Tag faith

Out of Love for the Truth

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

John 8:31-36

“Out of love for the truth and from a desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place.  Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence by letter.  In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.”

This was the introduction to the 95 Theses which Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Wittenberg University Chapel on Wednesday, October 31, 1517.   We sometimes think that nailing the 95 Theses to the door of the church was an act of rebellion, and in retrospect it was powerfully symbolic.  But it was actually a normal practice.  The church door served as a kind of bulletin board for the academic community.  If you wanted to propose a debate, that’s where you posted the notice with the propositions to be discussed.

Luther did not intend for the 95 Theses to be a manifesto for rebellion.  He had no idea that his challenge to the practice of selling indulgences would spark a revolutionary movement that would sweep across Europe bringing enormous changes in religion, politics, education, and everyday life, but once that movement started, he gave himself to it body and soul because he was committed to the truth of the Gospel and the love of Christ. 

The truth quite literally set him free from the heavy-handed authority of Rome—the Pope excommunicated him.  But the truth also bound him to the proclamation of salvation by God’s grace through faith and to the authority of God’s word in the scriptures.

Out of love for the truth and from a desire to elucidate it…  

According to the Gospel of John, when Jesus was on trial before Pontius Pilate he stated, “For this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”  In response, Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”  

In some respects that seems like an almost ridiculous question.  We know what truth is.  We learn about truth almost as soon as we learn to talk.  Sadly, that’s also when we learn to lie, because we learn pretty quickly that the truth may reveal things we would like to keep hidden.  We learn very early on that sometimes truth has consequences that we would like to avoid, and that those consequences might be unpleasant or even painful.  

Truth, the dictionary tells us, is the true or actual state of a matter.  Something is true when it is in conformity with reality.  We say a thing is true when it is a verified or indisputable fact.  The truth reflects actuality or actual existence.  When we say a thing is a basic truth, we mean that it is an obvious or accepted or provable fact.  

Truth means that my desires or imagination do not have the final word in determining what is reality and what is not.

There are twenty-seven verses in the gospels that contain the word truth.  Twenty-one of those verses are in the Gospel of John where truth is not only a central theme, it is anchored in and identified with the person of Jesus.  In John 1:14 we read, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”  Three verses later, John puts aside the figurative language of the Word to make it clear who he is talking about: “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

When Jesus sat discussing theology with a Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s Well, he told her that “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.”  This suggests that truth is a vital element in our connection to God.

In chapter 14, not long after Jesus has told Thomas that he, himself, is “the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of truth” and in chapter 16 he tells his disciples that “when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”  In chapter 17, as he prays for the disciples, Jesus asks that they would be sanctified or consecrated in truth.

“For this I was born,” Jesus told Pilate, “and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:37)

In today’s Gospel reading from chapter 8 of John’s gospel, we see a hint that some of those who were listening to Jesus were unsure about continuing to follow him.  Some scholars think that this passage is indicative of tension between Jewish followers of Jesus and Gentile believers in the community where this gospel was written, and that John, the writer, is calling both sides back to the middle ground of the truth found in the person and teaching of Jesus.  

“Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word—if you remain faithful to my teachings, then you are truly my disciples.  And you will come to know the truth.  And the truth will set you free.”  When they protested that they were descendants of Abraham and had never been enslaved by anyone—apparently they forgot about their own history with Babylon and Egypt—Jesus went on to make it clear that he was talking about the truth setting them—and us—free from our slavery to sin.  

But how does the truth set us free from sin?  

René Girard would suggest that truth sets us free from endless mimetic rivalries which are always based in falsehood, fantasy or desire.  Sin is the endless stream of little contests and competitions that we create against each other which escalate, eventually, into big and violent contests.  Truth can free us from this because truth has no bias.  Just as God is the ground of all being, truth is the ground of reality, the neutral acknowledgment of the way things are.  Sin wants to create a different reality or to act as if life is happening in a different reality with different rules.

Martin Luther defined sin as being curved in on the self.  Sin is when I put my preferences, my desires, my ideas, my plans, my goals above and before everyone and everything else.  Sin is me, me, me, me, me taken to the extent that it harms or disenfranchises or marginalizes or disempowers or diminishes or neglects you, you, you, you, you or them, them, them, them, them.  Sin creates a false reality, an illusion centered on my desires, my fears, my imagination.  And that illusion is seductive and captivating.  It ensnares.  It enslaves.  It makes me believe that I am the center of the universe, that what I think or believe or even just what I want very, very badly to be true is what is real.

Truth disabuses me of that illusion.

Once again: Truth means that my desires or imagination do not have the final word in determining what is real and what is not.

We are currently struggling through a time when truth is endangered in our culture.  There’s nothing new about that.  People have always preferred to put their own spin on facts that confront their biases or preconceived ideas or desires.  People throughout history have taken refuge in denial when events or outcomes don’t fit the way they wanted things to happen or the results they wanted.  What’s new is how widespread and militant this devaluation of the truth has become.  

When lies and spin become so prevalent that they begin to undermine any common understanding of basic facts, the world becomes a more dangerous place.  When people refuse to accept observable facts, when there is no longer the common cultural ground of truth based on fact, then there is no longer a starting point for discussion or compromise.  There is no way to move past confrontation and opposed binary positions that divide us.  When people lift up conspiracy theories and “alternative facts” as justification for their actions or opinions then we stand on the precipice of political violence.  

Sadly, we have seen clear examples of that lately.  It has become the sin of our society fed by the polarity of our politics.

The proliferation of misinformation and outright lies in our political and social conversation has become so common and problematic that our ELCA Conference of Bishops recently issued a joint statement to address the problem. These are the opening lines of their statement:

We know that the power of truth is greater than the power of deceit.

We, the members of the Conference of Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, speak with one voice to condemn the hateful, deceptive, violent speech that has too readily found a place in our national discourse. We lament the ways this language has led to hate-fueled action. We refuse to accept the ongoing normalization of lies and deceit. We recommit ourselves to speaking the truth and pointing to the one who is truth. 

We refuse to accept the ongoing normalization of lies and deceit.  We recommit ourselves to speaking the truth.   To do otherwise is sin.

Sin convinces me that I stand apart from the rest of humanity.  But the truth, the fact, is that I am deeply and intimately connected to the rest of humanity and, in fact, to all of creation.  Standing apart is an illusion.  Rugged individualism is a destructive myth—destructive because it undermines and negates the relationships that keep us alive in every sense of the word.

“We must all overcome the illusion of separateness,” said Richard Rohr.  “It is the primary task of religion to communicate not worthiness but union, to reconnect people to their original identity “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). The Bible calls the state of separateness ‘sin.’ God’s job description is to draw us back into primal and intimate relationship.”

As followers of Jesus, we are called to live in the imitation of God.  We are called to observe what God is doing all the time and everywhere and then do the same.  We are called to be generous because God is generous.  We are called to be creative because God is creative.  We are called to embrace diversity because God revels in diversity so much that no two things are exactly alike in the entire universe.  But above and beyond everything else, we are called to love.  “Love,” said St. Paul, “does not rejoice in unrighteousness, it rejoices in the truth.” (1 Cor 13:6)  Untruth is corrosive to love.  Lies and deception undermine and chip away at love until it disappears.  But truth reinforces love and makes it stronger.  There’s a reason we talk about “true” love.

We are called to love because God loves.  God is love.  Richard Rohr has said, God does not love us if and when we change.  God loves us so that we can change. That is the essence of grace—the grace that makes us whole, the grace that heals us, the grace that reunites us, the grace that saves us and leads us into the truth.  Truth is where all grace begins.

At the conclusion of their statement, the ELCA Bishops gave us some good practical advice to help us ensure that our lives, thoughts, speech and actions are anchored in grace and truth:

We find courage in our collegiality and implore the members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, as well as our partners and friends, to join us as we:

  • Pledge to be vigilant guardians of truth, refusing to perpetuate lies or half-truths that further corrode the fabric of our society.
  • Commit to rigorous fact-checking, honoring God’s command to “test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
  • Reject the use of humor that normalizes falsehood, remembering that our speech should “always be gracious” (Colossians 4:6).
  • Boldly advocate for the marginalized and oppressed, emulating Christ’s love for the least among us.
  • Courageously interrupt hate speech, standing firm in the knowledge that all are created in God’s image.
  • Lean in with curiosity, engage with those who think differently and “put the best construction on our neighbor’s action” (Luther’s explanation of the Eighth Commandment).
  • Amplify voices of truth.

Emboldened by the Holy Spirit, may we resist deception and lift up the truth that all members of humanity are created in the image of God.

On this Sunday, we celebrate a Reformation began with the words, “Out of love for the truth…”.  May we resist the sin of deception and live with a commitment to truth that continues to reform and refresh our faith, our lives and our world.  In the name of the Way and the Truth and the Life.

Whatever We Ask

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

Mark 10:35-45

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossing to the Other Side

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

Mark 4:35-41

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have preached that sermon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

image © Laura James

Scattering Seeds

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Mark 4:26-34

With what can we compare the kingdom of God…  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To what shall we compare it?

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

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

On earth as in heaven.

When Mom Doesn’t Like Your Job

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Mark 3:20-35

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What the World Needs Now

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

John 15:9-17

“What the world needs now is love, sweet love.  It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”  Jackie DeShannon was absolutely right when that song reached the top of the charts back in 1965.  And the Beatles were right, too, when they had a megahit with All You Need Is Love in 1967.  But Jesus said it first.  A long time before John Lennon and Paul McCartney or Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

Love is a powerful force.  It creates relationships.  It can overcome fear and hate.  Love is what created the universe.  It can sometimes transform things instantaneously, but more often it builds and changes things slowly.  Over time. Because love is patient and kind.

Love can improve your health.  It can even make you more successful, although that is entirely a side-effect.

In 1938, during the Great Depression, a group of doctors at Harvard Medical School began a long-term study to determine what factors contributed most to long-term health and well-being in men.  The Study of Adult Development has been ongoing for more than 80 years now.  Once selected, participants are followed for the rest of their lives.  They fill out a questionnaire every other year covering their physical and mental health, financial status, relationship status, and general level of happiness.  Every five years some of the men are selected at random for more in-depth study.  

Some of the findings in the study haven’t been all that surprising.  For instance, they’ve verified that alcoholism is destructive.  It has been the primary cause of divorce among study participants and it strongly correlates with neurosis and depression.  So, no big surprise there.  But here’s one that is surprising:  financial success depends more on warm relationships than on intelligence. In fact “warm relationships” play a huge role in lifetime satisfaction, wealth, and well-being.

A warm childhood relationship with your mother makes a difference long into adulthood:

  • Men who had warm childhood relationships with their mothers earned considerably more per year than men whose mothers were uncaring.
  • Men who had poor childhood relationships with their mothers were much more likely to develop dementia in later life.
  • In professional life, a man’s boyhood relationship with his mother—but not with his father—was associated with greater effectiveness at work.

But a warm relationship with your father is important, too. Warm childhood relationships with fathers correlated with:

  • Lower rates of adult anxiety.
  • Greater enjoyment of vacations.
  • Increased life satisfaction at age 75.

When George Vaillant, the former director of the Study, was interviewed by The Atlantic, his main conclusion was that “warm relationships” throughout life had a greater positive influence on “life satisfaction” than anything else—greater than money, greater than achievement, greater than acquisition and accumulation of things.  Warm relationships, he said, were the greatest predictor of happiness.  By far.  “Put differently,” Vaillant says,  “The study shows happiness is love. Full stop.”[1]  When a Canadian broadcaster suggested that his statement was overly broad and sentimental, Vaillant looked down at his data then looked up and replied,  “The answer is L-O-V-E.”[2]

“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you,” said Jesus.  “Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”

The word “love” here is agape which is a particular kind of love.  This isn’t a sentimental or emotional love, although it can develop into warm feelings.  But agape doesn’t start that way.  Agape is a decision.  It starts in the head before it moves to the heart.  Madeleine L’Engle described it this way:  “Agape love is…profound concern for the well-being of another, without any desire to control that other, to be thanked by that other, or to enjoy the process.”   

Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess.  It begins by loving others for their own sakes… Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both. It is redemptive goodwill for all people.  It is a love that asks nothing in return.  It is an overflowing love…And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love people not because they are likeable, but because God loves them.”   

When Saint Paul writes that Love is patient and kind, that love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, that it doesn’t insist on its own way, that love it is not irritable or resentful, that it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth…when he writes that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, when he writes that love never quits, he is describing agape.  

When Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you,” that’s the kind of love he is talking about, the decision to act for the well-being of others.  So what about those warm feelings that can have such a positive effect?  Well, agape love may start in your head as a decision, but it often moves to the heart because when you love with agape love, you make yourself vulnerable.  That’s part of the decision.  That’s why, right after Jesus reminds his disciples that he loves them, he goes on to call them his friends.

“Abide in my love,” says Jesus.  Most of us don’t use the word “Abide” too often.  The Greek word that’s at work here is meno, which means to stay, to remain, to continue, to continue to exist.  It’s in the imperative form here, so Jesus says it as a command.  Continue to exist in my love.  Stay in my love.

There are two ways to think about that.  One is that Jesus surrounds us with his love and commands us to stay inside the parameters of that love as we act and interact with each other and the world.  This might be what Saint Paul means when he talks about being “in Christ.”  

The other way to understand it is to see that our lives have been infused with the love of Jesus and we are now commanded to continue to regenerate that love for those around us, to keep spreading it out into the world.  Both understandings work.  Both keep the love of God flowing.  And Jesus assures us that if we keep the commandment to love, we will continue to abide, to exist, within the love of God.

“I have said these things to you,” said Jesus, “so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” This statement always catches me by surprise.  

I’ll be honest, I don’t usually think of Jesus as joyful.  You certainly don’t see him depicted that way very often in the gospels.  We see him arguing with scribes and Pharisees or impatient with his disciples when they’re being dense. We see his generosity, especially when he’s healing.  We see his power when he’s casting out demons, there’s certainly something energetic about that.  But joyful?  

When you think about it, the episodes of cranky or serious Jesus that we see depicted in the gospels are brief and they’re probably very much the exception rather than the rule.  We do see him dining with tax collectors and sinners.  Those were probably fun times.  He does tell the occasional joke—you know, a camel through the eye of a needle?  And joy would explain why huge crowds came to see him.  Joy is attractive!  Joy is charismatic!

So Jesus commands us to continue to exist in his agape love so that his joy may be in us and so that our joy may be complete.  And then to make it crystal clear that he’s serious about this—joyfully serious—he makes love a commandment.  “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

As I have loved you.    

“No one has greater love than this,” continues Jesus, “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  He’s referring to the cross here, of course, hinting at just how far he will go to demonstrate his agape love for all of us.  He will lay down his physical life.

But he might be referring to even more if we dive down below the surface.  The word that’s translated as “life” here is psyche.  It means living soul, inner self, mind.  It can also mean what we refer to as “ego.”  Richard Rohr has said that in order to learn how to fully and truly love we have to learn how to get our egos out of the way.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s ego for one’s friends.

“Authentic Christianity,” says Rohr, “is not so much a belief system as a life-and-death system that shows you how to give away your life, how to give away your love, and eventually how to give away your death.  Basically, how to give away—and in doing so, to connect with the world, with all other creatures, and with God…Here the primary language is unlearning, letting go, surrendering, serving others, and not the language of self-development—which often lurks behind our popular notions of salvation.”[4]

Paul Tillich once wrote about meeting a Swedish woman who had spent time in a prison camp for giving aid and comfort to prisoners and orphans during World War I.  He found in her a personification of that “greater love.”  “It is a rare gift to meet a human being in whom love – this means God – is so overwhelmingly manifest,” he wrote. “It undercuts theological arrogance as well as pious isolation. It is more than justice and greater than faith or hope. It is the very presence of God in the form of a human being. For God is love. In every moment of genuine love we are dwelling in God and God in us.”

When you let God’s love flow through you, you begin to love, as John Duns Scotus says, things in themselves and for themselves, and not for what they do for you.  That’s when you begin to love your spouse.  That’s when you begin to really love others—when you start seeing them detached from you or what they do for you or how they make you look or what they can get for you. 

When we love, we manifest God.  It’s as simple as that.  As it says in Ephesians, “I pray that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith as you are being rooted and grounded in love.  I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”[1]

When you love things and people in themselves, you are looking out at the world with the eyes of God.  When you look out from those eyes, you see that it’s not about you.  And you will see things that will give you joy.  Simple things will make you happy. Reality will start giving you joy, inherently.  And you will start overcoming the gap between you and everything else.

Abide in Christ’s love.  Be a friend of Jesus.  Build those warm relationships in the world.  So that Christ’s joy may be in you.  And your joy may be complete.

[1] Ephesians 3:16-19

To Know By Heart

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

John 10:11-18

You are one of a kind.  Even if you have an identical twin there is a lot about you that is unique.  Your fingerprints are unique, of course, but did you know that your toeprints are, too?  Your voiceprint is also unique and can be used to identify you.  The patterns in the irises of your eyes are yours and yours alone, and so are the patterns of the blood vessels in your retinas.  Your gait when you walk is uniquely yours and can be used to pick you out from a crowd.  You can be singled out from a multitude of other people online by patterns in the way you type on your keyboard or move your mouse, a little trick that’s been used, apparently, in espionage.  But here’s a new one—at least it was new to me.  Did you know you have a distinctive cardiac signature?   That’s right.  Your heart beats in a way that is unique to you and can’t be disguised.  The Pentagon has recently developed a laser-based tool called Jetson that can read your cardiac signature through your clothes from 200 meters away.  So now if somebody says they know your heart you might want to ask exactly what they mean by that.

“I know my own and my own know me,” said Jesus, “just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.”   Jesus knows your heart, although clearly not in the same way that the Pentagon’s invasive new toy does.  More importantly, though, we know the heart of Jesus.  We know he loves us and he cares for us enough to lay down his life for us.

Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd.  I wonder how many of us really understand what he means by that.  I think what comes to mind for a lot of us when we hear “Good Shepherd” is a kind of greeting card image or something from a stained glass window.  We picture Jesus looking pristine in a white robe with a gentle, pure white lamb draped across his shoulders.  Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.  But that image is a far cry from what the people listening to Jesus on that long-ago day in Jerusalem would have been picturing when Jesus described himself as the Good Shepherd.

When Jesus was talking to people two thousand years ago in Galilee and Judea, he used metaphors that were part of their everyday lives.  Many of these metaphors also echoed their scriptures and history.  That’s one of the things that made him such an effective teacher, but it also made him controversial sometimes.  

Even people who had never been outside of Jerusalem’s walls knew about shepherds.  They were a common sight.  They had all seen shepherds bringing sheep into the city for the markets and for sacrifices in the temple.  

The Shepherd was also an image from their faith heritage.  Joseph, one of the 12 sons of Jacob, had been a shepherd.  Jacob worked as a shepherd for Laban so he could marry Rachel and Leah who had also tended sheep.  Zipporah, the wife of Moses, had tended flocks with her sisters.  Moses tended sheep before God called him to lead his people out of Egypt.  King David started out as a shepherd.  

The prophets spoke of the kings and religious leaders or Israel as shepherds—sometimes good, but sometimes not so much.  The prophet Jeremiah wasn’t pulling any punches when he wrote, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord.  Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the LORD.”

God was regarded as the ultimate shepherd and, through the prophets, often spoke of the people of Israel as “my flock.”   In Psalm 80, the Psalmist cries out, “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock! You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth!”  And, of course, there is Psalm 23 where David sings of his reliance on God with the words, “The Lord is my shepherd.”

When Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd, it brought a particular image to mind for those listening to him, but it wasn’t stained glass and greeting cards.  There was nothing particularly pristine in their picture of a shepherd.  They knew that shepherding was a very physical, dirty, and smelly job.  But they also knew that good shepherds were strong and  brave and tough when they had to be to protect the sheep.  When David was still young, he told  King Saul that he was tough enough to take on Goliath because, as a shepherd in the field, he had already killed a bear and a lion.  

At night, when a shepherd would bring the sheep in from the pasture into the safety of the fold, he would recline across the opening of the sheepfold, making his own body the gate of the sheep pen, a barrier between the sheep and any predators or thieves, so that anything or anyone that tried to get at the sheep would have to do it across his body.

Often several shepherds would bring multiple flocks into a large sheepfold for the night.  When it was time to lead them out again to pasture in the morning, each shepherd would simply start calling out to their sheep with a call that was familiar to their own flock.  Each flock knew their own shepherd’s distinct voice and would follow him and only him out to pasture.  So again, when Jesus says, “My sheep know my voice,” he is using a metaphor that’s familiar to all his listeners.  

So why is Jesus using this powerful image in that time and place?  He’s in the precincts of the temple.  He is already in hot water for healing on the sabbath, bringing sight to a man born blind.  This is all happening during the Feast of the Dedication, Hannukah, the feast that commemorates the rededication of the temple after the victory of the uprising led by Judas Maccabeus over Antiochus Epiphanes in 164 BCE.  Judas Maccabeus was a national hero, someone whom the Jews thought of, historically, as a good shepherd.  The temple was the place that more than any other symbolized the people’s covenant relationship with God.  So with all that as background, the Pharisees and temple authorities are listening to Jesus very carefully.  And what Jesus says is, to their ears, very provocative.

“I am the Good Shepherd,” says Jesus.  Just what is he saying?  Is he comparing himself to Moses?  To David? To Judas Maccabeus? Was he comparing himself to their great prophets and kings, the revered political and military leaders or the past, the heroes who had freed them from their oppressors and enemies? 

Was Jesus equating himself with God, the ultimate Good Shepherd?   Just what did he mean when he said, “I am the Good Shepherd.” They had to be wondering.  

And then he said this: “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”  Who was he talking about?  Could he be talking about gentiles?  Was he talking about bringing them into the covenant?  Into the temple?  This was both unsettling and provocative to the Pharisees and temple authorities.

Who would those other sheep be for us today?  Who are those who are “not of this sheepfold”—or not of this church, maybe?—who Jesus intends to bring into the flock?

“There will be one flock,” said Jesus.  One flock.  One shepherd.  None of the artificial distinctions we’re so fond of making.  No us.  No them.  The Good Shepherd has gone outside the sheepfold to call in all the sheep who know his voice.  All of them.  All of us.  Are we ready to be one big happy flock with sheep we don’t know? Even if some of them have different kinds of wool?  One flock.  One shepherd.

“I know my own and my own know me.”   I wonder about that statement.  Is it always that straightforward?  Especially the second part—“my own know me”?  The other day I saw a video on Facebook that made me really think about what happens when the sheep don’t really know the shepherd, when they’re not really attuned to the shepherd’s voice.  

The video was shot by a man who was taking a nice leisurely hike through a forest in France.  As he came around a bend in the trail he saw a woman in red shorts jogging toward him and behind her was a fairly sizable flock of sheep.  When she got up to the man, who captured all this on his phone, she stopped to talk to him and the sheep came to a full stop behind her.  He asked her if she always led her sheep through the forest and she told him that they were, in fact, not her sheep.  These sheep had all just been milling around near the beginning of the trail and when she jogged by them, they all just turned and began jogging along right behind her.  When she stopped, they stopped.  When she ran, they ran.  When she finished explaining this to the man, she started jogging back down the trail and the sheep swept past him, the whole flock, running along behind the woman they had mistaken for their shepherd. 

“I know my own and my own know me.”  We think we know our Shepherd, but sometimes we make mistakes.  Sometimes we go jogging off behind other shepherds.  

I know I’ve sometimes been misled into following other voices.  It’s easy to follow the voice of politics or partisanship or moralism or prestige or money.  It’s easy to get caught up by voices that try to flock us together around national or racial or cultural or generational or religious identity.  

It’s easy to follow someone who looks like they know where they’re going or sounds like they know what they’re doing.  It’s easy to be misled out into a forest  full of unseen dangers.  

It’s easy, sometimes, to think you’re following the Good Shepherd when it’s actually someone else mimicking his voice or borrowing his name for their own purposes.  We all saw those “Jesus” signs at the January 6th Capitol Insurrection.  I’m pretty sure that wasn’t really the Good Shepherd inspiring that activity.  We’ve all seen politicians standing in front of churches or holding up Bibles to buttress their authority or polish their image

“My own know me,” said Jesus.  Well, with practice, yes.  I think that’s our never-ending homework—to keep listening, to keep learning to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd in a world that so noisy with other voices, to discern the voice of Christ above all the pretenders and the racket and the misguided or misleading “shepherds” that try to distract us.  

“My own know me.”  Maybe Jesus states this so positively, so affirmatively, so that we have to take it as a goal and not make a liar out of him.  “My own know me.”  Okay, Jesus.  I will do everything I can to make that’s true, to make sure I know you.  

But that first part—that part where Jesus says “I know my own,” –-that’s where the good news is for us.  Even when we have wandered off through the forest following the wrong voice or our own stubborn inclinations, Jesus still knows us. Jesus still says to us, You belong to me.  You are mine.  I know you.  I know your going out and your coming in.  I know your fingerprints and your toeprints and the pattern of your irises.  I know your heart.  I have your cardiac signature.  You are mine.

There will be one flock.  One shepherd…who knows the heart of each and every one of us.  A Shepherd who has laid down his life for us.  That’s the Shepherd we can follow.  That’s the voice we can trust. 

The Final Truth

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

John 12:20-33

As some of you know, I used to be a musician.  But I don’t listen to music anymore.  I can’t, really, since I have lost so much of my hearing. Music just doesn’t sound the same to me, and it’s frustrating because I know what it’s supposed to sound like.  So I don’t listen to music anymore.  Except in my memory.  

I do have a very good memory for music, and I can still hear a lot of pieces quite well in my mind’s ear, so to speak.  And in my dreams.  I dream in music a lot.  Sometimes in my dreams I hear pieces I wrote.  Sometimes I compose new pieces.  And quite often in my dreams I hear favorite pieces that have been part of the soundtrack of my life.  When that happens, I usually figure that it’s a kind of message from me to me, something my subconscious wants to tell me or remind me of.  Or… it could be the Holy Spirit.  Just saying.

The other morning, as I was still in that lovely place between sleeping and waking—you know, that place where you’re no longer fully asleep but you’re not really awake yet either—while I was still in that dreamy place, my mental mixtape began to play the song Nightingale by Judy Collins, a song that has always had a special place in my heart.  Joshua Rifkin’s orchestration of that song and Judy Collins’ voice are simply exquisite.  But her lyrics—her lyrics in that song are nothing short of profound.

Jacob’s heart bent with fear,

Like a bow with death for its arrow;

In vain he searched for the final truth

To set his soul free of doubt.

Over the mountains he walked,

With his head bent searching for reasons;

Then he called out to God

For help and climbed to the top of a hill.

Wind swept the sunlight through the wheat fields,

In the orchard the nightingale sang,

While the plums that she broke with her brown beak

Tomorrow would turn into songs.

Then she flew up through the rain

With the sun silver bright on her feathers.

Jacob put back his frowns and sighed and walked

Back down the hill.

God doesn’t answer me and

He never will.

As I lay there in bed, slowly waking up while the words and music of Nightingale faded, I thought about how often we are like poor Jacob in that song, our hearts bent with fear, searching in vain for some final truth that will set our souls free of doubt. 

I thought of how often, like Jacob, we walk across the beauty of God’s creation with our heads bent down as we search for some kind of enlightenment in the dark recesses of our own reasoning. 

Or maybe on our phones.  

I imagined Jacob calling out to God for help as he climbed to the top of the hill.  I thought of him watching the wind sweep the sunlight through the wheat fields, how he heard the nightingale sing from the orchard then watched as she flew up through the rain with the sun silver bright on her feathers.  

Lying in my bed, half awake, I thought about how Jacob, in the song, saw and heard all that beauty… and utterly failed to see or hear God’s presence, the answer to his prayer, the final truth that could set his soul free of doubt.

And as I rested in the gentle beauty of that music and the powerful imagery of those lyrics, I suddenly found myself thinking about those Greeks in the Gospel of John who wanted to see Jesus.

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  (John 12:20-21)

We don’t really know anything about the Greeks who made this request.  Were they Greek proselytes preparing to convert to Judaism?  Were they tourists who had come to see the temple?  After all, it was one of the wonders of the world at that time, and what better time to see it than during one of Israel’s most important festivals?  Had they heard that Jesus could work miracles and were maybe hoping to see one for themselves?  Were they interested in becoming disciples?  

Those are all possibilities, but I can’t help but think that maybe they wanted to have some kind of philosophical discussion with Jesus.  Greeks, after all, had a reputation of being philosophical by nature.  As St. Paul noted in 1 Corinthians, “Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom.”  So maybe that’s what they were looking for.  Maybe they wanted some time with Jesus the teacher of wisdom.  Maybe they were looking for the final truth to set their souls free of doubt.

We don’t really know anything about these Greeks or their motives.  But we surely can understand their request: We would like to see Jesus.  

I would like to see Jesus. Wouldn’t you?  Oh, I know I see him all the time in a Matthew 25 kind of way.  I see him in people in need.  I see him in people enduring injustice.  I see him in people pushed to the margins.  I see him in people whose lives are disrupted by religion or politics or violence or war or the economics of greed.  I see him.  

I do.  

And I see him in a 1 Corinthians 12, Body-of-Christ kind of  way, too.  I see him in the kindness of friends and strangers.  I see him in the ways we support each other and lift each other up and work together to dial up the love and grace and dial down the anger and fear and hate.  

I see Jesus in you.  

I see Jesus in you and that keeps me going.

But sometimes I would like to see Jesus the way Philip and Andrew saw him.  Face to face.  Wouldn’t you?

A few years ago, on the website Journey with Jesus, Debi Thomas wrote,  “I know what it’s like to want Jesus in earnest — to want his presence, his guidance, his example, and his companionship.  I know what it’s like to want — not him, but things from him: safety, health, immunity, ease.  I know what it’s like to want a confrontation — a no-holds-barred opportunity to express my disappointment, my sorrow, my anger, and my bewilderment at who Jesus is compared to who I want him to be.”[1]  

It stings to read that, but it’s so honest.  “I know what it’s like to want—not him, but things from him.”  It makes me think of that African American spiritual we sing sometimes, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me.  “I want Jesus to walk with me; all along my pilgrim journey, Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me;  In my trials, Lord, walk with me; when my heart is almost breaking, Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me;  When I’m in trouble, Lord, walk with me; when my head is bowed in sorrow, Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.”

I want to see Jesus.  I want Jesus to walk with me.  But am I ready to walk with him? That, right there, is a pivot point of spiritual growth.  Why do I want to see Jesus?  How do I want to see Jesus?  Do I want to see Jesus because I want something from him?  Do I want to see Jesus because my faith is wavering?  Do I want Jesus to tell me some final truth to set my soul free from doubt?

Am I willing to let Jesus be the final truth that sets my soul free of doubt?

Do I want to see Jesus because I want to surrender to him?  Do I want to see Jesus so I can follow him and serve him?  

Those are the kinds of questions we need to ask ourselves when we feel that powerful yearning to see Jesus.  And let’s be clear.  There are no wrong answers here… except dishonest answers.  

We don’t know why those Greeks at the Festival wanted to see Jesus.  What we do know is that as soon as Philip and Andrew came to Jesus with their request, Jesus began to talk about the cost of discipleship and about his own coming death.  

We might be singing “I want Jesus to walk with me,” but Jesus responds with, “Fine.  Walk with me. But this is where I’m going. You might not like it.”

When Peter and Andrew told Jesus that the Greek visitors wanted to meet him, Jesus answered, “Time’s up. The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.’”[2]  That’s how Eugene Peterson paraphrased it in The Message Bible.  Time’s up. 

The time for sightseeing is over.  The time for spectator discipleship is over.  Now the Human One will be glorified.  Glorified.  As in martyred.  As in putting the cost of God’s love on full display.

“Listen carefully,” he says. “Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.  In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.”[3]  

Jesus is telling his disciples, then and now, a message that disciples are always reluctant to hear.  If you cling to your life just the way it is, you will destroy it.  If you loosen your grip on life as you know it, if you let go of it in reckless love, you’ll have it forever.  

Reckless love.  Reckless love of God.  Reckless love of yourself.  Reckless love of others.  Reckless love is eternal.  Reckless love is the final truth.  

“If any of you wants to serve me, then follow me,” said Jesus. 

We would like to see Jesus.  But do we want to see him so we can serve him?  Do we want to see him so we can learn to be better followers?  Are we willing to be buried…like seeds…so we can grow into something more amazing than we can even begin to imagine?  

The language that Jesus uses here as he talks to the Greek visitors and his disciples and the crowd and us is all imagery and metaphor. The time has come to be glorified. When a seed is planted.  When I am lifted up.  But all that poetic language is euphemism for the horrifying reality of the cross.  Are we willing to go there to see Jesus?

Beginning next Sunday we will observe again the events of Holy Week, a week that builds to the brutal torture and crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday.  Attendance at worship on Good Friday is always low.  We want to see Jesus…but we don’t want to see Jesus on the cross.  We don’t want to see Jesus die, especially not in such an ugly, helpless, bloody and brutal way.

We don’t want to see Jesus willingly take on the hatred, the contempt, the violence, even the sheer indifference of this world—taking it all into his own body.  We want to see Jesus, but we don’t want to see Jesus there.  Like that.  

We want to see Jesus in a hundred other ways—muscular super-hero Jesus, miracle-worker Jesus, wisdom Jesus, justice radical Jesus (my personal favorite), social worker Jesus, American Jesus wrapped in a flag.  But Jesus on the cross?

That’s where reckless love takes Jesus.  That’s what he is saying in all that poetic language.  The seed will be buried and dead to the world.

If we want to see Jesus, really see Jesus, we need to look to the cross… because that’s where, in reckless love, he opens his heart and his arms to you.  

And me.  

And the whole world.  

And that’s the final truth.

[1] Debi Thomas, Journey With Jesus, 14 March 2021

[2] The Message, John 12:23

[3] The Message, John 12:24-25

[4] The Message, John 12:26

Pardon Our Disruption

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Numbers 21:4-9; John 3:14-21

Such an intriguing story in the Book of Numbers.  The people of Israel are on the road between Mt. Hor and the Gulf of Aqaba.  They’re complaining.  Again.  This time they’re not happy with the food.  It’s always something.  Anyway, the people grumbled, so the Lord sent poisonous snakes among them, and many Israelites were bitten and died.  That’s how the Israelites tell the story.

Nobody ever tells the story from the snakes’ point of view.  I mean, look at it from their perspective. They were all just slithering around, minding their own snaky business in Snake Land when suddenly the whole nation of Israel showed up with all their arguments, grumbling and complaints and pitched camp right on top of them, driving tent pegs down into their dens, breaking their eggs, chasing them with sticks, throwing rocks at them, hacking at them with swords… So yeah, they bit a few of them.  They were just trying to defend themselves.  They weren’t trying to kill anybody.  Why would they?  The Israelites were too big to eat…at least for those kinds of snakes.  

The text tells us that Moses prayed to the Lord to make the snakes go away.  But maybe the leader of the snakes also prayed to the Lord to make the people go away.  Maybe the leader of the snakes suggested that the Lord could tell Moses to put a big bronze snake up on a pole to remind the people that they were in snake territory, and that the snakes were there first thank you very much, so they should be careful where they were poking around and pitching their tents.  

Well, that’s not the way we get the story in the Book of Numbers, but then snakes never were any good at public relations, and they don’t come off too well in the Bible as a rule.  Still, it’s interesting that in this particular instance, even in the Moses version of the story, God is using the snakes to accomplish God’s business and that includes healing cranky, ungrateful people from snakebite… which they wouldn’t have got bit in the first place if they hadn’t been cranky and ungrateful and gone poking about looking for something else to eat when there wasn’t anything kosher out there to begin with.

So, the moral of that story is be grateful for what you have, even if you’re a little tired of it.  And leave the snakes alone.  

Many, many, many, many, many years later, this story would come up again when Jesus sat down one night with a Pharisee named Nicodemus.  Jesus was trying to help Nicodemus understand some very basic things about living in the love of God.  This was difficult for Nicodemus because he was a very smart and knowledgeable person.  A teacher, in fact.  He knew the sacred writings of Israel backwards and forwards and upside down, but the things Jesus was saying mystified him.  He had a lot to unlearn.  The way he understood things got in the way of him comprehending things…if you know what I mean.  

Jesus was trying to help Nicodemus learn how to see and enter and experience the kingdom of God.  The Commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness.  Nicodemus was trying hard to get his head around it, but what he really needed to do was to put his whole heart into it.  

Nicodemus needed another pathway into the mystery.

“It’s like this,” said Jesus.  “Remember when Moses lifted up that bronze snake in the wilderness?  It’s like that, Nicodemus.  The Human One will also be lifted up.  And in the same way that people were healed when they looked to that bronze snake gleaming in the sun, they’ll be healed when they look to the Human One, only they’ll be healed of something much more deadly than snake venom.

“Have you ever wondered, Nicodemus, what kind of magic was at work in that bronze snake on that pole in the desert.  It was a powerful magic, stronger than any other kind of magic.  When people looked at that snake on the pole, the light flashing off of it pierced their hearts and reminded them that they had complained against Moses and against God.  They had been in a desert, in a land of no food and no water, and God had provided for them!  But they were ungrateful.  There was poison in their hearts and it came out in their words.  The snakes biting them was a kind of metaphor for the way they had been treating each other.  And Moses.  And God.

“When they looked at that bronze snake glinting in the desert sun, they could see a very unflattering image of themselves.  They could taste the bitterness of their ingratitude and the venom of their complaining.  It made them stop and think.  It made them remember all the ways that God had been taking care of them.  They repented.  And they were healed, because they also saw that God loved them enough to put up with them long enough to transform them.  They could stop being snakes, metaphorical or otherwise.  The magic, the power that flowed from that snake on the pole was God’s forgiveness and God’s love and God’s vision of a better way to be. 

“But people forget, Nicodemus.  The lessons they’ve learned don’t always carry over from one generation to the next even when they’re written down and kept in the book of memories. 

“And now the whole world is snakebit, Nicodemus.  People believe they are walking always and everywhere under the dark night of God’s judgment.  They don’t see that they have been always and everywhere in the bright light of God’s love.  They’re perishing.  Their souls are dying because they can’t let themselves believe they are loved.

“Listen, Nicodemus.  God loves the world so much that God has given God’s unique Son so that whoever trusts and follows him won’t perish, won’t fade into an everlasting death and nothingness, but will instead live forever in the light of God’s love.  

“You think God is about judgment, Nicodemus?   I’ll tell you about judgment.  God wants to bring everyone and everything, even the snakes, into the light of God’s love.  But some don’t want to come.  Some want to stay in the dark.  Some want to keep living in the deep shadows of hatred and fear, and us versus them.  Some have a greedy hunger in them that wouldn’t be satisfied if they swallowed the whole world.  Some think they are the whole world and don’t have room in their hearts for anyone or anything else.  They think they’re all that and a bag of chips.  Some, Nicodemus, many really, want to keep judging others, because it’s the only way they can make themselves feel like they have any value, so they just keep living in the shadow of judgment…and the shadow of their own fears.

“But the Son of God is not here to judge, Nicodemus.  The Son is here to make people whole.  To save them from self-destruction.  To lead people out of the shadows.

“The world has forgotten how lovely it is, Nicodemus.  The Son of God has come to help the world remember, to relearn its beauty and its kindness.  

“The world has forgotten that when God created everything God said it was good.  All of it.  Everyone.  Even the snakes.

“The Son of God has come to help people remember Original Goodness.[1]

“When they see the Human One lifted up, Nicodemus, they will be reminded of all the ugly things that happen in a snakebit world.  They will be reminded of how the venom in their own hearts and souls can wound and kill.  And then they will remember they weren’t made that way.  Then they will see the love of God.  They will see that the Son came out of love, not out of need.  And the love of God will transform them.  They will step back into the light of God’s love.”

All of that is what Jesus was trying to get Nicodemus to  understand.  And us.  It’s what he would like us to understand, too.

When you think about it, all of this is about disruption. 

The Israelites disrupted the generally sleepy life of the snakes when they pitched camp in their territory. The snakes disrupted the grumbly and quarrelsome life of the Israelites when they started biting them.  God and Moses disrupted the poisonous dynamics of fear and dissatisfaction when they set up the snake on a pole.  Nicodemus disrupted Jesus’ quiet evening when he dropped by at night for a private interview.  In his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus disrupted our understanding of theology and the scriptures, especially our understanding of how judgment works.  Or doesn’t.

God works through disruptions to transform things and people. 

Sometimes life is disrupted by things that are completely beyond our control.

March 10, is the anniversary of the Long Beach earthquake of 1933, a disruption that killed 115 to 120 people and caused an estimated $40 million in damage.  That would be more than $800 million today.  Two hundred thirty school buildings were either destroyed or declared unsafe for use.  Out of that disruption, though, came new standards for building safety, including specific codes for school buildings.  New methods of government assistance for disaster response and reconstruction were instituted, too, as people realized that these kinds of resources were needed when damage was too widespread or extensive to expect a city to be able to recover and rebuild on its own.  Essentially, we found new ways to take care of each other.  To love each other.

That disruption has faded into the history books, but there is another disruption that we’re all too aware of, one that is still disrupting our lives in some ways.  

Four years ago this previous week was our last week of “normal” life as our lives were disrupted by the devastating pandemic of Covid 19.

For more than a year we lived in isolation, unable to worship in church together, unable to gather in our sanctuaries.  Our buildings.  But we never stopped being church.  The disruption of the pandemic made being church more difficult in some ways, but it also transformed us in some important ways, too.  Like all disruptions, it taught us more about who we are and invited us to think about who we want to be, who we are called to be, as we move forward.

The Israelites weren’t the same people when they left the land of the snakes.  They complained less and were more grateful.  Life-as-usual had been disrupted.

Nicodemus wasn’t the same person when the sun rose the next morning as he was when he had sat down with Jesus in the dark of night before.  He had begun to understand both God’s love and God’s judgment differently.  Everything he knew, everything he understood had been disrupted. You might say he was being reborn.

We aren’t the same people we were four years ago.  All the patterns of our lives have been disrupted.  In a time when need and circumstances required us to stay physically apart you would think we would have made every effort to find ways to pull together, but all too often, as a nation at least, we let the polarity of our dysfunctional politics pull us farther apart.  We have seen the damage caused by the venom of our fears and anger.  But we have also heard the voice of Christ calling us together and helping us relearn our loveliness,  reminding us of our Original Goodness. 

We have seen the serpent lifted up in the desert.  But also the cross lifted at calvary.  Through earthquake or pandemic, climate disruption or politics…even snakes…  God’s love still flows to carry us through it all.  Together.  The only question is this: will we let ourselves be healed and transformed so we can build something new, or will we just keep biting each other?

In Jesus’ name.

[1] Genesis 1:31

The Big If

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

One of my first courses in seminary was an overview of Martin Luther’s life and writings taught by the late, great Dr. Timothy Lull.  

Luther frequently wrote or spoke about his battles with the devil so it was natural that we ended up in a lively discussion in class one morning about Luther’s understanding of evil and Satan.  During that discussion, one of my classmates asked, “Dr. Lull, do you believe in Satan.”  The room was suddenly silent as Dr. Lull paused and looked out the window, deep in thought.  Finally, he turned back to us and said, “No.  I don’t believe in Satan.  But let me explain.  Luther tells us that to say ‘I believe’ is the same as saying ‘I trust.’  I save the words ‘I believe’ for God.  I believe in God.  I trust God.  I would never trust anything opposed to God.  Now, if you want to ask me if I think there is a personal force or entity at work in the world that is bent on evil, a force or entity who is opposed to God and all that God is doing, a force or entity who seeks to undermine and destroy us and the rest of creation, well, I think a good argument could be made that such a force or entity does exist.  But I would never trust it.  I would never believe in it.”

Every year on the first Sunday in Lent, the gospel text is always about, or at least contains, the story of Jesus being tested by Satan in the wilderness.  Mark’s version of the testing of Jesus reads almost like an afterthought, sandwiched between Jesus’ baptism and the beginning of his revolutionary proclamation of the kingdom of God in Galilee.  Matthew and Luke, on the other hand, flesh out the  temptation of Jesus in great detail which includes dialogue between Jesus and Satan and the specific temptations Jesus faced and how he responded.

I suppose the idea behind this focus on temptation is that when we look again at how Jesus responded to temptation we are better prepared to acknowledge and wrestle with our own demons and temptations during this long 40-day season of getting our spiritual houses in order.  It also confronts us with an opportunity to give some serious thought to what we think about evil—what we think it is and how we think it works.

Evil is opportunistic and insidious, but it’s not stupid.  It plays on desires we already have even if we’re not fully aware of them.   It lures us with things that we think will make us whole in some way.  And it finds its opportunities by either prodding us to question our sense of self-worth or by pumping up our egos to inflate our sense of self-worth.

Eric Berne, the Canadian psychologist who created Transactional Analysis, had a theory that by age 5 most of us have developed a “core story” about who we are and our inherent worth.  For far too many people, that story is kind of shaky and not all that positive.  One of the gifts of baptism is that in baptism we are given a new core story.  We are given an identity to live up to, an identity that grounds us and sustains us. As we are immersed into the life and love of the triune God, we hear the same words proclaimed over us that the voice of God proclaimed to Jesus at his baptism:  this is my beloved child.  You are God’s beloved child.

Evil wants us to doubt our identity as children of God…or at least to not remember it or think about it.  When we forget that identity, evil can get a foothold in our psyches by eroding our sense of self.  The very first words the tempter says to Jesus in the wilderness are, “If you are the Son of God…”  That’s a very big “if” and it’s loaded with insinuations.  The tempter is trying to get Jesus to doubt his identity or, failing that, to make too much of it.

Martin Luther once shared in a sermon how his sense of self-worth was assailed as he lay awake in the middle of the night: 

“When I awoke last night, the Devil came and wanted to debate with me; he rebuked and reproached me, arguing that I was a sinner. To this I replied: Tell me something new, Devil! I already knew that perfectly well; I have committed many a solid and real sin. Indeed there must be good honest sins–not fabricated and invented ones–for God to forgive for His beloved Son’s sake, who took all my sins upon Him so that now the sins I have committed are no longer mine but belong to Christ.”[1]

In  Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, Henri Nouwen wrote: 

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, ‘Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody.’ … [My dark side says,] I am no good… I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. 

Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.” Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.” 

You are God’s beloved child.  

Is that how you understand the core of your existence?  Or are there voices in your life, maybe even internal voices, that don’t want you to believe that you are seen and loved by God?

The word devil comes from the Greek word diabolos which means “the slanderer.”  When the tempter says to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God…” there is a kind of slander in that little word “if.”  It’s the same slander that comes to us in the voice of our self-doubt.  We hear it saying things like, “You’re not really a child of God.  You’re not really much of anything, are you?”  When that kind of voice gets in our heads we start wanting to prove ourselves, especially if we can do so without really doing anything “wrong.”

The thing that’s so insidious about the temptations the devil lays before Jesus, the thing that’s so insidious about most temptations and a good deal of outright evil, is that these things often look like good things on the face of it.  In fact, evil is often a good thing done in the wrong way or at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons.

What’s wrong with turning stones into bread?  Wouldn’t that be a great way to feed the hungry?  But to do that, you would have to do violence to creation.  You would have to coerce the stone into becoming something other than what God made it to be, something of an entirely different nature.  And to do that, you would have to separate yourself from creation.  You would have to stand apart from creation so you can impose your will upon it.  It’s true that later in Matthew’s gospel account Jesus will feed 5000 people with a few loaves and fish, but he doesn’t turn them into something other than loaves and fish to do it.

What’s wrong with trusting the scriptures so devoutly that you’re willing to believe that angels will catch you when you plunge off the temple parapet?  But where is the love in a shortcut like that?  How would that build relationships that become the foundation of God’s commonwealth of justice and mercy?  How would that be anything but another demonstration of power in a world that is already much too much infatuated with power?

What’s wrong with the King of kings and the Lord of lords assuming control over all the nations of the world?  Isn’t that exactly what the Book of Revelation says will happen at the Great Conclusion?  But how would that be done?  What would happen to free will in the process?  What kind of violence would resist that singular authority being imposed and how many would be lost before all the dust settled?  How would seizing and wielding imperious authority teach the world to deconstruct all the soul-crushing oppression of imperialism?

For Jesus to have done any of these things would have been a denial of his humanity.  Yes, he was and is the Son of God.  But he also was a son of humanity. His favorite title for himself was “the Son of Man” which can be better translated as “The Human One.”  If he had taken the slanderer’s bait to prove his divinity, he would have separated himself from his humanity.

Jesus was able to resist temptation because he had a firm understanding of who he was.  He believed the voice of God that proclaimed him to be God’s beloved son.  He also believed in the essential goodness of his humanity so he was unwilling to separate himself from humanity.  In the end, in the full confidence of both his divine authority and his essential human goodness, he simply ordered the tempter to go away. And the devil departed from him.  

Jesus trusted God.  Jesus believed in God.  Jesus met the devil face to face.  But he didn’t believe in him.  So when you are assailed by that insidious voice that wants you to forget your basic human goodness and God’s divine embrace of you as a beloved child,  be like Jesus.  Just tell that voice to go away.

[1] Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, p.105-6