Tag discipleship

The Big Fish of Civil Disobedience

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

John 21:1-19

The Gospel of John comes to a very satisfying conclusion at the end of Chapter 20.  In that chapter, the resurrected Jesus encounters Mary Magdalene by the empty tomb.   In the evening of that same day he appears to the disciples who were huddling in fear in the upper room.  Jesus greets them with a benediction of peace and breathes on them to bestow the Holy Spirit which will empower them for the work that lies ahead.  A week after that, he appears to Thomas to address his doubts.  The final words of chapter 20 feel like a conclusion:  “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.  But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” 

The end. 

Except it’s not.

Just as you’re about to close the book, the narrator starts up again in chapter 21 saying,  “After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he showed himself in this way.”  And what comes next is a fishing story.  Which is a little strange since fishing is not mentioned even once anywhere else in the entire Gospel of John.  

The final chapter of John, chapter 21, is a bit odd in a number of ways.  There is a general consensus among scholars that this chapter was added to the gospel at a later date, some say as much as 20 years after the original ending.  Since John was the last of the gospels, most likely written sometime around 90 CE depending on who you ask, that would mean that this epilogue was written sometime around 110 CE or thereabout. 

This epilogue, this fishing story, is not a story meant to inspire evangelism, although it has often been preached that way.  It’s not a story meant to affirm and reinforce the bodily resurrection of Jesus, although it has often been preached that way, too.  This is a story about civil disobedience.

So what was going on in the world and in the communities of Jesus people around that time that made it feel necessary to add this chapter?   And why does this chapter take them so suddenly back to Galilee?  And why are they going fishing?

To answer these questions, we need to revisit a little bit of history.

Jesus began his ministry in Galilee and that’s where he called his first disciples.  The writer of John seems to assume that we already know that Peter and Andrew and James and John were fishermen who fished in the Sea of Galilee before meeting Jesus.  John assumes we already know the story of how they dropped their nets and left their boats when Jesus walked by and said, “Follow me and I will teach you to fish for people.”  But if we didn’t know those stories from Matthew, Mark and Luke, we would not learn them from John because John’s gospel hasn’t been at all interested in fishing.  Until now.  In the epilogue.

Fishing was an important industry in the empire and it was heavily controlled.[1]  By law, the emperor owned every body of water in the empire and all the fish in those waters. Every last one of them.  It was illegal to fish without a license and those licenses were expensive.  Most fishing was done by family cooperatives who pooled their money to buy the license and the boats and nets.  You could make a living but you wouldn’t get rich because about 40% of the catch went for taxes and fees.  And you were probably making payments on the boat, too.  After the fish were caught they would be carted or carried by boat to a processing center where the fish would be salted and dried or pickled, except for the large fish.  I’ll come back to the large fish in a moment. 

The most important processing center on the Sea of Galilee was just down the road from Capernaum in the town of Tarichaea.  The Hebrew name for that town was Magdala Nunayya, which means Tower of Fish.  Just a side note here: Magdalameans tower, so Mary Magdalene means Mary the Tower, which tells us something about her status among the apostles.  Herod Antipas wanted to curry favor with the emperor Tiberias, so in the year 18 CE he established a city three and a half miles away from Tarichaea which he named Tiberias in honor of the emperor.  

Herod built piers and fish processing facilities then invited people from all over the empire to come live in Tiberias and work in its fishing industry.  Gentile pagans flocked to the town looking for employment on the Sea of Galilee which these newcomers now called the Sea of Tiberias.  Almost overnight the Jewish family coop fishing businesses that had sustained people like Peter and Andrew and James and John found themselves in stiff competition with state-sponsored foreign fishermen from all over the empire, and the wealthy fish-processing town of Tarichaea/Magdala Nunayya began rapidly losing money to Herod’s processing plants in the city of Tiberias.  

One of the consequences of all this was that opposition to Roman occupation and Herod’s administrative oversight began to intensify in Galilee, and Tarichaea became a hotbed of resistance. Eventually, that resistance became a revolt and a full-blown war.

In the year 70, the Roman general Titus completely leveled Tarichaea.  The Galilean fishing industry would have been completely destroyed, but the people of the city of Tiberias took an oath of loyalty to the emperor, so they were allowed to continue catching and processing fish in the Sea of Tiberias.  That same year, Titus sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple but the resistance to Rome’s heavy-handed power never entirely melted away.  The fishing community of Galilee continued to harbor a core of that resistance that core of the resistance movement.

All of this is in the background of Chapter 21, this epilogue to the Gospel of John.  This chapter was written about 80 years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and for most of those 80 years Rome had been at war with the Jews which meant they were also at war with the Christians because as far as Rome was concerned, the Christians were just another Jewish sect, a sect which the Roman Senate had declared to be an “illegal superstition.”  That declaration opened the door for persecution of Christians under Nero and Domitian and later emperors.  

So back to the original question: what was going on in the world and in the communities of Jesus people around that time that made it feel necessary to add this chapter?   In the year 112, Pliny the Younger who was serving as governor of Bithynia and Pontus wrote to Trajan, the emperor, and asked, “I have some people who have been accused of being Christians.  What do you want me to do with them?”   Trajan wrote back and said, “Well, don’t go hunting for them, but if someone is accused of being a Christian, just ask them to renounce their faith, take an oath of loyalty to the Emperor, and offer sacrifices to the gods of Rome.  If they do that, let them go.  If not, execute them.”  

This was not an easy time to be devoted to Jesus—not that it had ever been easy.  But now, if a neighbor publicly accused you of being a Christian you had a very hard choice to make.  On top of that, the seemingly endless war that Rome was waging on Jews who showed the least bit of activism kept popping up in hot spots, and as far as Rome was concerned Christians were just another kind of Jews, which, to be fair, was often true since many Christians were Jews who followed Jesus.  On top of all that, these early Jesus people had expected Christ to return at any minute to overthrow the Empire of Rome and replace it with the kingdom of God, but that had not happened yet.  The original Apostles were all gone to their reward and the People of the Way were losing hope and direction.  What do we do?  How do we continue?  How do we live in the life-giving Way of Jesus in the face of an oppressive and dehumanizing Empire?

Chapter 21 acknowledges the presence of the empire right away.   After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias.  Only the Gospel of John refers to the Sea of Galilee as the Sea of Tiberias.  That name is used nowhere else in the New Testament.  That’s the empire’s name for this body of water.  It’s a reminder that the Emperor claims ownership of this sea which plays such a large role in the story of our faith.  The emperor is in the story.  But the writer of this chapter is telling us right from the top that even where the empire claims sovereignty, Jesus shows up to challenge that claim with a quiet but firm counter claim.   

“Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.”  This naming of the disciples is a roll call of the companions of Jesus who established Christ-following communities throughout the empire.  This is a reminder to all those followers of Jesus and his apostles that we are all in the same boat even if the empire claims to own the sea.  

So they go fishing all night.  But they don’t catch anything.  Frustrating. Disheartening.  And doesn’t life in the church feel just like that sometimes.  You do everything you know how to do and you get bupkis. 

And that’s when they spot Jesus standing on the beach, waiting for them.  They don’t recognize him right away.  People usually don’t recognize the risen Christ right away. The disciples don’t recognize him until they follow his instructions, drop their net on the right side of the boat and then haul in so many fish that they can’t even lift the net into the boat.  That’s when they recognize him.  

When they got to the beach they found Jesus cooking some fish and bread over a charcoal fire and he invited them to breakfast.  It’s easy to go right past that, but it’s important not to miss it.  Jesus is already cooking a fish.  Jesus already has one of the emperor’s fish.  Jesus is engaged in an act of civil disobedience.  And he’s about to make it an even bigger act of civil disobedience.  “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught,” he tells them.  So Simon Peter hauled the net ashore and found it was full of large fish.  A hundred fifty-three large fish.  

A hundred fifty-three fish is impressive.  But the thing that would have been really impressive to the first people who read or heard this story was that they were large fish.  Regular fish were sent to the processor to be processed.  Large fish, however, were wrapped and put on ice and shipped off for the tables of the wealthy and nobility and even for the emperor, himself.  Large fish, the emperor’s large fish, were not for consumption by common fishermen on the beach.  But Jesus has other ideas.  “Bring me some of the fish you have caught and come have breakfast.”

Jesus is making a statement.  The sea does not belong to the emperor.  The sea belongs to God.  The fish do not belong to the emperor.  The fish belong to all God’s people.  In God’s economy the first and biggest and best of the world’s abundance does not automatically go to the wealthy and powerful. In God’s economy the abundant provision of the earth is for everyone. Jesus appropriates the emperor’s fish, large fish fit for the emperor’s own table, and creates a feast for his disciples, for the people who did the hard work of fishing. 

After a nice reunion breakfast of roasted fish and bread, Jesus turned to Simon Peter and said, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”  The word “these” makes Jesus’ question hauntingly ambiguous.  Does he mean more than these friends of ours, these other disciples?  Does he mean “these things?”—do you love me more than your boats and your nets and your life as a fisherman?  What are “these”?  Maybe it’s all of the above.

Jesus asks Peter this “do you love me” question three times, and in the Greek text there is an interesting play on words using two different words for love, agape and phileo.  Jesus asks Peter if he loves him with an agape love, the decisional, self-sacrificing love that puts the needs of the beloved first.  Peter responds with phileo,the deep bond of brotherly love and friendship.  Both words mean love and scholars note that they were often used interchangeably, but they’re not exactly synonyms and subtle nuances in meaning can flavor a conversation the way subtle differences in spices can change the flavor of a stew.  There is tension in this conversation between Peter and Jesus, and that tension is emphasized by the subtle differences in the words each one uses for love.

Jesus repeats the question a second time and Peter repeats his answer.  But the third time, Jesus asks the question differently, using the word for love that Peter has been using:  “Simon son of John, do you love me like a brother?”  That stings.  Peter feels hurt, and you can feel the heat when he says, “Lord, you know everything.  You know that I love you.”  

This tense dialogue with Peter, with its play between agape and phileo, echoes a moment from the final teaching Jesus shared with his disciples on the night he was betrayed.   As he sat at the table relaying his parting thoughts he said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another (agape) as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (philon).  You are my friends if you do what I command you.” (John 15:12-14)  

That was the same night when Peter denied Jesus three times.  Now, Jesus asks Peter three times to affirm his love and friendship, and three times he commands Peter to lead and care for those who will follow in the Way of Christ.  Feed my lambs.  Shepherd my sheep.  Feed my sheep.  With these words, Jesus reinstates Peter as a disciple.

Jesus wasn’t just speaking to Peter.  Jesus was speaking to all his followers in every age.

Do you love me?  Feed my lambs.  Shepherd my sheep.  Take care of people.  Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God.  Help the helpless and stand with the hopeless.  Protect the vulnerable.  Feed the hungry.  Protest injustice.  Embrace diversity, equity and inclusion, even if it breaks the rules of empire.  

Follow me.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.  The risen Jesus speaks these words to Peter as both a challenge and an invitation.   That challenge and invitation extends to anyone willing to follow Christ and be a disciple of the Way.  That challenge and invitation extends to you and to me.  And sometimes the abundant life in Christ and the feast of love and joy requires a little civil disobedience. 

[1] Hanson, K.C., The Galilean Fishing Economy and the Jesus Tradition; Biblical Theology Bulletin 27 (1997), 99-111.  

Priorities

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 4:21-30

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

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

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

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

He owned the prophecy.  He claimed it.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those last three words are so important.  

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

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

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

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

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

Whatever We Ask

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

Mark 10:35-45

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People as Things

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Mark 10:2-16

Martin Luther defined sin as being “curved in upon the self.”  That’s a really good and useful definition.  It covers just about all the bases.  But a few years ago I read another terrific definition of sin in the book Carpe Jugulum by the late Sir Terry Pratchett, my favorite author of fiction.  In this book , Granny Weatherwax, the wise woman of the hill country, defines sin in her own acerbic way while talking to a young theology student named Mightily Oats:  

“…And that’s what your holy men discuss, is it?” asked Granny Weatherwax.

“Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin, for example,” answered Mightily Oats.

“And what do they think? Against it, are they?”

“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”

“Nope.”

“Pardon?”

“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”

“It’s a lot more complicated than that–“

“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”

“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes–“

“But they starts with thinking about people as things…”

There you have it.  Sin is when you treat people as things.

Some Pharisees came to Jesus, and to test him—treating him a bit like a thing—they asked him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”  It’s interesting that they choose this question to test him.  The easy answer, and one that probably wasn’t open to debate in their minds, is yes.  It is lawful.  It says so quite clearly in Deuteronomy.  Chapter 24.  Verse 1.  

So there’s the answer.  It’s legal.  But Jesus understands that they’re really asking something else.  What they really want is his opinion on when it is permissible for a man to divorce his wife.  What are the acceptable grounds for divorce?  

Oh, and pay attention to that language.  It’s all about a man divorcing his wife.  Not the other way around.

Deuteronomy does not specify that a man needs any particular reason to divorce his wife.  It simply says, “Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house.”

Deuteronomy seems to simply assume that divorce is going to happen and doesn’t offer any real commentary on it.  In Jesus’ time, though, there was a big debate going on between the school of Hillel and the school of Shammai, two very influential rabbis, about what constituted just cause for divorce.  What kinds of things made it okay.  

Hillel argued that, since Deuteronomy doesn’t specify that a reason is needed except that she doesn’t please him, anything she does that he finds objectionable—that’s the language in the statute—is acceptable grounds for the divorce.  It could be as simple as “she burned the bread” he argued.  Shammai and his followers, on the other hand, argued that divorce is only acceptable in the case of adultery.  

Jesus ties adultery to his answer, too, and at first glance, it looks like he’s siding with Shammai, but his response is more nuanced than that.  He’s actually refusing to get involved in their debate over the law itself.  Instead, he wants the Pharisees to see that just by arguing about this statute from Deuteronomy they are lending legitimacy to the already established practice of divorce instead of seeing it as a sad example of human brokenness in general, and an example of men in particular being curved in upon themselves and treating women as things that they can hold onto or discard at will.  Jesus wants them to see that that this law rests on assumptions that are highly objectionable, and because of that the statute, itself, is suspect.  

So Jesus takes the discussion out of Deuteronomy and anchors it, instead, in Genesis.  Out of the law and into the God-created nature of relationships.

“Moses gave you this law because you’re so hard-hearted,” said Jesus.  Right there at the beginning he is challenging them to look at why this law is even on their books.  It’s because the men are so hard-hearted.  They act as if it is their natural right to have control over the woman’s fate.  The very language of the statute seems to assume that.  It’s all about a man divorcing his wife.  

But Jesus reminds them that before there was this questionable law, there was the world as God had made it.  Both male and female were created in the divine image and likeness of God.  Male and female were equal.  That was God’s original vision and intent.  Jesus yanks them out of their debate over when and how it’s okay to destroy a relationship, and reminds them of the original intention of the relationship as it is defined in Genesis: “For this reason ‘a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

You may not catch it right away, but Jesus is actually taking on patriarchy here.  In her ground-breaking book In Memory of Her, Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza describes it this way:

Divorce is necessary because of the male’s hardness of heart, that is, because of men’s patriarchal mind-set and reality…However, Jesus insists, God did not intend patriarchy but created persons as male and female human beings.  It is not woman who is given into the power of man in order to continue “his” house and family line, but it is man who shall sever connections with his own patriarchal family and “the two persons shall become one sarx (body/flesh)”… The [Genesis] passage is best translated as “the two persons—man and woman—enter into a common human life and social relationship because they are created as equals.”[1]

Jesus is protesting the way that patriarchal privilege has so casually and easily driven a wedge into the unity and equality originally intended for men and women.  And for marriage. 

He is not intending to create an absolute prohibition of divorce.  He acknowledges that it is an unfortunate fact of life.  But he wants to level the playing field.  And he also wants to make sure that no one enters into divorce lightly or with an unrealistic or incomplete understanding of the consequences.  

He makes it clear that those who remarry after divorcing will bring a certain amount of spiritual and emotional baggage to their new relationship whether they realize it or not. They will be “committing adultery” in the sense that they are no longer remaining faithful to the original relationship, and some part of their mind and heart will always know that.  

I don’t think Jesus is so much describing a continuous state of sin here as he is acknowledging the reality of the pain of broken relationships.  He applies this understanding to both men and women.  And it’s important to note that he doesn’t tell people to stay in relationships where they are being abused or broken or even simply neglected.  It’s important to remember, too, that Jesus is the one who can heal the brokenness, ease the pain and forgive the wounding that every divorce brings with it.

Jesus is trying to make it clear to both the Pharisees and to his own disciples that, in God’s eyes, the central problem with their understanding of the divorce law in Deuteronomy is that the whole thing is based on men treating women as objects, and that even if you restore equality to the relationship and level the power dynamics, treating people as things will always drive a wedge into your relationships.

Having said what needed to be said about treating people as if they were disposable, Mark’s gospel shifts focus so Jesus can address another group of persons whom their culture tended to treat as objects.  Children.  Only this time it’s the disciples who are failing to see the basic humanity of these smaller persons.

Mark tells us, “People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them.”  Jesus was indignant. “Let the little children come to me,” he said, “It’s people like these who make up the Kingdom of God!”  

That was a huge thing to say in a world where children had no stature whatsoever.  But Jesus wasn’t finished.  “Listen.  Whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

This is where a lot of commentators rhapsodize about the innocence of children.  I always wonder when I read those commentaries if the writer has any actual experience with real children.  I wonder if they’ve ever been on a long drive with two bored siblings in the back seat fighting because one kid’s arm or foot strayed into the territory claimed by the other kid.

So if Jesus isn’t referring to “the innocence of children” here, whatever that may be, what does he mean when he says we need to receive the kingdom as a little child? 

Well, one thing almost all children have is curiosity.  Richard Rohr calls it “a beginner’s mind of a curious child…what some would call ‘constantly renewed immediacy.”[2]  This is the state of mind which Rohr says makes it easier for us to enter into real spiritual growth.  This is the state of mind that can keep us from assuming that we already know everything.  This is the state of mind that enables us to see everyone else and ourselves as children of God, and not as objects.  Things. 

When we are able to see each other as children of God, when we are able to receive the Kingdom of God as a present reality and immerse ourselves in it with a beginner’s mind, a constantly renewed sense of immediacy, when we stop treating people as things, then we will be able to begin healing ourselves and the world.  Then we will be taken up in the arms of Christ and blessed.  And by the power and presence of Christ within us, we will embrace and bless the world around us.

In Jesus’ name.

[1] In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins; Elizabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza, p.143

[2] Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality; Richard Rohr, p. 8

The Scandal of False Opposition

Steve Beckham 4 Comments

Mark 9:38-50

In George Eliot’s wonderful book, Middlemarch, Dorothea Brooke asks a question that I keep coming back to over and over again.  “What do we live for,” she asks, “if it’s not to make life less difficult for each other?”  

That’s a powerful question, and if you take nothing else home with you today, I hope you take that.  I hope you let that question live with you.  What do we live for, if it’s not to make life less difficult for each other?

It seems like so often in life too many of us go out of our way to do just the opposite.  We make life more difficult, more challenging, more contentious, often without even intending to.  

In the ninth chapter of Mark, there’s a moment when the disciples made life more difficult for someone and they wanted Jesus to approve what they had done.  John, the disciple, came to Jesus and said, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.”   

Think about that for a minute.  Someone was freeing people from spiritual oppression or possession—in the name of Jesus, no less—and they tried to stop him.  Because…?  Because he was not part of their group.  In the eyes of the disciples he wasn’t properly authorized to use the name of Jesus, I guess.

The way Jesus responded to this probably surprised his disciples, and  I can’t help but think he was maybe just a little bit exasperated when he told them, “Don’t stop him!  No one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.  Whoever is not against us is for us!  If someone does something as simple as giving you a cup of water in the name of Christ which you bear, they’re helping, not hurting.  Nobody loses God’s favor for helping others.”

That seems pretty clear, but Jesus has more to say.  He really wants them—and us—to be more aware of this human habit we have of creating opposition where there isn’t any, just like the disciples did when they told the non-disciple to stop casting out demons in Jesus’ name because he wasn’t a member of the Disciple Club.  

“If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,” said Jesus, “it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”  That’s how his words are translated in the Updated Edition of the NRSV and in a number of other English translations.  In some translations, he says, “If you cause one of these little ones to stumble…” which is a more accurate translation but still doesn’t really give us the whole sense of what Jesus is talking about.

The Greek word in question here is skandalise.  In its most common sense, it means to cause someone to stumble or to trip someone.  It comes from the word skandalon which gives us our English word scandal, but it’s not an exact equivalent.  A skandalon is a stumbling block or a trip wire.  It’s something that trips you up, slows you down, stops you, or springs a trap.   

The late René Girard said that in Mark’s Gospel this term is being used by Jesus in a very particular way to describe a very common dynamic in our relationships with each other.  He said that we “scandalize” each other in any number of ways by creating almost endless small rivalries which lead to blaming and scapegoating.  

I saw an short stick-figure animation the other day that was a perfect example of this.  The first character said, “Dang.  I spilled orange juice all over myself.  You never tighten the lid properly.” “Never?” said the other character.  “You’re saying I always, in every instance in my entire life, fail to screw the lid all the way down?”  “Yes.  The orange juice, the milk, the aspirin bottle… you never put the cap on right.”  “Well maybe the real problem is that you insist on shaking things without checking to make sure the cap is secure.”

Sound familiar?  They are “scandalizing” each other.

René Girard said that all these little contests of will are the “scandals” that Jesus is referring to and that we “scandalize” each other all the time in any number of ways, often without even noticing it.  These “scandals” create tension and anxiety in our relationships and they can escalate if they’re not addressed right away.  We carry that anxiety and tension out into the world with us where it joins in the great cloud of everyone else’s anxiety and tension.  

Think of road rage.  It may start with something small, one car not letting another merge into a lane, or one car cutting in front of another, but as we’ve seen far too often, with the wrong people in the wrong mood on the wrong day it can quickly escalate into something violent that puts everyone on the road at risk.

We scandalize others and are scandalized by others, colliding with each other in what Girard calls a cycle of mimetic rivalry which we keep reflecting back and forth at each other. Eventually, says Girard, our mimetic rivalry becomes contagious and our anxiety can all too easily become a kind of violent potential energy looking for a place to land, or, more specifically, a designated victim who will be the scapegoat that releases the tension.

We fall into this mimetic rivalry naturally enough, but there are forces in our world that encourage it for their own profit.  Politicians and certain news organizations, for instance, often manufacture or exaggerate a problem to serve as the target of our anxieties so they can then portray themselves as the ones who have the solutions—solutions which almost always involve scapegoating someone else.

This was the dynamic Hitler was using when he convinced the German people that the Jews were the source of their problems.  This is the dynamic some of our own politicians are using when they stir up antagonism toward immigrants, or even the other party.   

“If one of you scandalizes one of these little ones who believe in me, the ones with less power or resources or stature, it would be better for you if a great millstone—the Greek actually says the millstone of a donkey, a millstone so large you need a donkey to turn it—it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea,” said Jesus.  In other words, if you do something inadvertently or intentionally that traps someone else into a cycle of mimetic rivalry, especially if it’s someone with less social currency than you have, you’re sinking yourself and that other person into a very deep sea of trouble.

Jesus wants us to know that it starts in our bodies.  He wants us to understand that this mimetic rivalry is a very physical thing.  

“If your hand scandalizes you, cut it off.  It’s better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to Gehenna.  If your foot trips you up, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into Gehenna.  And if your eye scandalizes you, pluck it out.  It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into Gehenna where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.  I’ll say more about Gehenna in a moment.

Now let’s be clear.  Jesus is not advocating that we maim ourselves in any way.  A lot of people are really troubled by this passage, and a lot of pastors hate to preach on it.  One pastor asked his adult Sunday School class to think about which Sunday would be good for inviting their friends to church and one woman said, “Any Sunday except pluck-your-eye-out Sunday.”

She has a point.  It’s a scary text and it could put people off.  But it’s important to remember that Jesus is using hyperbole here.  He uses these very graphic images to hammer home the point.  The cycle of mimetic conflict begins in your body.  If your hand reaches for things that don’t belong to you, teach it to open up in gratitude for the things you do have.  If your hand all-too-easily balls itself into a fist, teach it to relax and reach out to others with understanding and compassion.  Metaphorically cut off that angry hand and give yourself one that’s peaceful.  If your foot keeps stepping into trouble, give yourself a foot that knows a better path.  If it keeps ending up in your mouth, well that’s a different problem, but maybe give yourself a more patient tongue.  If your eye keeps looking at others with inappropriate desire, retrain it to look on the world with genuine love and appreciation.

Mimetic rivalry and mimetic desire begin in your body.  And your body can be trained.  And healed.

Thich Nat Hanh, the great spiritual teacher once said, “My anger lives in my body but it will do no harm if I do not direct it at anyone.  When you say something really unkind, when you do something in retaliation, your anger increases.  You make the other person suffer, and he will try hard to say or to do something back to get relief from his suffering.  That is how conflict escalates.  I would not look upon anger as something foreign to me that I have to fight…I have to deal with my anger with care, with love, with tenderness, with nonviolence.”

 If we don’t learn to stop this scandalizing that we fall into all too easily, the penalty is pretty severe.  And it’s self-inflicted.  “Better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into Gehenna, where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.”

Many of our translations say “thrown into hell,” but the Greek word here is Gehenna, not Hades or Sheol, and it is a very specific place.  Gehenna was the nickname of the Valley of Hinnom, a ravine running along the south side of Jerusalem.  It was believed to be cursed because, allegedly, children had been sacrificed to the Canaanite god Moloch there in one of the darker chapters of Israel’s history.  In the time of Jesus, this ravine, Gehenna, had become the city dump.  In addition to all kinds of refuse, corpses of animals were dumped there as were the bodies of criminals and nameless beggars. 

Jesus is telling us that if we keep scandalizing each other, if we don’t teach ourselves to escape these mimetic cycles of antagonism and anxiety, we will be sending ourselves to the trash heap, and I suppose that is a kind of hell.  The mimetic repetitive cycle where we keep mirroring our anxieties off each other, this scandalizing is the worm that never dies and the fire that is never quenched.  

But there is a way out.  “Everyone will be salted with fire,” said Jesus.  “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”  Salt, in his time, was medicine.  It was the number one antibiotic.  Salt was used to treat infection.  And it burned like fire, but it worked.  Salt also transforms things.  If you put salt in your food as you’re cooking, it doesn’t just season it, it changes the chemical composition of it because salt is a mineral, not a seasoning.  It transforms the food and makes it something different.  “Have salt in yourselves,” said Jesus.  “Burn out this contagious infection of antagonism so you can be at peace with one another.  Be transformed.”

Be at peace.  Be at peace with each other and with yourself.  Do your best to lower the temperature and reduce the anxiety around you.  And the anxiety within you.  “Be kind,” said author Wendy Mass.  “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”  

Be kind.  Greet the world with an expansive and welcoming attitude—not one of exclusion or antagonism or defensiveness.  Help people whenever and however you can.  Or at the very least, don’t be a stumbling block when you see someone else helping people. 

After all, what do we live for, if it’s not to make life less difficult for each other?  Especially if we can do it in the name of Jesus.

A Different Kind of Fire

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38

It has been a stressful week in Springfield, Ohio.  A middle school was closed on Friday and two elementary schools were evacuated because of bomb threats.  Yesterday, three medical facilities in Springfield were targeted with more bomb threats.  The police have beefed up their staffing because racist threats of violence against Springfield’s Haitian immigrant community have been circulating and there is concern that these threats could escalate into actual violence.[1]  

Things were already a bit uneasy in Springfield, a mostly blue-collar city of about 60,000 residents.  The city’s manufacturing economy was hit hard by the Covid shutdown and economic renewal, while steady, has been moving more slowly than they had hoped.  Over the past few years about 15,000 Haitian immigrants have been drawn to the city by new factory jobs and relatively affordable housing, but some of the longtime residents, mostly white, have been antagonistic to the newcomers, accusing them of driving up housing costs and straining city services.

All of this came to a head last week when a neo-Nazi group fabricated a story about the Haitian immigrants kidnapping and eating their neighbors’ household pets.  This racially inflammatory story moved from the social media platform Telegram to X where it was picked up by Vice-Presidential candidate J.D. Vance who repeated it as part of a verbal jab Vice President Harris even though the story had already been debunked by the mayor of Springfield and police officials.  When former President Trump repeated the story during Tuesday night’s presidential debate, the lie about immigrants eating cats and dogs immediately became the source of countless jokes and memes, but the people of Springfield aren’t laughing, especially not the Haitian community.  Some of them are afraid to leave their homes.

“How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!  And the tongue is a fire,” we read in the chapter three of James.  “The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of life, and is itself set on fire by hell —a restless evil, full of deadly poison.  With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, made in the likeness of God.”

Words have power.

This week we observed a horrible anniversary, the commemoration of an event that upended our world and set enormous changes in motion.  Coming, as it did, on the day after an important presidential election debate, this anniversary was overlooked by many, but in many ways the explosive shock of that day is still reverberating throughout our nation and the world.

It was twenty-three years ago, September 11, 2001, when terrorists violently assaulted our religious, social, economic, and political structures by crashing three planes into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon.  Analysts think that the fourth plane, which was heroically brought down by its passengers, was intended to crash into the US Capitol building or the White House. 

The heinous action of the terrorists was born in words. It was a statement, a word of hatred, self-righteousness, religious piety and vitriol, but its inarticulate message was incinerated in the flames and destruction of its violence.  How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire.

Words have power.

In the aftermath of that violent act, a lawyer sat down at his computer and wrote a sentence, a 60 word run-on sentence that blurred the line between war and peace, a sentence that led us into the longest war this country has ever known.  On September 18, 2001, that 60-word sentence was adopted by both houses of Congress and signed into law as the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Words have power.

In the Gospel lesson from two weeks ago, some Pharisees and scribes gave Jesus a bad time because his disciples didn’t wash their hands before eating.  So Jesus said to the crowd, “Listen and understand:  it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person.  It’s what comes out of the mouth that defiles.  What comes out of the mouth gets its start in the heart. It’s from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, and racism.  That’s what pollutes.”

Words have power.

In last week’s Gospel lesson, Jesus traveled to the region of Tyre and Sidon.  The people of Israel had a low opinion of the people of Sidon and Tyre, an opinion rooted in a long history of animosity between the two regions.  When a woman from the area asked Jesus to free her daughter from a demon, Jesus insulted her.  “It’s not right to give the children’s food to the dogs,” he said.  He called her a dog.  You have to wonder why he would say such a thing.  

Did Jesus, the same Jesus who was criticized for hanging out with tax collectors and “sinners,” the same Jesus who crossed all kinds of boundaries to embrace all kinds of outcasts, the same Jesus who touched lepers! did this Jesus trek all the way to the heart of Sidon just to insult this poor woman with a racial slur?

Yes.  Yes he did. Jesus schlepped all the way to Sidon to create a teaching moment that his disciples and all his followers forever after would not forget.  Words have power.  Especially the ugly ones.

In that moment with that desperate woman, Jesus said aloud what his disciples were thinking.  He wanted them to hear the ugliness of their attitudes out loud.  He led them to the neighborhood of “those people,” the ones who they think are inferior, the ones who they think are cursed.  The ones who, in their understanding, God doesn’t much care for. 

I am not for one moment suggesting that the disciples in particular or Jews in general were xenophobic.  I’m suggesting that almost all of us are to one degree or another.   We humans have a bad tendency to “other” each other.  And we do it with our words.

Words have power.  Words have consequences.

It’s not what goes into the mouth that pollutes, it’s what comes out of the mouth.  It’s from the heart that we vomit up lies, blasphemies, bigotries, othering and racism.  That’s what pollutes us.  That’s what poisons us generation after generation.  

Our words have power.  

At the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus begins his campaign to change the world with an announcement.  He proclaims that the Reign of God is arriving.  Everything that happens in Mark’s gospel pivots around that opening announcement:  The reign of God, the dominion of God, the commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy, the kingdom of God—is arriving.  

The announcement, itself, the very language of it, has power.  Jesus doesn’t announce that the Kingdom of God has arrived, but that it is within reach.  The message is that even though Jesus, the Christ has arrived to inaugurate the reign of God, it’s not a done deal.  And maybe it never will be.  The language Jesus uses tells us that the kingdom may always be a work in progress.  

In chapter 8 of Mark, smack in the middle of the gospel, the disciples come to an inflection point, a crossroads.  Mark wants us to understand that if we follow Jesus and try to live his Way, at some point their inflection point will become our crossroads, too.  And it will all hang on a word.  Because words have power.

Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”  It’s an easy question.  What’s the buzz?  What’s the word out there in the crowd?  What do the polls say?

They told him that some people thought of him as John the Baptist.  Others thought of him as Elijah.  They all pretty much agreed that at the very least he was a prophet.  

At this point, the question Jesus is asking is theoretical.  The words are speculative.  The question and the answers are all in the realm of rumor.  It’s about what people are thinking.  It’s a head question and the answers are all nothing more than opinion.

But words have power.  When Jesus redirects the question and asks his disciples point blank, “Who do you say that I am, he puts them on the spot.  Suddenly the question becomes visceral.  And so do all possible answers.  Words have power.  And that power becomes action.

The geographic location where Jesus asks this question is speaking its own words of power.  They are in Gentile territory just outside Caesarea Phillipi, a city famous as a center of pagan worship, most notably worship of the god Pan—a very sexy and earthy deity.  They are at the edge of a city that was reconstructed by and named for the Tetrarch Phillip, the sycophant son of the ruthless Herod the Great.  In an effort to curry favor with his Roman overlords, Phillip also dedicated the city to Caesar, the Roman Emperor, a dictator who claimed to be divine.  On top of all that, Caesarea Phillipi was the place where the Roman legions took their R&R.   And when those same Roman legions marched into Palestine to put down Jewish rebellion, they launched their campaigns from Caesarea Phillipi. 

Here, in a place that confronted the disciples with pagan gods and stared them down with the brute force of its political and military might, here is where Jesus asked them—and asks us—his pointed question:  “Who do you say that I am?”  In the face of the allure of mythical nature religion and all the idols that seduce us, in the face of intimidating political power, in the face of the addictive efficiency of brute force, in the face of a world noisy with rumor and gossip and inuendo, Jesus asks “Who do you say that I am?”

Peter said, “You are the messiah.  The Christ.”  Is that your answer, too?  What does that word mean to you?  Messiah.  Christ.  What consequences come with that word, that identity?

Jesus, apparently, did not like the way Peter and the others interpreted that word.  Messiah.  He told them not to say it.  He told them not to talk about him in those terms.  He didn’t deny that he was the Messiah, but he knew that they were thinking of Messiah in terms of political power.  Coercive clout.  Military might.  Maybe he was worried that they might be thinking of doing something rash and violent—the first century equivalent of  flying planes into Rome’s symbolic towers.  

So he told them to keep quiet.  

Then he told them about the cross.  He told them that if they really were his disciples there would be a cross for them, too. 

Peter didn’t like what Jesus was saying.  Peter was thinking of Messiah as a righteous general who would lead a holy army into a holy war, but Jesus was telling him he wasn’t willing to play that role, that pitting violence against violence was not the way to bring about a world of nonviolence.  So Peter argued with Jesus right there in front of everybody.  

How often do we argue with Jesus because he won’t play the role we want him to play?  How often are we looking for a Messiah who will kick tail and take names and step in and fix everything?  That seems to be what Christian Nationalism is all about, but if Jesus wasn’t willing to do it then, why does anyone think he would be willing to do it now?

In Mark’s gospel, acknowledging Jesus as Christ, living life as a follower of Jesus, means standing in opposition to both the religious and political systems that enrich and empower some while simultaneously creating a permanent underclass of the oppressed and disadvantaged.  The first readers of Mark understood that Jesus was asking for a total commitment to his nonviolent revolution, his transformation and restructuring of the world to bring it into conformity with God’s vision.  

Jesus is still asking that of us.  But he wants us to understand that there are consequences for standing against the powers.  He also, however, wants us to understand that there are consequences for not doing it, for continuing to play along with all the forces of business as usual. 

“What good will it be if you play the game and get everything you want, the whole world even, but lose your soul?  Your very self?  What are you going to get in exchange for selling off your soul in little pieces?  What’s the going rate for that internal eternal essence that makes you uniquely and creatively you?  What’s the market price for the image of God in you? What good will it be at the end of the day if you’re surrounded by every comfort but you’ve lost everything that makes you really you, everything in you that shines with the likeness of God? 

Be careful how you answer.  Words have power.  

[1] ABC News, September 14, 2024

Silencing the Critic

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Mark 6:14-29

“Power does not corrupt,” said John Steinbeck. “Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power.”  That seems to be the story of Herod Antipas, at least as he is portrayed in the Gospel of Mark.  Because of his fear of losing face, Herod Antipas has gone down in history not as the king who built the beautiful city of Tiberias or who rebuilt the important trade city of Sepphoris, but as the villain who executed John the Baptist and had his head served up on a platter.  

Mark implies that it was really Herodias, Antipas’ wife, who was responsible for John’s death.  As Mark tells the story, she is the one who pressured Antipas into arresting John the Baptist in the first place, and she is clearly the one who tells her daughter, Salome, to ask for John’s head on a platter as a reward for her enticing dancing.  

John had been preaching and baptizing, calling people to a change of life, but he had also been talking about God’s judgment on the sins of the nation.  In that vein, John had been especially vocal in publicly condemning Herodias and Herod for divorcing their spouses in order to marry each other, a sin that John found particularly egregious because Herodias’s first husband was Antipas’ half-brother, Philip, the tetrarch of the large territory to the north and west of Galilee.   And because the wife Antipas was divorcing was a princess of an important kingdom to the south, this whole situation created more than a little political instability in the region.   

That political instability erupted into a nasty little border war.  In order to marry Herodias, Antipas divorced his first wife, Phasa-el, the daughter of Aretas, the king of Nabatea, which led to a bloody territorial war which proved disastrous for Antipas and his sovereignty in Galilee.  As the war began to get out of hand, the Roman Emperor Tiberius sent Roman troops marching in to reestablish the peace.

Blood had been spilled.  People had died.  Regional political balances had been upset.  

The ancient Jewish historian Josephus also records the beheading of John in his Antiquities of the Jews.  He reports the beheading in a straightforward recital of historic events.  There is no cunning wife or beguiling daughter.  In his account, the unjust arrest and beheading of John is described as a purely political expedient to silence a persistent critic.   

Some tend to read the execution of John the Baptist in Mark as a kind of morality tale, an abbreviated historical novella about a morally compromised aristocracy, one that won’t hesitate to imprison or even murder its critics.  But Mark is also telling us a cautionary political story.  We just don’t hear all the political nuances because we don’t know the history of all the people in the story, a history that would have been very familiar to Mark’s original readers.

The Jews of Palestine had no fondness or real loyalty to the Herodian dynasty. Herod the Great called himself a Jewish king, but he was not really Jewish.  He was an Edomite who had begun his career as a brutal enforcer in the Hasmonean dynasty.  The Hasmoneans had defeated the Greek Seleucid colonizers in the Maccabean revolt and, as a result, were much loved.  For a while.  But they became Hellenized, adopting the ways of their former Greek overlords and more or less abandoning their Jewish ways, laws and customs.  

Herod the Great, who was pretty much the equivalent of a mafia boss, rose to power through a combination of brutal force and astute politics.  His father, Antipater the Idumean, was on good terms with Julius Caesar, and Herod, himself, cultivated a friendship with Mark Antony who convinced the Roman Senate that he would be a good choice as a client king to keep the unruly region of Judea under control.  

Herod had nine wives and at least 10 children.  In his will, he divided his kingdom into four parts and arranged for three of his sons to govern in a tetrarchy with one of the sons, Archelaus, being given a double portion.  Antipas was given control of Galilee and Perea.  

One of the ways that the Herodian dynasty preserved its power and perpetuated its authority was through intermarriage that bordered on incest, and Herodias was a perfect example of this.  

Herodias was the granddaughter of Herod the Great.  Her father was Aristobulus, Herod’s son by Mariamne I, who was the last descendant of the Hasmonean dynasty.  After executing her father, Aristobulus, Herod the Great arranged for Herodias to marry Herod II, sometimes known as Herod Philip or Philip the Tetrarch. Herodias and Philip had one child, a daughter named Salome.  The Hasmonean bloodline of Mariamne, Herodias and Salome gave a slight patina of Jewish legitimacy to the Edomite Herodians, but it really wasn’t enough to make serious Jews regard them as genuinely Jewish rulers.

Neither the Hasmonians nor the Herodians paid much attention to the Law or the established rituals of Judaism, and the marriage of Herodias and Antipas was seen by many as an affront to Jewish culture, standards and customs.

It would be easy to write off John the Baptist as a religious zealot who was opposed to divorce and remarriage, but John was more deeply concerned with the political fallout from the marriage of Antipas and Herodias.  John was also attacking the dynastic agenda that the marriage represented, and he was particularly upset with their collaboration with Rome.

John was speaking truth to power, the truth of his people and the truth of the God they served.  He was, as always, inviting even Herodias and Antipas to a change of life.  Mark tells us that Antipas, at least, was beginning to listen: “for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him.  When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him.”  

But Herodias flexed her power.  She wanted her annoying critic silenced once and for all.  And when, in an unguarded public moment Herod told Salome to ask for anything, Herodias saw her chance.  She told her daughter to ask for the head of John the Baptist.

Mark tells us that “the king was deeply grieved.”  But he was backed into a corner of his own making.

The king was deeply grieved.  John’s execution haunted him. Later, when Antipas began to hear reports about Jesus, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was John, raised from the dead.

Nobody likes to hear criticism.  Nobody likes to be told where they are failing or falling short.  Nobody likes to be told that they are on the wrong side in the everlasting struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.

But if we don’t speak up, nothing gets changed.  If we don’t speak up, bad can quickly go to worse.  

Those of us who are called to live in the Way of Jesus, who are called to invite the world to change, are also called to speak truth.  Even truth to power. Even when we know that power will try to silence us.

1 Peter 3:15 tells us, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you,  yet do it with gentleness and respect.”  Good words to remember when we stand up and invite the world to change when we tell the world what we see that needs to be changed. Good words to remember when we challenge the world to abandon self-serving lies and rationalizations so the truth can transform them.  Gentleness and respect.

“For this I was born,” said Jesus when he stood before Pilate, “and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Crossing to the Other Side

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

Mark 4:35-41

  On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

It’s been about three years now since the Covid 19 pandemic retreated enough so that we could begin to gather again in church and other public places.  We spent fifteen months secluded in our homes because a kind of life-storm rose up unexpectedly and caught us off guard and unprepared, a storm created by a virus that flew in from the other side of the world.  That storm has mostly receded now, although we are still dealing with occasional waves,  and maybe it’s just me, but even though it has been three years, it still feels like we haven’t really returned to normal, or at least what normal used to be.

In some ways that’s good.  There was a lot about our old “normal” that needed to be improved.  But in other ways, it’s not at all good.  It feels as if we are still locked into a heightened state of anxiety, and since anxiety always wants a target, we seem sometimes to be taking it out on each other, especially in our politics.

We lost a lot during the pandemic.  Social connections were lost or  strained. Some of our common understanding of how society is supposed to work was lost.  The Church, unable to gather in person in our usual places of worship, lost members in a decline that had already been underway but was exacerbated by the enforced restrictions and now shows no signs of slowing or reversing.  And, of course, millions of lives were lost throughout the world.  

Ever since Covid, we have been sailing through choppy waters toward the shore of a new and unknown reality.  It feels to me that we are somewhat like the disciples in the boat after Jesus calmed the storm.  The storm has stopped, but we are still sitting in the middle of the lake in the dark, bailing out our boat.

Today’s Gospel lesson from Mark lifts up some important things for us to think about as we sail toward a future we can’t really see.  And let’s face it, we’re not going to simply sail back into the way things used to be.  Too much was changed in those 15 months of isolation and these three years of recovery.  

In Mark’s telling of this story of the storm on the sea,  Jesus and his disciples set out in the evening, of all things, to sail across the Sea of Galilee.  A great windstorm blew up and the boat was being swamped.  We know it was a serious storm because even the fishermen who were out on this water all the time were frightened. Through all of this, Jesus was soundly asleep on a cushion in the stern of the boat.  Finally, the disciples cried out, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?!?” That’s when Jesus woke up, then got up and rebuked the storm.  The sea became dead calm, and the disciples, dumbfounded by this new dimension of his power and abilities, were left wondering just who Jesus really is.

When we read or hear these stories, these episodes from the life and ministry of Jesus, it’s natural for us to ask ourselves, “Okay, what does that mean for me or for us?”  It’s always good to try to  imagine how the original listeners heard these gospel stories if we’re able, but we also hope there’s something in the story that we can take home with us, some lesson that fits our lives right here and right now.  That’s why we do this little exercise of preaching and teaching with the gospel every week.

With this particular story, it has been far too tempting for far too long to personalize it a little too much.  And I confess I’ve been as guilty as any preacher out there in doing this.  That sermon goes something like this:  “When storms arise in your life, just remember that Jesus is in the boat with you…even if he’s taking a nap at the moment.  He has the power to quiet the storm.  Maybe he’s asking you, ‘Why are you afraid?  Where’s your faith, pal?’  Muster up some courage.  Maybe it’s your turn to stand up and tell whatever  storm is swamping your boat, ‘Peace!  Be still.’”  

I have preached that sermon.

Listen, there are probably worse ways to go with this story.  We’ve all had moments in our lives when we’ve wanted to join the disciples in yelling, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re perishing?!?”  I know I’ve been there a few times.  But the fact is, there is something greater at stake in this story than a bromide to help us face our fears.  There is something greater at stake here not just for them in their time, but for us in our time.  But to know what that is, we have to range beyond the boundaries of these six verses.

From the very beginning of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus has been announcing that the kingdom of God is imminent.  Actually, imminent is not quite the right word.  The Greek word is engikken.  It’s often translated as “has come near,” but there is an even greater sense of immediacy in the word than that.  Think of it as a train coming into the station.  It’s not all the way into the station yet but the engine has already reached the edge of the platform.  That’s the sense of it.  The kingdom of God’s engine has already reached the platform of our lives.  The train is engikken.  Get ready to board.

Everything Jesus says and does in the Gospel of Mark is said and done to demonstrate the power and presence of this new reality he calls the kingdom of God or, as Diana Butler Bass calls it, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy.  He is not just telling people about this kingdom, he is showing them what it looks like and how it acts.  When Jesus calls the disciples, he is recruiting them to build a new community, a Beloved Community, based on the ideals and principles of “The Way,” which is another name Mark uses for the kingdom of God.  

Another thing to understand about the Gospel of Mark is that everything that happens in this Gospel is heavily weighted with myth and symbolism.  That’s not to say that the events the gospel depicts didn’t happen, but that it is important to pay attention to how Mark is describing and using these events and what kind of language he is using as he tells the story of Jesus.  

We need to ask questions.  What other scriptural connections does Mark make—or expect us to be making?  What apocalyptic expectations and understandings are at  work in the culture of Mark’s time?  What mythic stories are at work in the background as Mark tells the story of Jesus?  What cultural boundaries and expectations are being crossed?  If we don’t catch all these clues, then we might not get the point Mark is trying to make. We’ll get some other point instead.

When we see the disciples and Jesus set off from the shore in a boat in the evening, Mark wants us to be nervous.  We’re supposed to remember that in their mythic understanding the sea is the home of Chaos and Destruction.  Dread, unpredictable, cosmic forces hide in its depths and the only thing that could tame it at creation was the Spirit of God hovering over it.  That they are setting out as night falls with the intention of crossing all the way to the other side—well, if we were Mark’s first readers or listeners we would know they’re heading for trouble.

As the story unfolds, Mark assumes that somewhere in the back of our minds we are maybe remembering Psalm 107: “Some went down into the sea in boats…then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves were hushed.” (107:23,39)  When we read that Jesus was asleep on a cushion in the stern of the boat, Mark wants us to remember how Jonah slept as his boat was about to break up in a mighty tempest. (Jonah 1:4, 10).  Mark puts all these things together so that we will understand that this storm that the disciples face out there on the sea of Chaos is not just a metaphor for the troubles of life.  This is a Cosmic storm.  Their boat is being assailed by cosmic forces.  Something wants to stop them.  Some great elemental power wants very much to keep them from getting to the other side of the lake.  But what?  And why?

To understand that, it’s important to understand why Jesus wanted to cross the lake in the first place.  

The Sea of Galilee was also called Lake Gennesaret or Lake Tiberias depending on who was talking about it.  It served as a clear geographic boundary between the territories of Philip and Agrippa in the tetrarchy of Palestine when the Emperor Augustus divided up the region between the sons of Herod the Great, and it continued to serve as a clear social boundary between the Jews of Galilee on the south side and the Hellenized Jews and Gentiles of various nationalities throughout the Decapolis on the north side. 

Why did Jesus want to go to the other side of the lake?  Quite simply because that’s where the gentiles were.  

Jesus was fighting other-ism.  Racism.  He wanted his new beloved community to embrace everyone—Jew, Gentile, people of all nationalities and types, people who had differences in how they worshipped. So he took his mission of proclamation, healing, exorcism and teaching across the sea to invite those “other” people to be part of “the Way.” He also wanted to teach his disciples that in the kingdom of God there simply is no room for such nonsense as racial exclusion or historical segregation or anything like that.  In the kingdom of God no one can call anyone else unclean.  Or unwelcome.  

That storm that rose up against them is symbolic of all the storms that rise up to resist our attempts at opening our hearts and minds to reconciliation and renewal.  It was the elemental malicious something in our world and in the human heart that wants to keep us forever sorted in our caste systems and historic animosities, that force that resists healing and unifying humanity.  And I want you to notice something here:  The words that Jesus spoke to stifle that storm are the words of exorcism.  Most of our translations make those words prettier than they actually are, but they are the same words that Jesus spoke when he cast out the demon in Mark 1:25.  “Peace.  Be still.”  Okay, sure.  But that’s a very mild translation.  The full force of the words in the Greek text is more like “Silence!  Shut up!  I muzzle you!”  

Maybe  this is how we need to speak to racism.  Maybe this is how we need to speak to Jim Crow laws and race-baiting and race-driven gerrymandering.  Maybe this is how we need to speak to racial slurs and jokes and microaggressions and all the derogatory language of bigotry.

Maybe we need to speak this clearly and bluntly to the forces that try to dissuade and discourage us from reaching out to make new bonds of friendship.  Maybe this is how we need to speak to those voices who keep dragging up tradition and history as reasons to preserve symbols of hatred and monuments to violence in public displays.  Maybe this is the plain kind of speech we need to use with those who continue to pursue paths of prejudice that have done nothing but separate us and poison us against each other.  Maybe instead of trying to be reasonable and persuasive against such divisive winds it’s time to simply say, “Stop right there!  I will not listen to hate.  I will not let you keep us from getting to the other shore.  I will not let you stop us from including everyone in the Beloved Community.”

During the pandemic, we had fifteen months of enforced separation, an imposed time to sit apart and consider all the things that are dividing us.  We had fifteen months to witness as more than a million people died from a disease that could have been curtailed much more easily and much more quickly if we had been more unified.  

We had 15 months to watch as unreasonable political forces and conspiracy theory voices assaulted the foundations of our democracy and truth, itself.  We had 15 months to see racial tensions repeatedly exacerbated by hate and violence and lamentable systemic conditioning.  

We had fifteen months to sit apart in our homes and miss each other and think about what it means to be friends, to be church, to be disciples of Jesus, to be people of The Way.  

And now the doors have been open for three years.  The storm has subsided.  We’ve been back together for some time now.  We get to be “us” again.  But there are people “not like us” across the road, across town, across the lake, on the other side of the sea of chaos. And Jesus is still saying, “Let’s go across to the other side.”  

Yes, storms will almost certainly rise up.  The elemental malicious  something will try to stop us.  But Christ is in the boat with us, and Christ has given us the words to silence bigotry.

“Christ sleeps in the deepest selves of all of us,” said Frederick Buechner, “and whatever we do in whatever time we have left, wherever we go, may we in whatever way we can call on him as the fishermen did in their boat to come awake within us and to give us courage, to give us hope, to show us, each one, our way. May he be with us especially when the winds go mad and the waves run wild, as they will for all of us before we’re done, so that even in their midst we may find peace…we may find Christ.”

image © Laura James

Scattering Seeds

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Mark 4:26-34

With what can we compare the kingdom of God…  

What do you think of when you hear or read that phrase: the kingdom of God?  I think it’s hard for us to really grasp what Jesus was talking about when he talked about the kingdom of God not only because he described it in metaphors and parables, but because a kingdom, itself, is a thing entirely outside of our experience for almost all of us.

Most of us think of kingdoms in terms of either physical territory or fairy tales, but clearly Jesus is talking about something that transcends mere physical boundaries and is a lot more real than fairy tales.  A kingdom can simply be a territory ruled over by a king or queen, but it can also mean a sphere of authority or rule, and that might be closer to what Jesus is getting at:  the rule of God.  The authority of God.  But even that is something most of us can’t relate to too well because we have never lived under the authority of a monarch or a lord or a master, and those monarchies that are still active in our world are either almost entirely symbolic or wildly dysfunctional or utterly dictatorial.  And I don’t think we want to attribute any of those qualities to God.

Also, words like authority and rule can have a coercive edge to them, and the kingdom, as Jesus describes it, seems to be much more about influence, persuasion and cooperation.  It’s more organic.  It’s something that grows in us and around us and among us.  

I have often used the phrase “kin-dom of God” for that reason—to try to capture some of the cooperative, love-based nature of God’s sovereign rule as Jesus describes it in the beatitudes and parables.  Diana Butler Bass has called it the Commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy, and I think that might be even more in the right direction.  Maybe.  But it’s also important to remember that the kingdom of God is not a democracy.  God is sovereign.  God’s rule is absolute.  Fortunately for us, so is God’s love, and that love is the very fabric of this thing Jesus is trying to describe as “the kingdom of God.”  The kin-dom of God.  The Commonwealth of God’s kindness.

When Jesus told these parables, and thirty-some years later when Mark wrote them down, trouble was brewing in Galilee and Judah and pretty much throughout all of Palestine.  Landowners were putting pressure on tenant farmers for rents they could barely pay.  Scribes from the temple in Jerusalem were demanding a crushing and complex levy of tithes from those same farmers.  Herod Antipas was demanding taxes from the landowners because Rome was demanding taxes from him.  Unemployment was high.  Bandits roamed the highways.  Soldiers patrolled everywhere.  Rome’s colonial government was heavy-handed and oppressive to the point of brutality.  People wanted a heavenly anointed messiah to step in and fix things before they exploded—or maybe to light the fuse and set off the explosion that everyone felt was coming. It’s no wonder that the disciples kept asking Jesus, “Is this the time when you will bring in the kingdom?”

Jesus kept trying to tell them and all the crowds following him, “No, the kingdom of God is not like that.  It’s not what you’re thinking.  It won’t do any good to simply replace one coercive external system with another one even if the ruler is God!”  

The change has to be internal.  It has to be organic.  Seeds have to be planted.  Human hearts and minds have to be changed. It’s not about imposing a new kind of law and order.  It’s about implanting a new kind of love and respect.  That’s what will fix the world.

“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”

For generations we had a family farm in Kansas—my  mother’s family farm—where we grew winter wheat.  Winter wheat is planted in late September or early October, depending on the weather.  Not long after it’s planted, it starts to sprout.    Beautiful little shoots that look like blades of grass start to poke their heads up out of the soil.  And then just as they’re getting started, the cold hits them.  And it looks like it’s killed them.  They slump back down to the dirt and go dormant, and they’ll just lie there all through the winter.  The ground will freeze.  Snow will drift and blanket over them.  And there’s nothing you can do.  

All winter long you go about your business.  You sleep and rise night and day.  And then you get up one spring morning and notice that the weather is a bit warmer, and the snow is patchy or mostly gone, and you look out the window to see that you suddenly have a field full of beautiful green wheat starting to rise up out of the ground.  It’s an amazing thing to see, and if you have half a sense of wonder, you thank God for the natural everyday miracle of it and marvel at it for at least a moment before you get on with your chores.  

The kingdom of God is like that, says Jesus.  It is seeds scattered on the earth.  Seeds of ideas and vison. And sometimes it looks like they’ve died.  Or been crushed.  Or been frozen out or buried.  Or simply forgotten.  But they are still there, just waiting for their moment.  

The kingdom of God is seeds of ideas and vision and understanding.  They are ideas about fairness and justice and cooperation.  They are an understanding about fuller and more generous ways to love each other and take care of each other.  The kingdom is a resolve to make a world that is healthier for everyone.  It’s a resolution to embrace God’s vision for how the world is supposed to work—a world where everyone is housed and everyone is fed and everyone can learn and everyone is safe and everyone is free to be their true self.  The kingdom is a determination to repair the damage we’ve done and restore creation so that we and all the creatures who share this world with us can breathe clean air and have clean water.

The kingdom of God, the rule of God, the reign of God, the kin-dom of God, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy is a commitment to let justice roll down like water and to show each other kindness and to walk humbly with God and with each other.  It is a continual correction of our vision so we keep learning how to see the image and likeness of God in each other—in each and every face we face so that racism and classism and every other kind of ism evaporate from the earth.  It is the seed of courage taking root in our hearts and minds so that we learn not to be afraid of something or someone simply because it or they are different from us or from what we know or what we expect or what we are used to.

“With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?,” said Jesus.  “It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

The mustard seed!  That tiny seed that produces the most egalitarian, most democratic of plants!  That’s what God’s kingdom is like.  It freely and bounteously shares itself and all that it has.  Given half a chance it spreads itself everywhere.  The mustard plant doesn’t care if you are rich or poor.  You don’t have to buy one.  It will come to you and give you and your family food and medicine and spices for your cuisine and healing oils for what ails you.  A most amazing, versatile and humble plant.  And it starts as just a little tiny seed.

The kingdom of God is the planting of seeds. The seeds don’t have to be eloquent preaching or brilliant explanations of theology—probably better most of the time if they’re not.  “Preach the gospel at all times,” said St. Francis. “When necessary, use words.”  At a time when the city of Assisi was a rough and dangerous place, Francis would walk through the town from the top of the hill to the bottom and say as he went, “Good morning, good people!”  When he got to the bottom of the hill he would turn to the brother who accompanied him and say, “There.  I have preached my sermon.”  What he meant was he planted a seed—he had reminded the people that the day was good and that they had it in themselves to be good people.

The seeds of the kingdom may be little acts of habit, like bowing your head for a moment to say grace before a meal in a restaurant, even if you don’t say it out loud.  That simple thing might remind those around you to pause, to be thankful, to remember all the connections that bring food to our tables, to remember the goodness of the earth and the sweat of the farmers, to remember the presence of God.

The seeds of the kingdom might be small acts of kindness.  When Oscar Wilde was being brought down to court for his trial, feeling more alone and abandoned than he had ever felt in his life, he looked up and saw an old acquaintance in the crowd.  Wilde later wrote, “He performed an action so sweet and simple that it has remained with me ever since.  He simply raised his hat to me and gave me the kindest smile that I have ever received as I passed by, handcuffed and with bowed head. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that. It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love, that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss the leper on the cheek. I have never said one single word to him about what he did … I store it in the treasure-house of my heart … That small bit of kindness brought me out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the wounded, broken, and great heart of the world.”

The seeds of the kingdom might be a word of affirmation and encouragement when it’s needed most.  Helen Mrsola was teaching ninth graders new math years ago.  They were struggling with it.  The atmosphere in the classroom was becoming more tense and irritable every day.  So one Friday afternoon Helen decided to take a break from the lesson plan.  She told her students to write down the name of each of their classmates on a piece of paper, then to also write down something nice about that student.  She collected the papers, and over the weekend Helen compiled a list for each student of what the other students had written. On Monday, she gave each student a paper with list of what the other students liked about them.  The atmosphere in the class changed instantly; her students were smiling again. Helen overheard one student whisper, “I never knew that I meant anything to anyone!” 

Years later, a number of the students, all young adults now, found themselves together again at a school function.  One of them came up to Helen and said, “I have something to show you.”  He opened his wallet and carefully pulled out two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been opened and folded and taped many times.  It was the list of things his classmates liked about him.  “I keep mine in my desk at work,” said another classmate.  Another classmate pulled hers out of her purse, saying she carried it with her everywhere she went.  Still another had placed his in his wedding album.

The kingdom of God.  The rule of God.  The reign of God.  The kin-dom of God.  The Commonwealth of God’s kindness. . . 

To what shall we compare it?

It’s like seeds scattered on the earth, says Jesus.  It’s like mustard seeds.  Seeds of righteousness.  Seeds of justice. Seeds of vision.   Seeds of help.  Seeds of hope.  Seeds of mercy.  Seeds of peace.  Seeds of affirmation.  Seeds of goodness.  Seeds of kindness.   Seeds of love.  

You don’t know how they grow.  But oh, they do grow.

On earth as in heaven.

When Mom Doesn’t Like Your Job

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Mark 3:20-35

Question:  What do Katy Perry, Kris Kristofferson, Florence Nightingale, Edouard Manet, Miles Davis, Alfred Nobel, Edgar Allen Poe and Robert Zemeckis have in common?   Answer: Their parents objected to the careers they chose.

Family can have a profound influence on the path we follow in life.  Alex Haley said that in every conceivable way, the family is a link to our past and a bridge to our future.  Your family can inspire, you, guide you, and cheer you on as you find and pursue your vocation, or they can misguide, misdirect, discourage and just plain thwart you.

I first felt called to become a pastor when I was fifteen years old.  My parents did not like the idea, and that is one of the main reasons I didn’t begin seminary until I was almost forty.  They loved me.  But they had a different future in mind for me than the future that chose me.

In today’s gospel reading from Mark we find two groups who would be happier if Jesus were to pursue a different career.  They would like nothing better than for him to stop the healings and exorcisms and the preaching and teaching and go do something more normal. Like be a carpenter, maybe.  On the face of it, these two groups wouldn’t seem to have much to do with each other, but the one big thing they have in common is that Jesus scares them.

Jesus had been busy traveling around the Galilee, announcing the arrival of the Reign of God, or, as Diana Butler Bass calls it, the Commonwealth of God’s Justice and Mercy.  In his preaching and teaching he had been describing a very different way of life that comes with God’s reign, and he had been demonstrating what this Commonwealth of Kindness looks like with healings and exorcisms and other acts that restore people to community.  In doing all this, he had also butted heads with the religious establishment because he was continuously reinterpreting Torah in ways that undermined the hierarchical authority of the scribes and the piety of the Pharisees.

Mark tells us that the crowd following him had become so large that it was almost unmanageable.  People were coming from as far away as Jerusalem, Idumea, Tyre and Sidon.  And then one day his family showed up, lingering somewhere at the edge of that great crowd that was following Jesus everywhere he went.

The NRSV translation says that his family had come to restrain him.  That’s a fair enough translation, but it doesn’t really capture the force of krateo, the Greek word that Mark uses, unless you imagine them using actual restraints.  To be clear, they had come to seize him and take him home by force if necessary because they thought he had lost his mind.

They were afraid for him.  They were afraid for him because they didn’t understand him.  They were afraid for him because it was hard for them to believe that this kid who grew up in their house had turned out to be so much more than the kid who grew up in their house.  They were probably a little bit afraid for themselves, too.  After all, having a crazy, radical preacher in the family can be hard on a family’s reputation.

But mostly they were afraid for him because they loved him.  He was family, after all.  So they worried about him, especially when they overheard this other group that wanted to rein him in.  Or worse.

Some scribes had come down from Jerusalem to see Jesus for themselves and to begin to form some kind of official opinion of him and his actions.  And their official opinion was that he made them nervous.  They wouldn’t have said it in so many words, but they were afraid him.  They were afraid because he called their privilege—their role and status and authority into question.  But mostly they were afraid of him because the crowd loved him.  And the crowd kept growing.  Big crowds would make their Roman overlords pay attention, and the things Jesus was saying, his language about “the Kingdom of God,” might sound like a call for revolution. . . which, to be fair, it was.  And is.  

“It is by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, that he casts out demons,” said the scribes.  “Well how does that make any sense?” asked Jesus.  “How can Satan cast out Satan?  If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand!” He may have had his family in mind when he added, “And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.”

Finally, to make it crystal clear just what his mission was all about he said, “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house may be plundered.”  

But Jesus wasn’t finished.  In one last note of caution for the scribes, Jesus said something that should give all of us pause, especially when we are about to speak judgmentally about people or things happening in our world that we don’t like or that make us uncomfortable.  “Truly I tell you,” he said, “people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin.”

He said this because the scribes had accused him of being possessed by Beelzebul. But Jesus, of course, was actually intimately connected with the Holy Spirit.  

I have thought of this passage often over the years when I have heard others say that something they are opposed to is evil or demonic. During the years when our denomination was debating whether it was okay or not to ordain lesbian and gay and trans people, I more than a few times heard people describe our efforts at being more inclusive as being evil when it seemed clear to me and others that it was the work of the Spirit.

How many times in history have we been trying to hold a door shut that the Holy Spirit is trying to open?  How many times in history has the Church called something demonic only to realize in retrospect that it was the work of the Spirit trying to broaden our minds and horizons?  God’s embrace is always bigger than ours and God’s vision always sees farther than ours.

God’s perspective is broader than ours.  Jesus sees things differently than we do, and sometimes that can be unsettling.  I still find the last segment of this episode with the scribes and his family disconcerting.   

Jesus’ mother, Mary, stood outside the house with his brothers and sisters, calling out to him.  The crowd that surrounded him made sure he knew they were there.  Someone spoke up and said, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside asking for you.” 

The way Jesus responded can sound cold and heartless, but it’s important to remember that everything Jesus said or did in this Gospel of Mark was calculated to reveal the values and vision of the Reign of God—the Commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy.  

Jesus posed a rhetorical question: “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.  Then, looking at all those people who were crowded around him, he gave the Reign of God answer to that question.  “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother.”

In one sentence, Jesus undermined the coercive and restrictive potential of the biological family and at the same time expanded the definition of family.  As cold as his answer might sound to us, Jesus did not actually disown or repudiate his biological family, but he wanted to make it clear that in God’s eyes family goes far beyond being biologically related.  In the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness, family is whoever does the will of God.

Sometimes the imagery in the gospels can be confusing or opaque.  More often, though, I suspect that the problem isn’t so much that the words of scripture are puzzling as that they make us uncomfortable, so we move past the troubling parts without taking time to really deal with them.  As Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”

According to Ched Myers, author of Binding the Strong Man, which has become pretty much the go-to commentary on the Gospel of Mark, this gospel was probably written somewhere in Palestine between 68 and 71 CE during the height of the Jewish revolt against the Roman occupation.  Myers tells us that this gospel, in which Jesus is gritty, uncompromising, down-to-earth, and scathingly direct—this Gospel of Mark is, in fact, a manifesto for nonviolent revolution, written to serve as an alternative path for the followers of Jesus who are being pulled into the violence of the uprising against Rome.  

In Mark, the followers of Jesus, then and now, are truly being called to subvert the dominant paradigm—to challenge and deconstruct and then reconstruct the systems by which our world operates until there truly is liberty and justice and peace and health and wholeness for all.  Anywhere there is coercion, the followers of Jesus are called to stand up to it with nonviolence.  

In other words, the gospel that Jesus proclaims, the living and uncompromising assertion of the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness, is nothing short of a nonviolent revolution.

Almost every pastor I know has stories about times we have been accused of being too political.  I have had people say to me that they come to church to hear about spirituality and not politics.  I get it. We humans have this very unfortunate tendency to compartmentalize our lives.  We organize our hearts and minds in little boxes: spirituality in this box, politics in this box, everyday life in this box over here.  The problem is that that these things really are not separate.  Our politics and economics are a barometer for our spirituality.  Our everyday life and the way we conduct our business puts our real beliefs on display.  

If we are sincere about following Jesus, then we can’t avoid politics because the gospel that Jesus proclaims is a kind of revolution and revolution is political.  Jesus wasn’t crucified for being a spiritual teacher.  He was crucified at the intersection of religion and politics because he was proclaiming a revolution that seeks to transform and restructure the entire world, to unite and unify all of life, and to redefine what it means to be human.  But before you can do that, you have to undo life as it is.  You have to take apart coercive systems and deconstruct business as usual.

Jürgen Moltmann, the great German Lutheran theologian who died this past week wrote, “Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.”[1]  God calls us to take up the tools of Christ to bring that promised future into the unfulfilled present.  But our tools are nonviolent tools.  Following the model set by Jesus, we use logic and common sense instead of violence.  Our first tool for reshaping the world is a stubborn resistance rooted in love and compassion and kindness and truth and hope.  And our hope is rooted in a vision of a healthy world where we all live in peace and cooperation with each other and with our God-beloved, God-made planet in a harmonious and generous balance.

Jesus came to bind the strong man, to take down all the human, religious and demonic forces that bully and constrict God’s children and crush our souls. Empire.  Coercive religion. Even family when it becomes too rigid and authoritarian.  People who are deeply vested in unhealthy systems don’t like to read the gospel this way.  They prefer to keep things “spiritual” which, in the end, means that neither Jesus nor his words ever touch the ground.  Or the depths of the heart.  And they certainly don’t change the world.

Jesus came to plunder the house of the strong man, to liberate every person who will follow his Way so that together we can build the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness and make it as visible on earth as it is in heaven.  

[1] Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology