Tag faith

In, With, and Under

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

It’s a simple thing.  You take a bit of bread and a sip of wine.  But it’s not just bread and wine.  It is nutrition for the soul where spirit and matter intersect.  Christ is in the bread.  Christ is in the wine. You are taking Christ into yourself.  The body of Christ becomes your body and you become part of the body of Christ. The blood of Christ becomes your blood and your blood flows through the body of Christ. You are being empowered and equipped to be Christ’s hands and feet and eyes and ears, to speak Christ’s love and forgiveness and grace.  In that bit of bread and taste of wine you are united as one with all the others who have shared in this sacrament in every age. In that bit of bread and that taste of wine you are drawn back to that last supper that Jesus shared with his disciples.  In that bit of bread and taste of wine you are also being drawn into tomorrow.  

This is the eucharist, literally “the good gift,” the sacrament of communion.  This is the sacrament that signifies our unity as followers of Jesus.  And ironically, sadly, it has been the pivot point of many of Christianity’s most intense  disagreements. 

Over the centuries church leaders and theologians have excommunicated each other over their different understandings of just exactly how Jesus is present or if Jesus is present in that bit of bread and taste of wine.  Ulrich Zwingli, the Swiss reformer said that Christ isn’t really present.  The sacrament, he said, is only a “remembrance.”  Martin Luther insisted that Christ truly is present “in, with, and under” the bread and the wine.  Legend says he was so adamant about this that while arguing with Zwingli he carved it into a table top: “corpus meum est”—“this is my body.”   Luther and Zwingli excommunicated each other.  And the Pope excommunicated them both.  Calvin later said that Christ is present, but only spiritually.  No one was quite sure what to make of that.

And I think all of this makes Jesus weep.

One of the very first social boundaries that Jesus crossed was the boundary of table fellowship. The Pharisees criticized him roundly for it.  In their day, who you ate with was important. Table fellowship determined your social status.  It had implications beyond that.  In a culture where the ideas of “clean” and “unclean” or “acceptable” and “unacceptable” were important social constructs that could have serious implications for how your life was going to go,  who you shared a table with and who invited you to their table was a huge thing.  Dining with the right people could open doors and make your reputation.  Dining with the wrong people could close those doors and besmirch your name even if you had done nothing wrong.  So when the Pharisees talk about Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners, it’s not a compliment; it’s an accusation.  But Jesus did it to make a point.  In the Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness, everyone is welcome at the table.  In the kingdom of God everyone is “acceptable.”  Everyone.

On the night he was betrayed, even Judas was at the table.  Even his betrayer received the bread and wine.  Levi the tax collector sat beside Simon the Zealot.  Simon Peter the Galilean fisherman sat beside Thomas the builder.  They’re not mentioned by name, but it’s probably safe to assume that Mary Magdalene was there, and Joanna, and Mary, his mother.  The point is, there were people gathered around that table who might not have been acceptable in the “polite” company of the Pharisees, or maybe even in each other’s company if Jesus wasn’t there as their host.

When Jesus breaks the bread and begins to pass it around the table, I can’t help but wonder if he isn’t looking at the faces of all his friends as he says, “this is my body.”   Is he, maybe, thinking, “You—this eclectic group who would never in a million years have come together on your own, you all together, each of whom would be an outcast somewhere—you, this companionship—this is my body.  You people sharing this bread are the ones who will carry on my Christ-ness, my Christ presence in the world.  Take me into yourselves the way you take in the bread and the wine.  Take in my teaching, my way of being, my love, my spirit, my grace, my unity with God, my way of seeing—swallow me whole so you can be my hands and feet and voice, so I will still be present in the world.”

True faith is a continuing metanoia and metamorphosis, and God gives us examples in everyday life.  Seed is buried in the earth then sprouts up green to stand in the sun and ripen with heads of grain which are crushed and ground.  They change in form to become flour, which changes in form again when bound with water then changes in form yet again when baked to become bread.  

We come to the Way of Jesus as individuals.  As we take up the work of Christ we are changed in form.  Our habits, impulses and priorities change.  We are infused with the Holy Spirit. We are bound together in the water of baptism, then baked into a community through life and service together. 

This is my body.  For you.

That same night, we’re told in John’s gospel,  Jesus had washed their feet.  “You call me Teacher and Master,” he said.  “And you’re right, I am.  But if I, your Master and Teacher have washed your feet, you should wash one another’s feet.  And in case you’re a little slow on the uptake, what I’ve just done was to give you an example.  I want you to serve each other.  More than that, I want you to love each other.  I’m giving you a new commandment: you must love one another just as I have loved you.  That’s how people will know you’re my disciples—if you have love for one another.”

And these things, too, are in that bit of bread and that sip of wine.  

The call to serve is there—in, with and under the bread and the wine.   Love is there—in, with and under the bread and the wine.  Grace and forgiveness are there—in, with and under the bread and the wine. The Word of Creation is there—in, with and under the bread and the wine.  

Christ is there—in, with, and under the bread and wine—the way Christ is present in all of Creation.

Life in all its fullness is there in a bit of bread and a taste of wine if you open your heart and mind to take it in.

What Does Love Look Like?

Steve Beckham 5 Comments

John 12:1-8

Love does a lot of hard work.  What I mean is that our English word, love, carries a heavy load and covers a lot of territory that ranges from a fondness for things and persons to deep attachment to ideas and ideals.  We talk of love to describe emotions ranging from infatuation and romance to the bonds of commitment in marriage.  We use the word love to talk about our family relationships and our favorite sports teams.  We talk about books and movies and songs we love.  We say we love our country to declare our patriotism.  

We talk a lot about love in the church, which is appropriate since the word loveappears 185 times in the New Testament.  That’s just over a third of the 540 references to love in the entire Bible.  John 3:16 tells us that Jesus was given to the world as a gift of God’s love.  Jesus commanded us to love each other and also told us to love our enemies.  He affirmed that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  He told us that people would recognize us as his disciples by our love for one another.  And he said there was no greater love than to give up your life for your friends.

As I said, our English word love covers a lot of territory, which makes it vulnerable to misuse and misinterpretation.  The New Testament, however, was originally written in Greek, a language that has four different words for love, each one with its own sphere of meaning, but the New Testament only uses two of those words.  

Philos describes a friendship love, a deep bond of affection characterized by mutual respect, shared interests and companionship.  Philos (philei) is the word used in John 16:27 when Jesus says, “The Father himself loves you because you have loved me.”  God has befriended us because we befriended Jesus.  Philos is the love word Paul uses in Romans 12:10 when he writes, “Love one another with mutual affection.”

The New Testament use of Philos, or Phileo in its verb form, is a reminder that part of our call as followers of Christ is to befriend each other and live together in a deep bond of friendship.  Philos is an important kind of love. But the most commonly used Greek New Testament word for love is agape.  

Agape is the highest form of love.  It is a pure, selfless, unconditional love that desires the highest good for another. This is the love St. Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 13 when he writes, “Love is patient.  Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant.  It does not insist on its own way.”  And so on.  Agape is the love word Jesus uses when he gives us a new commandment to love one another, and it’s the word the writer of 1 John uses to tell us that God is love.

It’s interesting to think about these different words for love and it’s useful to note which word is being used when we try to more fully understand something we’re reading in the Bible.  But no matter which word you use, unless we embody it, love remains just an intellectual exercise or an immaterial emotion.  Love, to be real,  must be enacted.  

God is love—the most powerful and creative force in the universe.  Ilia Delio, a Franciscan theologian and evolutionary biologist wrote, “Divine love exists when God becomes God within us—it is a potential energy that must be activated to demonstrate its power.”  

God is love, a pure, selfless, unconditional love that desires the highest good for us and for all of creation, a potential energy that must be activated in us to demonstrate its power.  Love must be embodied to activate its power.  But what does that look like?

Six days before the Passover, Jesus and his disciples came to Bethany to dine at the home of Lazarus, Mary and Martha.  While they were dining, Mary began to anoint Jesus’s feet with a very expensive aromatic oil made from spikenard.  She not only massaged the ointment into his tired feet, she dried his feet with her hair.  

This is one of the most evocative and sensual moments in the whole Bible.  And it’s also a very clear depiction of what embodied love looks like.  

This scene in the Gospel of John engages all our senses.  The soothing balm of the ointment being lovingly and gently massaged into the skin of Jesus’s feet by tender and sensitive hands. The silken touch of Mary’s long, dark hair caressing his feet as she dries them.  And the aroma.  The fragrance, John tells us, filled the house—the fragrance of spikenard.  Earthy.  Spicy.  Musky.  Soothing. Hypnotic.  In ancient times, the scent of spikenard was used as aromatherapy to dispel anxiety and stress.  It was even used to treat melancholia—what we call depression.  The ancients believed that it’s scent could transport you out of your thoughts or worries or sadness into a state of tranquility, peace and well-being.

When Mary rubbed this exotic, expensive ointment onto Jesus’s feet, her lovely, extravagant act of devotion, kindness and love was probably exactly what Jesus needed at that moment.  The tender massaging of his feet after so many, many months of walking the stony and dusty roads of Galilee, the Decapolis, and Judah probably felt like a little bit of heaven.  After all the road-weary days and nights surrounded by sweaty disciples and jostling crowds the soothing fragrance that was filling every corner of the house was probably the nicest aroma he had smelled in a very long time.  That moment of just plain niceness as Mary focused all her attention on doing something pleasant for him, something that would speak her love for him better than any words—that moment would be the last time anyone showed him kindness and concern for his wellbeing.  It was his last moment of peace, intimacy and tenderness before his crucifixion.  

Sadly, that moment was interrupted.  

“Why wasn’t this ointment sold and the money given to the poor?” asked Judas. “This stuff is worth what…three hundred denarii?  That’s the better part of a year’s wages for a laborer.  There are better ways to use that much money than slathering it on his feet.”

Judas comes across as one of those people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.  The Gospel of John tells us that he wasn’t really concerned about the poor at all but was angling for a way to get some of that cash into his own pockets.  And maybe that’s true.  But to be fair, spikenard ointment really was very, very expensive.  It’s made from a plant in the honeysuckle family that grows in the Himalayas of Nepal, India and China.  It was costly to make it and even more costly to transport it.

All four gospels tell the story of this deeply personal encounter, but they tell it in different ways and different settings.  One thing that all versions of this story have in common, though, is that someone is indignant about the attention and the expense being lavished on Jesus.  In Matthew and Mark, it’s all the disciples who complain about the expense of the ointment.  All of them chime in about how the money could have been given to the poor.  “Why was this ointment wasted in this way?” they say in Mark.  “Why this waste?” in Matthew.

Waste.  Her extravagant care for Jesus, her loving attention—they see it as a waste.    

Why is it that some of us are so uncomfortable with extravagant expressions of love and devotion?  What is it about moments of intimate caring that gets some of us up on our high horse and turns us into critics?  

I don’t usually quote Friedrich Nietzsche, but there is something he wrote that seems particularly appropriate here.  He said, “The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity.”

Mary had bought this expensive ointment to anoint Jesus’s body after his death.  But she loved him so much that she couldn’t bear the thought that he wouldn’t get to experience its healing and soothing properties while he was still alive. So she opened the alabaster jar and anointed him with it while he was still alive to sweeten his last hours and days “with a precious and fragrant drop of levity.”  She brought lightness to counter the heaviness of those final days.  And only a few days later, Jesus would follow her example as he washed his disciples’ feet at the last supper.

Life is both precious and precarious.  Death is a foregone conclusion; it’s only the timing that’s uncertain.  So why do we not live every moment of every day with “a precious and fragrant drop of levity?”  Why do we not find more ways to express our love for each other?

Why do we back away from extravagant gestures of love?  We should be accustomed to them if we’re paying any attention at all.  Annie Dillard said, “If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation.  After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor.  The whole show has been on fire from the word go.”

Mary was extravagant in her love for Jesus.  Jesus was extravagant in his love for the world.  God has been extravagant in love poured out into all of creation.  And God is calling us to embody and enact extravagant love for each other.

So what does that look like?  What does extravagant love look like in your life?  What does it look like in your work?  What does it look like in our community? What does it look like in our nation, especially in a time of political and economic turmoil and disruption?  How do we embody extravagant love?

Last Monday evening, Senator Cory Booker stood on the floor of the Senate and began to speak. Citing the example of the late Representative John Lewis, a man who, as Senator Booker said “loved his country even when his country didn’t love him back,” Senator Booker said, “Tonight, I rise with the intention of getting in some good trouble. I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able.  I rise tonight because I believe, sincerely, that our country is in crisis.”

 I don’t know how Senator Booker’s 25 hour speech looked to you, but I saw it as a powerful act of love.  

Senator Booker set aside partisanship and conventional patriotic rhetoric to speak from his heart about how the recent disruptions and brokenness of our political and economic systems are affecting people’s individual lives.  He talked about real people.  He shared what people had been telling him in phone calls and meetings.  He shared their fear and pain from letters they had written to him.  He didn’t just speak of an ambiguous, amorphous love for the nation, he spoke out of his love for its people.

In that speech he said, “These are not normal times in America, and they should not be treated as such. This is our moral moment. This is when the most precious ideas of our country are being tested…. Where does the Constitution live, on paper or in our hearts? . . . In this democracy, the power of people is greater than the people in power.”

I don’t usually get this political in my sermons, but I have to say that Senator Booker is right.  These are not normal times in our country.  This is a moral moment for the nation which means it’s also a moral moment for the church.  If our faith means anything, it means that now is a time to stand up for those who are abused and oppressed, for those who are living in fear of losing their health care or their livelihood.  This is a moral moment for us. 

Where does the love of Christ live?  On the paper pages of scripture?  In our heads as an ideal?  Or in our hearts…and hands…and voices…and feet?

Yesterday, more than millions of people took to the streets to protest the policies and practices of the Trump administration.  They protested on behalf of immigrants who have been deported and imprisoned without due process.  They protested on behalf of the people who have been swept up off the street and disappeared.  They protested on behalf of all the people whose jobs were suddenly eliminated and all those whose healthcare is threatened.  They protested against a regime that prioritizes tax advantages for billionaires and oligarchs over the everyday needs of everyday people.  They protested out of love.

Dorothy Day said, “God is Love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love, to stand in that relationship with each other of love. We want with all our hearts to love, to be loved.”

God is love, a pure, selfless, unconditional love that desires the highest good for us and for all of creation, a potential energy that must be activated in us to demonstrate its power.  But what does that look like in your life?   Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, [we] will have discovered fire.”

Stuff Happens

Steve Beckham 4 Comments

Stuff Happens

Ten weeks ago 16,255 homes, businesses and other buildings were destroyed and 29 people died in the Palisades and Eaton fires here in Southern California. 

Last weekend, a deadly series of storms across the US South and Midwest leveled homes and businesses and killed 42 people.  Wildfires swept across Oklahoma and destroyed 400 homes.  In Kansas, a dust storm led to a highway pileup involving at least 50 vehicles in which 8 people were killed.

Four weeks ago, 68 people were killed when heavy rains in the Philippines caused a landslide that destroyed a gold-mining village.  Another 51 are still missing and presumed dead.

Twenty-six people were killed when a train was hijacked by a militant group in Pakistan, and a fire in a nightclub in North Macedonia left 59 people dead.

Last Saturday, under orders of the President, US Immigration & Customs deported hundreds of Venezuelans to a brutal prison in El Salvador in defiance of a court order instructing them to turn the planes around.  As a result, many legal experts are saying that our country is now in a full-blown constitutional crisis.

There is no shortage of tragedy in our world.  On any given day, in any given week, horrible things happen to people.  And when horrible things happen, one of our first instincts is to look for somewhere to lay the blame.

Sometimes it’s easy to pinpoint the source of the tragedy and fix the blame on the responsible party or parties.  I think we could all agree on who is primarily culpable for the slaughter and destruction in Ukraine.  But knowing who to blame and knowing the motives behind their aggression only makes the carnage more horrible.

It isn’t always easy to decide who or what has caused a tragedy.  Sometimes—far too often—we blame the victims.  What were those people in the Philippines thinking when they built their houses on an unstable hillside?  

Some people blame God when horrible things happen.  When a horrendous earthquake killed more than 100,000 people in Haiti in 2010, evangelist Pat Robertson said that God was punishing the people of Haiti because in 1804 they had made a deal with the devil to drive out their French colonial overlords.  He didn’t say why God waited 106 years to exact this punishment.  Robertson also claimed that Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and killed more than 1800 people in 2005, was God’s punishment for allowing abortion, gay rights, and other liberal policies to continue in the U.S. 

We might think Robertson’s ideas are Loony Tunes, but a surprising number of people still see the world that way.  The idea that calamity is God’s punishment for sin is as old as humanity.  In the Book of Job, when Job is afflicted with one heartbreak after another, the three friends who come to offer him moral support yammer on for days insisting that Job must have offended God in some way.  When Job resolutely insists that he is innocent, their response is pretty much, “Well you must have done something!”  In the end, though, God puts an end to their speculation about what Job might or might not have done. “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” says God. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Go on, tell me if you’re so smart.”   The message in the end is that, while God may have allowed Job to suffer, God didn’t cause Job’s troubles.

While Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, some people brought up the issue of some Galileans whom Pilate had killed mingling their blood with their sacrifices.  It’s important to note that this wasn’t just Pilate being randomly cruel and bloodthirsty, although he was certainly capable of that.  The Galileans in question were almost certainly executed for being resistance fighters in the endless underground campaign against Rome’s occupation.  

So why was the crowd asking Jesus about this?  Were they thinking he would be scandalized by it?  Did they think he would be shocked that Pilate would not only kill these Galileans but would also profane their sacrifice?  Did they think that maybe, since Jesus was also a Galilean, he might be angry enough to join the zealots who were fighting against Rome?  Or did they simply want him to share his thoughts on why God would do this or allow it to happen?  Was God punishing those Galileans for some reason?  Was their sin really so awful that they deserved to die that way?  

So Jesus asks them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?  No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.  Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?  No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Stuff happens.  Do you think God or Karma or the universe was punishing the people of Pacific Palisades and Altadena because they were worse sinners than everyone else in California?  No.  That’s not how it works.  And those forty-two who were killed by tornadoes—do you think they were snuffed out because they were the most awful people in that part of the country?  No.  God doesn’t work that way.  But… unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.  

What did Jesus mean by that?  Repent is such a ponderous and dreary word. It’s all about regret and contrition. The Greek word, though—metanoia, the word that we translate as “repent”—that word is full of possibility.  Metanoia means a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of viewpoint, a change of direction.  Metanoia might start with contrition, but it doesn’t end there.  Metanoia is always a way forward.  

Jesus is telling them, “Unless you change the way you see and understand life, unless you change the way you see and understand God and how God works, you’re all going to be lost the same as they were.  You’ll die in your ignorance.  Death can sneak up on you or catch you by surprise, and when it does, you’ve lost your opportunity to embrace the life and love of God and for that matter, the life and love of humanity.  You’ve lost your opportunity to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with God and humankind and the rest of creation.  You’ve lost your opportunity to make a positive difference in the world.

To bring home the point, he told them a parable.  A story.  “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it but he didn’t find any.  So he said to the gardener, ‘Look,  for three years now I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none.  Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’  The gardener replied, “Sir, leave it alone for another year.  I’ll dig around it and put manure on it.  Maybe it will bear fruit next year.  But if not, then you can cut it down.’”

A lot of us were taught in Sunday School to read parables as allegories.  So if we did that with this parable, the land owner would be God and the fig tree would be some unproductive person who is not doing anything to improve the world, and the gardener who wants to spare the tree and work with it would be Jesus.  That’s the Sunday School explanation.

Reading the parable that way has some merit, but it also has some problems.  “Allegorical readings,” said Amy-Jill Levine, “can speak to eternal truths and ultimate longings. Yet…such readings rarely produce a challenge and rarely offer a surprise; rather, they confirm standard Christian views.  A second problem with the traditional allegories…is that they cannot convey what a parable would have meant to its original audience.  Allegories require keys, so that readers know that the elements given in the tale correspond to very particular elements on the outside.  As these allegories were developed much later, that original audience would not have had the key.”[1]

How would you hear this parable if, instead of treating it as an allegory, you put yourself into the story?  What would you hear if you were to sit inside the parable, put on its characters for a moment and let them speak to you and through you?  What questions would this parable prompt you to ask yourself if you let it be more than a simple morality tale?  

For instance:  Am I like the absentee landowner?  Have I avoided getting my hands dirty by keeping my distance from those places and moments where life and death actually happen?  Have I been pronouncing judgment from the sidelines?  Have I been seeing the value of things only in terms of whether or not they are productive in some measurable, consumable, marketable way?  Have I been looking at life through the lens of cost/benefit analysis, weighing how people and other living things consume resources and take up time and space?  Do I need to be persuaded to see possibilities, to extend a little patience and grace?  Do I need to show some empathy?

Am I like the fig tree?  Am I failing in some way to nurture and nourish others?  Am I holding on to space and resources that could be used more productively to sustain others?  Am I throwing shade over someone else’s life and preventing them from growing or fulfilling their potential?  Am I willing to change or let myself be changed, to “repent,” to take the path of metanoia so I can learn to bring more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and gentleness into the world around me?  Am I taking life—being alive—for granted and neglecting the gift that God has given me to be present and aware and alive in this amazing God-filled world?

Am I like the gardener?  Am I willing to get my hands deep into the dirt and manure of life if it will bring someone else some grace, give someone else a chance to grow and bloom and become what they were made to be?   Am I willing to give time and energy and sweat and love and hope to help someone else thrive?

Why do horrible things happen?  Jesus is not going to answer that question…  because “Why?” is not a life-giving question.  Jesus is not going to play the blame game, because placing blame doesn’t heal anyone or help the survivors.  Instead, Jesus tells us a story to remind us that life is both precious and precarious, to remind us that we are interconnected and our choices affect each other, and to remind us that time is not on our side.  He reminds us that there are forces at work in the world which, like the land owner, would cut us down without hesitation or remorse.  But his story also reminds us that the force of love and life is also in the world, a force that is willing to go elbow deep in muck and manure to give us a chance to grow and thrive and bear good fruit.  

Fred Rogers once said to his television friends in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things on the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.’”

I was reminded of Mr. Rogers’ good advice the other day when I read about the group of masons that has banded together to form Save the Tiles.  These volunteers are racing against the clock to rescue valuable Batchelder and other historic ceramic tiles from Altadena homes destroyed by the Eaton fire before the Army Corps of Engineers bulldozes the burned out houses to the ground.  The group is using their special skills to retrieve the tiles and return them to the owners of the burned homes so the owners can use them in the construction of their new homes.   

Look for the helpers.

When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago we saw a steady stream of stories about violence, destruction and devastation.  But there were also stories about the extraordinary things people did to help the people of Ukraine survive their nightmare.  

Border guards, volunteers and ordinary people lined the sides of the wooden pedestrian bridge across the Tisza river with stuffed animals and toys so that refugee children crossing from Ukraine into Romania could, as one volunteer put it, “enter the country with a nice thought.” 

An organization called Deaf Bridge, which had been working in Ukraine to help establish church ministries for deaf and hearing impaired people, quickly shifted to helping deaf people in Ukraine find shelter and escape routes.  Also, since deaf people can’t hear air raid sirens, they taught them to look for visual cues and paired them with hearing persons so that they would know when danger was imminent.

Polish parents left baby strollers in Poland’s railway stations for refugee parents to use when they arrived with their babies in their arms and their childcare necessities in a backpack.

Volunteers arrived in Poland from all over the world to work with World Central Kitchen which is still providing food for refugees and also for Ukrainian cities where food is in short supply.  

Life is both precious and precarious.  Horrible things do happen on a daily basis.  We are living in a difficult time and it feels like the ground is shifting under our feet.  There is always someone who is all too ready to cut down the tree.  

But there is also always someone who is ready to try to save it, someone who is willing to stand up to those who wield the axe, someone who is willing to dig around the roots and even sink their hands into the muck to give it another chance at life.  

So who, in this story, are you?

[1] Short Stories by Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine, p.128

The Hard Stuff

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Luke 6:27-38

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

Love your enemies.

Do good to those who hate you.  

Bless those who curse you.

Pray for those who abuse you.

Turn the other cheek.

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

Give something to everyone who asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Jesus’ name.

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

Do Not Be Afraid

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Luke 5:1-11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do not be afraid.  

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

Do not be afraid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do not be afraid.  

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.

In Your Hearing

Steve Beckham 5 Comments

Luke 4:14-21

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

The world sets the agenda.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

         “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

                  because he has anointed me

                           to bring good news to the poor.

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

                  and recovery of sight to the blind,

                           to set free those who are oppressed[2],

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So What?

Steve Beckham 5 Comments

Luke 3:15-22

So.  This is the Sunday when we observe that one thousand nine hundred ninety-five years ago, give or take, Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River.  And I confess that on this Sunday when wildfires are still raging across Southern California, when our eyes are still watering from the smoke in the air, when our vision is still blurred with tears for all the homes and land destroyed and lives lost, when our hearts are still breaking for friends and family—for all the people who have had to evacuate, who have had to flee in terror as fire roared toward them—I confess that my first response to the baptism of Jesus in this week of catastrophe on a Sunday when the fires are still raging and homes and lives are still in peril–my first response to the baptism of Jesus is: so what?

So what if Jesus was baptized?  So what if a voice from heaven proclaimed him as the divine, beloved child of God with whom God was well pleased?  What does that have to do with me?  With us?  How does that help us at a time when our neighborhoods are on fire and our lives are filled with fear and anxiety and desperation?

One thousand nine hundred ninety-five years ago, more or less, Jesus was baptized.  What does this mean?  Where is the good news in that ancient fact in the face of the very real and present danger we are facing right now?

Where is the Good News?  

Well maybe—stay with me here– maybe it’s right where it has  always been.  Maybe it’s right in front of us, in the water and in the Word.  

The baptism of Jesus is depicted in all four gospels.  Sort of.  The Gospel of John alludes to baptism of Jesus but never actually describes him being baptized.  My favorite version of the Baptism of Jesus is in the Gospel of Matthew.  In Matthew, Jesus has no sooner waded into the water when John and Jesus start arguing.  That’s just so human.  In Matthew’s telling of the story, John didn’t want to baptize Jesus.  Matthew tells us that John “would have prevented him.”  It didn’t feel right to John.  It didn’t feel appropriate.  For him to baptize Jesus seemed upside down and backwards.  “I need to be baptized by you!” he tells Jesus.  

I need to be baptized by you.  That’s an interesting choice of words.  It implies that John thought he was lacking something that Jesus could give him.  What could that be?

Jesus finally persuaded John to go ahead and baptize him when he said, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”  Basically, Jesus was telling John, “let’s go ahead with this because it’s the right thing to do.”

Why is it the right thing to do?  John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin[1].  But Jesus didn’t have any sin that he needed to repent of, did he?  So why was it the right thing for him to do?  How did his baptism “fulfill all righteousness”?

Preachers like to use the baptism of Jesus as a springboard to talk about the meaning of our baptism and the gifts that baptism bestows on us.  I’ll admit that that’s what I’ve preached about on this Sunday for many, many years.  But this year I think something else needs our attention.

Don’t get me wrong.  It’s always useful to take some time to remember our baptism and think about what it means and how we are living out our lives in the covenant of baptism.  But this year, as fires rage around us and life seems perilous and precarious, I have found myself thinking about the baptism of Jesus a little differently.  This year I find myself wondering what it meant for him.  What was he showing us?  What did he want us to see?  What did he want us to learn?

The word “baptism” comes from the Greek verb baptizein which means “to dip,” or “to plunge or to immerse.”[2] When we are baptized, the water that is poured over us is a sign that we are immersed into the life and love of the triune God, that we are plunged into the eternal perichoresis, the eternal circle dance of love that flows between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  But Jesus was already fully immersed in the life and love of the Trinity, so what did plunging into the water signify for him?  What was he immersing himself in?

I can’t help but think that what baptism signified for Jesus was not his immersion into the life of God, but his immersion into the life of humanity.  

With the Holy Spirit descending like a dove and the voice from heaven proclaiming that Jesus is heaven’s divine and pleasing child, it’s easy to get so caught up in the divinity of Jesus that we overlook how very human this moment is.  Jesus was already immersed in his divinity.  Here at the river, with water up to his chest, he was plunging into his humanity.

Jesus immersed himself into an existence where water is a necessity of life that can cleanse you and sustain you and quench your thirst, but it can also flood your home, sweep away your crops and livestock and drown you.

Jesus immersed himself into a life where fire can refine metals and give you light in the dark and warm your home and bake your bread and cook your meals, but it can also burn down your house and ravage your fields and orchards.  It can obliterate whole cities. It can burn you with the worst kind of pain.  And it can kill you. 

Jesus immersed himself into a human life in a body that was strong and beautiful, a body that could embrace the warm comfort of companions and smell the sweet and uplifting aromas and taste all the delicious flavors and see all the beautiful horizons and hear the music of the birds, a body that could feel joy and compassion and tenderness.  But it was also a vulnerable body, a body that could be wounded and injured,  a body that could smell the stink and feel the sharp edges and experience all the not-so-pleasant sensations of the world, a body that could feel anxiety and fear and pain.  A body that, in the end, could die.

Jesus immersed himself into all that it means to be human, the good and the bad. His baptism was more than an act of divine solidarity; it was a validation of deeply human unity.  He was showing us that he was one of us.  

But he wasn’t just immersing himself in us.

One thousand nine hundred ninety-five years ago, or thereabouts, Jesus was immersed in the waters of the Jordan, a river whose waters had been evaporated from the seas and transported in clouds before falling on the hills as snow and rain, a river that swept minerals and seeds and soil down from the mountains to enrich the land below, a river that carried away the effluent of people, cattle and animals as it flowed past villages and fields and farms and towns, a river filled with life and with a life of its own.  Jesus was immersed not only into the life of humanity, but into the life of the world itself, the life of the planet. 

And maybe that’s the Good News, on this Sunday when fires are still endangering our lives and so many things we hold dear are in jeopardy.  Maybe the Good News for us in the baptism of Jesus is that Christ is immersed in our lives and we are immersed in the life of Christ, but also that Christ is immersed in the life of the world.  Maybe, if we open our eyes and minds and hearts, we can trust that Jesus is with us, in, with and under all our heartbreaks and joys, our fears and our relief.  Maybe we can learn to trust him and hear his voice speaking a word of promise from Isaiah: 

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and the rivers will not overwhelm you.  When you walk through fire you shall not be burned and the flame shall not consume you… for I am the Lord, your God…you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you.  Do not be afraid, for I am with you.”[2]

[1] Matthew 3:11

[2] Isaiah 43:2, 4, 5

When the Men Are Silent

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”  But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ­–Luke 1:28-29

When I was seven years old my parents sat me down and said, “We are moving to California.”  I was much perplexed by their words.  I mean, I understood all their words… individually… as words.  I even understood their words as they had assembled them together in that sentence: we are moving to California.  It conveyed coherent meaning to me.  But that was the problem.  

There was too much meaning in those five words strung together like that. They were heavy with meaning.  They meant that I would be saying goodbye to life as I knew it in Kansas City, Missouri, saying goodbye to my best friend Dennis who lived right next door and all my other friends and cousins and Daniel Boone Elementary School and the woods where we played and fireflies in the backyard in the summer and sledding down the little hill in front of our house in the snow in the winter and a million other things that were crowding into my seven year old mind all at once.  

Mom and Dad tried to make it sound like it was good news.  Beaches!  Disneyland!  New Friends!  Are there any scarier words in the world for a kid than “New Friends?”  Worse, while I was still feeling the shock of their words, still being perplexed and wondering in my seven-year-old mind if maybe I had somehow caused this terrible thing to happen, I realized that things were already in motion and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it.

“Greetings, highly favored one, the Lord is with you.”  When I read that Mary was perplexed by the Angel Gabriel’s words I can’t help but wonder if she wasn’t feeling something like what I felt that day when my parents told me that my life was about to change completely and utterly.  Perplexed is a pretty tame translation for the word that’s in Luke’s Greek text.  Perplexed sounds like she was a bit puzzled, perhaps a little confused.  Diatarasso, the verb in the original text means she was distressed, disturbed, disoriented and deeply troubled by the angel’s words.  

Mary apparently knew that the ones who are highly favored by the Lord, those whom the Lord was with, were not folk who tended to have quiet, easy, uneventful lives.  The Lord tends to use the “favored ones” to get things done.  The Lord tends to move them around like chess pieces.  If an angel shows up to tell you that you are favored by God and that God is with you, hold on to your wallet and make sure your passport is up to date.  It means that God has plans for you.  Mary may have only been a teenager, but she was smart and she knew the stories about those whom the Lord favored.  So she pondered what sort of greeting this might be and waited for the angel to say more.  What was God up to?  What was God planning to do with her?

After a long moment of Mary saying nothing, Gabriel cleared his throat.  He had a message to deliver.  God had given him a script and told him not to deviate from it.  So he launched back into his speech.  It’s a nice speech, a very formal speech, the kind of speech you’d expect from an archangel on a mission from God. 

He told her she would conceive—in her womb, just in case she was uninformed about where conception happened.  He told her that the child would be a boy and that she was to name him Jesus.  He would be great.  He would be called the Son of the Most High.  The Lord would give him the throne of David.  His kingdom will have no end.

Up to this point Mary had been silent, but now she interrupts.  “How can this be,” she asks,  “since I am a virgin?”  She’s got some moxie, this young woman.  She’s not afraid to stop an archangel in the middle of his spiel and say, “Excuse me, but you’re forgetting one very important technicality.  I don’t know how it’s done with angels, but for humans there’s a part of the process missing in your plan here.”

“Ah, yes,” says the angel.  “I’m coming to that.”  And he resumes his recitation.  He told her that the Holy Spirit would initiate the pregnancy, that the power of the Most High would overshadow her, so the child would be holy.  He told her that her relative, Elizabeth, who was getting along in years and had never had children was now pregnant because nothing is impossible with God.  And with that Gabriel reached the end of his script and stood there waiting for a response.

Finally Mary has a chance to speak again.  Our translations soften the impact of her words, I think.  “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” That’s how it reads in the NRSV and our other English versions are in the same dynamic range.  They sound so docile compared to the force of the words in the original language.  Even the Latin toned it down from Luke’s original Greek where there are hints of both fierceness and resignation in her words that don’t come through in the niceties of our translations.

The first thing she says is rather startling, especially if you remind yourself that she is saying it to one of the seven archangels who stand at the throne of God.  The first thing she says, literally translated, is, “Look.”  She invites the angel to really see her.  “Look,” she says, “the slave girl of the Lord.  It will happen to me according to your word.”

“Look at me, angel, before you vanish back to heaven.  Really pay attention for a moment to the one who is highly favored, the Lord’s slave girl. Yes.  It will happen just as you have said.  How could it not?  I am a slave in heaven’s hierarchical eyes. Who am I to argue with God?  But before you go, see me.  And think about how your visit will change my life.  See me, and think about what it will cost me because the Lord is with me. Think about what it means to be the slave girl of God, even if the slave agrees to play her part.”

Then the angel departed from her.  The language is abrupt, so the departure probably was, too.  I wonder if the angel left so quickly because he suddenly realized that his announcement had been more than a little coercive.  Nothing in his message even hinted that Mary had any choice in the matter.  Maybe he realized this and was a bit embarrassed by his own imperious manner. Or maybe not.  Maybe he was just done.  Who can tell with angels?  They’re not like us.

The angel departed, and not long after that, Mary departed to see her relative, Elizabeth and her miraculous pregnancy.

Now here’s an interesting thing.  Have you ever noticed that in the original Advent, that time building up to the birth of both John the Baptizer and Jesus, the men in the story are silent?  Well, Gabriel talks a lot, but he’s an angel and everything he says is a message from God. Otherwise the male voices are almost entirely silent. 

Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband doubts Gabriel when Gabriel tells him he’s going to be a father so late in life, so Gabriel makes him mute for the entire time of Elizabeth’s pregnancy.  Joseph is visited by an angel a few times in Matthew’s gospel, but Joseph never speaks. The women, though,  the women speak powerfully and prophetically.  

Elizabeth silences the gossipy busybodies of her community saying, “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.”

When Mary comes to see her, Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit and blesses Mary with words so powerful that they have become embedded in the beads of the rosary and engraved on the psyche of our faith for all generations. “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” And then she affirms Mary for agreeing to her role in God’s plan: “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”   

Elizabeth speaks in the tradition of the five women prophets of the Hebrew Bible, Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Noadiah, and the unnamed prophetess mentioned in Isaiah 8.  She speaks in the strength of Judith, the conviction of Tamar, and joyful mirth of Sarah. 

Moved by her words and stirred by the Spirit, Mary begins to sing a prophetic song full of joy and power to proclaim the work of God. Young, poor, unmarried and pregnant, she becomes a prophet.

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,  for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.”  She rejoices that God isn’t transforming the world through the rich and the powerful, but instead is working through the poor, the humble, the disenfranchised and marginalized—through her and people like her. 

She sings of things to come as if they are already accomplished, a proleptic vision of God remaking the world from the bottom up.  “Prophets,” writes Barbara Brown Taylor, “almost never get their verb tenses straight, because part of their gift is being able to see the world as God sees it — not divided into things that are already over and things that have not happened yet, but as an eternally unfolding mystery that surprises everyone, maybe even God.”

“The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung,” said Dietrich Bonhoeffer.   She sings of a sweeping change in the social order, a change so radical that her Magnificat has been regarded as politically dangerous in places where despots and tyrants have tried to maintain control.  It was banned in India during British rule.  When Guatemala was ruled by a military junta in the 1980s they outlawed her Magnificat, and it was outlawed again during the “dirty war” in Argentina when the mothers of disappeared children began papering the streets with posters of her song.  When you’re trying to rule people with an iron fist you can’t have them singing about power being overturned.

“He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;  he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

In a time when her own land and her own her own people are burdened by the yoke of Rome, she sings of God’s faithfulness:  He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

Mary sings an overture for the work of her son, The Son of the Most High.  She sings to proclaim God’s vision of justice.  She sings to remind us that we are called to share the vision and to share the work of making God’s commonwealth of justice and kindness a reality on earth as it is in heaven.

Look.  See the slave girl of the Lord.  An angel speaks to her and she is much perplexed.  But she is not silenced.  She sings the song of Advent, the song of God’s revolution.

When the men are silent, the women sing.  And their songs change the world.

The Light of Hope

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

The Light of Hope

Luke 21:25   

There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.  People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.  Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.  Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

  Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees;  as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.  So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.  Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.  Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

 “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life and that day does not catch you unexpectedly,  like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.  36 Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Four years ago on the first Sunday in Advent, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 270,000 Americans had died from Covid 19.  That was 270,000 empty seats at the Thanksgiving table, enough people to fill every seat in Dodger Stadium five times.  By the end of December, that number had climbed to 350,831[1].  All in all, in the first four years of the pandemic more than 1.2 million Americans died.  Thanks to vaccines, increased awareness and improved health practices, only 43,360 people have died from Covid in the US this year.  But that is 43,000 reminders that the virus can still be a deadly threat.

Because of general economic disparity in our country, 47.4 million people live in households experiencing food insecurity.  17.9% of households with children under 18 were food insecure in 2024.  That’s actually a huge improvement over four years ago when 56% of such households were food insecure, but it still represents 14 million children who are at risk of going to bed hungry every night in a country that has more than enough resources to ensure that everyone has enough to eat.[2]  And sadly, it almost goes without saying that rates of food insecurity are higher  among people of color and in single-parent households headed by women.

Because of the high cost and shortage of housing, more than 25% of renters in California spend more than 50% of their income on housing, and more than 160,000 experience homelessness on any given night.

On the other side of the world, Israel’s war against Hamas has degenerated from a justifiable defense into genocide in Gaza and the violence has expanded into Lebanon.  Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine has become more dire as Russia has deployed a new nuclear capable hypersonic missle.  

Turning back to home, here in the US we are living in a time of political tension and uncertainty which our recent election has exacerbated as we brace ourselves for what comes next.

In so many ways and for so many of us, this is a grim and precarious time.  The words of Isaiah ring in us like a bell:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,

          so that the mountains would quake at your presence—  

          When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect,

          you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.[3]

Like the people of Israel in Isaiah’s day, we find ourselves crying out in fear and frustration.  O God, why won’t you do for us the kinds of things you did in the past?  Where’s our parting of the sea?  Where is our manna falling from the sky?   Where is our just and prophetic leadership?  Where is the “righteous Branch for David” that Jeremiah promised, the one who will “execute justice and righteousness in the land?”[4]

This feels like a grim and precarious time.  But then, it was a grim and precarious time for the people of Judah when Jeremiah spoke that promise.  It was a grim and precarious time when Isaiah begged God to break open the heavens and come down.  The people of the covenant were suffering under the harsh oppression of Babylon.  They wanted the same kind of divine intervention that so many of us are longing for right now.

It was a grim and precarious time when Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives and shared his apocalyptic vision of the temple’s destruction with his disciples. The people were chafing under the harsh and authoritarian governance of Rome.  And it was a grim and precarious time for Jesus, himself,  and for his disciples, even though at that moment the disciples seemed obtusely unaware of just how much danger they were facing.

As we read the story in the synoptic gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, Jesus is telling his disciples about the coming time of turmoil just days before Judas betrays him and he is crucified.  And it’s also a very perilous time when the writer of Mark, the earliest Gospel, records all this.  Biblical scholar Ched Myers has suggested that Mark was writing his account during the Jewish revolt against Rome, the rebellion that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.  There is a haunting and prophetic prescience when Jesus says,

“But in those days, after that suffering,

         the sun will be darkened,

                  and the moon will not give its light, 

         and the stars will be falling from heaven,

                  and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”

Luke expands on Mark’s words and broadens the reach of the calamity when he writes:

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.  People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.   

These words of Jesus take on new weight on the first Sunday of Advent when you think of them being spoken during a time of violent political oppression, a time when any hint of opposition to the empire’s political or social order is quickly and decisively squashed.  These words have a sharper edge when you think of them being written down and preserved while the streets of the city are filled with the noise and bloodshed of battle between Roman soldiers and Jewish partisans, or when you think of the followers of Jesus being tortured and persecuted by the agents of the empire.  

Beware.  Stay alert.  Stay awake.  The advice Jesus gives is practical.  Keep your eyes open.  Don’t fall for false messiahs and conmen.  Don’t make yourself crazy trying to figure out God’s timetable because only God knows.  It’s going to be a bumpy ride.  There will be trying times.  Stay awake.

Advent is a time for pragmatism and preparation. 

Advent is a time to walk into the turmoil and the pain of life with your eyes wide open.  In an age and a season when it is all too easy to live in denial, when we would love to jump straight to Christmas, Advent calls us to take a hard look at the world around us.  Advent calls us to see the world as it really is, to see ourselves as we really are, to open our eyes to things that we maybe don’t want to see, to listen to things we might prefer not to hear.  Advent calls us to be realistic…about the world and about ourselves. 

In 1952, as the Korean War was dragging on and the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was becoming more intense, William and Annabeth Gay wrote a haunting and profound hymn that, to my mind, perfectly captures the spirit of Advent for our age.  The title that Annabeth gave it is Carol of Hope, but you might know it by its first line which is how it’s titled In most hymnals, a line that sounds anything but hopeful:  Each Winter As the Year Grows Older.[5]

Each winter as the year grows older, 

we each grow older, too.  

The chill sets in a little colder; the verities we knew

seem shaken and untrue.

When race and class cry out for treason, 

when sirens call for war, 

they overshout the voice of reason and scream till we ignore

 all we held dear before.

Yet I believe beyond believing that life can spring from death,

that growth can flower from our grieving, 

that we can catch our breath

and turn transfixed by faith.

So even as the sun is turning to journey to the north,

the living flame, in secret burning, 

can kindle on the earth

and bring God’s love to birth.

O Child of ecstasy and sorrows, O Prince of peace and pain,

brighten today’s world by tomorrow’s,

renew our lives again;

Lord Jesus, come and reign!

Advent calls us to be realistic about the shadow side of life, to mark where we’ve not only grown older but colder, to notice where the verities we knew seem shaken and untrue.  Advent calls us to identify those voices that overshout the voice of reason so we can be more attentive to reason and to the Prince of peace and pain.  

But Advent doesn’t simply ask us to dwell in gloom and shadows.  Advent also calls us to bring light—four lights to restore brightness and health to a self, a nation, a world stumbling in murky clouds of doubt and fear—four lights to prepare the way for the true light of Christ. 

And the first light is Hope.

“Genuine hope is not blind optimism,” said Jürgen Moltmann.  “It is hope with open eyes, which sees the suffering and yet believes in the future.” And perhaps Barack Obama was thinking of Moltmann when he said, ““Hope is not blind optimism. It’s not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It’s not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.”

Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us.

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for,” wrote Barbara Kingsolver. “And the most you can do  is live inside that hope.  Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”[6]

On this first Sunday of Advent, as we begin a new year in the calendar of the Church, we light the candle of Hope.  If the sun is darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars seem to be falling, light the candle of hope.

If we are suffering now because of politics and war and the erosion of truth and trust, Saint Paul reminds us that, “suffering produces endurance,  and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,  and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”[7]  “If we hope for what we do not see,” he said, “we wait for it with patience.”[8]

So if it looks like the sun has been darkened and the moon won’t shine and the stars are falling and the world is more or less metaphorically ending, in the spirit of Advent, let’s be realistic and honest about it.  Let’s stay awake and aware.  And then let’s light a candle of Hope.  Because Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us.

May the God of hopefill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hopeby the power of the Holy Spirit.[9]

[1] CDC National Center for Health Statistics;  2020 Final Death Statistics: Covid 19 as an Underlying Cause of Death vs. contributing Cause

[2] Food Research and Action Center https://frac.org/news/usdafoodsecurityreportsept2024

[3] Isaiah 64:1-2

[4] Jeremiah 33:14-16

[5] Each Winter As the Year Grows Older, William Gay, 1920-2008;

  Tune: Carol of Hope, Annabeth Gay, 1925-2020;  Evangelical Lutheran Worship, #252

[6] Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

[7] Romans 5:4-5

[8] Romans 8:25

[9] Romans 15:13