All Persons Being Equal

May 12, 2025Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Clergy persons often refer to this Sunday as Shepherd Sunday or Good Shepherd Sunday because of the lectionary readings assigned for today, but I’m going to depart from the lectionary because it’s also Mother’s Day.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my mom. She was an amazing woman—a social worker and, until cancer cut her life short, a law student. She was smart, generous and loving. She had a great sense of humor and a deep and vibrant faith. She’s probably the reason I became a pastor. And I’ve missed her every day of the last 36 years

My mom told me once that I’d never amount to much because I procrastinate too much. I said, “Oh yeah? Well just you wait.”

I’ll never forget one Mother’s Day—we had a big family meal at Mom and Dad’s house but right after dinner Mom kind of disappeared. I found her in the kitchen getting ready to wash a sink full of dirty dishes. I said, “Mom, it’s Mother’s Day! Go sit down and relax. You can do the dishes tomorrow.”

Mothers Day was first proposed by Julia Ward Howe and other feminist activists just after the Civil War. Julia Ward Howe, by the way, wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic. These women originally envisioned Mothers Day as a day for mothers around the world to come together to promote international peace, and also to honor mothers who had lost sons and husbands to the carnage of the war. Unfortunately, aside from a few stirring proclamations, their efforts didn’t produce much.

A few decades later, though, Anna Maria Jarvis almost single handedly managed to make Mothers Day a national holiday. Inspired by her mother’s wish to see a national day honoring mothers, Anna Jarvis began promoting the idea throughout the country. By 1911 Mothers Day was being observed in every state, and in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation officially designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

And here’s an odd but important note: originally there was no apostrophe in Mother’s Day. Julia Howe and Anna Jarvis both envisioned it as a day to honor all mothers. Plural. But the greeting card industry, the florists, and the candy makers quickly idealized it and individualized it and began promoting it as a day for you to honor your mother. In their advertising, Mothers Day (plural/all mothers) quickly became Mother’s Day with an apostrophe, as in your particular mother’s day (singular/possessive). Needless to say, the idea of it being a day to promote international peace pretty much vanished with the arrival of that apostrophe.

Ann Jarvis, who had worked so hard to make Mother’s Day a national observance, ended up hating it. The holiday became so commercialized, that in 1943 she tried to organize a petition to rescind Mother’s Day, but her efforts went nowhere. Frustrated, and literally at her wits’ end, Anna Jarvis died in 1948 in a sanitarium. Ironically, her medical bills were paid by a consortium of people in the floral and greeting card industries.

As joyful and sentimental as Mother’s Day is for some, others find it almost unbearably painful. Anne Lamott’s Mother’s Day column which she re-posts every year begins this way: “This is for those of you who may feel a kind of sheet metal loneliness on Sunday, who had an awful mother, or a mother who recently died, or wanted to be a mother but didn’t get to have kids, or had kids who ended up breaking your hearts…” Lamott goes on to acknowledge many of the ways that this Greeting Card holiday can be painful for many women…and also for many children.

Most pastors I know are ambivalent at best when it comes to Mother’s Day. It’s something of a minefield for us. We don’t dare let it go unmentioned, but at the same time we are very aware of those women in our congregations who for one reason or another will be feeling that “sheet metal loneliness” that Anne Lamott talks about.

On the plus side, though, Mother’s Day does give us an opportunity to highlight issues that women face in a world and culture that still operates with far too much patriarchal dominance and oppression, often in ways that men don’t even see.

One of the most persistent and troubling issues that women face is the gender pay gap, the disparity in earnings between women and men that gets amplified when those women and men are mothers and fathers. Often referred to as the “motherhood penalty,” this phenomenon sees mothers earning significantly less than fathers, even when they possess similar qualifications and experience. Overall nationally, mothers were paid 61.8 cents for every dollar paid to fathers. In 2023, mothers who worked full-time year-round were paid 74.3 cents per dollar paid to fathers. That means that mothers earned $19,000 lessfor a year of full-time work, an amount that’s roughly equal to the cost of infant care.^[1]

Mothers of color face an even larger earning gap when compared to White fathers. Nationally, in 2023, Black mothers earned 48.8 cents per dollar paid to White fathers, Native American mothers earned 48.2 cents, and Latina mothers earned 42.7 cents per dollar paid to White fathers.

In contrast to the “motherhood penalty,” fathers often experience a “fatherhood bonus,” where their earnings may actually increase following the birth of a child. Employers tend to perceive fathers as more stable and committed to their jobs, leading to higher wages and better career prospects. This bias not only perpetuates economic inequality but also reinforces traditional gender roles within the family and the workplace.

This economic inequality is so very contrary to the values of the kingdom of God, or as Diana Butler Bass calls it, the Commonwealth of God’s justice and mercy. In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul wrote, “In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. . .There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” In his book The Forgotten Creed: Christianity’s Original Struggle Against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism, Stephen J. Patterson points out that this egalitarian statement did not originate with Paul. Rather, Paul is quoting a baptismal creed that was already in use by early Christian communities, a creed which Patterson describes as one of “the earliest attempts to capture in words the meaning of the Jesus movement.”

These early Christians understood that race, class and gender are typically used to divide the human race into us and them. When these earliest Christians listened to the voice of their good shepherd, they believed that Jesus was calling them to live in radical equality. In their baptismal creed, these early followers of Jesus claimed that there is no us versus them. We are all one. We are all children of God. We are all equal.

Unfortunately, the radical egalitarianism of these earliest Jesus communities didn’t last long. Their way of life made these communities stand out too sharply in contrast to the patriarchal and hierarchical norms of the Roman culture that surrounded them. Living out this radical equality made the followers of Jesus more visible and vulnerable when Roman authorities began to persecute them.

And now here we are, two thousand years later and, despite some progress, people are still, by and large, expected to fulfill traditional roles, and the culture punishes those who don’t or won’t. One of the problems with Mother’s Day is that it reinforces a cultural expectation that puts the weight of parenting primarily on Mom. That’s unfair to Mom and limits a child’s experience because even Super Mom can’t really do it alone. As the old African proverb reminds us, it takes a village to raise a child.

“My main gripe with Mother’s Day,” said Anne Lamott, “is that it feels incomplete and imprecise. The main thing that ever helped mothers was other people mothering [their children], including aunties and brothers; a chain of mothering that keeps the whole shebang afloat. I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother, who unconsciously raised me to self-destruct; and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends, my own best friends’ mothers, and from surrogates, many of whom were not women at all but gay men. I have loved them my entire life, including my mom, even after their passing.”

Raising children is a community affair. It should be done with an eye on what’s best for the community. We lose sight of that too often. We think good parenting means raising kids who will share our cherished internal family values. That’s only natural, but the child really needs to be prepared for the time when they will leave home to enter the world on their own. They need to be prepared not just to make a valuable contribution to the community, but to be a positive contribution to the community.

Parents need to remember that their children are not just a gift that God gives to them, but a gift that they, in turn, give to the world. We need to send our children into the world equipped with empathy, wisdom, patience and understanding. As Barbara Kingsolver said, “We want our children to grow up in a culture of kindness and generosity.” They need to have a clear understanding of and feeling for the intrinsic value of other people. Developing those attributes requires more influence than any one parent can provide. And I have to say, I think a lot of the problems we’re facing today as a nation are a direct result of too many people in positions of authority who were raised without that extended community and without those values—especially an understanding of the intrinsic value of other people.

Jesus told a story in chapter 20 of the Gospel of Matthew about a man who went to the marketplace one morning to hire some workers, and before sending them out to work in his vineyard, he made a verbal contract with them to pay them the basic daily wage of one denarius. A few hours later, he went to the marketplace again and hired some more workers and said, “I will pay you whatever is right.” He went to the marketplace three more times during the day to hire more workers, the last time just an hour before sunset, and each time he told those workers that he would pay them “whatever is right.” At the end of the day when all the workers lined up to receive their pay, he paid the workers who had only been in the field for an hour one denarius, the whole day’s wage. Naturally, the workers who had been working since sunrise figured they were in for one heck of a bonus, but when it was their turn to be paid, the man also paid them one denarius, the standard daily wage. They were upset about this and groused about it. “These latecomers only worked an hour and you have made them equal to us even though we were out here in the heat all day!” The landowner responded, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; didn’t you agree with me for the usual daily wage? I chose to give the latecomers the same as you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

This parable makes a lot of people squirm, mostly because we tend to feel slighted on behalf of those workers who were out in the hot sun all day. On the flip side, we tend not to feel any joy on behalf of the one-hour workers who got what amounts to an astonishing bonus. I think we feel all this because we lose sight of what this parable is all about and our focus is in the wrong place.

This is not just a story about wages—how much should the fieldworker get paid per hour—or how much should a mother be paid—this is a story about what’s best for the community. Jesus starts the story by saying “The kingdom of heaven is like…” The context is bigger than the owner of the vineyard or the workers.

The landowner understands that his wealth, his resources are not just for his own personal benefit or his family’s, but are meant to be used to make the whole community healthier and stronger. I suppose you could say he’s “mothering” the community. He understands that he is not just paying workers to harvest his grapes on his property, rather, he is providing a means of support for the whole community. He understands that by paying the one-hour worker the full day’s wage, he is creating one less beggar in the marketplace while preserving that person’s dignity and helping to feed that worker’s family for days. He understands that by paying all the workers the same wage he is sending the message that they are all equally vested in the good of the community.

In this short story by Jesus, the workers who complained saw what the land owner was doing and they didn’t like it. They said, “you have made them equal to us.” In our country today there are still people who don’t like it when you propose making the richest people carry a larger share of the tax burden that supports our government and systems that benefit all of us, or if you propose something like single-payer universal healthcare, something they may not use because they can afford good private medical care but something that would, nonetheless, be beneficial for everyone else. Something that would strengthen the community.

“You have made them equal to us.” What is it in us that rebels at true equality? Why do we have this desire, this expectation that some should be more equal than others? Why do some people work so hard to limit or prevent diversity, equity and inclusion and to preserve stratification of society even when it results in less qualified people doing critical jobs? Why is it so hard for some to understand that when we try to live by the ethics of equality and inclusion that Jesus modeled for us, we’re not trying to displace them, we’re just trying to build solidarity within diversity? And why did the church lose sight of its beautiful and powerful first creed?

In Christ there is no longer Jew or Gentile, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female. We are all God’s children.

And that brings us back around to the original intent for Mothers Day. It was intended to be something to strengthen the community and bring peace to the world. Just like our Christian faith.

In Jesus’ name.

^[1] Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Fact Sheet, May 2025

The Big Fish of Civil Disobedience

May 5, 2025May 5, 2025Steve Beckham Leave a comment

John 21:1-19

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

The end.

Except it’s not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Signs of Spring

April 21, 2025Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Every year there are certain things we look for in the early Spring, certain signs that tell us we are approaching the season of Easter. There may or may not be one last big snowfall in the mountains. We may or may not get soaked by El Niño rains. The dandelions may or may not suddenly show up in our front lawns and the lilies may or may not bloom in time for our Easter morning services. But one thing you can absolutely count on as Easter approaches is that there will be a rash of articles showing up in our newspapers, focus pieces in our magazines, pundits on podcasts and blogs on social media debating whether or not Jesus actually rose from the dead.

To be fair, there has been less of that this year, and I can’t help but wonder if that maybe has something to do with our current political climate. Maybe folks are feeling less safe about saying something that might be perceived as anti-Christian. That would be unfortunate. Christianity does not need to be defended by the state, and the separation of church and state has always been a healthier state of affairs for both.

In 1999, Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright collaborated on a book called The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions. In an Easter season interview that same year with National Public Radio’s Chris Roberts, the two well-respected scholars summarized their very different understandings of the Resurrection.

Marcus Borg said, “I do believe in the Resurrection of Jesus. I’m just skeptical that it involved anything happening to his corpse… The truth of Easter really has nothing to do with whether the tomb was empty on a particular morning 2,000 years ago or whether anything happened to the corpse of Jesus. I see the truth of Easter as grounded in the Christian experience of Jesus as a living spiritual reality of the present.”

N.T. Wright responded by saying, “When [the early followers of Jesus] believed in Resurrection, they were talking about what we would call some kind of embodiment. A disembodied Resurrection is a contradiction in terms…We can be completely confident on Easter day that the things we’re saying in church are true. For the very good reason that, historically speaking, it’s actually impossible to explain the rise of early Christianity without it.” ^[1]

I have to tell you that I really resonate with what Marcus Borg says about the truth of Easter being grounded in the Christian experience of Jesus as a living spiritual reality of the present. Yes. That should be the Easter experience we carry with us every single day—Jesus as a living spiritual reality alive in our own physical bodies and in our corporate body as the church.

But when all is said and done, I think that Wright is right. We must explain why the earliest Christians believed in Jesus Christ’s bodily Resurrection and risked hostility and danger to rapidly spread the message that he had been raised from the dead and appeared to them in person.

People have had doubts about the Resurrection of Jesus from the very beginning, and one of the things I really appreciate about the New Testament is that these early witnesses to the Resurrection take those doubts seriously and meet them head on.

The original ending of the Gospel of Mark, the earliest of the gospels written sometime around 69 or 70 C.E. during the height of the Jewish rebellion against Rome, plays on that doubt. Mark’s gospel ends with the women finding the tomb empty except for a young stranger clothed in white who tells them that Jesus is risen and that they are to meet him in Galilee. They run away terrified, which leaves the reader hanging, but also leaves us with the implied message that the risen Christ is out there in the world and we need to go find him. (16:8)

The Gospel of Matthew ends with the disciples doubting even as Jesus gives them the Great Commission. In Matthew 28:16-17 we read, “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted.”

In the Gospel of Luke when the risen Jesus appears suddenly in the midst of the disciples in the upper room, they believe they are seeing a ghost, so Jesus says to them, “’Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. Yet for all their joy they were still disbelieving and wondering.” To prove he is really physically, bodily there, he asks for something to eat. Because ghosts don’t eat.

The Gospel of John, of course, gives us the story of Thomas who refuses to believe that Jesus is risen until he sees him with his own eyes and touches him with his own hands. Thomas has become a paradigm for reasonable doubt but also for our confession of the faith. Thomas is the one who first bows down before the risen Jesus and says, “My Lord and my God.”

But the very earliest testimony to the Resurrection comes from the Apostle Paul, and he, too, directly addresses those who doubt. In 1 Corinthians 15, written at least 15 years before the Gospel of Mark, Paul wrote: “I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died because of our sins . . . and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day . . . and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”

Paul testified to his own encounter with the risen Jesus, and to the experience of a surprising number of others. It’s almost as if he is saying, “If you don’t believe me, fine. There are lots of others who have seen him, too. Go ask one of them.”

Paul goes on to speak to the doubt that some in Corinth are experiencing when he writes, “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ . . . If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

N.T. Wright wrote, “In the New Testament Gospels’ depiction, the risen Jesus was no ghost, disembodied spirit or vision. Jesus did not have a merely resuscitated corpse but a body with uncanny new properties, yet a physical body nonetheless.”

In that resurrected body, which was the same but not quite the same as the body he died in, Jesus cooked fish on the beach for his friends. He left footprints on the dusty road to Emmaus as he walked, unrecognized, beside his friends and opened their minds to understand the scriptures so that they could see that everything that had happened to him was in perfect continuity with what God had been doing all along. They recognized him when he broke bread with his wounded hands.

In his resurrected body with uncanny new properties, he appeared behind locked doors and offered his wounds for inspection. He ate a piece of broiled fish to prove he wasn’t a ghost, and in so doing, as Debi Thomas wrote, he turned their trauma into communion.

We need the Resurrection. We need an embodied Jesus because we are embodied. Tielhard de Chardin said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” I love how Debi Thomas expressed this:

“I know that it might be unfashionable to ‘need’ the resurrection. Isn’t this the criticism so often leveled at Christians? That our faith is a crutch, an opiate, a refusal to face the harsher aspects of reality? But here, too, I will bear witness and insist that I need Jesus’s bodily resurrection precisely because I, too, am embodied. As the ancient Psalmists and prophets so beautifully describe it, my spiritual life is inseparable from my physical one: my heart melts like wax, my throat grows parched, my bones go out of joint, my tears cover my pillow, and my groans, sighs, and moans reach wordlessly for God. Every experience I have of the holy is grounded in my body.

“And so I need a Savior with a body like mine — a body that adores, worships, and celebrates, but also a body that fails, ages, aches, breaks, and dies. A body that carries wounds and scars, visible and invisible, fresh and faded. A body that is profoundly and often terrifyingly vulnerable to forces beyond my ability to mitigate or control. A body that is, for the most part, defenseless against injury, violence, illness, injustice, and cruelty. A body that might die — as Jesus himself died — too soon, out of season, away from loved ones, in random, inexplicable, cruelly traumatic circumstances too frightening to contemplate. I need a God who resurrects bodies.”^[2]

I know I need Resurrection. Eleven years ago when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer I found myself confronting my mortality, especially since both my mom and my dad died of cancer. My surgeon assured me that my chances of coming through the surgery and radiation were probably good. Don’t you love the language doctors use once the “C” word has been spoken? You hear the word “probably” a lot. The point is, once the word “cancer” has been spoken, it sharpens your focus. Things that had been theoretical either become the life raft you cling to or they get discarded. I realized during that time that, while I’m willing to entertain and discuss all kinds of ideas and theories about Resurrection, for me personally a psychological or philosophical or solely spiritual understanding isn’t enough to carry the weight of my hopes and fears. I need something with some bones in it, some skin on it. And I’m not alone in that.

I have seen a lot of death in my decades as a pastor. I have accompanied people up to death’s door and held their hands as they crossed the threshold. Resurrection is what has given many of them the courage to walk peacefully and fearlessly through that door. And Resurrection is what has given me the courage and confidence to walk through the valley of the shadow with them.

And that’s the point. Resurrection gave the earliest followers of Jesus the courage to risk hostility and danger so they could carry on his work of proclaiming that there was a better way to live, a better way to be community, a way to oppose all the dehumanizing, competitive pettiness of empire, a way to live in mutual support of each other in the commonwealth of God’s justice and kindness.

Jesus was a real physical person who was tortured to death in a first-century lynching. The state and the religious authorities colluded to crucify him, to physically destroy him and in so doing to destroy his opposition to their power. His crucifixion was a political statement. What they failed to see and understand, though, was that in Jesus there was a power and authority that dwarfed any power or authority they imagined they had over him.

For that reason, nothing less than a bodily resurrection would do to nullify their violence and call their power into question. It was his physical body they killed. It would have to be his physical body that would proclaim their work undone.

The resurrection of Jesus was also a political statement. It was God’s way of saying that violence will not have the last word. Oppression will not have the last word. Pain will not have the last word. Fear will not have the last word. Anger will not have the last word. Disease will not have the last word. Suffering will not have the last word. Death will not have the last word.

The Resurrection of Jesus was God’s way of saying that love, grace, forgiveness, kindness, generosity, hope and faith—these things will have the last word.

The resurrection was God affirming that Life and Love will have the last word.

And will be the last word.

Through Jesus Christ, our risen Lord.

^[1] The Resurrection of Jesus; Religion and Ethics Newsweekly; NPR/PBS, March 26, 1999

^[2] Embodied; Debi Thomas, http://www.journeywithjesus.net; April 11, 2021

In, With, and Under

April 18, 2025Steve Beckham 1 Comment

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

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

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

And I think all of this makes Jesus weep.

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

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

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

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

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

This is my body. For you.

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

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

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

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

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

What Does Love Look Like?

April 7, 2025Steve Beckham 5 Comments

John 12:1-8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sadly, that moment was interrupted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unresolved Melody

March 28, 2025March 28, 2025Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

When I was seven years old, not long after we moved to California from Kansas City, a little black dog showed up at our door one night, whimpering on the front porch and scratching on the door to be let inside. This adorable and pugnacious little Pekingese/Cocker mix of a dog didn’t have a collar or tags, and this was decades before microchips, so we had no idea where he came from or who his people might be. We ran an ad in the paper and I went door-to-door for several blocks asking if anyone had lost their little black dog, but nobody claimed him.

So we did. We named him Barney. We got him his shots and tags, and he officially became our dog.

We loved Barney, and I’m pretty sure he loved us, too. He would sleep curled up next to me in my bed. He would snuggle up next to us on the couch when we were reading or watching TV. He gave us lots of little dog kisses. He loved to pull my sister and me up and down the sidewalk on our roller skates. And he rode patiently in the car with us as we made the long car trip every summer back to Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas to see family. He was in almost every way a perfect family dog. But Barney had one bad habit. An impulse, really. If anyone left the back gate or the screen door open, he would be off like a shot, running as fast as his little legs would carry him, launching himself out into the world to have an adventure. A few times he was gone for several days before some kind soul took him in and then called us to come pick him up.

When Barney took off on one of his adventures, I’m sure it never crossed his little canine mind that we were heartbroken and worried sick about him. And when he came home nothing was ever really resolved. Dogs are very capable of showing regret, but Barney never did. There was always a risk that he would take off and go exploring again. It was just in his nature. Some dogs are like that. And so are some people.

We are all happier when people—and dogs—color within the lines. We all secretly think that the world would be a better, happier place if everyone stayed in their lane and lived by the rules and boundaries as we know and understand them. But the plain truth is that not everyone does. Some people have different, looser ideas of what is acceptable and what is not. Some dogs just want to see what else is out there.

Some Pharisees and scribes were grumbling because Jesus was hanging out with and sharing meals with “tax collectors and sinners.” They didn’t think it was appropriate for Jesus to be making friends with people who were not socially acceptable by their standards, and they told him so. But Jesus didn’t respond directly to their criticism. Instead, he told them a story.

“There was a man,” he said, “who had two sons.” We all know this story. We call it The Prodigal Son, although a better title might be The Two Brothers, or even The Over-Indulgent Father. Amy-Jill Levine suggests that it could be called The Parable of the Absent Mother. That puts a different spin on things, doesn’t it? And it fits, since this is really a story about family dynamics.

Whatever title we use, we know this story so well that I wonder if we really listen to it. There is a lot going on in this parable that could, maybe should, make us uneasy. We assume that it’s about sinning, repenting, and forgiving. But is it? Or are we imposing our traditional understanding and ideas on this story and ignoring the ancient culture that heard it first, a culture that saw things very differently?

Was it a great sin for the younger son to ask his father for his inheritance? Jewish law did not prohibit asking for your inheritance, so while it might have been considered foolish, it would not have been seen as a sin—at least not by the first century Jews who were listening to Jesus as he told this story.

Does the father sin by giving away half of his estate to the younger son? Deuteronomy 21 says that the oldest son should inherit a double portion, but by the first century it was considered perfectly allowable for a man to divide his estate any way he saw fit. So while the father’s actions in this parable could also be seen as prodigious foolishness, no one would think he was sinning. In some circumstances he might even have been seen as prudent. In The Wisdom of Ben Sirach, Ben Sirach counseled, “When the days of your life reach their end, at the time of your death distribute your property.” Is the father in this parable, perhaps, nearing the end of his days? Would that explain why he so readily indulges his son’s unusual request? The wording in the New Revised Standard Version says that the father “divided his property,” but the wording in the original Greek text says that he “divided his life.” How should we hear that—not that he is giving half his money or property, but half his life to this younger son?

After asking for his inheritance, the prodigal son doesn’t leave immediately. “A few days later” he gathers up his things and leaves. Jesus doesn’t say what happened during those few days. Did the father try to talk his son out of leaving? Did the older brother step in and try to talk some sense into him? The story doesn’t say. We don’t even know if he said goodbye.

What the story does tell us is that he went far away—to a far country—somewhere out beyond the boundaries of Jewish law, somewhere far beyond the boundaries and expectations of the home and community he grew up in. In that far-away place, out beyond the familiar restrictions of home and community, he squandered his wealth with reckless living. When his money was gone and famine hit the land, nobody helped him. He managed to find a job feeding pigs, but it didn’t pay anything and he was so hungry that he thought about eating the seed pods that he was feeding to the pigs. Amy-Jill Levine points out that there’s a proverb from the rabbinic commentary Leviticus Rabbah that says, “When Israelites are reduced to eating carob pods, they repent.”

This is the point in the story where this reckless young man decided that it was better to go home and eat crow than to starve to death in a pigsty. Jesus, telling the story, says he came to himself. He admitted to himself that he was not living the dream and having his best life. He also seemed to realize that if he was going to go home, some sort of apology might be in order. So as he walked the long way home, he rehearsed a little speech: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”

Now this might sound like he’s repenting, but is it real repentance or is it conniving? He already knows that his dad is inclined to be extravagantly generous. And notice this: he not going to ask to be restored to the full status of being a son, but he’s not volunteering to be a slave, either. He’s planning to ask his dad to treat him like one of the hired laborers. They get paid. When you read his little speech carefully, he still sounds pretty self-absorbed. There’s no remorse for how he has treated his dad or his brother. His confession that he has sinned is generic at best. Basically, as David Buttrick put it, what the prodigal is really saying to himself is, “I’ll go to Daddy and sound religious.”

He has rehearsed his little speech, but he never got to deliver all of it. Before he even got all the way home, “while he was still far off” his father saw him and was filled with compassion. His father ran to him, put his arms around him, kissed him, then started issuing orders. “Get him some clean clothes! Put a signet ring on his finger! Get the barbeque going, and let’s celebrate! My son was dead and is alive again! He was lost and is found!”

And now the story shifts focus. The older brother comes in from mowing hay all day in the hot sun and is surprised to find that there is a party going on because his younger brother has returned home. This makes him mad, so angry that he refuses to go in the house. His father comes out to plead with him, to beg him to come in and join the party. And that’s when we learn that the relationship that is most damaged in this story is the connection between the father and the elder brother. The older brother unleashes a tirade of pent-up resentment, and as he spews out his bitterness over years of being neglected and overlooked. That’s when the father realizes that it’s his older son who is truly “lost” to him. For years the older brother has worked hard to be “the good son.” For years he has been faithful to the family values. For years he has faithfully contributed to the success and wealth of the family. It’s clear from his outburst that he has a pretty low opinion of his younger brother, but it’s even more clear that his anger is directed primarily at his father.

In response to this flood of anger, all the father can do is try to reassure his eldest son that their bond endures. “Child,” he says, “you are always with me. All that I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice because your brother was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

And that’s where Jesus ends the story.

As I said earlier, we have a long tradition of assuming that this parable is about sinning, repenting, and forgiving. But is it? As I read it again, I can’t help but notice that nothing in this story gets resolved. It’s like a melody in the key of C that ends with a G7 chord. Everything feels suspended. The younger son never really expresses any remorse or sorrow, in fact no one in this family expresses any regret for the ways they’ve hurt each other. The father gins up a party to celebrate the return of his younger son, but did you notice that he never actually speaks to him? He does speak to his oldest son, but the story ends with the two of them still standing outside the house, outside the celebration.

This parable leaves us with questions hanging in the air. Will the two brothers reconcile? Can the father repair his relationship with his oldest, neglected son? Can he even persuade him to come into the house, to join the party? Will the prodigal son stay and work for the good of the family, or will he be out the door again when someone leaves the gate or the screen door open?

When all is said and done, if it’s not about repentance and forgiveness, then what is Jesus trying to teach us with this parable?

In Short Stories by Jesus, her outstanding book on the parables, Amy-Jill Levine says that this parable actually guides us with straightforward advice: “Recognize that the one you have lost may be right in your own household. Do whatever it takes to find the lost and then celebrate with others, both so that you can share their joy and so that the others will help prevent those who have been recovered from ever being lost again. Don’t wait until you receive an apology; you may never get one. Don’t wait until you can muster the ability to forgive; you may never find it. Don’t stew in your sense of being ignored, for there is nothing that can be done to retrieve the past.

“Instead, go have lunch. Go celebrate and invite others to join you. If the repenting and forgiving come later, so much the better. And if not, you still will have done what is necessary. You will have begun a process that might lead to reconciliation. You will have opened a second chance for wholeness.”^[1]

^[1] Short Stories by Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine, p.69

Painting by Ron DiCianni

That Reasonable Voice

March 10, 2025Steve Beckham 4 Comments

Luke 4:1-13 (NRSV)

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,

and serve only him.’”

Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’

and

‘On their hands they will bear you up,

so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

————-

By the end of the third day the constant ache of his empty belly began to fade. He had fasted before and expected this, and gave thanks for this small blessing that made the discipline easier. A little easier. But he knew, too, that his craving for food could come roaring back unexpectedly, that his body’s impulse to survive would mean that no stray lizard or bug or mouse or even a scorpion would be safe from his appetite unless he harnessed his will and tuned his physical hunger to the feast of his spirit.

He had fasted many times for a day, several times for three days, and once even for seven days. He knew what to expect and how to prepare for such fasts. But this time was different. Very different. He had not prepared for this fast. He had been led to it. Led here, to this parched, eerie, yet providential place in the wilderness by a dove. A snow-white dove who had fluttered down out of nowhere, out of everywhere, out of heaven to land on his dripping, baptized shoulder and nuzzle his cheek, then raised her face to the sunlight, eyes closed and perfectly still as she listened for a moment to the whispering wind before taking wing and beckoning him to follow.

On his fourth day in the wilderness, he realized that it would be very easy to lose track of the days altogether, so every morning when the first light began to tinge the sky he made a mark with a sharp stone to count the days on the sandstone face of the cleft where sheltered in the wadi. Then he would splash water on his face and his head and drink a sip from the small, clear pool, barely more than a puddle, that seemed to almost miraculously refill itself every night from a tiny trickle that dribbled out of the rocks. He supposed there must be a spring somewhere uphill, or perhaps a larger oasis. But this place and this water were enough for him, this small gash in the hillside with its pool and its single scrub tree and its long, unobstructed view across the desert.

And the days went by, each one like the day before. Every morning the splash of water on his face—and with each splash hearing again, so fresh in his memory, that voice he had heard from heaven as he rose out of the waters of his baptism: “You are my son. You are loved. I am so pleased with you.” Now, as the sunlight began to chase the shadows into the deeper recesses of the dry canyon, he would stop and raise his wet face to the sky as the water he had splashed on his face mingled with his tears of joy. He would stand still like that, wet face raised to the sky, until the sunlight and warming air dried his cheeks.

As the sun began to shine full on his face, he would retreat to the shade, lean back against the canyon wall, and pray. And meditate. And listen. Listening to his body. Listening to his breath. Listening to the sounds of the wilderness. Listening to the earth. Listening to the night sky. Listening for God. And he would watch. Watching the dust devils dance across the desert. Watching the plants sway and bend in the wind. Watching, sometimes, the endless dance of predator and prey, things hunting and things hunted. Watching things rest. Watching the stars move across the night. Watching the moon slip through its phases. Watching his own dreams.

By the tenth day he would have had no clear idea of how long he had been there without the marks he made every morning on the sandstone wall. By the twentieth day he hardly moved.

He had vivid dreams when he slept and vivid visions when he meditated so that day and night began to blend together and he began to slip fluidly from one state of consciousness to another with little or no space in between, from wakeful alertness to vision to dream so that it all seemed as one to him. His thoughts and his prayers blended into a single thing, a constant conversation with God who had affirmed him at the Jordan. He would think, then pray for the earth. He would think, then pray about humanity. He would think, then pray about his mission. He prayed for clarity. And when clarity came to him he sat with it and examined it, too, in his thoughts and his prayers.

And often, often the devil would come to him. To test. To tempt. To assault with phantasms of the imagination. To ask leading questions. To challenge.

On the very first night he had heard the maniacal gibbering of hungry hyenas prowling through the darkness not far from him and a great shadow of fear came moving up the wadi toward him. But he just kept gazing at the stars and sang aloud from Isaiah, “The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?” And in the face of his smile and his song, the fear evaporated, and the gibbering of the hyenas as they moved off into the darkness sounded like laughter. But the devil didn’t give up

Often the devil would come with questions. Usually the same questions or accusations or challenges repeated ad nauseum…

Are you really the Son of God? What does that even mean?

This mission of yours, is it really worth it?

How will you save them? Are they even worth saving? And what makes you think you can do it?

You don’t think people are really going to understand what you’re trying to teach them, do you?

You know how this turns out, don’t you?

Why are you even doing this…this fasting, this mission… any of it?

Over and over again, these questions. Constant seeds of doubt insinuated, whispered in the spaces between his own thoughts in a voice that sounded almost like his own or like the Spirit. Almost. But not quite.

He would sit and listen, sometimes marveling at the devil’s persistence but in the end he would tire of it and simply say, quoting Isaiah again, “The Lord called me before I was born. In my mother’s womb he named me. The Lord said I will give you as a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” And then the devil would leave him. For a while.

On the fortieth day his body’s reserves were utterly spent. He knew that one way or another this day would be the end of his fast. He had seen angels in the night. Or had he dreamed them? He had often sensed them nearby like the hyenas.

As the first light of morning seeped into the sky he had no strength to move the few steps to the pool for a splash of water and a drink. Still, when the edge of the sun blushed across the horizon he managed to croak out the morning prayer his parents had taught him so many years ago:

Blessed is the One who spoke and the world came to be. Blessed is the One!

Blessed is the One who continually authors creation. Blessed is the One whose word is deed: blessed is the One who is compassionate towards the world; blessed is the One who is compassionate towards all creatures. Blessed is the One who rewards the reverent. Blessed is the One who exists for all time. Blessed is the One who redeems and saves.

As he finished the prayer a large dust devil came spiraling lazily toward him and as it reached the apron of the hill it released a tendril to blow its hot, gritty breath into his canyon, into his face. And in that tendril of dry, dusty wind came the voice—that voice so much like his own, so much like the Spirit, but not, insinuating itself between his thoughts. That voice with its poisonous seeds of doubt. That horrible voice. That reasonable voice.

Why are you starving yourself, Son of Man? Forty days without food is a bit excessive, don’t you think? You’ve made your point. You can’t do any good for anybody if you die of starvation out here in the wilderness. So…if you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.

And there it is, he thought. Two things. No, three things. But so cleverly hidden in that reasonable little speech. If you are the Son of God… this evil wants me to doubt not just myself, but God. God who proclaimed me the beloved Son. And then this evil suggests that I should prove my identity. Prove it to whom? To myself? To God? To this voice of evil, this hot wind blowing through the canyon, through the delirium of my hunger? This thing would have me deny my humanity. Hunger is part of being human. Yes, I could change the stone to bread, but others cannot. Others must make do with the resources at hand or go without. So the last thing evil suggests might be the worst. Command the stone to become bread. Turn your back on your humanity. This thing would have me deny what I am and also make the stone something it is not. Refuse to see it for what it is. Ignore its worth and value and history as a stone. Coerce creation to satisfy my hunger. Do violence to this thing God has made and to the workings and patterns God set at work in the world so that I can take a shortcut to feed myself? Simply because I can? No.

And then, because it would not do to simply say it in his thoughts, because, oddly, he wanted the stone to hear it, too, he said it aloud in his starved, parched voice…

One does not live by bread alone.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he was caught up in a vision. He was floating high above the world looking down on all its gleaming cities, its mountains and valleys, forests, farms and deserts and seas. An angel of light was beside him but there was something not quite right about either the angel or the light. It was a dark kind of light. And the angel wore a mask. And from behind the mask came the voice. To the ears of his spirit it still sounded reasonable, but it also sounded imperious. And hollow.

Look at this world, Son of Man, these kingdoms. This is what you came for, isn’t it? Isn’t that the promise? That you will be king of kings and lord of lords, that your kingdom will rule over all others? I will give you authority over all of them right now, all the glory that comes from them, because it has all been given over to me and I can give it to anyone I choose. All you have to do is worship me. Bow down to me and it’s all yours.

He looked down at the world for a long moment that felt like forever. He looked and thought of the difficult, painful path that lay ahead of him if he was to continue in the way he knew was right. He knew there was some truth in what the devil said. Evil did seem to have sway over so much of what happened in the world and for a moment the devil’s caustic words echoed in his soul. It’s all been given over to me. But then he thought, By whom? Who gave it over to you? People gave it over to you. People you tricked. People you seduced with your reasonable, poisonous propositions and your false promises. I’m here to win it back one person at a time because it was never rightfully yours to begin with. And again you try to tempt me with a shortcut. But it only shows how much you misunderstand. I did not come to seize power. I came to give love. And you can’t order people to love. You can’t coerce love. If I took your path I would be just another dictator. And worship you? As we stand in this place between heaven and earth in your sickly, false light? You clearly do not know me. And then, to bring the vision back to earth, he said aloud…

It is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.

Instantly, his vision shifted with a vertiginous twist. But instead of being returned to the canyon, he found himself standing on the highest point of the temple with the devil standing beside him robed like a priest, his face behind a veil. And from behind the veil came that voice, that reasonable voice.

I don’t know why you insist on making things so difficult for yourself. I’m not clear on what your plan is, holy man, but whatever you’re trying to accomplish, you’re going to need followers. You’re going to have to persuade a lot of people to believe in you, to trust you. You seem to believe that you’re the Son of God, so you’re going to need them to believe it, too. I suppose you could do a miracle here and there, turn up your charisma a bit, impress a few people at a time. But why not just do something big and dramatic? And there is a scriptural warrant for this. If you are the Son of God, just throw yourself down from here, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you. And it’s also written, On their hands they will bear you up so that you will not so much as bruise your foot against a stone.

And there it is again, he thought. That challenge. If you are the Son of God. Prove it. It occurred to him that he was making the devil uneasy. No, I don’t need to prove anything, he thought. God doesn’t need to prove anything. You are my son. You are loved. I am so pleased. I did hear God’s voice. I did follow the Spirit. And I did it out of love. And those who follow me will do so out of love. And yes, it will be hard. And yes, they will miss the point, over and over again. They will get it wrong. They will make mistakes. But that’s what forgiveness is for. And impressing people, even with angels catching me in midair, won’t convince them to keep following when things get really difficult. Only love can do that. Only love can carry them through those dark valleys, those dark days. Admiration, being amazed, is not the same thing as love. No, this is just another shortcut and one that would be short lived, at that.

And then, as he stood atop the temple, without looking at the thing in the priest’s robes, he said aloud…

You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

And the hot wind stopped. There was a moment, a breath, and a cool breeze filled the canyon. He opened his eyes and saw an angel smiling at him. He closed his eyes. And when he opened them again, there was a traveling peddler beside him, urging him to drink some water and take a bite of bread. He smiled and laid his hand fondly on the warm stone beside him as he said a prayer of thanks.

When you hear that reasonable voice that insinuates itself between your thoughts—and you will—that voice that entices you to take the shortcut, that voice that tempts you to discount your own humanity and the bond you share with others, that voice that thirsts for power, status and wealth at the expense of the rest of the world, take time to listen very carefully. Listen not just to what it offers, but to what it will take from you in return. Listen not just to what it promises to give you or make you, listen to what it will cost you. And what it will make you deny.

The Hard Stuff

February 24, 2025Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Luke 6:27-38

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

Love your enemies.

Do good to those who hate you.

Bless those who curse you.

Pray for those who abuse you.

Turn the other cheek.

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

Give something to everyone who asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Jesus’ name.

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

Do Not Be Afraid

February 10, 2025Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Luke 5:1-11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do not be afraid.

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

Do not be afraid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do not be afraid.

Priorities

February 4, 2025Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 4:21-30

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

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

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

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

He owned the prophecy. He claimed it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those last three words are so important.

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts Along the Way

Thoughts Along the Way and Occasional Music from Pastor Steve Beckham

Tag Jesus

All Persons Being Equal

The Big Fish of Civil Disobedience

Signs of Spring

In, With, and Under

What Does Love Look Like?

Unresolved Melody

That Reasonable Voice

The Hard Stuff

Do Not Be Afraid

Priorities