophy, because the God of all geography and time and philosophy was and is somehow present in him.  

John began his gospel like this:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and that life was the light of all humanity.  The light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it…. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we gazed on his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The language of this prologue is pure poetry.  But it’s also philosophy.  And in a strange, farsighted way, John was brushing up against physics.  

The Greek word we translate as “Word” is logos.  Logos was a word that ancient philosophers loved to play with and because of that we have numerous ways to translate it.  One of the oldest meanings of logos was story or narrative.  Where does your mind go if you hear In the beginning was the story, and the story became flesh and lived among us?  

Logos could also mean content or reason or statement.  Other philosophical meaningsincluded, order, idea, blueprint, primordial template, primal thought, or intention.  

Logos became flesh and lived among us.  The metaphysical became physical.  If that sounds too esoteric, consider quantum physics.  

 Energy moves through quantum fields as abstract mathematical wave functions.  When wave functions are observed, they tend to collapse into particles.  Particles continually move through patterns in a kind of quantum dance, always moving toward closeness, joining, partnering, combining.  Fermions dance with bosons.  Neutrinos, muons, gluons, leptons and quarks assemble themselves into protons, neutrons and electrons which assemble themselves into atoms which assemble themselves into molecules we call elements.  Hydrogen and carbon molecules dance together to form the four essential organic compounds: nucleic acids, proteins, lipids and carbohydrates.  And out of all of this comes life.  The Word, the Story, the Pattern, the Intention, the Thought becomes flesh and dwells among us.  

The great British astrophysicist James Jeans wrote: “The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.  Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the field of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as a creator and governor of the realm of matter… We discover that the universe shows evidence of a designing or controlling power that has something in common with our own minds.”[3]

This is The Incarnation.  The great Thought of God expressed in the whole universe condensed itself into a singular human life and lived among us.  And why would God do that?  

Love.

Teilhard de Chardin saw love as the driving force of the universe.  “For Teilhard, love is a passionate force at the heart of the Big Bang universe, the fire that breathes life into matter and unifies elements center to center; love is deeply embedded in the cosmos, a ‘cosmological force.’”[4]

God is Love, we read in 1 John.  “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”

Love became flesh and lived among us.  And still lives among us.  And within us.  And around us.  And beyond us.  

Love…God… was not content to be an abstract idea or a mere sentiment.  God, the Author of Life, the One in whom we live and move and have our being is Love with a capital L.  Love Personified.  And Love is all about relationship.  Christmas is when God, the Love that founded the universe, showed up as one of us in order to show us in person just how much we are loved and in order to teach us to love each other more freely and completely. 

Love became flesh and lived among us so that we might learn to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength and love our neighbors as ourselves.  

Love didn’t come to us as a king or potentate to lord it over us.  Love came as a poor baby among a poor and oppressed people far from the centers of privilege and power in order to show us that “the fire that breathes life into matter and unifies elements center to center,” is alive in and breathing life into all of us and wants to unify us with each other center to center and heart to heart.  And to all who receive him, who believe in his name, he gives power to become children of God.[5]

It’s an enormous idea, this thing called Christmas, this Incarnation.  This idea that the Word became flesh encompasses everything we see and everything we don’t see.  It speaks in poetry then carries us into the depths of philosophy and physics.  It warms the heart and boggles the mind.  It is, quite literally everything.  And the beating heart of it is love.

To even begin to understand the Incarnation, we have to open our minds and our hearts.  As another early follower of Jesus wrote: “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”[6]

Merry Christmas

[1] Hebrews 1:3

[2] Colossians 1:15

[3] James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, as quoted by Ilia Delio, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, p. 40

[4] Ilia Delio, ibid., p.43

[5] John 1:12

[6] Ephesians 3:18-19

Human Values vs. Legal Values

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Mark 2:23-3:6

How do you deal with people when their obsessive focus on something good leads them to use that good thing in a way that is manipulative or domineering?  How do you get through to people whose attention to the details of something good and beautiful leads them to treat people in a way that is harsh or even cruel?

There was a letter that appeared in Amy Dickinson’s advice column the other day that really brought that question home to me.  The letter writer was concerned because one particular house in their neighborhood had become an eyesore because of deferred maintenance.  

“Dear Amy,” they wrote. “I live in an affluent neighborhood of expensive although older homes. The vast majority of homes are well maintained and manicured. Many have had major remodels. 

However, there are a couple of homes that are in serious need of a facelift! One home in particular is a complete eyesore. 

Although it is worth more than a couple million dollars, the lawn is dead, paint doesn’t match and/or is faded in places, wood facia is rotting, along with other significant cosmetic problems.  There do not seem to be any code violations. I am not aware of the owners’ financial situation, but they’ve been there long enough that there should be significant equity to refinance and get money for repairs — or sell and move to a less expensive home.  Other neighbors have left notes, to no avail.  Any suggestions on how to get this family to fix up their house, or even move?”

The letter was signed, “Frustrated Neighbor,” and Amy’s response to this Frustrated Neighbor was pure gold:

“Dear Frustrated,” she wrote.  “It is so generous of you to provide such a detailed list of repairs to be made to this property! You’ve obviously inspected the house quite closely. 

“What a neighborhood! People leaving notes and developing repair punch lists and investment advice — and not one finding out who these neighbors are and asking if they need a hand. 

“I suggest you approach this by putting human values ahead of property values. Changing your orientation and approach should improve the neighborhood.”

Putting human values ahead of property values.  Or legal values.   Or economic values.  That’s exactly what Jesus was doing when he began his nonviolent campaign to confront the traditions and  institutions and the political and religious authorities and laws that were squeezing the life out of the people of Galilee.

In today’s Gospel reading from Mark, we see two episodes where Jesus is confronted by self-appointed guardians of Sabbath piety, men—and they were all men—whose  strict interpretation of Sabbath codes was impairing the quality of life for the very people whose quality of life they were supposed to be safeguarding.  Their pious concern for every jot and tittle of the very good gift of God’s law in Torah had led them to treat God’s people with harsh inflexibility.

The first confrontation comes when Jesus and his disciples “made their way” through the grain fields on the Sabbath.  As they forged a pathway through the field, the disciples were plucking and eating heads of grain.  This didn’t sit well with the Pharisees who were observing them.  “Look,” they said, “why are your disciples doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath.”  

The Law of Moses permitted poor people in Israel, or travelers, or aliens to glean enough grain for a meal from the crops in a landowner’s fields. Deuteronomy and Leviticus both make it clear that you were allowed to pluck grain by hand in a neighbor’s field or pick some grapes from your neighbor’s vines as long as you didn’t use a tool to cut the stalks or collect your gleanings in a basket.  The open question, though, was can you do this on the Sabbath?  

The Torah did not specifically say one way or the other, so the Pharisees, who were always inclined to err on the side of strictness, had concluded that, while it might be okay to do a little personal harvesting on the other six days of the week, it was definitely not okay on the Sabbath.  This, of course, could leave poor people in a real bind.  If you can’t use a basket to collect enough for tomorrow and you can’t come back to the field on the Sabbath, you’re pretty much stuck with going hungry on the day of rest.

Jesus, of course, took the opposite view.  Hunger doesn’t know or care what day it is.  Hunger doesn’t know or care about Sabbath laws.  Human values override religious legal values.

Jesus tried to get the Pharisees to discuss this issue by referring to an incident from the life of King David.[1]  “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food,” he asked them,  “how he entered the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions?”  When the Pharisees responded with stony silence he added, “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath.”  The point Jesus was trying to make is that some human needs take precedence over other human needs.  The need for food takes priority over the need for rest or Sabbath observance.  

Since Mark’s account immediately moves to the next confrontation, we are left to assume that the Pharisees simply were not open to debating this issue with Jesus.

“Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand.  They were watching him to see whether he would cure him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.”    

The way Mark’s gospel describes it, this looks like a setup for entrapment, but Jesus sees right through the Pharisees’ scheme and decides to put them on the spot. “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath?” he asks them.  “To save a life or to kill?”  Jesus turns the issue into a clear binary decision.  The implication in his question is that there really is no moral middle ground between compassion and legalism.  If you fail to do good when you have the chance then you are doing harm.  If you do not act to save a life in peril when you have the chance, then you are complicit in the killing.  

The Pharisees responded to Jesus once again with silence.  Jesus, we are told, “looked around at them with anger.  He was grieved at their hardness of heart.” 

With all that tension simmering in the air, Jesus healed the man’s withered hand. And the Pharisees?  “The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”

The Pharisees in these incidents are like a homeowners association who are so concerned about maintaining the curb appeal of the houses in their neighborhood that they completely ignore the lives of the people who live in those houses.  When they see a house that is not in compliance with their standards, rather than seeking to understand the situation or even provide assistance, they add to the burdens and difficulties of their neighbors with their notices of noncompliance and their threats of fees and legal action.

Standards are good.  Laws are necessary.  But people are more important.

In chapter 12 of Mark’s gospel a scribe asks Jesus, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus replied by combining a quote from Deuteronomy with a quote from Leviticus. “The first is,” he said, “is ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

In reflecting on this Greatest Commandment, Father Richard Rohr said, “Imagine how different the world would be if we just obeyed that one commandment—to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. It would be the most mighty political, social upheaval imaginable. The world would be radically different if human beings really treated other people as they would like to be treated. We can take this as a simple rule of thumb: What would I want from that person right now? What would be helpful for me to receive? Well, there’s our commandment. There’s our obligation to do to others!  

“It’s so simple that we can see why we put all our attention on the Ten Commandments, or the hundreds of other regulations culture and religion place on us. It’s much easier to worry about things that keep us ‘pure,’ so to speak, but are of little consequence.  

“After all is said and done, it comes down to loving God and loving our neighbor—and that implies loving ourselves. If I said this without quoting Jesus, I could be accused of oversimplifying or ignoring some of the important commandments, but thank God Jesus said it first. He taught that it’s all about love, and in the end, that’s all we’re all going to be judged for. Did we love? Did we love life? Did we love ourselves? Did we love God and did we love our neighbor? Concentrating on that takes just about our whole lifetime and we won’t have much time left over to worry about what other people are doing or not doing. Our job is to love God, love ourselves, and love our neighbor.”[2]

The Pharisees love God and they love Torah, God’s law—that’s a good thing—and in their own way they love their neighbor because they believe that their neighbor will benefit if everybody rigorously obeys Torah.

Jesus loves God and also loves Torah, but Jesus interprets the law differently because he understands that, to paraphrase what he said about the Sabbath, the law was intended to serve people; people don’t exist to serve the law.

The way Jesus interprets Torah is consistent with the way the prophets understood the law.  The prophet Micah summed it up very succinctly when he wrote, “God has told you, O Mortal, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

To love kindness.  The Hebrew word that Micah uses here is chesed.  It means kindness.  Or steadfast lovingkindness. Or, sometimes, mercy.

In rabbinic tradition, the world is said to stand on three things:  Torah, divine service, and chesed—acts of kindness.  Chesed, kindness, is considered “boundless” because a person can never do too much of it.  It is behavior that goes above and beyond the letter of the law, a one-sided giving that brings goodness to the neighbor.

Chesed, kindness, strengthens mutual relationships.  It reinforces the bonds of our implied covenant with each other, our social contract.  Chesed, kindness, is one of the attributes of God.  At the end of Psalm 23 the psalmist is speaking of God’s steadfast lovingkindness when he says “Surely goodness and chesed, kindness, will pursue me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Kindness acknowledges that we are of the same kind.  We have the same needs.  We have the same fears.  We face the same pitfalls.  We have the same hopes.  We are of a kind.  Kindness acknowledges that what is good for you is good for me, or to put it another way, I will be kind to you and trust that you will be kind to me because we are all in this together.

What kind of world might we see if we made chesed, kindness, the central pillar our politics our economics and our laws?  That’s the question Jesus wants us to consider as he moves through our world announcing that the Kingdom of God, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness, is within reach.  It can be our reality on earth as it is in heaven.

Standards are good.  Laws are necessary.  But people are more important.  

[1] 1 Samuel 21

[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr,“613 Commandments Reduced to Two,” homily, November 3, 2012. 

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