Tag Holy Spirit

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

The Breath, The Wind, The Spirit

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

John 14:8-17, 25-27; Acts 2

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.  And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”

It’s no surprise that this is the text that usually gets all our attention on Pentecost Sunday.  It’s a big, dramatic story.  The language is intense and the narrative is filled with almost cinematic details that light up our imaginations!  Violent wind!  Tongues of fire!  Everyone streaming out into the street speaking different languages!  This outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the second chapter of Acts is so vivid and powerful, so action-packed and full of good stuff for motivating the church that it’s no wonder we return to it every year to be inspired by it and to have our own personal zeal and dedication rekindled. 

This Pentecost story in the second chapter of Acts is an important part of our heritage; many call it the birthday of the church, but Diana Butler Bass reminds us that it’s really the birth of something much bigger.  “It’s the birth of a new humanity, a new creation!”  On the day of Pentecost, as the followers of Jesus proclaimed the Good News in the languages of everyone gathered there, Peter reminded the crowd of what the prophet Joel had said four or five hundred years earlier, “In the last days,” God declares, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.”

All flesh.  All people.  As St. Paul reminds us in Romans, “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.”

The Pentecost story in Acts tells the story of that moment in history when the Spirit of God was poured out for all people, not just the insiders.  In fact, the insiders quite literally rushed outside to bring the fire of God’s presence and love and Good News to everyone who would listen.  

But there is another story in the New Testament about the outpouring of the Spirit, and over the past few years I have felt myself more and more drawn to that story from the end of the Gospel of John. 

In chapter 20 of John, the disciples were huddled together in hiding.  It was evening, three days after Jesus was crucified.  The day had been an emotional roller coaster.  Just before sunrise, Jesus’ tomb was found to be unsealed and empty.  Mary Magdalen claimed that she had seen Jesus and spoken with him, but no one else had.  And then suddenly, even though the doors were locked, there he was standing in the room with them!  “Peace be with you,” he said.  “As the Father has sent me, now I’m sending you.”  

And then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

This is a much gentler and more subdued giving of the Spirit.  It’s not as flashy as Luke’s Pentecost story, but it is very powerful in its own way.  It’s more personal. More intimate.  The Holy Spirit is given and received as the very breath of Jesus.  

This is the culmination of a wonderful play on words that has been going on throughout John’s gospel since chapter 3 when Jesus told Nicodemus that “The wind blows wherever it chooses, and you hear its sound, but do not know where it is coming from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”  In Greek, the language in which the Gospel of John was written, the word for wind and breath and spirit are all the same word.  Pneuma.  So when Jesus breathes on them in chapter 20 and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” it could also be understood as “receive the Holy Breath” or “Receive the Holy Wind.” 

What does it do to our understanding of the Spirit if we can hear it all three ways: to hear it as the Spirit, the essence of God that resides with us and in us, guiding us and speaking to our spirits; but also to hear it as the very breath of Jesus filling our lungs, empowering our words when we speak; and then to also hear it as the wind of God that blows us where God wants or needs us to be?  Receive the Holy Breath.  Receive the Holy Wind.  Receive the Holy Spirit.

I like the rambunctious giving of the Spirit in Acts 2.  It’s a joyful and empowering picture of the Spirit at work.  And it’s for everyone!  All people!  But as I said, I have been more and more drawn to the way the Gospel of John describes the movement and work of the Spirit.  I find this quieter, gentler “Pentecost” more in keeping with my own experience and more consistent with the ways I have seen the Spirit move and work most often in others.  I find that very often the work of the Spirit is so subtle that it’s not until I look back on the moment that I even realize that the Spirit was at work.

Let me give you an example.  As I was preparing this sermon, I had done my research and gathered all the bits and pieces in my notes, and prayed, so that the only thing left to do was to start writing.  And that’s where I was stuck.  My brain needed more time to percolate all the things I had been reading and thinking.  I guess I was still in sermon-avoidance mode.  So I went online to Facebook just to get the synapses firing and blow out the cobwebs.  As I scrolled through different posts, I came upon a painting of Jesus by Maria Brock.  It is an arresting and well done painting, and there were two things I liked about it immediately.  First, in this painting Jesus looks like a Palestinian.  There’s an authenticity about it that makes it easy to say, “Yeah.  Jesus could very well have looked like that.”  But the thing that was really striking about this picture, at least for me, is that Jesus is smiling.  He looks warm and friendly and understanding.  And loving.  

Staring at this marvelous picture of Jesus, I found myself thinking about our gospel text for today from John 14.  This passage is part of the Last Supper Discourse, also called the Farewell Discourse.  John describes Jesus gathered with his disciples on the night of his betrayal, taking advantage of their short remaining time together to prepare them for what is to come.  

I have always imagined him being very somber throughout this whole discourse, after all, he’s sharing some very serious things with his disciples.  But then I remembered that this dinner took place during the week of Passover, a joyful and celebratory time for the Jews.  And looking at this picture where he’s smiling, where he looks so loving, I began to think, “What if this was his expression as he said all these difficult and necessary things?  What if he was looking at them with deep love and gentleness and patient understanding?”  

As I looked at that painting, I began to hear his words differently.  The tone of voice changed and the words of Jesus came alive for me in a new way.  I could hear Jesus saying with that gentle and loving smile, “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid,” and those words went to my heart in a deeper way than ever before.

That, I believe, was a Holy Spirit moment.   Finding that picture.  Reimagining that scene of the text.  Opening to the words of Christ in a new way.  That’s the kind of thing the Holy Spirit does for us much more often, I think, than tongues of fire and speaking in unfamiliar languages.

It was a happy and festive season for their people, but it was probably not a happy and festive mood in the room where Jesus had gathered his disciples to give them the new commandment to love each other and to promise them the gift of the Spirit.  They were anxious and afraid.  They had so many unanswered questions.  Jesus had told them that he would be departing from them and it had begun to sink in that soon they would be on their own.  They needed some kind of reassurance.  

In her commentary on the Working Preacher website, Meda Stamper said, “The promise of the Spirit does not come to completely faithful, courageous people, already loving one another and the world boldly, already worshiping in spirit and truth.  It comes in the midst of confusion and fear, which has made them unable to grasp what he is saying, and it is the answer to that.  Jesus makes the promise of the Spirit, emerging from the mutual love of the Father and Son for one another and for us, into which they and we are invited, at the very moment when such grace seems most beyond their grasp and ours.”[1]  

Jesus tells them and us that simply in our love for one another we open our hearts to the Holy Spirit, the presence of God in us and with us, to guide us and make us bold enough love a world which, frankly, is not always loveable—a world that is sometimes threatening—but a world that is always and everywhere loved by God.

Jesus promises that when loving the world and each other feels like a trial, when it seems to be beyond our ability to find one more drop of grace and understanding in what Johannes Buetler called our “lawsuit with the world,”[2] when life, itself, feels like an ordeal, Jesus promises that we will have a Paraclete.  An Advocate.  The Spirit comes alongside us and abides in us in the same way that the Father abides in the Son and Jesus dwelled in the world.  “When the physical presence of Jesus is no longer available, still the way, the truth, and the life are in us.”[3]

This is what the Spirit does.  She comes into us like a breath and carries us forward like a powerful wind.  She reminds us of all the things that Jesus has taught us.  She gives us courage to witness, to convict or convince the world of the presence of Christ and the power of love.  She gives us the energy and the courage to do in our time what Jesus did in his own time—to love each other and the world into health and wholeness.  

“Jesus in John shows us what living love looks like in his own life of making God’s love for the world known,” said Meda Stamper. “He enacts love… in words and works: in dangerously truthful testimony to political and religious authorities; in a ministry of boundary-breaking healing and of feeding the physically and spiritually hungry; and in a life of humility,… friendship, and prayer.  He tells us that we are to follow his example…”

Jesus enacts love and tells us to do the same.  Jesus makes his own life an example of God’s love in the world and tells us to do the same.

This is the quieter Pentecost, the alternative Pentecost, a Pentecost centered in love. This is the Pentecost that empowers us to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. The Spirit is breathed into us, dwells in us, advocates for us, and flows through us as a witness to God’s love in a hurting world.  Jesus calls us to live into the fullness of life in this Holy Spirit to bring light and love and restoration to all of creation.

Jesus breathes the Spirit into us to give us comfort and courage and peace.  “Peace I leave with you,” he says. “My peace I give to you,” and the peace that Jesus gives us is the breath of the Spirit.  It is the very presence of God in us.   Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.  God is with you and in you.

Whether it’s with tongues of fire and a loud rush of wind, or with a whisper, a breath, or a breeze, may this Pentecost renew the power of the Spirit within you.

May the Spirit of God make you bold to love the world.  May this Holy Spirit, the breath of Christ within you, empower you to be kind, to speak truth, and to stand for justice and fairness.  May your life be centered in love.  And may the peace of Christ, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

[1] Meda Stamper, Commentary on John 14:8-17, 25-27

[2] Johannes Buetler, Paraclete, The New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible

[3] Meda Stamper, Commentary on John 14:8-17, 25-27

When Mom Doesn’t Like Your Job

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Mark 3:20-35

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sent Out

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Note: Today, Pentecost Sunday, was my last Sunday as pastor of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Long Beach. I am retiring. What follows is both my Pentecost and my farewell sermon.

Acts 2:1-21; John 20:19-23

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”  Kind of like us.  Here.  Now.  Today.  They were all in one place and then all of a sudden a sound like a mighty blast of wind filled the place and tongues of fire appeared and came to rest on each of them.  And all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.

That’s how the book of Acts describes the Holy Spirit coming upon the followers of Jesus.  The writer of Luke, who was also the writer of Acts, really likes special effects, especially the ones that seem to pierce the boundary between heaven and earth.  Just look at his Christmas story.  

The description of Pentecost in Acts is dynamic and inspiring, and I know that the Spirit still does show up in some pretty remarkable and breathtaking ways sometimes.  I think we should always be open to that kind of energizing experience of the Spirit, always praying for the Spirit to fire us up with a passion to speak about what God has done and what God is doing among us and in the world.

The story of Pentecost in Acts is knock-your-socks-off inspiring and it can speak to us very powerfully of hope and empowerment and mission.  But there’s another story about the giving of the Holy Spirit that can speak to us just as powerfully even though it is a much quieter story.

The Gospel of John tells us that it was evening on the first day of the week when the disciples received the Spirit, evening on the day of the resurrection.  The Jews have always understood evening to be a transition time, a time when one day is ending and a new day is beginning.  For them the new day begins at sunset.  John tells us that it was evening.  An in-between time.  And the disciples were all together, except for Thomas.  

They were all together behind locked doors.  They were tense.  They were confused.  They were apprehensive.  Their future was uncertain.  Kind of like us.  Here.  Now.  Today.  They were all in one place, smothered under the weight of their anxiety, when suddenly Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

He showed them his wounds.  He spoke peace to them again.  And then he told them they were going to be sent out.  And then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness, it remains withheld.”

That’s how the disciples received the Holy Spirit in the Gospel of John.  It may not seem as theatrical as the fire and wind of Pentecost in the book of Acts, but it is no less dramatic.  It’s just a different kind of drama—a quieter and more personal drama, but no less life-changing.

As much as we might long for a blast of wind and tongues of fire, it has been my experience that most of us have received the Holy Spirit more in a Gospel of John way than in a Book of Acts way.  Most of us, I think, have experienced the Spirit as the quiet but revitalizing breath of Christ shared among friends in the beloved community.  The Spirit has come to us in hearing, studying and sharing the Word of God, in sharing the bread and wine of the table and in a splash of water at the font.  The Spirit has come to us in conversation and companionship, in words of comfort and whispers of prayer.  The Spirit has come to us in laughter and in singing.  And sometimes in tears.  

As long as we have gathered together in the name and presence and love of Jesus, the Holy Spirit has never stopped filling us and renewing us in our life of ministry, worship and faith.  Together.

When Jesus breathes on his friends he reaffirms the promise of peace.  Shalom.  “Peace I leave with you,” he had told them earlier. “My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”(John 14:27) And now as he fills the room with his breath, the breath of the Holy Spirit, he says to them once again, “Peace be with you.”

They needed that peace.  We need that peace, because to receive  the Holy Spirit also means receiving a mandate to pass it along.  It means being sent out to carry the love, grace and joy of Christ into the world to transform the world.  

Jesus sends us into the world, empowered by the Spirit, to forgive sins.  Immediately after saying “receive the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness of any, it remains withheld.”   Eugene Peterson in The Message said it this way, “If you forgive someone’s sins, they’re gone for good. If you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?”

We have been given the power and authority and responsibility to free people from the burden of sin.  Or to bury them under that burden if we neglect or fail to free them.  We’ve been given the Spirit to make the love of God tangible, to make God’s grace visible in the world.

This is the news of Pentecost:  God has a whole new way of being in the world.  God has chosen to work in the world in us, with us, and through us.   We cannot be afraid of change—because God has called us and empowered us to be the change that all of creation has been longing for.  (Romans 8) 

God, through us, is transforming the world, and that can be daunting.  But God has shown us the Way, the Truth and the Life in Jesus and empowered us with the Holy Spirit so we can walk that Way, speak that truth and live that Life.

“Peace I leave you,” said Jesus.  “My peace I give you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” 

In his book, God’s Politics, Jim Wallis tells about the time he was attending worship in St. George’s cathedral in South Africa during the days of apartheid.  Bishop Desmond Tutu was preaching when suddenly the service was interrupted by South African security police who marched into the cathedral to intimidate Bishop Tutu so he would not speak out yet again against the apartheid government.  

When the Security Police filed into the building with weapons, tape recorders and cameras, Bishop Tutu stared them down then said to them, “You are powerful. Very powerful. But I serve a God who will not be mocked.” Then with a dazzling, warm smile he said to them, “Since you have already lost, I invite you today to join the winning side.” 

Immediately the congregation was transformed.  The spell of fear that had gripped them was broken and the people began to dance.  They danced out into the streets where even more security forces were waiting to intimidate them, but the police ended up standing aside and letting the people dance in the joy of the Spirit.

When the forces of intimidation showed up at church, Bishop Tutu stared them down with a dazzling smile and the Fruit of the Spirit.  That’s our weapon.  That’s our most powerful tool in the God Family Business—the business of transforming the world:  a dazzling smile fully loaded with all the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,  gentleness, and self-control.  And also grace, which is often the same thing as forgiveness.  

And I would add one more characteristic of the Spirit: gratitude.

As I stand here this morning preaching my final sermon as pastor of the Little Church with a Big Heart, my heart is overflowing.  I am so grateful to God and to each and every one of you for the almost 12 years we’ve had together, for the love we’ve shared, for the joy we’ve shared, and even for the sorrows we’ve shared.  I am grateful for the way you have all been the Church.  I am grateful for your sense of mission that reaches far beyond this building.  I am grateful for your consistent stewardship of your time, treasures and talents.   I am grateful for the ways you have adapted to change. Most of all, though, I am grateful for the love you have given so freely to Meri and me as we have shared this life of faith together.

Thank you for calling me to be your pastor all those years ago.  

And now God is sending us out, me to retirement and you to continue being the Little Church with a Big Heart in new and different ways.  Be not afraid.  You have all the gifts you need.  You are the Body of Christ.  You are filled with the Holy Spirit.

God be with you.  As St. Paul said in Colossians: “Though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, and I rejoice to see your morale and the firmness of your faith in Christ.”  Peace be with you.  In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

A Breath of Fresh Air

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

John 20:19-31

Have you ever found yourself in a group of people who are going on and on about a particularly beautiful and inspiring place they’ve all been to but you haven’t been there?  Or maybe they’re talking about a show or a movie you haven’t seen, and they keep talking about how moving it is or how a particular scene brought tears to their eyes, or how it made them think about things in a whole new way?  And maybe they even turn to you and say, “Oh you’ve got to go see it!”  But you haven’t been to that place or seen that show, and you really can’t imagine that it’s everything they say it is, so you wander over to another group who are having a good-natured debate about whether or not garlic belongs in guacamole. 

It’s hard to be fully involved in the conversation about an experience you haven’t had.  It’s hard to believe that the thing everybody’s talking about is really as terrific as they say when you haven’t seen it yourself.

In today’s Gospel reading we have a story about a guy who had not yet had the experience that all his friends were talking about, a guy who simply couldn’t imagine the life-changing event his friends were describing because it just seemed too far-fetched, too contrary to the way the universe and life are known to work.  It was easier to believe that his friends were pulling some kind of elaborate prank in very poor taste than to believe that their beloved teacher who had been tortured to death had suddenly shown up in the room with them very much alive.

The story of Thomas is a story for us.  And a story about us.  When Jesus asks Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen?” then adds, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,” he is talking to us.  And about us.

This is a story for us, to us and about us even before Thomas is ever mentioned.  The story begins with the disciples huddled together behind locked doors.  They are afraid.  The world beyond those locked doors has become a dangerous place for them, and it’s easy for them to imagine that all that danger might burst through those locked doors any second now.  

They are grieving.  They are afraid.  And they are in turmoil.  In the midst of all that, Peter and the other disciple had erupted into the room all in a lather to say that the tomb was empty and the grave clothes were all neatly folded.  Okay.  Weird, but maybe explainable.  But then Mary Magdalene swept in and told them that she has seen Jesus and spoken to him!  But so far, she’s the only one who claimed to have actually seen the Jesus, resurrected and alive.  She’s the only one so far who had claimed to have spoken with him.  And for the rest of them… well that was just…unbelievable… so they passed it off as a delusion caused by her grief.  Or maybe some kind of female thing.  Because, you know, that’s how the boys’ club usually dealt with the perplexing things women sometimes said.

So there they were, locked in grief and fear and unbelief every bit as much as they were locked behind those doors.

But then Jesus showed up behind their locked door, stepping into their emotional prison to free them from the fear and grief that were paralyzing them, and at the same time unlocking and opening for them a whole new understanding of life and death and God.  

Jesus does the same thing for us.  Jesus steps inside our locked up spaces.  Jesus steps through our fear and unbelief to come and stand beside us and among us, to show us that he is alive—and to teach us how to live in a new reality.  If we will believe.  If we will trust.

In his book Living Jesus, Luke Timothy Johnson wrote, “The most important question concerning Jesus, then, is simply this: Do we think he is dead or alive?

“If Jesus is simply dead, there are any number of ways we can relate ourselves to his life and his accomplishments. And we might even, if some obscure bit of data should turn up, hope to learn more about him. But we cannot reasonably expect to learn more from him.

“If he is alive, however, everything changes. It is no longer a matter of our questioning an historical record, but a matter of our being put in question by one who has broken every rule of ordinary human existence. If Jesus lives, then it must be as life-giver. Jesus is not simply a figure of the past in that case, but a person in the present; not merely a memory we can analyze and manipulate, but an agent who can confront and instruct us. What we can learn about him must therefore include what we continue to learn from him.”

When Jesus steps into the locked up places in our hearts and minds, when Jesus steps through our fears and unbelief to stand before us, to stand in the midst of us, he does it for a reason.  The living Jesus stands in our midst not just so that we can resume the same old relationships with God and with each other that we had before, but so that we can begin an entirely new relationship with God and with each other.  

Jesus does not just want us to learn about him.  Jesus wants us to learn from him so we can live in unity with him.  We are not united to a dead, historical Christ who lives only in the pages of the Gospels.  We are united to a living Jesus who stands here among us, who meets us at the table of companionship, sharing with us and serving us all at the same time. We are united with a living Jesus who meets us in disguise on the streets just as in Matthew 25.  He awakens us to his presence and opens our eyes to look for him.  He urges us to be listening for him.  He opens our minds so we can learn from him.  He embraces us to be one with him as he is one with the Father.  

But Jesus doesn’t just show up.  Jesus knows that there’s something more that we need so we can rise out of our pain and fears and unbelief.  Jesus knows we need a spirit of courage that will make us brave enough and bold enough to love each other and love the world, a spirit of joy and wonder that will keep us from slipping into cynicism or despair in a world that is all too often indifferent when it isn’t being downright nasty.  Jesus knows that if we’re going to help heal the world’s angst, we need to be free of it ourselves.  So he gives us the antidote.

“Peace be with you,” he says.  Shalom aleichem.  Put away your anxiety.  Let go of your fear.  Put away your disagreement.  Stop trying so hard to be right.  Try, instead to be loving.  Stop the finger-pointing.  Stop investing so much energy and emotion in nonsense and things that don’t really matter.  “Peace.  There is so much you may never agree on, but you can agree on me.  Peace.  I will be your peace.”  

“After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” 

He showed them his hands and his side.  He shows us his wounds.  

In Wounded Lord, Robert Smith’s commentary on the Gospel of John, which he completed shortly before he died, he wrote: “Those wounds will never go away.  The exalted Christ has not passed to a sublime existence immune to suffering.  Even after Good Friday and Easter, God continues to turn to the world through the wounded Christ.

 “To believe in this Jesus means to take him, wounds and all, into our own lives.  To believe means to participate in Christ’s own suffering on behalf of the true life of the world.”

Our Christ, our God, is not some transcendent deity who sits in heaven far removed from the pain of our existence.  Our Christ, our God is wounded from embracing the world, wounded from loving the world.  We can sing about victory all we want, but the reality is that we’re still in the struggle, and the Good News, the really Good News is not that our Messiah, our Commander is immortal and impervious, but that he has a Purple Heart.  The Good News is that his wounds were fatal, but his fatality was not.  His wounds mean that our wounds may kill us, but that won’t stop us.  “If we share in a death like his,” says St. Paul, “then surely we will share in a resurrection like his.”

But first, we need peace.  And before we can spread peace “out there” we need to spread it “in here.”  

         We each need to receive that peace.

         We need to share that peace with each other.

This is so important that Jesus said it three times.  Peace be with you.

“Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 

This is where we go from being disciples to being apostles.  Now we have the same mission Jesus had.  We are not supposed to just sit still and happy in our own little pool of peace.  We are sent.  We have to go out in peace.  And with peace.  We have to be grounded in Shalom—the blessing of well-being—but on the move, carrying the shalom of God with us, sharing it and spreading it.

“When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

It says in most English translations that Jesus breathed on them.  Karoline Lewis of Luther Seminary says that the better translation would be that he breathed into them, and she reminds us that the word that’s used in the Greek, emphisao, is the same word that’s used in the Septuagint Greek version of Genesis 2 when God breathes life into the human that God has made out of earth.  This is the breath that gives life.  Jesus breathes the Spirit of life into us to give us a whole new life.

Breathe.  Take a moment right now and breathe.  Inhale the Spirit of God that is being breathed into you right now, right where you are.  Breathe.  

Now breathe out.  Let the holiness in you, the Christ in you, the love and goodness in you fill the room.  And now breathe in again.  Breathe in the Holy Spirit, the breath of Christ. 

And now, think about this.  This new life that you are breathing in—it has a purpose.  You are being sent.  “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you,” said Jesus.  You are being sent to bring God’s shalom to the world.  You are being sent to bring shalom into your home, to breathe out the love of Christ and breathe in the presence of Christ from those around you.  You are being sent into the world to breathe the Spirit of God and divine shalom into every place you go and everyone you meet.

Hand in hand with the breath of the Spirit comes the duty of 

forgiveness.  As Jesus breathes into his disciples he says, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  Jesus gives us this very serious but also joyous job of discernment.  If you forgive, it’s forgiven.  Forever. Period. If you do not forgive, someone will carry the burden unforgiveness…and it might be you.  Refusing to forgive can forge a very heavy chain that binds you to the unforgiven person in ways that are painful and destructive. 

The Greek word for forgiveness means “to set loose, to set free.”  Just as there is bondage in not forgiving, there is transformative liberation in forgiveness.  As followers of Jesus, we are in the forgiveness business.

Robert Capon in Hunting the Divine Fox wrote:  “The church is not in the morals business. The world is in the morals business. . .

“What the world cannot get right, however, is the forgiveness business – and that, of course, is the church’s real job. She is in the world to deal with the Sin which the world can’t turn off or escape from. She is not in the business of telling the world what’s right and wrong so that it can do good and avoid evil. She is in the business of offering, to a world which knows all about that tiresome subject, forgiveness for its chronic unwillingness to take its own advice. But the minute she even hints that morals, and not forgiveness, is the name of her game, she instantly corrupts the Gospel and runs headlong into blatant nonsense. . . We Easter People have been sent to forgive sins.”

Receive the Holy Spirit.  Breathe in the shalom of God then breathe it out again into a world that is gasping for the breath of peace.  If you forgive anybody anything, in God’s eyes it is forgiven.  When you do not forgive, someone will carry the burden and the body of Christ will continue to be wounded.  

And don’t worry about the Thomases of this world.  Don’t worry about those who don’t believe.  Just love them patiently and surround them with your peace.  When they see what you’ve seen and hear what you’ve heard, perhaps they will come to believe what you believe.  Until then, forgive their unbelief.  

Dear Nicodemus

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

John 3:1-17

Dear Nicodemus,

I owe you an apology.  I confess that I have not always held you in very high esteem.  The fact is, in the past I thought you were—how to say this?—too cautious and, well, more than a little timid—and, if I’m being really honest, I sometimes thought that you were not the sharpest quill in the inkwell.  I’m sorry I was so quick to judge you.  I confess I hadn’t really read the story from your point of view. 

I realize now, Nicodemus, that it was actually very brave of you to seek out Jesus that night when you two sat down to talk.  Nothing timid about it.  Some people think you came at night just because you didn’t want to be seen talking to the “enemy.”   That’s the frame a lot of people put around your meeting with Jesus.  They see the antagonism and contempt that some of your fellow Pharisees had for Jesus—but to be fair, he gave as good as he got, better really—anyway, people see that enmity in his back-and-forth with your fellow Pharisees, so they assume that you came to that meeting that night with a little malice and a big agenda.   

I hadn’t really thought about it before, Nicodemus, but I can see now how much was at stake for you.  John says that you were an archon, a leader or ruler of the people.  And the language he uses indicates that you were a most highly respected teacher among your people.  Plus you were wealthy.  You had standing in your community as a righteous man, blessed by God.  You had a big reputation to protect, and you were putting all that at risk in order to have a meeting of the minds with a man who many of your community regarded as a troublemaker.  That could have badly tarnished your reputation, and I admire you for putting that concern aside so you could have an honest, personal discussion with Jesus, rabbi to rabbi.

Having said all that, I realize now that you probably came at night simply to avoid the crowds.  I see now that what you wanted was a real conversation with someone who cared deeply about the same things you cared about.

Some have said that your coming at night was symbolic.  They see you as a caricature of  “those who walk in darkness.”  That idea makes a certain kind of sense based on the ways that John’s gospel uses the themes of light and darkness.  But since you came to Jesus, who later calls himself “the light of the world,”  wouldn’t it make more sense to see you as someone who was moving out of darkness and into the light?  You remind us that faith is a process.  Understanding unfolds by degrees.  Too often we forget that.

I’ve also been thinking, Nicodemus, about that first thing you said to Jesus when you sat down to talk:  “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”  It’s kind of sad, really, but in our time and our culture, when someone greets you with flattery like that, our first impulse is to hold onto our wallets.  But I’ve come to think you were really in earnest when you said it.  You showed him such respect, calling him rabbi and acknowledging not just the powerful things he had done, but the source of that power.  You acknowledged his relationship with the one he called Father, though you couldn’t possibly have understood the true nature of that relationship.  

But then, who does?  Oh, we have no shortage of doctrinal formulas and illustrations to describe that relationship—relationships, really, because the Holy Spirit is part of that eternal dance of love we call the Trinity.  But when you get right down to it, who can really understand the relationship between the Maker, the Christ and the Spirit?  We recite the illustrations and restate the formulas and then think that because we found some language to corral it, we understand that mystic communion of love that is God.  Our language, itself, betrays our lack of real understanding.  In naming them Father, Son, and Spirit, we insert a separateness between them and ascribe roles. That is the antithesis of their relationship, their existence, their being, where they cannot and will not be separate.  As Frederick Buechner said, they are the Mystery beyond us, the Mystery within us, and the Mystery among us—and it’s all one deep and eternal Mystery that gives us life.  The best we can do is enter the Mystery and experience it—and understand that we will never completely understand.  Saint Augustine said that it’s like trying to pour the ocean into a seashell.  

Speaking of understanding, I now understand that I have greatly misunderstood your conversation with Jesus.  When I dug a little deeper, did a little more homework, I came to realize that the dialogue between you two was typical of the way rabbis talked to each other and mulled over ideas in your time.  I didn’t realize before that you were actually inviting Jesus to elaborate more on “being born from above” when you asked, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”  You gave the obvious “dunce” response to Jesus so that he had a reason to go deeper into what he was teaching.  It was a rhetorical device.  You are far from a dunce, Nicodemus.  I may be wrong, but your dialogue with Jesus now sounds to me like you and he were using a familiar and respected rabbinic method to engage in a kind of team teaching for the disciples.  And you, with grace and humility, played the role of the “not so bright” student.  

Even when Jesus says, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things,”  it reads to me now as if he’s using you as a foil, and you great teacher that you are, you graciously play along.  You help him make the point to those gathered around and listening, that these are not simple, easy concepts to grasp, these things that you two are discussing.  Even a “great teacher of Israel” has to wrestle these ideas.  You help him spur the other listeners into thinking more deeply and opening their minds and hearts more fully to the Mystery of God in, with, under and around them.  You give them permission to have questions.

If you’re wondering why I’ve reassessed my opinion of you, Nicodemus, it’s because I took a good look at the two other times you are mentioned in John’s gospel, particularly that time in chapter 7 when the other Pharisees in the Sanhedrin are upset with the temple police for not arresting Jesus.  They throw shade on him because he’s from Galilee, which is just pure prejudice.  They say he should be arrested for misleading the people because “he does not know the law.”  But you stood up for him, and with perfect irony said, “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?”  That one cost you, I know.  Somebody in that group tried to throw shade on you, too, when he said, “Oh are you from Galilee, too?  Nobody’s ever heard of a prophet coming from Galilee.”  But I think you were maybe beginning to suspect that he really was a prophet, and maybe something more than a prophet.  Even if he was from Galilee.

And then there’s that other thing you did—that beautiful, generous, heart breaking thing.  You were there when he was crucified.  When his disciples had deserted him, you stayed.  Right there at the foot of the cross.  And when you and Joseph of Arimathea took his body down from the cross, you brought a mixture of myrrh and spices—a hundred pounds of myrrh and spices—to prepare his body for a decent burial even though the scriptures said he was cursed for hanging on a tree.  Some have said that in preparing his body you were betraying that you didn’t really believe what he had said about resurrection.  Well if that’s the case it’s no shame on you.  Nobody else believed it either.  Not then, anyway.

No…that was an extravagant act of deep respect, one teacher for another.  That was an act of love.  And that is why, Nicodemus, I have had to revisit what I thought about you.  I realized that you were a person of profound integrity and generosity of spirit.  I realized that you were a righteous man.  I realized that I had no right to judge you to begin with.  

So please forgive me, Nicodemus.  And please know, teacher of Israel, that you have taught me a great deal.

With Us All Along

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already come to the season of Pentecost.  In one way, of course, we live in Pentecost, inspired and sustained by the Holy Spirit.  But if you’re like me, maybe you don’t think about the Spirit in particular as often as, say, you think about Jesus.  

We’ve all seen countless depictions of Jesus, and even though all of those pictures are merely artist’s conceptions (since we don’t really know what he looked like), it’s easier to picture him in our minds when we talk to him in prayer because our brains already have some images to work with.  The Spirit, on the other hand, is…spirit.  We have symbols for the Spirit, but they are just that: symbolic.  We know the Spirit is not a dove (or a wild goose if you’re Celtic).  Those symbols can call the Holy Spirit to mind, but they’re not always helpful to hold in our imaginations as we pray.  The Spirit is like the wind or breath, but that’s kind of hard to picture and personalize when it’s prayer time.  And that’s a bit unfortunate because she’s the one who is nudging us to pray in the first place.

Some people don’t like it when they hear or see the Holy Spirit referred to as “she.”  There are good reasons, though, to use the feminine pronoun when referring to the Spirit.  Genesis 1:27 tells us that God created humanity in God’s own image, male and female.  So there is a strong suggestion there of a feminine presence in the Trinity.  The Hebrew word for spirit, ruach, is a feminine word, so in Genesis when the wind or Spirit hovers of the waters it’s that feminine voice bringing order out of Chaos.  The Spirit also appears in the Tanakh (Old Testament) as Sophia, Wisdom, a feminine name with feminine pronouns.  And we must not forget Shekinah, the powerful, shining presence of God which settles on the prophets and sometime upon the people.  Shekinah appears numerous places in the Tanakh.  The word Shekinah is feminine, and the presence has always been understood as presenting a feminine aspect of God.  So if it helps you to mentally visualize who you’re praying to when you pray to the Holy Spirit, maybe you could imagine her as a feminine personage composed of wind and light and the flames of Pentecost.

Or you could learn to experience her presence in other ways, because she comes to us in limitless ways and forms.  That’s the advantage of being Spirit.

The other day I was struggling to write my sermon for Pentecost.  My thoughts were all over the place and I had a serious case of Writer’s Block.  I had pages of notes but no central idea was pulling them all together.  I sat at my computer here in the guest bedroom that has become my home office and stared blankly out the window, not really seeing anything.  In frustration, I offered up a little prayer.  “Okay, Holy Spirit, how about a little help here?”  

At that moment the light shifted outside the window and movement caught my eye.  The layer of overcast had parted and bright sunlight was flooding down on the trumpet vines on the fence outside the window.  The bright, almost garish vermillion flowers with their yellow throats were suddenly dancing in the breeze, raising their trumpet faces to the sun against the backdrop of deep green leaves, and I could almost hear them singing a song of praise: “Life! Life! Life in all its fullness!” 

I felt immersed in the presence of God, Shekinah, as I watched the wind, ruach, playing with the flowers and vines, shaking them to get my attention.  And the Sophia of God, Wisdom, spoke to my heart and head, telling me to rest and come back to the writing later.

Pentecost comes to us when we learn to see that the Holy Spirit has been with us all along.

Conspiring with God

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

When you think of all the things the disciples of Jesus saw and experienced in their three or so years with him—exorcisms, healings, calming of storms, raising people from the dead, and then his own crucifixion and resurrection—it’s a wonder they didn’t become unhinged.  Maybe they did a little.  I think it’s safe to say that conspiring with Jesus had fundamentally changed their understanding of reality.  They had seen things.

The Book of Acts tells us that Jesus stayed with his disciples for another 40 days after his resurrection, teaching them about the kingdom of God. He told them to stay in Jerusalem and wait for “the promise of the Father.”  “John baptized with water,” he said, “but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”  And was while he was saying all this “he was lifted up and a cloud took him from their sight.”  I wonder if they had any clue what was going to happen next.  Things were about to get even stranger.

On the sixth day of Sivan, seven weeks and one day after the Feast of Unleavened Bread, on the day of Shavuot, which the Hellenized Jews call Pentekosta, the streets of Jerusalem were filled with people from every tribe and nation, from the far reaches of the empire and beyond, some even from Cush, Iberia and Ethiopia, from Scythia and the Parthian Empire.  Jews and proselytes, curious gentiles and ambitious traders had come from everywhere to be in the Holy City for the festival of the first fruits of spring and to remember when God gave the Torah to Moses.  

The followers of Jesus were there, too.  They had stayed all together in one place, in one room, waiting as Jesus had instructed—waiting for a signal, praying for something to happen.  Suddenly the house was filled with a sound like a hurricane.  It filled the house and drove them to their feet while something that looked like tongues of fire danced between them until a flame seemed to alight on the head of each one of them.  They felt a presence swell up inside them and knew it was the Holy Spirit. 

They poured out into the street where they began to speak to the crowd in languages they had never learned, the Spirit speaking through them, proclaiming the love and grace of God as it had been made known to them in Jesus the Christ.  They spoke of God’s works of power through Jesus, his feeding of multitudes, his healings, his teaching.  They spoke of how he welcomed strangers and touched lepers.  They spoke of how he challenged the self-righteous and embraced the neglected.

On the day of Shavuot, the Festival of Harvest which was also called Pentekosta, the day on which Moses had been give the Law, the Holy Spirit began to spread the good news of the Reign of God through Jesus, the Christ, across the empire of Caesar and beyond.  That day, that Pentecost, was the birthday of the church.  We sometimes think of it as the day that the Holy Spirit entered the story, but the Spirit had been part of the story from before the beginning.

When Jesus was baptized, the Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove.  That’s why the Spirit is usually depicted as a dove.  In Celtic Christianity, though, the Spirit is often portrayed as a wild goose.  

When you think about a dove, you think of something graceful and gentle and sweet.  It’s easy to ignore a dove.  Their cooing is soft and quiet.  It can lull you to sleep.  A wild goose, on the other hand, is a different bird altogether.  Geese are loud and intrusive.  They can be downright aggressive.  A goose will wake you right up.  There is no complacency with a wild goose.  If a goose wants you to move, it will find a way to move you.  A wild goose isn’t safe or tame, and neither is the Holy Spirit.  If the Spirit wants you to move, she will find a way to move you.  

The Holy Spirit is sometimes depicted as fire.  The Apostles experienced tongues of fire filling the room then resting on them.  The prophet Jeremiah said that when he tried to be silent the unspoken word of God, inspired by the Spirit, “is like a fire shut up in my bones.”  John the Baptist had told people, “I baptize you with water, but the one who is coming will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”  In 2 Timothy 1:6-7 we read, “I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you … for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”  

The Spirit is sometimes understood as wind or breath.  The Hebrew word for Spirit, ruach, also means breath or wind.  It’s the same with the Greek word for Spirit, pneuma; it also means wind or breath.  In the Genesis story of creation, it is the ruach of God—the breath of God or wind of God—the Spirit that hovers over the waters, bringing order out of chaos.  When the prophet Ezekiel had a vision of a valley full of dead and dry bones, it was the ruach breath of God that filled those bones with life.  In the Gospel of John, the resurrected Jesus surprised the disciples in the locked room where they are hiding then breathed on them—pneuma­­­­—and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  

The Spirit inspires us to envision God’s reign on earth as it is in heaven, and energizes us to work to make that transformation a reality.  The Spirit inspires our imaginations,  she gives us visions and dreams of the better world that God is calling us to build.  Our word “inspire” comes from the Latin word spirare, to breathe.  We breathe in the Holy Spirit, acknowledging that the life and power of God are in the very air we breathe.  We breathe in and call it inspiration.  When we die, we expire—ex (out of) spirare (breath)—we give up our breath, our spirit.  And in all of this, in all our life of faith, we are called to conspire with God. Conspire, con-spirare—to breathe with.  The Holy Spirit invites us to breathe as one with God, to change our understanding of reality, to learn to see the world through God’s eyes and love the world with God’s heart, to bless the world with God’s presence flowing through us.

It is by the Holy Spirit that we can say that Christ is in us and that we are in Christ.   It is the Holy Spirit who opens our hearts and opens our eyes to the presence of Christ in, with, and under everything.  It is the Holy Spirit who guides us to the future that God has envisioned for all of us.

When we conspire with God, the Spirit takes root in our lives to produce the fruit that builds and sustains community.  Love inspires us to invite and welcome others, to create a place of safety and comfort for them.  Goodness makes us trustworthy and moves us to treat others well.  Peace creates openness so that we can know each other more deeply.  Faithfulness ensures that we are deeply loyal to God and the Spirit’s calling.  Gentleness shows that we care for God’s creation, that we will treat each other, and animals, and creation, itself, with care and respect.  Joy keeps us from sinking into cynicism or bitterness.  It keeps our hope alive and flourishing.  Joy is a testimony to the presence of God within us and to our participation in the life of God.  Kindness, shows that we understand that we are all of the same kind—created in the likeness and image of God and that sometimes we all need a little help, some understanding, grace, and love.  Patience is the inspired virtue that shows that we understand that we are each learning and growing at a different pace and that life is teaching us different lessons.  Self-Control means that, with the Spirit’s help, I keep a rein on both my appetites and my temper.  It means I keep track of how well I’m doing at bringing love, goodness, peace, faithfulness, gentleness, joy, kindness, and patience—the fruit of the Spirit[1]—into the world around me.

We say sometimes—I’ve said it myself—that the church needs a new Pentecost, another outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  I think what we really need, though, is to revisit the ways that the Spirit is still alive and moving in our midst, and to open ourselves more fully to the wind and the fire.  We’ve been happy with the quiet cooing of the dove.  It has sustained us and calmed our anxieties.  I think, though, that it’s time to wake up the wild goose.  It’s time to rekindle the fire.

Symeon the New Theologian, writing in the late 10th or early 11th century said, “When you light a flame from a flame, it is the same flame that you receive.”  We’ve received that flame of the Spirit down through the centuries as it passed from one to another of us in our baptism.  That flame goes all the way back to the Apostles.  It’s the same flame that danced on their heads on that day of Shavuot so long ago.  It has been waiting to dance on our heads and in our hearts.  She[2] has been waiting to change our understanding of reality.  She has been waiting for us to conspire with God.

[1] Galatians 5:22

[2] I know that some object to using the feminine pronoun to identify the Holy Spirit, however, there is a long tradition of this which is rooted in both the original languages of the Bible and in theology.  In Genesis 1:27 we read that humanity was created in the image and likeness of God, “male and female he created them.”  The Hebrew word for Spirit, ruach, is a feminine word.  Another name for the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament is Wisdom—Sophia—another feminine name and word.  Then there is the Shekinah of God, another term for the Presence or Spirit of God which falls upon or rests upon the prophets and others.  Shekinah is not only a feminine word, but has always been understood to be a feminine aspect of God.  Pneuma the Greek word for Spirit, is gender neutral. 

image credit: ©2013, Hilary Ann Golden