Tag God

The Space Between

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Luke 17:11-19

You know how you can read something a hundred times and on the one hundred and first time something will pop out at you that you never really saw before?  I don’t know how many times I’ve read this passage from Luke over the years.  It’s pretty familiar, but this week, something in the opening line really jumped out at me:

On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus passed through between Samaria and Galilee. 

That is such a curious way for this story to begin.  Where, exactly, is this space between Samaria and Galilee?   On the map Samaria and Galilee butt right up against each other.  There is and was a border that separated the two territories.  There was also a very pronounced social, cultural and religious line in the sand separating the Jews of Galilee from the Samaritans of Samaria, a line of intense historical animosity.  So what is the writer of Luke trying to tell us when he says that Jesus was passing between Samaria and Galilee?

As he entered a certain village, ten men with leprosy approached him but kept their distance and shouted, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  Jesus looked at them and said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed of their skin disease.

In Biblical times, leprosy was a catch-all term for a variety of skin conditions, especially those that created whitish patches of scaly skin such as atopic dermatitis or plaque psoriasis.  White, scaly skin can also, however, be one of the first symptoms of true leprosy, what we now call Hansen’s disease, so in an age before microscopes,  diagnostic tests and bloodwork, it made some sense to assume the worst when those scaly patches appeared.  

The book of Leviticus dictated that persons with such as skin disease had to live outside the town.  The leper laws in Leviticus required them to tear their clothes and mess up their hair to make themselves more easily identifiable, and they were required to wear a cloth mask or veil that covered from the upper lip to the chin.  They were also required to carry a bell or wooden clapper and to cry out “unclean, unclean” to warn people not to get too close, because the law required them to keep a safe distance from everyone else.  The Talmud said that the minimum safe distance on a normal day was two cubits, about six feet, but if it was windy 150 feet was the recommended safe distance.

These men with a skin disease stood at a distance and begged Jesus for mercy .  Their plea had to be loud enough to travel across the space between them and Jesus.

Jesus healed them, but he didn’t lay hands on them.  He didn’t put them in the awkward position of violating both religious and civil laws that required them to keep their distance, which meant that in this particular instance, Jesus observed those laws, too.   So he didn’t lay hands on them, and the text doesn’t say anything about him praying for them, either.  He simply said, “Go show yourselves to the priests,”  which is what Torah required if they were healed.  Their healing happened in the space between them and Jesus.

On the face of it, this looks like a simple, if somewhat unusual, story about healing.  There is also the noteworthy gratitude of the one man who returns to thank Jesus and prostrates himself before him in an act of worship, so it can also a story about gratitude.  But when we look closer, I think there is more to it than that.  

Clearly this is a story that reminds us of God’s power to heal.  It also shows us yet another example of Jesus’ compassion.  And yes, it even makes a point about taking a moment to be grateful when God has done something extraordinary for you.  But I think maybe Luke is also trying to tell us something about the power and importance of between places, those places and times when we are in neither one place or the other but on the edge or verge of both.

Luke tells us that Jesus was passing through between Samaria and Galilee.  Jesus is in a borderland, an in-between space that is both Galilee and Samaria, and at the same time really neither one.

The ten men with the skin disease were also in a between space.  They were husbands, fathers, brothers living at a distance from those they loved most in order to keep their loved ones safe.  They were living on the outskirts of the village, living on the margins of the community in that space where the village ended and the wilderness began.  More poignantly, they were also living in that thin space between life and death.  

Because their disease had excluded them from all other society, they formed their own small community, Jews and Samaritans bound together by their common affliction in a space where the cultural animosity and antagonism of Jew versus Samaritan was not only irrelevant but could threaten their survival. 

Every border, every territorial boundary, no matter where it is, is a testament to conflict.  It is a reminder that at some point in history one group of people behaved aggressively against another group of people.  Every border is a monument to our human failure to make peace with our differences, a testimony that the space between us is often filled with anger and fear.

Anxiety, said Saint Augustine, is the garden in which sin grows.

When borders are rigidly drawn and vigorously enforced, they sharpen the divide and highlight the differences between the people on one side or the other.  They intensify the “otherness” of those who are not from our side of the line, and that, in turn, can stimulate anxiety, suspicion and fear, which all too often leads to scapegoating and violence. 

On the other hand, when borders are porous and less strictly enforced, they become zones of cross-pollination and fusion between cultures, places where ideas and feelings are shared,  places where transformation is possible.

The borderlands, the between spaces, are places where meaningful change is not only more possible but more apt to happen.  

Twenty years ago, Stuart Kauffman, a researcher in theoretical biology and complex systems, proposed a new theory to explain how organisms and systems adapt and become more complex.  He called his theory Adjacent Possible Theory or “APT-ness,” and he has suggested that the “adjacent possible” is such a powerful dynamic that it could be considered the fourth general law of physics.  

Adjacent Possible Theory suggests that at any given moment there is a space of untapped potential around every complex system—around every organism, around every person, around every institution.  That field of untapped potential in the adjacent possible is actually a new field of energy that powers change and transformation. 

In other words, you are surrounded by an energizing halo of possibility.

Think about your living room. Most of us have the same furniture, sitting in the same spots for years at a time. When the house gets crowded on game days or holidays, you know where people are going to end up, what the traffic flow is going to be like, where there are going to be “traffic jams,” where the favorite spot to hang out always is.

Kauffmann’s law of the “adjacent possible” says real change takes place when you re-arrange the current configuration of things, opening up a new possibility for movement and matter.  Rearrange your living room furniture, and see what happens.  Without adding even one new chair or table, the whole feeling of the room is changed. People move about the room differently. They interact with others in new groups. The energy in the room flows in a new configuration. All that just by moving the furniture.

The Adjacent Possible, that halo of possibility is particularly potent in between spaces because the between space is adjacent to two or more differing realities or paradigms and draws energy from both.  The “furniture” tends to be in flux.

In many ways the Church is in an in between space.  We are in a time, a space, where we are no longer what we were but what we will be has not yet been revealed.  The culture has been moving us to the margins.  We are in a space of transformation, the realm of the Adjacent Possible.  The good news is that there is energy in that space, the energy to be made new.

In the original Greek text of Luke’s story of the healing of the ten men with the skin condition, there are three different words for the healing that takes place.  The first word is katharizo.  It means “to be cleansed.”  Catharsis.  This is what the 10 men experience as they leave Jesus to go to the priests.

The second word is iathei.  It means “to be changed to an earlier, correct, or appropriate state.”  To be restored.  This is what the one grateful Samaritan experienced.  He saw that he was restored.

The third word is sesoken, the active indicative form of sozo.  It is often translated as saved, but it also means to be made well or whole.  This is the word Jesus speaks to the Samaritan who bows before him in praise and gratitude when he says, “Your faith has made you whole.”  

As a church and as a nation, we are standing in an in-between place.  We are in the borderland of the Adjacent Possible, surrounded by a halo of possibility for transformation.  The shape of that transformation depends on the choices we make. 

If we open our eyes, our minds, our hearts to encounter Jesus in this in-between space, if we ask Christ for his healing mercy and guidance, then we, too, can experience cleansing, restoration, and positive transformation.   We, too, can be made whole.

Our task, our calling, is to step past the hard lines of the borders we’ve drawn, the lines that divide into us versus them.  If we want to be made whole again, we need to step into the in-between places.  That’s where we can encounter each other.  That’s where we can form a new sense of community.  That’s where we can stand in a halo of possibility. That’s where we can encounter Jesus.  That’s where God is doing a new thing… in Jesus’ name.

Image: Ten Lepers by James Christensen

Song of Anger, Song of Faith

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4;  Psalm 37:1-9; Luke 17:5-10

In January of 1949, Pete Seeger sat down at the piano with his friend, Lee Hays, and plunked out a song he was working on.  Hays liked it and they massaged the lyrics together.  A year later, they recorded the song on Charter Records with their group, The Weavers.  They only sold maybe a thousand copies and never got any airplay, but that didn’t surprise them because Seeger and Hays were both blacklisted by the McCarthyism craziness that was making life impossible for so many artists and others.   People suspected that the song had some kind of communist message because, as Seeger said, “In 1949 only ‘Commies’ used words like ‘peace’ and ‘freedom.’  

Somehow the song made its way down to South America where it became fairly popular and local groups created different versions of it. Twelve years later, Peter, Paul and Mary recorded it and it became a top-ten hit.  The next year, 1963, Trini Lopez recorded a version with a Latin vibe that landed at number 3 on the charts.[1]   

Suddenly the song was everywhere.  People were singing it in coffee houses and cocktail lounges.  Folk groups were singing it at Hootenannies.  Teenagers who only knew four guitar chords were singing it in church.  I know, because I was one of them.  

The song was originally titled, “The Hammer Song,” but is more commonly known by its first line: “If I Had a Hammer.”  

I thought of that song this week when I was reading our first reading from Habakkuk because the first line of the chorus is  “I’d sing out danger, I’d sing out a warning…”  That’s exactly what poor Habakkuk had been trying to do as the mighty Chaldean army drew ever closer to Jerusalem.  He saw his beloved nation beset from without by forces bent on conquest and colonization, and beset from within by denial and corruption.

I think we’ve all felt like Habakkuk at one time or another.  His words are so honest, his feelings so raw, his anger so palpable, and he doesn’t buffer any of it with any false piety.

O LORD, how long shall I cry for help,

                  and you will not listen?

         Or cry to you “Violence!”

                  and you will not save?

         Why do you make me see wrong-doing

                  and look at trouble?

         Destruction and violence are before me;

                  strife and contention arise.

         So the law becomes slack

                  and justice never prevails.

         The wicked surround the righteous—

                  therefore judgment comes forth perverted.[2]

Some scholars think that Habakkuk was a temple prophet, a Levite who also served as one of the temple musicians.  If so, he spent his days singing and composing psalms of praise for worship.  But now songs of praise and worship aren’t speaking to him anymore…or speaking for him.  He’s angry with God.  He sees the world falling apart.  He sees that his society is corrupted.  He sees that the enemy is coming and his country won’t be able to withstand them.  He feels like God isn’t paying attention.  So instead of a psalm of praise, he composes a song of rage and lament.  He sings out danger.  He sings out a warning.

In his frustration with God, Habakkuk finally says, “You know what?  I’ve said all I can say. I’m just going to go up in the tower and wait and watch.  You’ve heard my complaint, God, so what do you have to say about all this?”

Habakkuk stood in the tower and waited for God to respond.  I can’t help but wonder if another song came into Habakkuk’s mind while he was up there waiting and watching on the rampart.  He surely would have been familiar with Psalm 37, a psalm which tradition says was written by King David when he was an old man.  The answer God finally gives Habakkuk seems to resonate with that Psalm 37’s advice: 

Do not fret because of the wicked;

                  do not be envious of wrongdoers,

         for they will soon fade like the grass,

                  and wither like the green herb.[3]

When God finally spoke to Habakkuk, God gave him neither advice nor a pep talk.  Instead, God gave Habakkuk a task list. Habakkuk recorded God’s instructions by adding another verse to his song:

Then the LORD answered me and said:

         Write the vision;

                  make it plain on tablets,

                  so that a runner may read it.

         For there is still a vision for the appointed time;

                  it speaks of the end, and does not lie.

         If it seems to tarry, wait for it;

                  it will surely come, it will not delay.

         Look at the proud!

                  Their spirit is not right in them,

                  but the righteous live by their faith.[4]

Remember the vision.  Write it down.  Make it visible.  Make it plain and simple so that even someone running by can grasp it.  The righteous will live by faith.

When life seems precarious and frustrating, it’s tempting to worry if our faith is going to do us any good.  When the world seems to be trying to tear itself apart, it’s tempting to wonder if I have enough faith to fix even one small piece of it.  But God tells us to keep moving toward the vision, the new reality, the kin-dom that God is working to create.  God reminds us that even when it looks like God is absent, God is not only present but is deeply engaged in the process of making things new.  God tells us, “Don’t worry about having enough faith.  It’s your faith that’s telling you there is a problem.  Start with that.”

Joy J. Moore of Luther seminary said, “Habakkuk speaks to me.  I hear him saying, ‘I have enough faith to believe that things aren’t right, things are not the way they’re supposed to be—and enough faith to watch and see what you’re going to do, God.’  In days like these, I need those words.”

In days like these we all need those words.  Write down the vision.  Keep it in front of you.  Make it simple so even someone in a hurry can read it and carry it with them.    

While they were on their way to Jerusalem, Jesus had reminded his disciples that there were consequences for wounding or misleading others.  In the next breath, though, he told them that they needed to be generous with forgiveness.  “If someone sins against you seven times in one day but repents seven times then you must forgive them seven times.” Forgiving so freely must have sounded like an insurmountable challenge to the disciples because they responded by saying, “Increase our faith!”[5]

I think we’ve all had that moment too.  We’ve all had our Habakkuk moment where we wonder if God is seeing the wrongs that we’re seeing and we’ve had our disciple moment when we have felt that if we just had more faith we could maybe live in the healing and mending way that Jesus is asking of us.

But what is faith?  Is it belief?  Is it power?  Is it obedience?  Is it humility?  Is it quantifiable?

“If you had faith the size of a mustard seed,” said Jesus, “you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”  What is he saying behind the hyperbole?

Faith equals trust said Martin Luther.  “Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favor that you would stake your life on it a thousand times.”  

Faith is confidence.  Faith is acting on your trust with confidence that God is faithful and trustworthy.  Paul Tillich said that faith, when you see it, will look a lot like courage.

Faith isn’t just a feeling.  Faith isn’t even just believing.  Faith is doing what God has asked us to do, being bold enough and courageous enough to participate in what God is creating.  Faith isn’t quantifiable.  It’s not a noun.  It’s a verb.

Faith isn’t interested in accolades and trophies, because faith is motivated by love and captivated by hope.

“Who among you,” said Jesus, “would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’?  Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’?  Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?  So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”

I think Jesus may have said this tongue-in-cheek—it’s unlikely that any of his disciples had any slaves—but his point was clear.  “When you’ve done all that you’ve been told to do” then you’ve done what you were supposed to do.  

We try to keep people from stumbling and pick them up when they do because that’s our job—as  followers of Jesus and as a decent human beings.  We forgive and keep on forgiving because Jesus told us to, and because we know that forgiveness is the starting point for healing and restoration of relationships.  Faith isn’t interested in accolades and trophies, because faith is captivated by the vision of the kin-dom of God, the commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness.

Sometimes we sing the song of Habakkuk because the brokenness of the world just seems so overwhelming.  Sometimes we are reluctant to take on the work of embracing God’s vision, of building the commonwealth of justice and kindness, because we feel ill-equipped, like we just don’t have the tools.   

In his autobiography, How Can I Keep From Singing, Pete Seeger talked about the message of The Hammer Song.  “The message,” he said, “was that we have got tools and we are going to succeed. This is what a lot of spirituals say: we will overcome. I have a hammer. The last verse didn’t say ‘But there ain’t no hammer, there ain’t no bell, there ain’t no song, but honey, I got you.’ We could have said that! The last verse says ‘I have a hammer, and I have a bell, I have a song.’ Here it is. ‘It’s the hammer of justice, it’s the bell of freedom, the song of love.’ No one could take these away.”

We have the tools we need to fix the world.  We have the vision of God’s kin-dom.  We have the hammer of justice and the bell of freedom.  We have the song of love between our brothers and our sisters and our non-binary siblings all over this land.

We just need to have faith…and even the littlest bit of faith is enough to change the world.

[1] Hammer Recalled;  Richard Harrington, The Washington Post, Feb. 1, 1983

[2] Habakkuk 1:1-4 (NRSV)

[3] Psalm 37:1-2

[4] Habakkuk 2:1-4

[5] Luke 17:1-10

The Works of Grace

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 16:19-31

One bright afternoon in heaven, three people showed up at the Pearly Gates at the same time. St. Peter called the first person over and said, “What did you do on earth?” “I was a doctor,” she said.  “I treated people when they were sick and if they could not pay I would treat them for free.”  “That’s wonderful, Doctor,” said St. Peter. “Welcome to heaven, and be sure to visit the science museum!”  Then he called the second person over.  “What did you do on earth?” he asked.  “I was a school teacher,” the man replied.  “I taught educationally challenged children.”  “Oh, well done!” said St. Peter.  “Go right in!  And be sure to check out the buffet!”  Then St. Peter called over the third person.  “And what did you do on earth?” he asked.  “I ran a large health insurance company,” said the man.  “Hmmm,“ said St. Peter. “Well, you may go in but you can only stay for three days.”

Some people think that the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is about heaven and hell. And in a way, maybe it is, but not in the obvious way.  Like all good parables, this story where the poor man is comforted after death and the rich man is left languishing alone in Hades is another one of those Jesus stories that should make us stop and rethink what we believe and what role that belief plays in our lives.

We Lutherans and many other Protestants are big on Grace.  This was Martin Luther’s big breakthrough after all—the understanding that we don’t earn our salvation, but that God’s love and God’s grace is what saves us.  

When I was in confirmation class many, many years ago, our whole class was required to memorize Ephesians 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—  not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”  The Lutheran curriculum we were following wanted to make it crystal clear that being saved was entirely dependent on God’s grace.  For most of us at that age, being saved simply meant that you get to go to heaven when you die, and no one suggested that there might be other richer or more nuanced ways to understand it.

So Grace, we were taught, is your ticket to heaven and the only way in.  The formula was pretty simple.  You might do all the nice and good things it’s possible to do in the world, but that won’t get you into heaven because no matter how good and nice and helpful you are, you’re still going to sin.  You can’t help it.  It’s part of human nature.  And sinful people can’t go to heaven, because no sin is allowed there.  But, if you believe in Jesus, then God will forgive all your sins!  You get a free pass.  You get Grace with a capital G.

The problem with our Protestant theology of Grace is that too many people stopped with that overly simple middle-school understanding.  Too many people came to believe that all they have to do is accept Jesus into their hearts as their personal Lord and Savior, and that’s it.  Done.  

This truncated understanding can lead to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace,” a belief that what you do or don’t do doesn’t matter because God will forgive you for Christ’s sake simply because you say you believe.  This is like setting off on a thousand mile hike and stopping after the first 20 yards.  At best, “cheap grace” leads to a very shallow personal theology and a me-centered spirituality.  At worst it lays a foundation for an “anything goes” way of life with no sense of accountability. People who believe in this kind of “cheap grace” can sometimes do atrocious things, or leave very necessary things undone, and still think of themselves as “saved.”  

Many of us cling to the gift of grace promised in Ephesians 2:8-9, and rightfully so, but too many of us stopped reading too soon;  we failed to read on through verse 10 where it says,  “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (NRSV) 

I particularly like the way the New Living Translation renders verse 10:  “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”

We are saved—rescued, healed, made whole, restored—by grace through faith.  But “through faith” doesn’t just mean that we intellectually accept the idea of grace.  Real faith opens our eyes to God’s grace at work in our lives and the world around us.  Real faith moves us to embody and to enact God’s grace.  Real faith moves us to do the good things God planned for us long ago.  If we don’t do those good things, then faith becomes nothing more than a security blanket of wishful thinking to wrap around ourselves on dark nights of doubt and fear.  As the Book of James says, “we are shown to be right with God by what we do, not by faith alone… For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.” (James 2:24-26)

One of the themes in Luke and Acts is the presence and work of the Holy Spirit, and yet Luke doesn’t let us “spiritualize” things that put us on the spot.  The examples of the “work of the Spirit” in Luke and Acts, especially as that work plays out in the ministry of Jesus, are practical, concrete, and challenging.  As much as we might want to spiritualize the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, it’s tough to explain away its central message, especially in light of what Jesus has to say about wealth and poverty throughout the entire Gospel. 

The Gospel of Luke emphasizes that the status of the rich and poor is reversed in the kingdom of God.  In the opening chapter of Luke, Mary sings, “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;  he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” (1:46-55)

 In the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled,” and then “woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” (6:20-25)

Luke makes it clear that “the poor” receive special attention in the ministry of Jesus and in the kingdom he is announcing. When he stands up to preach in the synagogue in Nazareth, he reads from the scroll of Isaiah,  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” (4:18)

When John the Baptist is in prison and sends one of his disciples to ask Jesus if he really is the one they’ve been waiting for, Jesus says, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them.” (7:22)

When he is a dinner guest at the home of a Pharisee, Jesus tells his host and others, “Don’t invite all your friends to your banquets, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.” (14:12) – because that’s who is invited to God’s banquet (14:21).

When the rich young ruler asks Jesus how he can inherit eternal life he is told to go sell all he has and give it to the poor. (18:18-30)

In Luke’s gospel Jesus makes it clear that having “treasures in heaven” is not just about piety; it is also about selling possessions and distributing wealth to the poor. (12:33; 18:22)  

In Luke’s gospel, conversion doesn’t just mean accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior or asking Jesus into your heart, whatever that means. When Zacchaeus the tax collector is befriended by Jesus, he gives half of his possessions to the poor and repays anyone he has defrauded four times over.  

Concern for the poor is a central part of the ministry of Jesus, but it wasn’t invented by Jesus.  Jesus himself stresses that it is the commandment of Torah.  In Deuteronomy, Moses states: “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.  You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.  Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, “The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,” and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing; your neighbor might cry to the LORD against you, and you would incur guilt.  Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.  Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” (Deut. 15:7-11)

This parable of the rich man and Lazarus raises important questions.  We’re not told that Lazarus did anything particularly noble or good.  He was just poor.  So why is he carried away by angels to be nestled and comforted in the bosom of Abraham after he dies?   We’re not told that the rich man did anything particularly horrible, he’s just self-centered.  So why is he in anguish in the flames of Hades after he dies?

Lazarus benefits from the default of grace.  He is a descendent of Abraham, so he is included in God’s covenant with Abraham.  He hasn’t done anything to remove himself from the covenant so he will spend eternity “in the bosom of Abraham,” enjoying companionship with others who have kept the covenant.

The rich man, on the other hand, removed himself from the covenant when he failed to “open his hand” to the poor and needy neighbor on his doorstep.  He failed to even see Lazarus, much less see their kinship in the covenant of Abraham and the covenant of humanity.  Instead of using his resources to help Lazarus, he used them exclusively to feed his own appetites. He is condemned to live forever in the burning loneliness that he, himself, created.  By focusing only on himself during his life, he created a great uncrossable chasm which now separates him forever from the companionship of eternity. 

“Some people, we learn, will never change,” says Amy-Jill Levine.  “They condemn themselves to damnation even as their actions condemn others to poverty.  If they think that they can survive on family connections—to Abraham, to their brothers—they are wrong.  If they think their power will last past their death, they are wrong again.”[1]

There is a sad “too-little-too-late” moment at the end of this short story by Jesus.  The rich man, realizing that there is no reprieve for him, asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his five brothers so they don’t end up “in this place of torment.”  Abraham reminds him that Moses and the prophets have already warned them, and the rich man replies, “No, Father Abraham!  But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent!”  Abraham says simply, “If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.”

“We are those five siblings of the rich man,” wrote Barbara Rossing.  “We who are still alive have been warned about our urgent situation… We have Moses and the prophets; we have the scriptures; we have the manna lessons of God’s economy, about God’s care for the poor and hungry.  We even have someone who has risen from the dead.  The question is: Will we—the five sisters and brothers—see?  Will we heed the warning before it’s too late?”[2]

[1] Short Stories by Jesus, p. 271, Amy-Jill Levine

[2] Working Preacher.org; Barbara Rossing, Commentary on Luke 16:19-31, September 25, 2016

The Joy of Reconnecting

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 15:1-10

We have seen an alarming increase in violence in our country this year, especially in the last few months.  As of this week there have been 47 school shootings in the U. S.[1]  On top of that the strained remainder of our national equilibrium has been rocked by two political assassinations. 

I really don’t want to dwell on this situation.  I doubt if I could tell you anything you don’t already know.  I don’t have any words that could shed new light on our violence problem and I am all too aware that even when our words are written or spoken with the best intentions they can generate a lot of heat that enflames without bringing any light of healing.  I will say this, though.  I think part of the problem is that we, as a people, have been losing our joy.  And we’ve been losing our joy because we’ve been losing our overall sense of connection with each other.  

We sequester ourselves into like-minded cloisters, sifting ourselves into righteous versus unrighteous, clean versus unclean, and then we snipe at each other from our guarded hilltops, each group using its own specialized vocabulary to describe the wrongness of the others who are not us.  There’s nothing new about this.  It’s a dynamic as old as humanity itself.  

So how do we recapture our joy?  How do we reconnect when the connection has been broken?

Well, if we’re following the example of Jesus, we tell a story.

So this one time, some Pharisees and religion teachers were getting all cranky because Jesus was having way too much fun with the wrong crowd.  Tax collectors and known sinners—you know, those people who color outside the lines where the religious boundaries are concerned—these kinds of people kept coming to listen to him and he didn’t shoo them away or disrespect them or anything.  On the contrary, he would welcome them and invite them to join the discussion!  Sometimes he would even break bread with them.  Basically, he treated them like they were all old friends at a reunion.

This didn’t sit well with the holier-than-thou guardians of propriety.  They didn’t think associating with “those people” was appropriate for a well-known rabbi, especially one with such a growing following.  They thought he should be setting an example for the rabble.  Well, he actually was setting an example, it just wasn’t the one they wanted him to set.   So they were grumbling about him.

Jesus overheard all their crabby comments, of course.  He thought about calling them out on their snooty attitude, but what good would that do?  It would just make them defensive and even more stand-offish when what he really wanted was for them to loosen up and join the party.  So he tried to reframe their thinking with a couple of hypothetical scenarios.  Parables.  He told them some parables.

“Suppose a guy has a hundred sheep,” he said, “and one of them wanders off and gets lost.  “Won’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the wilderness to go search for the one that is lost until he finds it?  And when he finds it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders.  And when he gets home, he will call all his friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep!’  It’s like that.  There is more joy in heaven over one lost soul’s rescued life than over ninety-nine righteous people who don’t need rescuing.

“Or how about this—suppose a woman has ten silver coins on her necklace and she loses one.  Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and get down on her hands and knees to sweep under furniture and look in every nook and cranny until she finds it?  And when she does find it, she’ll call all her neighbors and friends and say, ‘Rejoice with me!  I’ve found my lost drachma!  It’s just like that!” said Jesus.  “There is joy and celebration among God’s angels when even one lost soul returns to God!”     

Now I am absolutely sure that some of the people listening to Jesus spin these hypotheticals were chuckling, and I am just as sure that some of them were scratching their heads because there is some obvious craziness in these little stories.  Leave ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness while you go off searching for one?  Who would do that?  And sheep don’t repent.  Coins don’t repent.  And is it really repentance?  The sheep didn’t do anything to help himself be found—he didn’t wander home all sheepish about being lost.  The silver coin didn’t roll itself across the floor to rejoin the other nine coins on the necklace. 

Or are these stories allegories maybe?  Is the shepherd God?  But does God leave ninety-nine obedient sheep at risk in the wilderness to go find the one that wandered off?  Maybe. But that does raise questions, especially if you’re one of the ninety-nine.  

So maybe God is like the reckless shepherd who puts everything at risk to find the one lost sheep.  Maybe God is like the woman who drops everything and lights a lamp and cleans house until she finds that one lost silver drachma.  Maybe.

Or maybe something else is going on here.  Sheep and coins don’t repent—at least not the way we usually understand repentance.  They don’t apologize.  They don’t have a change of mind or a change of heart.   

But what if Jesus is giving us a new definition of repentance?  What if repentance is not about clearing some kind of moral bar?  What if it’s not about moral rectitude or moral correction?  What if repentance is about being brought back to where you fit in God’s grand design, being brought back into the community and communion?  What if repentance is about crossing all those artificial barriers we put up between each other, those barriers that divide us into opposing camps?

Maybe repentance is about being brought back together.  Maybe it’s about reconnecting.[2]

That would explain this other thing.  Did you notice how many times Jesus mentions joy in these two little stories?  Five times!  The shepherd carries the sheep joyfully!  He calls out to his neighbors to rejoice with me!  Jesus says there is joy in heaven when a lost soul is reconnected with the community.  The woman who finds her lost coin calls out to her neighbors rejoice with me!  And once again, Jesus says there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one lost soul is reunited with companions.  It’s all about the joy!

Jesus wanted the Pharisees to understand that they were missing out on the joy!  He wanted them to understand that there is joy in making connections with people you might ordinarily be reluctant to associate with.  There is joy when we step out of our clique or private club of like-minded associates to go out and meet the wider world.  

Matt Harding is a guys who knows all about that joy.  

Matt was living the dream.  He was working as a Video Game Developer, creating new games for Activision, one of the biggest companies in the business.  He was kicking around ideas for a new game with his team one day, when somebody suggested, “Let’s do a ‘shoot-em-up’ game.  Those are very popular.”  Matt said sarcastically, “Sure.  How about Destroy all Humans?”[3]  Matt was being facetious, but the boss liked the idea and gave the game a green light. And that’s when Matt quit.  “I didn’t want to spend two years of my life writing a game about killing everyone,” he said.  

Now Matt had time on his hands, and a fair bit of savings, so he decided to see the world. One day in Saigon, Matt was in kind of a goofy mood so he did this funny little dance in front of a restaurant, which his travel buddy caught on video.  It gave them a good laugh, so they decided that they would do this everywhere they were going on their trip around the world. 

When they got home, they cut together all these fun little clips to create a three minute video of Matt dancing in all kinds of interesting places all over the world.  And that would have been the end of it, except that Matt’s sister uploaded the video to this new thing on the internet called YouTube™.     

Dancing Matt became an internet phenomenon almost overnight.  So Matt decided to go out into the world and do it again, only this time he would invite people to dance with him.  And dance they did.  Over a period of about 15 years he recorded and posted six Dancing Matt videos which have brought joy to people all over the world.  You can find all of them at www.wheretheheckismatt.com. 

When NPR asked Matt what he had learned as he danced through the world, he said, “Here’s what I can report back: People want to feel connected to each other. They want to be heard and seen, and they’re curious to hear and see others from places far away.  

I share that impulse. It’s part of what drives me to travel.”

In her TED talk about Vulnerability, Brené Brown said, “A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people.  We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong.  When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to.  We break.  We fall apart.  We numb.  We ache.  We hurt others.  We get sick.”

Right now our country is in a grumbling mood…and so is much of the rest of the world. We are not functioning as we were meant to.  We have found too many ways to separate ourselves from each other.  We have turned too many people into “those people,” the ones we don’t want to be seen with.  As a result, we’re missing the joy.  We’re missing the celebration.

We need to repent, not with apologies or penance, but by reconnecting.  We need to find our way back into where we fit with each other in God’s grand design.  We need to find our way back into community and communion.  We need to bring ourselves back together.  And maybe even dance with strangers.  Because that’s where the joy is.

[1] CNN

[2] Special Thanks to Prof. Matt Skinner and Sermon Brainwave for this perspective.

[3] Destroy All Humans is in its 7th version and is available on multiple platforms.  Clearly there’s money in nihilism.

How Far Will You Go?

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

Luke 14:26-33

In the summer of 1972, when I was 19, my best friend, Mackay, and I decided that it would be all kinds of fun to ride our bicycles from Long Beach, California to Ensenada, Mexico.  And so one sunny morning in June, we set off pedaling down the Pacific Coast Highway with sleeping bags and a few other necessities strapped to our bikes. 

The miles flew by through Seal Beach, Huntington Beach and Newport Beach.  The hills of Laguna slowed us down a bit more than we had anticipated, but it was still too early for lunch when we reached San Clemente, so we decided to push on and have lunch in Oceanside.  But at the south end of San Clemente, we ran into a very big obstacle that we had not planned on.  Camp Pendleton Marine Base.  

We knew we wouldn’t be able to ride through Pendleton on the freeway, but we thought we could ride through the base on the old highway, which, according to our maps, still ran alongside the freeway.  The very nice Marine guard at the entrance to the base told us that that was not going to happen–  because the old highway was long gone.  

After some begging and pleading and a few choruses of “Gosh, We’ve Ridden All This Way,” he got on the phone and managed to get permission for us to ride through the base.   He sketched out a map for us and gave us very strict instructions to stay on the route he had outlined for us,  making it clear that straying off that route could have grave consequences, including but not limited to death, dismemberment or being imprisoned.  

An hour and a half later, we were utterly lost on a winding dirt road when a very perturbed Marine officer in a jeep came roaring up to us and asked us what the H-E-DOUBLE-Q we thought we were doing.  He also told us that we were perilously close to a live-fire range, then threatened to throw us in the stockade or make us enlist or both before finally deciding to guide us down to the southern end of the base.  He sent us off with a warning that if we ever set foot or bicycle tire on the base again there would be dire consequences unless, of course, we were in a Marine uniform.  

We had lost a lot of time on the confusing roads of Pendleton, so we powered through Oceanside and into San Diego without stopping for lunch.  Then came the ordeal of getting through San Diego on surface streets which proved to be far more complicated and took much longer than we had planned.  And just so you know, not even the military had GPS yet in those days, so we were at the mercy of outdated gas station roadmaps.  

The sun was getting ready to call it a day by the time we crossed the border into Tijuana.  We grabbed a couple of tacos from a taco cart then raced the sun for the last 14 miles to Rosarito Beach where we camped for the night.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.  The ride from Rosarito to Ensenada on the old road up across the mountain—the only way bicycles were allowed to go—was a challenging but beautiful ride.  After a night in Ensenada, we turned around and headed for home.  

We spent the night at Rosarito Beach again, had a good breakfast at the cantina, then set out for the border.  We made good speed and got to Tijuana at about three in the afternoon which gave us plenty of time to make it to Silver Strand State Beach in San Diego where we were planning to pitch our tent for the night.

And that’s when we ran into another obstacle we hadn’t planned on.  There were three long lines of cars waiting to cross the border into California.  We rode our bikes up between the lines of cars to the state line expecting that the border guard would just wave us through—after all, where would a couple of guys on bicycles hide anything?   But the guard at the border wasn’t having it.  He gave us a lecture about trying to cut the line then told us to go all the way back to the end of the line.  Two hours later after standing in the heat astride our bicycles and breathing exhaust fumes from all the cars, we finally got back to the border where the same guard just waved us across without even asking for our I.D.   

At that point, we pulled over to the side of the road and took stock of where we were and what lay ahead of us.  We were exhausted, hot and sweaty.  Our legs were trembling and aching.  We didn’t even want to think about trying to get through Pendleton again.  What we wanted most was a good shower, a long, cold drink and a good meal. What we wanted was to be home.  

The bicycle ride that we had thought would be all kinds of fun had turned out to be all kinds of challenging.  Our stamina had evaporated in the exhaust fumes and unrelenting sunshine while we waited at the border.  We were fresh out of  possibility.  Our ride was over.  We made our way to the airport and, grateful for small miracles, managed to snag seats on a flight back to Long Beach.  

“Who would build a tower without first figuring out how much it’s going to cost?” asked Jesus.  “What king would go to war without first figuring out if he has a chance of winning?”  Who would ride a bicycle to Ensenada without making sure that they could actually get there and back?

Luke tells us that large crowds were traveling with Jesus as he made his way toward Jerusalem.  They had been watching him heal people.  They had been listening to him as he taught them about the kingdom of God and how radically different it is from the empire of Caesar.   The crowd was drawn to him.  They liked him.  They liked the different world he described, the better world that he told them is possible.  A lot of them were probably wondering what it might be like to be part of his inner circle—to be his disciple.

But there’s a big difference between being a fan and being a disciple.  

Jesus wanted to make it clear to the crowd that becoming a disciple means putting him and the kingdom of God first.  Jesus wanted them to understand that  becoming a disciple means you join him in making the kingdom of God, the commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness, a reality on earth as it is in heaven.  And Jesus wants us to understand that the other kingdoms of this world are going to resist you when you do that.  

The kingdom of family may be perfectly happy for you to be a fan of Jesus, even for you to embrace some of the things he teaches.  But they may not be so happy when you start giving away time and resources that they feel they have a claim to.  “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple,” said Jesus.  And no, he did not mean a disciple has to have some kind of intense animosity toward family, but he did mean that you, as a disciple, have to be willing to turn away from them, to let them go, when what they want is trying to pull you away from where Jesus is leading you.

The kingdoms, the empires of this world will resist you when you become a disciple of Jesus and set to work in earnest to make God’s reign a reality in your life and in the world.  

The kingdom of consumerism will sneer at you for not having the newest, shiniest, most fashionable, most advanced everything—clothes, gadgets, house, car or whatever when you, as a disciple of Jesus, learn to be satisfied with what you have and to give away what you don’t really need. 

The kingdom of capitalism will call you a socialist or maybe even a communist when you, as a disciple of Jesus, insist that those who have more should contribute to the well-being of those who have less.  When you remind them, as Jesus did, that God did not intend for the bountiful resources of the earth to enrich only a few, they will call you a radical and try to silence you.

The empire of power will oppose you when, as a disciple of Jesus, you stand up for the powerless, take the side of the marginalized and speak for the voiceless.  They will combat you when you  work to liberate the oppressed, fight for the dispossessed and lobby to set the captives free.  When you, as a disciple of Jesus, insist that all people are equal and beloved in God’s sight so the opportunities and benefits of life together in a civil society should be equal, too, regardless of race or gender or color or sexuality or country of origin.  They will call you a trouble-maker and try to put a stop to you…one way or another.

“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple,” said Jesus, and those people in the crowd, especially the wannabe disciples, knew he wasn’t just using hyperbole.  They knew that the cross he was talking about wasn’t a metaphor.  He was telling them there would be a real cross with real nails and real pain…because when you try to establish the reign of God in the midst of the empire of coercive power, coercive power will try to stop you.  Brutally.  

If you want to be my disciple, says Jesus, then stop and think about what that might cost you.  There’s no shame if you can’t go that far.  There’s no shame if you just want to follow in the crowd and listen from a safer distance.  But you should know, eventually that won’t be enough.  

Eventually the Word of God will bring you to a place where either you will summon up the stamina and will to finish the ride… or call it quits.  Eventually either the vision of the kingdom of God will become all-consuming for you, or you will dismiss it as a nice but unobtainable ideal—or maybe some kind of prize in the afterlife if you are nice enough to qualify.

Traveling with Jesus sounds like all kinds of fun.  And it does have its rewards.  There are healings along the way.  He’s a marvelous teacher and the Way of life he envisions is beautiful.  He loves you and isn’t shy about making that known.   Jesus loves the crowd… but not everyone in the crowd is ready to go all the way to discipleship.  

Lots of people can ride a bicycle.  Comparatively few can ride it all the way to Ensenada and back.

How far will you go?

Burning Down The World

Steve Beckham 4 Comments

Luke 12:49-56

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the name of Jesus.

[1] A Room Called Remember; Frederick Buechner

Faith Without B.S. (Bogus Stuff)

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Genesis 15:1-6; Hebrews 11:1-4, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40

A pastor was just about to begin his sermon one Sunday when he was handed a note.  He unfolded the paper, looked at it a moment, then said to the congregation, “This says there will be no B.S. tomorrow.”  He paused for a long moment then said, “I’m pretty sure that means Bible Study, but I have to confess that for just a moment there I thought, ‘Oh, that would be nice.’”

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a day scheduled for no B.S.—no Bogus Stuff?  

In the alternate first reading for this morning from chapter one of Isaiah, Isaiah takes the people to task for their Bogus Stuff.  He tells the people quite plainly, “God doesn’t want your bull.”  Well, what he actually says is:  

10 Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom!

Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!

11 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD;  I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. 

12   When you come to appear before me,  who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more.

13 Bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation— I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.

14 Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them.

15 When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.

Somewhere along the way, the people had substituted the practice of their religion for the ethics of their faith.  They had fallen into the habit of thinking that as long as they performed the right rituals and offered the right sacrifices, as long as they celebrated certain festivals and observed certain holy days in the calendar, then everything would be okay between them and God.  

But Isaiah tells them in plain language, “No.  God thinks all of that is B.S.  Bogus Stuff.  God doesn’t want your bull…or your ram or your goat.”  So what does God want?

“Wash yourselves;” says Isaiah, “make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”[1]

The texts assigned for today are all about faith.  They tell us what faith is and what it is not.  

Isaiah makes it clear that faith is not simply worship.  It is not liturgical worship or praise worship or any other form of worship.  Faith may move you to worship God.  Worship is one way to express your faith.  But it is not a substitute for faith.  And worship without faith is meaningless.

Faith is not mere belief.  Faith does not mean you accept or give your intellectual assent to certain propositions or truths about God, about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit.  Faith is not creeds or doctrine or dogma.  Those are tools that may help guide our faith in the same way a map can help you get somewhere you want to go.  But the map is not the journey.  It’s a depiction of the path others have traveled before you.   

So what is faith?

“Faith,” said Martin Luther, “is God’s work in us, that changes us and gives new birth from God… It kills the Old Adam and makes us completely different people.  It changes our hearts, our spirits, our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith… Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.”[2]

Faith is trusting God.  That’s Martin Luther’s definition. And that’s not always as easy as it sounds because God’s ways are not our ways and God’s timetable is certainly not our timetable.

Abram trusted God, but that didn’t stop him from complaining.  He had left his home in Ur to find a new homeland that God had promised.   Everywhere he went in the new land he prospered.  He acquired vast parcels of property.  His flocks increased.  Local kings respected and feared him so much that they tried to recruit him as an ally in their territorial wars.  He could have built his own city, but Abram continued to live in a tent because God had told him to keep moving.  But when  long years had passed and he and Sarah had not been blessed with children, Abram complained.

So God took Abram outside to look up into the night sky.  “Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can,” said God.  “If I can make that, do you really think giving you descendants will be a problem?”

Genesis tells us that Abram trusted God, and God regarded Abram as righteous because of his faith.

Faith is trust in God.  

When Jesus was on the road with his disciples announcing that the reign of God, the kin-dom of God is in reach, his followers started to worry about all the things one worries about in daily life.  Jesus turned to them and said, “A person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God.  That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food to eat or enough clothes to wear. For life is more than food, and your body more than clothing.  Look at the ravens. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for God feeds them. And you are far more valuable to God than any birds!  Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?  And if worry can’t accomplish a little thing like that, what’s the use of worrying over bigger things?

    “Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are.  And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

   “So don’t be afraid, little flock.  For it gives your Father great happiness to give you the kingdom.”[3]

Faith is trusting God as we follow the Spirit-driven yearning of our hearts toward the better world that Jesus described for us.  It is trust that carries us through this in-between life—living between what life and the world are now and what we hope and dream life and the world will be as we work to transform them.  Faith is a holy restlessness.  A longing.  A hunger.  A desire.  Faith is not a destination, it is the road, the journey.

“Faith,” wrote Debi Thomas, “is the audacity to undertake a perilous journey simply because God asks us to — not because we know ahead of time where we’re going.  Faith is the itch and the ache that turns our faces towards the distant stars even on the cloudiest of nights.  Faith is the willingness to stretch out our imaginations and see new birth, new life, new joy — even when we feel withered and dead inside.  Faith is the urgency of the homeless for a true and lasting home — a home whose architect and builder is God.”[4]

Faith is a holy dissatisfaction with the world as it is.   Faith wants to tear down walls and build bigger tables.  Faith wants to open the doors wider so more can come to the feast.  Faith trusts that there will always be enough for everyone.  Faith trusts that Love is not diminished but multiplied when it’s shared.  Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see except in our Spirit-inspired imaginations.

When we stand to recite the Creed on Sunday mornings, we begin with the words, “I believe, ” which is the common English translation of the Latin word Credo.  In his book The Heart of Christianity, the late Marcus Borg reminded us that Credo has a richer, deeper meaning than what we are typically thinking when we say, “I believe.” 

“Credo does not mean ‘I hereby agree to the literal-factual truth of the following statements.’  Rather, its Latin roots combine to mean ‘I give my heart to.’ . . .As the giving of one’s heart, credo means ‘I commit my loyalty to,’ ‘I commit my allegiance to.’

  “Thus, when we say credo at the beginning of the Creed, we are saying, ‘I give my heart to God.’  And who is that?  Who is the God to whom we commit our loyalty and allegiance?  The rest of the creed tells the story of the one to whom we give our hearts: God as the maker of heaven and earth, God as known in Jesus, God as present in the Spirit. . . 

  “Most simply, ‘to believe’ means ‘to love.’  Indeed, the English words ‘believe’ and ‘belove’ are related.  What we believe is what we belove.  Faith is about beloving God.”

Faith is about trusting God, but more than that, faith is about loving God.  “The only way I know how to love God,” said Richard Rohr, “is to love what God loves.”

Jesus tells us to trust God, to love God, and to travel light.  He tells us to free ourselves from excess everything and give to those in need.  Where your treasure is, he says, that’s where your heart will be.  So, let your heart go out to all those other children of God in the world around you.  Love God.  And love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Be dressed for service.  Keep your lamps burning.  And be ready.  The kin-dom of God is so close…and we don’t want to let Bogus Stuff keep us from getting there.

Have no fear, little flock.  It is your Father’s great pleasure to give you the Kingdom.

[1] Isaiah 1:16-17

[2] An excerpt from “An Introduction to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans,” Luther’s German Bible of 1522 by Martin Luther, 1483-1546

Translated by Rev. Robert E. Smith from DR. MARTIN LUTHER’S VERMISCHTE DEUTSCHE SCHRIFTEN. Johann K. Irmischer, ed. Vol. 63 Erlangen: Heyder and Zimmer, 1854), pp.124-125. [EA 63:124-125]

[3] Luke 12:22-32 (NLT)

[4] Debi Thomas, Called to Restlessness, Journey With Jesus, August 7, 2022

How Much Is Enough?

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 12:13-31

There is an odd little detail at the beginning of chapter twelve in the Gospel of Luke that’s easy to overlook.  It could be utterly insignificant.  But, maybe it’s not.  Jesus had been invited to dinner by one of the Pharisees but it turned out to be a pretty unpleasant time with lots of verbal sparring between Jesus and the Pharisees and scribes.  When Jesus left the Pharisee’s house he discovered that, “the crowd had gathered by the thousands, so that they trampled on one another.”[1]

That’s the odd little detail.  They trampled on each other.   I think this peculiar little note is Luke’s metaphorical way of setting the stage for what Jesus is going to say about greed and hoarding and selfishness.  And fear.  

Someone in the crowd yelled out, “Teacher, tell my brother to give me my share of what our father left us when he died.”  Jesus replied, “Man, who made me your probate judge?” Well, words to that effect. Then he turned to the crowd and said, “Don’t be greedy!  Owning a lot of stuff won’t make your life safe.”  And to illustrate his point, he told them a little parable.

A rich man’s farm produced a huge crop, and he said to himself, “What am I gonna do? I don’t have a place large enough to store everything.”  But then he thought, “Hey, I know! I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones, where I can store all my grain and all my other stuff. Then I’ll say to myself, ‘Self, y ou have stored up enough good things to last for years to come. Live it up! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.’” But God said to him, “You fool! Tonight you’re going to die. Then who will get all your stuff?” 

Jesus paused for a moment to let that sink in then said, “This is what happens to people who store up everything for themselves, but are poor in the sight of God.” 

So what did this man do wrong, this rich fool in the parable?  Is Jesus saying that we shouldn’t save up for retirement or stash some cash for a rainy day when we get a bit ahead of the game?  

I don’t think Jesus is saying that it’s wrong to be rich, and I don’t think he’s opposed to saving for retirement.  But he’s also not a fan of hoarding wealth and surplus and thinking only about ourselves.  

The rich man talks to himself like he’s the center of the universe.  His surplus is all about himself.  In the culture of the people who originally heard this Jesus story, that kind of attitude would be frowned upon… to put it mildly.  Torah, the Jewish law, had some pretty clear things to say about sharing the wealth.  You didn’t harvest to the edge of your field, you left the margins for the poor.  You didn’t pick up windfall fruit in your vineyard or orchard, you left it for the poor.  And when you did harvest, you gave a minimum of 10% in a tithe for supporting the Levites and the poor.  The rich fool in this parable doesn’t even mention these things.  He only thinks of himself.  And he never asks himself, “How much is enough?”

Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Slaughterhouse 5 was good friends with Joseph Heller, who wrote Catch 22.  When Heller died, Vonnegut remembered a conversation they had once had at a party.  He recorded that conversation as a poem and read the poem at Heller’s funeral.  Here’s what he said:

True story, Word of Honor:

Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer

now dead,

and I were at a party given by a billionaire

on Shelter Island.

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel

to know that our host only yesterday

may have made more money

than your novel ‘Catch-22’

has earned in its entire history?”

And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”

And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”

And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

Not bad! Rest in peace!”

How much is enough?  

I’ve been asking myself that question for years.  How much is enough?  I like to tell myself that my needs are simple, that I don’t need a lot of stuff, but then I look around my office, my dresser, my closet, my garage and, honestly, I am inundated with stuff.  And a lot of it is stuff I don’t need or even much want anymore.  How did that happen?  

How did I end up with so much stuff?  And it’s not just my stuff.  I have stuff that belonged to my parents and grandparents and my in-laws.  My Beloved Spouse texted me two articles on Thursday on how to declutter.  So I guess we’ll be doing that soon. . . 

On the Sermon Brainwave podcast this week, Professor Rolf Jacobson told us that his grandmother used to say, “Possessions are their own punishment.”  Yep.  Possessions are their own punishment.

We cling to our stuff, and, it seems like our stuff clings to us.  Back in 1981 the late George Carlin had a whole standup routine about all our stuff.

“I bought a house,” said Carlin. “I needed a place to keep all my stuff.  That’s all your house is, a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you’re taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody’s got a little pile of stuff.  All the little piles of stuff.  And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn’t want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. They always take the good stuff… All they want is the shiny stuff. That’s what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get…more stuff!”

What George Carlin said in 1981 is just as true today.  Maybe even more so.  Many people don’t have enough room in their houses for all their stuff, so one in 20 households rent extra space for their stuff!  Last year there were 52,301 self-storage facilities in the U.S. according to the Self-Storage Almanac.  That’s right, the stuff storage industry has its own publication.  The Almanac is projecting that in the U.S. alone, the market is expected to grow from $44.37 billion to $49.88 billion by 2029.  We can’t seem to create enough affordable housing for all our people, but we’re going to make sure we take care of all our stuff.  And it’s weird when you think about it because eventually you’re going to die.  And then who’s going to get all your stuff?  And do they even want it?    

How much is enough?  

As a culture, it seems like there’s no end to our desire for more stuff. . .or more money.  Which is really just a more portable kind of stuff.  Congress just recently passed what they called the One Big Beautiful Bill which will give the country’s estimated 900 billionaires a tax break of $60 billion dollars in federal taxes over the next two years.[2]  That averages out to more than $66 million per billionaire!  Nice.  If you’re a billionaire.  But the Congressional Budget Office also estimates that those tax breaks will add $3.4 trillion to the federal deficit by 2034.  And, of course, the bill gutted Medicaid and SNAP benefits to pay for all this largess to wealthiest among us which means that millions of the poorest among us will be without medical coverage or adequate food.

Mahatma Gandhi said that the world provides enough for all our need, but not for all our greed.

Thomas Hendricks, a psychologist who writes for Psychology Today said, “Most people, I believe, would agree that selfishness is not the basis for a healthy, sustainable society.”[3]  He’s got a point.

Stephen Hawking, the physicist, said, “We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity.” 

You want to try a fun little exercise?  Put the words “Greed and Fear” in the Google or whatever search engine you use.  Ninety percent of the results will talk about financial markets, and a lot of them will refer to the Greed and Fear index, a graph they use to tell us if Greed or Fear is driving the stock market right now.  But here’s the thing—what they don’t tell you is that Greed is rooted in fear. 

Greed is rooted in a fear of scarcity, loss, or not having enough, a fear that can drive us in a relentless pursuit of wealth or material possessions.  Greed is driven by a subconscious belief that our worth as persons is somehow tied to how much we have, and if we don’t have much, then we’re not worth much.  That is a story our culture often tells us in many not-so-subtle ways.  Some go so far as to say, “Greed is good.”  That was the unforgettable message of Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas in the 1987 movie Wall Street.  But the idea that greed is good doesn’t only appear in fiction.  More than a few politicians and financial commentators, Milton Friedman for instance, have talked about greed as a necessary and driving force in the economy.  

Maybe.  But one thing that is for certain is that greed is one of the ways we trample on each other.

“Take care!,” said Jesus. “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”  The Contemporary English Version simplifies it this way: “Don’t be greedy. Owning a lot of things won’t make your life safer.”[4]  It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

The letter to the Colossians tells us that greed is a kind of idolatry.[5]  It’s worship of a false god.  Martin Luther would whole-heartedly agree. “Show me what you trust,” said Luther, “what your heart clings to, and I will show you your god.”[6]

So. . .what do you trust?  What does your heart cling to?  How much is enough?  These are “come to Jesus” questions, are they not?

“I tell you not to worry about your life!” said Jesus. “Don’t worry about having something to eat or wear.  Look at the crows!  They don’t plant or harvest, and they don’t have storehouses or barns.  But God takes care of them!  You are more important than any birds.  Can worry make you live longer?  If you don’t have power over small things, why worry about everything else?”[7]

I hear Jesus say these things and I think, “Yeah, Jesus, I hear you.  I get what you’re saying.  That would be a nice way to live.  But the cost of living keeps going up.  And Elon Musk monkeyed around with the IRS so I haven’t got my tax refund yet.  And we’re still paying for our last vacation. . . And what if one of the cars needs new tires or the water heater blows or the dishwasher floods the kitchen or one of us gets sick or any one of a dozen other expensive things happens?

And then Jesus says this:  “Only people who don’t know God are always worrying about such things.  Your Father knows what you need.  So put God’s work first, and these things will be yours as well.”

Only people who don’t know God are always worrying about such things.  

So I guess that means that if I’m worrying about such things then I don’t know God as well as I think I do.  I guess that means that I need to get to know God better.  To spend more time with God.  To listen to God more carefully. To trust God more.  To love God more fully and freely.

“Do not be afraid, little flock,” said Jesus, “for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  

So, I guess what it all boils down to is we need to trust God.  We need to trust that God will see to it that we have enough.  Maybe we could simplify our lives.  Maybe we could make do with less and learn that that’s enough.  And, of course, we should try not to trample on each other.

[1] Luke 12:1

[2] What The Big Beautiful Bill Really Means for Billionaires; Martina Di Licosa; Forbes,  July 9, 2025

[3] Hendricks, Thomas, Ph.D.; Greed and Fear; Psychology Today, August 3, 2017

[4] Luke 12:15 (Contemporary English Version)

[5] Colossians 3:5

[6] Luther’s Large Catechism

[7] Luke 12:22-26 (CEV)

A Prayer for Us

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

A Prayer for Us

Luke 11:1-13

How do you pray?  How do you talk to God?  What name or practice opens your heart to deep communication with the Maker of all things, the heart of Life and Love?    

Once, when Jesus was praying, one of his disciples said, “Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples.”  John the Baptizer had apparently taught his disciples a special prayer for their community.  Jesus responded to this request by teaching his disciples the prayer that we’ve come to know as The Lord’s Prayer, or, if you’re Catholic, the Our Father, but I can’t help thinking Jesus would prefer for us to think of it as Our Prayer.  He gave it to all of us, after all.

The Lord’s Prayer was originally taught and transmitted orally, so it would naturally be remembered with some slight variations from community to community.  That’s probably why the version in Luke differs slightly from the version in Matthew, and both of them differ from the version in the Didache, the late first-century manual on how to do church.  

The most common version used today in English speaking communities is based on the wording that first appeared in The Book of Common Prayer in 1549.  That version was based on William Tyndale’s translation of the Gospel of Matthew from 1526 which is the only translation, by the way, where you’ll find “forgive us our trespasses” in Matthew 6:12 instead of “forgive us our debts.”[1]

I could talk all day about difficulties and variations in translation and transmission of the prayer.  It has even been a centerpiece of controversy a time or two in church history, but for now let’s use Luke’s version to take a deeper look at the meaning of this amazing prayer that Jesus has given to us.

“When you pray,” said Jesus—and the “you” is plural here—so, “when all y’all pray, say: Father, may your name be revered as holy. Your kingdom come.  Give us each day our daily bread.  And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.  And do not bring us to the time of trial.”  

We usually start a conversation by getting the other person’s attention. We often do that by simply by saying their name or title.  For example, my grandsons call me Pono.  When I hear one of the say, “Pono,” I know they want to talk to me about something or ask me something or sometimes just come sit with me—which is one of my favorite things in life.  It’s the same when we begin the Lord’s Prayer saying, “Father…”  We’re letting God know we would like to have a conversation.  Or that we’re ready to listen.

The word “Father” acknowledges that we have a personal relationship with God.  It’s supposed to help us feel like we’re sharing our hearts with a warm, nurturing, loving parent.  That’s the kind of relationship Jesus had with God and that’s what he would like for us to have, too.  

But the Father image, or for that matter the Mother image doesn’t work for everybody.  Some people have experienced abuse or conflict with their father or mother or both, so parent imagery isn’t inviting for them.  When that’s the case, it’s perfectly okay to address God in some other way.

In her book Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, Anne Lamott wrote, “Nothing could matter less than what we call [God].  I know some ironic believers who call God Howard, as in ‘Our Father, who art in Heaven, Howard by thy name.’  

“Let’s not get bogged down on whom or what we pray to.  Let’s just say prayer is communication from our hearts to the great mystery, or Goodness, or Howard; to the animating energy of love we are sometimes bold enough to believe in; to something unimaginably big, and not us.  We could call this force Not Me. . .  Or for convenience we could just say ‘God.’”

Anne Lamott’s advice to call on God with whatever name opens your heart and draws you closer to God might seem contradictory to what comes next in the Lord’s Prayer: “may your name be revered as holy,” or to translate it directly from the Greek, “Let it be sacred, the name of you.”  So, are we treating God’s name as sacred if we call on God as Howard or some other name?  Well, I think that depends entirely on your attitude when you use that name. 

Devout Jews often address God as Hashem in their prayers.  Hashemmeans “the name,” and addressing God as Hashem gives them a way to address God by name, sort of, without actually saying God’s name, which they believe is too holy to be spoken.  In effect, Hashem becomes a name they use for God in much the same way that Pono is the name my grandsons use for me.  

Devout Jews avoid speaking God’s name, the name God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, as a way to ensure that they don’t break the commandment against taking God’s name in vain.  Taking God’s name in vain means a lot more than just saying God’s name at the wrong time or in the wrong way or saying “Oh my God” as an expletive.  

Taking God’s name in vain means using the name or authority of God in a way that draws ridicule.  It can mean claiming the authority of God for purposes that have nothing to do with God’s sovereignty or God’s desires.  It can mean using God’s name or authority to further your own ideas or agenda, to reinforce your own authority, or simply using God’s name or authority for show.  

When we say “hallowed by your name,” we’re saying, “Let it be sacred, Hashem, let it be sacred, the name of you.” When we pray this, it’s a way of saying, “Keep us humble in your presence and keep us honest, God.”

And now we come to the part of the prayer that is truly the most challenging if we really think about what we’re saying.

“Your kingdom come.”  I think sometimes that if we took this petition seriously our knees would buckle.  When we pray “your kingdom come,” we are volunteering to help build a civilization grounded in justice, kindness and love.  

This petition is where the Lord’s Prayer becomes subversive in the best possible way.  When we pray “your kingdom come,” the Lord’s Prayer can no longer be regarded as merely a nice religious artifact or a litany of devotion.  And if anyone wants to suggest that Jesus is telling us to pray for the establishment of God’s heavenly kingdom at the end of time, then I would suggest that they haven’t really read the gospels or understood the teaching of Jesus.  Jesus was not crucified because he talked about heaven; he was executed for proclaiming that the dominion of God was within reach and, in fact, had already begun. 

Your kingdom come is a declaration that we are in favor of radical changes in the way the world operates.  When we pray your kingdom come, we are asking God to work through us to make significant changes in economics, politics, religion and society in order to bring the justice and shalom of God to our everyday lives.  When we pray your kingdom come we are volunteering to live here and now in God’s shalomand also to do whatever we can to bring God’s shalom to others and to all of creation.

Shalom is what the Lord’s Prayer is all about.  Shalom is a Hebrew word that means peace, but it’s not merely a peace based on the absence or suppression of hostility.  The word Shalom comes from the Hebrew root shalam, which literally means “make it good.”  It is a word used to describe completeness and wholeness.  And, while it’s good for us to seek our own inner shalom, the real shalom of God’s dominion happens in community.  The Shalom of God’s kin-dom is a peace that recognizes that we are all interconnected and interdependent.  Shalom is built on justice and fairness and desires peace and well-being for everyone, not just for ourselves.  

Cherokee theologian Randy S. Woodley describes it this way:  “Shalom is communal, holistic, and tangible. There is no private or partial shalom. The whole community must have shalom or no one has shalom. As long as there are hungry people in a community that is well fed, there can be no shalom. . . . Shalom is not for the many, while a few suffer; nor is it for the few while many suffer. It must be available for everyone.”[2] 

When we pray Your kingdom come, we are praying for shalom in our homes, in our towns, in our churches, in our nation and throughout the whole world.  We are praying for peace and justice and fairness for everyone.  And that brings us naturally to Give us each day our daily bread, because in the commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness, in God’s shalom, everyone is fed and no one goes hungry. 

Give us each day our daily bread.  There are some variations in the ancient Greek manuscripts here.  Many of them have this petition exactly the way we’re used to hearing it or saying it: give us today our daily bread.  However, the insightful Jewish New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine, suggests that a more useful understanding comes from the manuscripts that say give us today our bread for tomorrow.  

In most households in Jesus’s day, the dough for the next day’s bread was prepared the evening before and allowed to rise during the night.  If you were going to have bread tomorrow, you needed to have the ingredients today.  So, “give us today our bread for tomorrow” is a way of asking for something very practical.  We’re asking God to save us from at least a little anxiety by giving us today what we will need tomorrow.  

This part of the prayer reaches beyond our family table.  It echoes a traditional Jewish table prayer called the motzi: “Blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”  It reminds us that God doesn’t just magically put bread on the table. God uses the generosity of the earth and the labor of the whole community to put bread on the table.  

When we pray give us today our bread for tomorrow, we are asking God to care for the land where the grain grows.  We’re asking for clean and gentle rains so the crops can grow.  We are asking God to guard and protect the farmers who plant and care for and harvest the crops.  We are asking God to care for those who transport the grain and mill it into flour.  We are asking God to care for the hands that make the dough and knead it.  We are asking for fuel for the fire in the ovens that bake the bread.  

Bread on the table depends entirely on the well-being of the community and on our relationships within the community.  God brings forth bread from the earth, but it is a team effort.  When we pray for both today’s bread and tomorrow’s we are once again praying for the shalom of God’s kin-dom. The next time you hold a piece of bread in your hand, or any piece of food for that matter, think of all the hands that labored to bring it to your hand.

Shalom is what makes it possible for us to have our daily bread.  But sometimes things we do or say disrupt our peace and fracture the cooperation and mutuality of shalom.  Sometimes our sins or the sins of others rupture relationships and forgiveness is needed to restore those relationships.  And that’s why Jesus taught us to pray Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.  

Luke says “forgive us our sins.”  Matthew says, “forgive us our debts.”  In both Aramaic and Hebrew, “debt” was another way to talk about sin. This petition reminds us that there is a reciprocity involved in forgiveness.  As Jesus said in Luke 6:37, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”  Once again it’s about relationships all the way down, which means that this petition is also about God’s shalom.

But let’s go back to the language about debts and forgiving debts. Remember that Jesus was a Jew and he was teaching this prayer to his Jewish disciples.  This language about debts would have been a reminder to them of everything the Torah and the prophets had to say about economic justice.  Jesus is reminding them and us that we are called to live in an economically ethical way.  When we don’t, it’s a sin.  We accrue a spiritual debt.

Living a life of faith as a follower of Jesus means that sometimes we face difficult questions. Sometimes it feels almost as if we’re being tested. And so we pray do not bring us to the time of trial.  

When the Book of Common Prayer was revised in 1604, the phrase “lead us not into temptation” in that version of the Lord’s Prayer caused a huge controversy. The Puritans were quick to point out that the Book of James says, “No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one.” (James 1:13)  This was only one of several complaints they had about the Book of Common Prayer, but it was one they were not willing to compromise.

They had a point.  What the Greek says in both Luke and Matthew is “do not bring us into a peirasmon.  Peirasmon is a time or place of testing, trial or examination.  Temptation may be a kind of test, but not every test is a temptation.  In this petition, we are asking to be spared from any kind of catastrophe or stress, or any situation that would put our faith to the test. 

The Lord’s Prayer, Our Prayer, this prayer that Jesus gave us, is not only one of the great treasures of our faith, it’s also, in its way, a call to radical discipleship.  In this prayer we are asking God to empower us, guide us, and walk with us as we embrace a new way of life with new values and a new vision of what the world can be.  It really is, in six simple lines, a kind of manifesto for life as a follower of Jesus.

In this prayer we are asking for peace, health, and  wholeness for ourselves and for our community.  We are asking God to help us live in the shalom of the commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness here and now.  We are asking God to help us live in the Way of Love.  When we say “Amen,” we are not only saying “Make it so,” we are saying we will do whatever we can to live in that vision and make it a reality for others.  In Jesus’ name.

[1] I’m very grateful to Brian Stoffregen for this bit of history and other insights in his weekly Exegetical Notes.

[2] Shalom and the Community of Creation; Randy S. Woodley

The Power of Three

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Have you ever noticed how many things come in threes?   Our constitution, for instance, give us a government of, by and for the people, with three balanced and equal branches, the executive, the legislative and the judicial.  Well, they’re supposed to be balanced and equal.

Our lives depend on the environmental threesome of land, water and air.  The plants that feed us are dependent on the trio of soil, rain and sunlight.  Native Americans learned long ago to plant a triplet of crops together corn, beans and squash.  They called them the Three Sisters because they worked together in a way that made all three healthier and more robust.  The corn provided a natural pole for the beans to climb.  The beans fixed nitrogen into the soil to fertilize the corn and squash, and the squash spread out its leaves and vines around the roots of the corn and beans to provide shade and preserve moisture in the soil. 

Our planet is composed of three kinds of rock: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic and the elements that compose the stuff of the universe come to us in a triad of solid, liquid and gas.  The nearly infinite variety of colors we see are all built from the three primary colors, red, blue and yellow.

We describe our passage through the day as a journey through morning, noon and night, and as we drive through the city streets our stopping and going is controlled by a troika of green, yellow and red lights.  When we’re on the go, we often refuel with the gastronomic trinity of fast food—a burger, fries and a shake, then we decide who will pay the bill with a quick game of rock, paper, scissors.

When we relate to each other thoughtfully, we realize that the human person we’re conversing with is a complex triplex of intellect, physicality and emotion.  Freud tells us that our psyches are a gordian knot of id, ego and superego.  And in broader, more ancient terms we understand ourselves as body, mind and spirit. 

Jesus told us that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and St. Paul told us that Faith, Hope and Love abide, which are the three things we need most as we confront the evil triad of greed, sexism and racism.

Aristotle said that everything that comes in threes is perfect.  Omnes trium perfectum, a statement that may have had some influence on the bishops of the early Church who gathered at the Council of Nicaea.

Today is Trinity Sunday, the one day in the Church year dedicated to a doctrine, the first doctrine adopted by the Church, the doctrine that tells us that God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit exist eternally as three persons but also as one God.  In his book, The Divine Dance, the Trinity and Your Transformation, Richard Rohr says that the Trinity is the fundamental reality of the universe, a perfect balance of union and differentiation, and a model for human relationships—God for us, God alongside us, God within us.

It’s not always easy to wrap our heads around this idea.  Martin Luther once said that denying the Trinity might imperil your soul but trying to understand it could imperil your sanity.  The truth is that the infinite God cannot be boxed into our very finite minds.  The limitless God cannot be corralled by our limited understanding.  “’Circling around’ is all we can do,” says Richard Rohr. “Our speaking of God is a search for similes, analogies, and metaphors. All theological language is an approximation, offered tentatively in holy awe. That’s the best human language can achieve. We can say, ‘It’s like—it’s similar to…,’ but we can never say, ‘It is…’ because we are in the realm of beyond, of transcendence, of mystery. And we must—absolutely must—maintain a fundamental humility before the Great Mystery. If we do not, religion always worships itself and its formulations and never God.”[1]

The Holy Trinity, the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons living as one God, is not a puzzle to be solved.  It’s a mystery in which to immerse ourselves.  Frederick Buechner described the Trinity as the Mystery beyond us, the Mystery among us, and the Mystery within us.  You don’t solve mysteries, you explore them.  You enter into them.  You participate in them.  Maybe instead of calling this day Trinity Sunday, we should call it Mystery Sunday.

Richard Rohr said that when something is a mystery, especially when it’s a God mystery, that doesn’t mean it can’t be understood, it means that it can be understood endlessly.  There is always more to see.  There is always more to relate to.  There is always more to understand.  There are always new steps in the dance.

And it is a dance—or at least that’s, historically, one of the best descriptions we’ve ever had of the Trinity.  But how did we come to have the Doctrine of the Trinity in the first place?  There is no passage in the Bible that specifically describes or defines God as Trinity, though there are some passages that hint at it.  The closest we come to a full statement of Trinitarian theology is at the end of Matthew when Jesus tells his disciples to baptize new disciples in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  And St. Paul ends his second letter to the Corinthians with Trinitarian language when he says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the union of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” As my colleague Heather Anne Thiessen once said, the Trinity isn’t spelled out in scripture, but it’s there in kit form.  

Early followers of Jesus had a problem.  Like the Jews—and remember, the very first followers of Jesus were Jews—these early Jesus followers believed that there is only one God.  But they also believed—or at least most of them did—that Jesus was divine and that he was somehow completely one with God whom he called Abba or Father.  On top of that, they had received the Holy Spirit—the very breath of God, who they also experienced as a divine person because the Spirit often seemed to exist and act independently of Jesus and Abba.  At the baptism of Jesus, though, all three seemed to have been present: Jesus coming up out of the water, the Spirit, descending in the form of a dove, and Abba, speaking like thunder.  So how do you reconcile three divine persons but hang onto the idea that there is only one God?

Well, you don’t, said one group of Jesus people.  These people were called Arians because the main proponent of their theology was Arius of Alexandria.  The Father is God, said Arius.  Jesus, the Son is a slightly lesser god.  He was created by the Father in the first millisecond of creation and all his authority and power comes from the Father, but he is separate in substance and stature.  And the Spirit is a slightly lesser god than Jesus, the Son, and also of an ever-so-slightly lower stature and substance.  What the Arians were saying, more or less, is that there are really three gods and, while they are eternally united, the Father is the first and most important God, the one with all the power and authority.   

Hang on a minute, said the Trinitarians.  Jesus said, “The Father and I are one.  You who have seen me have seen the Father.”[2]  He also said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”[3]  After the resurrection, Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into the disciples.  The Spirit is in his breath.  It’s his Spirit that flows in us.  When the prophets would say, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”  they were talking about the Father’s Spirit.  So, the Three have to be One.  But they are also Three.  And they are still One.  Three persons, One God.

This disagreement the Trinitarians and the Arians had started to become violent and threatened to completely and irreparably divide the church which had only recently really begun to come together in a meaningful way.  So 1700 years ago last month, in May of the year 325, the Emperor Constantine, who had recently declared himself to be a follower of Christ, decided that this question had to be settled for the good of the Church and the good of the empire.  He called for a Council and ordered all the bishops to meet at Nicaea to debate the matter.  After much argument, Constantine declared that the Trinitarians had won the debate and ordered the bishops to formulate an official statement to describe the Doctrine of the Trinity.  

This was the very first official doctrine of the whole Church, by the way, and the bishops and presbyters argued heatedly over the words they would use.  They argued about whether the Father and the Son were made of the same substance (as if anybody could possibly know that) and whether they had the same nature.  They knew they were standing at the edge of an enormous Truth about God and they felt it was vitally important to get all the details exactly right even though there was no possible way for them to know or even see all the details.  In some ways, they were like children who stand on the beach and think they can fully describe the breadth and depth and power of the ocean and all the life contained in it.  

The bishops created the first draft of what we now know as the Nicene Creed and decided that adherence to this statement of faith would determine if someone was a true Christian or not.  Ironically, their very useful insight about the all-loving, all-relating God who exists eternally in the expansive community and relationship of the Trinity led them to formulate a faith statement that would be used to exclude people from the community and the embrace of the Church.

The doctrine of the Trinity continued to confuse a lot of earnest Christians, and, truth be told, it was not universally accepted everywhere even though the Emperor had declared it to be the official stance of the church.  For many people it was just too confusing to figure out how one plus one plus one could equal one.  Fortunately, about 50 years after Nicaea, the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil, the bishop of Caesarea, his younger brother, Gregory, the bishop of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzen, the patriarch of Constantinople came up with a better description of how the three persons of the Trinity exist as one God.  

The model they used was a circle dance, and the fancy theological name they gave their idea is perichoresis, a Greek word which more or less literally means circle dance.   The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they said, exist as one in an eternal circle dance of love.  The Trinity is an eternal, joyful, radiant manifestation of love, loving, and being loved.  The love that endlessly flows between, in and through the Father, Son and Holy Spirit creates and sustains the universe.

One of the beautiful things about this idea is that there is no hierarchy in it.  The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are equal in their eternal love for each other and for their creation, which includes us.  Another wonderful thing about this idea is that it describes God as always in motion.  God as a verb, and not as a static noun, exists as an endless flow of love.  But perhaps the most powerful thing about this idea, at least as far as we are concerned, is that we are invited into their dance.  We are invited to participate in the endless flow of love, loving, and being loved.  The Holy Spirit, who dwells within us, carries us into the loving embrace of the Father and the Son and invites us to learn the steps of the dance.

We are called to embody this trinitarian flow of love, loving and being loved to carry it out into the world, loving God, loving our neighbor and being humble and vulnerable enough to let ourselves be loved.

In the name of God the Father, in the authority and authenticity of Jesus, and in the power of the Spirit, we are called to practice in what the late Walter Brueggemann called prophetic imagination.  As we are embraced by the wholeness and balance of the Trinity, we are called to speak out, to proclaim the inbreaking of the kingdom of God, to speak truth to power, and to live out God’s definition of goodness—to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with God and with each other.

In his book Interrupting Silence: God’s Command to Speak Out, Walter Brueggeman said, “The church has a huge stake in breaking the silence, because the God of the Bible characteristically appears at the margins of established power arrangements, whether theological or socioeconomic and political.”  He went on to say, “Since we now live in a society—and a world—that is fitfully drifting toward fascism, the breaking of silence is altogether urgent.  In the institutional life of the church, moreover, the breaking of silence by the testimony of the gospel often means breaking the silence among those who have a determined stake in maintaining the status quo.”

We are called to remind the world that God is inherently just.  God’s justice is inseparable from the love, kindness and grace that flows endlessly in the circle dance of the Three-in-One, and from the Triune God to us and through us.  If we live in the trinitarian flow of love, loving and being loved, we cannot remain silent and inactive in a hurting world.  

[1] Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation

[2] John 10:30; John 14:9

[3] Matthew 28:18