Out of Love for the Truth

October 31, 2022Steve Beckham 1 Comment

John 8:31-36

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

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

Luther didn’t intend for the 95 Theses to be a manifesto for rebellion. He had no idea that his challenge to the practice of selling indulgences would spark a revolutionary movement that would sweep across Europe bringing enormous changes in religion, politics, education, and everyday life, but once that movement started, he gave himself to it body and soul because he was committed to the truth of the Gospel and the love of Christ. The truth quite literally set him free from the heavy-handed authority of Rome—the Pope excommunicated him—but the truth also bound him to the proclamation of salvation by God’s grace through faith and to the authority of God’s word in the scriptures.

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

According to the Gospel of John, when Jesus was on trial before Pontius Pilate, Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” In some respects that seems like an almost ridiculous question. We know what truth is. We learn about truth almost as soon as we learn to talk. Sadly, that’s also when we learn to lie, because we learn pretty quickly that the truth may reveal things we would like to keep hidden. We learn very early on that sometimes truth has consequences that we would like to avoid, and that those consequences might be unpleasant or even painful.

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

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

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

When Jesus sat discussing theology with the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s Well, he told her that “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” In chapter 14, not long after he has told Thomas that he, himself, is “the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of truth” and in chapter 16 he tells his disciples that “when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” In chapter 17, as he prays for the disciples, Jesus asks that they would be sanctified or consecrated in truth.

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

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

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

But how does the truth set us free from sin?

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

Truth disabuses me of that illusion.

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

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

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

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

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

“We must all overcome the illusion of separateness,” said Richard Rohr. “It is the primary task of religion to communicate not worthiness but union, to reconnect people to their original identity “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). The Bible calls the state of separateness ‘sin.’ God’s job description is to draw us back into primal and intimate relationship. As 1 John 3:2 reminds us, ‘My dear people, we are already children of God; what we will be in the future has not yet been fully revealed, and all I do know is that we shall be like God.’”

As followers of Jesus, we are called to live in the imitation of God. We are called to observe what God is doing all the time and everywhere and then do the same. We are called to be generous because God is generous. We are called to be creative because God is creative. We are called to embrace diversity because God revels in diversity so much that no two things are exactly alike in the entire universe. But above and beyond everything else, we are called to love. Because God loves. God is love. And, as Richard Rohr has said, God does not love us if and when we change. God loves us so that we can change.

That is grace—the grace that makes us whole, the grace that heals us, the grace that reunites us, the grace that saves us.

Believe it.

It’s the truth…and it’s the only thing that can set us free.

Teach Us to Pray – Part 2

August 2, 2022Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Teach Us to Pray – Part 2

Luke 11:1-13

Last week we finished Part 1 of our deep dive into Luke’s version of The Lord’s Prayer with the petition Your kindom come. As I said last week, a literal translation would be “Let it come, the reign of you,” or “Let your reign begin.” I also pointed out that this petition, “let your reign begin” is where this prayer stops being a nice religious sentiment or litany of devotion and becomes an endorsement of a better reality.

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

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

Cherokee theologian Randy S. Woodley describes it this way: “Shalom is communal, holistic, and tangible. There is no private or partial shalom. The whole community must have shalom or no one has shalom. As long as there are hungry people in a community that is well fed, there can be no shalom. . . . Shalom is not for the many, while a few suffer; nor is it for the few while many suffer. It must be available for everyone.”^[1]

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

Give us each day our daily bread. There is some ambiguity in the Greek wording here, and it can be translated in two ways. The first way, of course, is the way we’re used to hearing it or saying it: give us today our daily bread. Amy-Jill Levine points out, though, that this is not only redundant but rather odd. She suggests that a better translation would be give us tomorrow’s bread today.

Give us tomorrow’s bread today is a valid translation from a linguistic standpoint, but it may also give us both a more practical and a more wholistic way to think about what we’re asking. In most households in Jesus’ day, the dough for the next day’s bread was prepared the evening before and allowed to rise during the night. If you were going to have bread tomorrow, you needed to have the ingredients today. Understood this way, this petition is a way of asking for something very practical. We’re asking God to save us from at least a little anxiety by ensuring that we have today what we will need tomorrow.

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

Last week I told the story of the little boy who was saying his bedtime prayers and prayed very loudly, “AND GOD, PLEASE GIVE ME A NEW BICYCLE!” When his mother reminded him that he didn’t need to say it so loudly because God isn’t hard of hearing, he said “I know, but Grandma is.” As I said last week, this little guy was onto something—God often uses others to answer our prayers, in fact, that’s how it works most of the time.

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

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

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

Luke says “forgive us our sins.” Matthew says, “forgive us our debts.” In both Aramaic and Hebrew, “debt” was another way to talk about sin. In the version we pray in our congregation, we usually say “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” That’s a perfectly fine way to pray this petition. It reminds us that we do sin against God and against each other. We do need forgiveness from God and from each other. This petition reminds us that there is a reciprocity involved in forgiveness. As Jesus said in Luke 6:37, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Once again it’s about relationships all the way down, which means that this petition, too, is also about God’s shalom.

But let’s go back to the language about debts and forgiving debts. Remember that Jesus was a Jew and he was teaching this prayer to his Jewish disciples. This language about debts would have been a reminder to them of everything the Torah has to say about economic justice. Jesus is telling them and us to live in an economically just way.

In Hebrew, the word for charity, tzedakah, is from the same root as the word for righteousness, tzedek. Torah says in Deuteronomy 15:11, “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” Deuteronomy 24:14 tells us, “You shall not withhold the wages of the poor and needy laborers, whether Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns.”

In this petition, Jesus reminds us to think of our spiritual indebtedness—we are all indebted to God’s grace—but we are reminded to consider the economic implications of the way we live. Are the products and services we buy produced in a way that’s economically fair to the workers who produce them? Does my lifestyle depend on or contribute to some economic injustice? What can I do to change that?

Living a life of faith as a follower of Jesus means that sometimes we face difficult questions. Sometimes it feels almost as if we’re being tested.

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

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

As I said in Part 1, The Lord’s Prayer, this prayer that Jesus gave his disciples is not only one of the great treasures of our faith, it’s also, in its way, a radical call to a discipleship. In this prayer we are asking God to empower us, guide us, and walk with us as we embrace a new way of life with new values and a new vision of what the world can be. It really is, in six simple lines, a kind of manifesto for life as a follower of Jesus. In this prayer we are asking for peace, health, and wholeness for ourselves and for our community. We are asking God to help us live in the shalom of the kin-dom here and now. We are asking God to help us live in the Way of Love.

“Shalom,” writes Jamie Arpin-Ricci, “is what love looks like in the flesh. The embodiment of love in the context of a broken creation, shalom is a hint at what was, what should be, and what will one day be again. Where sin disintegrates and isolates, shalom brings together and restores. Where fear and shame throw up walls and put on masks, shalom breaks down barriers and frees us from the pretense of our false selves.”^[2]

When we pray for God’s name not to be profaned, when we pray for God’s reign to begin in earnest, when we pray for a healthy community and world so that everyone may have tomorrow’s bread today, when we pray for forgiveness and the power to forgive, we are praying for God’s vision of a healthy world. When we say “Amen,” we are not only saying “Make it so,” we are saying we will do what we can to live in that vision and make it a reality for others. In Jesus’ name.

^[1] Shalom and the Community of Creation; Randy S. Woodley

^[2] Jamie Arpin-Ricci, Vulnerable Faith: Missional Living in the Radical Way of St. Patrick

Familiarity Blindness

July 18, 2022Steve Beckham 1 Comment

Luke 10:25-37

Note: This sermon was preached in 2 parts which are combined here.

Have you ever experienced familiarity blindness? A lot of us develop familiarity blindness with one thing or another—that condition where you know something so well that you actually stop seeing it. The upshot of it is that the next time you do take a hard look at that familiar whatever it is, you see all kinds of things that you hadn’t noticed before.

In my office at home I have a black and white photograph, a portrait of my grandparents—my mother’s mom and dad. That picture was taken the year I was born, so I’ve been seeing it my entire life. My grandmother, the woman in that picture, died nine days after my first birthday, so a lot of my impression of her came from that photograph. As a kid, I always thought she must have been kind of stern and austere—that was how the picture struck me. But the other day, I took a moment to look at it again from a slightly different angle, and I realized that she is actually smiling ever so slightly, and her eyes look very loving, gentle and understanding. Now that I was really looking at her picture, I also realized that there was something strikingly familiar about her eyes, and then it suddenly dawned on me that I was seeing my mother’s eyes in this picture of her mother. That smile, those gentle eyes had always been there in the photograph, but I hadn’t seen them because of familiarity blindness.

I think it’s fair to say that many of us have a kind of familiarity blindness with the parables of Jesus in general and this one in particular, and I shared with you last week how Dr. Amy-Jill Levine’s amazing book, Short Stories by Jesus, helped me see this familiar story in a new way.

We talked last week about the lawyer who tries to trap Jesus into saying something that can be used against him. We talked about his trick question about inheriting eternal life and how Jesus turned the tables with a trick question of his own but amplified it with an even more important question when he asked, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”

That first question, “what is written in the Law,” was a red herring. Torah, the Law, doesn’t say anything at all about eternal life. The Law of Moses isn’t interested in life after death but it is vitally concerned with how we live here and now. The really important question is the second one Jesus asks the lawyer: How do you read it? That question is just as important for us today as it was then. Maybe even more so.

The lawyer responded to Jesus by quoting a mashup of the Shema from Deuteronomy and the Golden Commandment from Leviticus: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” “That’s correct,” said Jesus, “Do that and you will live.”

The bottom line is love. Love God, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Do that and you will live. Love is the key to an abundant life.

It sounds simple. The problem, though, is that this commandment to love is all inclusive, and there are some people we really don’t want to love.

I think the lawyer in this story is honest enough to realize that about himself. He knows there are some people—you know, “those people”—that he will never love, and he suspects that this is true for everyone standing there listening to Jesus. Luke says he wanted to justify himself. He wanted to make himself look right in the eyes of all those listening. But he also wanted to maybe find a loophole. Surely Jesus can’t mean that he has to love everybody, because, you know, there are some people—those people—who have clearly demonstrated that they are not on our side. Are we supposed to love them?

So he asks another question: “And who is my neighbor?”

In the context of law, the question about who is a neighbor has legal merit. After all, good fences make good neighbors. But in the context of love it’s irrelevant.

So Jesus redirects with a story.

A man travelling on the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho is violently assaulted by robbers. They don’t just rob him, they strip him and beat him so badly that he’s half dead. So there he is half dead at the side of the road. A priest happens by and does nothing to help the poor victim who is lying there bleeding. He passes by on the other side of the road. He gives the wounded man a wide berth. Next a Levite comes by. He also passes by on the other side of the road and does nothing to help the wounded stranger.

At this point, those listening to Jesus tell this story are shocked and the lawyer has to be wondering where this is going. For them, it’s unthinkable that a priest and a Levite would pass by without helping. The Law is very clear on this. They are required them to help! That would be their duty and it would take precedence over any other duty or obligation. Even if the wounded man turned out to be dead, they had a responsibility to care for his body.

The people listening to Jesus would have been shocked. But they are about to be utterly scandalized. Because the hero of the story turns out to be a Samaritan.

It’s hard for us to imagine how much the Jews hated the Samaritans. And vice versa. There antagonism between these two peoples went back centuries and was all the more intense because they were so closely related.

We traditionally call this parable the story of the Good Samaritan, but in the minds of those who were listening to Jesus, the words “good” and “Samaritan” would never go together. It was an oxymoron. Samaritans were the enemy. The people listening to Jesus as he tells this story might have thought, “If I were the man in the ditch, I would rather die than admit that I was saved by a Samaritan.” In their minds, Samaritans were something less than fully human.

So how did things get to be that way between the Jews and the Samaritans? Well, centuries before Jesus, in the time of Jacob, Samaria was called Shechem, and it was a Prince of Shechem who raped Jacob’s daughter, Dinah. In the time of the Judges, the false judge Abimelech, who murdered all his rivals, came from Shechem. For a time, Shechem became part of the united kingdom of Israel under David and Solomon, but after Solomon died, the Northern Kindom of Israel—which had been Shechem—broke away and a kind of low-grade civil war broke out that continued for generations. When the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom which was now called both Israel and Ephraim, they brought in people from other conquered kingdoms to resettle and then renamed the land Samaria after the capital city. That’s also when the people of Judah began to refer to Samaritans with a kind of racial slur, calling them “the people with 5 fathers.” But the thing that the people of Judah found absolutely unforgiveable forever and ever amen, was that when they returned to Jerusalem after their time of captivity in Babylon, Sanballat, the governor of Samaria, joined forces with other people in the region and attacked them to try to stop them from rebuilding the city wall and the temple.

For their part, the Samaritans called themselves the Shamerim, meaning “guardians” or “observers” of the Law. They had built their own temple on Mt. Gerizim and they had their own version of Torah, which they insisted was the “true” version. They believed that only Torah—their Torah, of course—contained the word of God and they did not include the writings and the prophets among the books they regarded as holy.

For Jews, Samaritans were the ultimate “other.” For Jesus to cast the Samaritan as the benevolent hero was almost beyond belief. It would be like an ultra-orthodox Jew being saved by a Hamas Palestinian. To bring it closer to home, it would be like someone wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt being saved by someone wearing the Confederate stars and bars and a red MAGA baseball cap.

Who would it be for you? Who is that ultimate “other” who, in your mind, only just barely qualifies as a real person? Who is it who, in your mind, seems to be so radically different from you that there’s really no point in even talking to them? Or maybe there’s someone who sees you that way. How would you feel if it was one of those people who pulled you out of the ditch?

The lawyer had asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus reframed his question. Jesus wants us to understand that the question is not “who” merits my love or even “from whom” should I expect love. As Amy-Jill Levine wrote, “The issue for Jesus is not the ‘who,’ but the ‘what,’ not the identity but the action.” Love—loving God, loving your neighbor, loving yourself—is revealed in action. Love does not exist in the abstract; it must be enacted.

The Priest and the Levite did not act in love even though their law and duty commanded that they should. In his sermon on this parable shortly before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr. had an explanation for why they did not help: “I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible these men were afraid… And so the first question that the priest and the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ … But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”

The Samaritan gave first aid to the man at the side of the road. He put him on his donkey and took him to the nearest inn where he could receive more help. He paid the innkeeper two days wages to take care of the wounded man and then gave him a promise that amounted to a blank check. “Take care of him,” he said, “and when I come back, I will repay you whatever you spend.”

“Which of these three,” Jesus asked the lawyer, “was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The lawyer couldn’t even bring himself to say, ‘the Samaritan.’ I imagine there was a long pause before the lawyer finally said, “The one who showed him mercy.”

Mercy. It’s an important detail here at the end of the parable, a well-chosen word. In both Greek and Hebrew, the word we translate as mercy can also mean “kindness.” It is also a covenant word in Hebrew. It signifies a shared bond of common humanity in the eyes of and under the Law of God. It is an acknowledgement that we “are of the same kind.” The Samaritan showed mercy. Kindness, a word that takes us back to the prophet Micah: “God has told you, O Mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness…mercy…kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

“Go and do likewise,” said Jesus to the lawyer. And to us.

In our country today, we find ourselves living in a culture scarred by cycles of division, antagonism, conflict, and even violence. In this parable, Jesus is telling us that these spirals of perpetual antagonism can be broken with kindness. The question that Jesus wants us to wrestle with is this: Can we learn to treat even our enemies, the “Samaritans” in our lives, in ways that acknowledge their humanity? Can we dare to see them in ways that acknowledge their potential to do good? Can we can bind the wounds of those “others” and dare to imagine that they would do the same for us?

When we encounter each other on the road full of bandits and other dangers, will we be blinded to each other by our familiar stereotypes, or will we step outside of the roles we’ve cast for each other to show kindness and be the good neighbor?

Love Story

May 16, 2022Steve Beckham Leave a comment

I came across the best love story on Facebook this week, and I just had to pass it along to you. A reporter was interviewing a man who had managed to get himself and his family out of Mariupol during the Russian bombing. Here’s what he said:

“I left the bomb shelter and saw a car with keys in the ignition near the store. I watched it for two hours, waited for the owner. When the owner didn’t show up, I didn’t wait. I took my family, got in the car and drove to Vinnitsa to stay with relatives. I found a phone number in the glove compartment and called the owner:

“‘Sorry,’ I said, “I stole your car. Saved my family.’

‘Thank God!’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I have four cars. I took my family out in my Jeep. The rest of the cars I filled with fuel and left in different places with the keys in the ignition and the number in the glove compartment. I received calls back now from all the cars. There will be peace. See you. Take care of yourself.’”

As I said, it’s a love story. Leaving those cars behind, gassed up and ready to go with the keys in the ignition so that other people, strangers, could escape the hellish bombing of their city—that was an act of love. That was God made manifest.

“I give you a new commandment,” said Jesus, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

It isn’t doctrine that marks us as disciples of Jesus. It isn’t our intellectual assent or understanding of the faith. It isn’t embracing particular ideas about atonement or grace or the nature of Christ. It isn’t our righteousness or our moral stance on hot-button issues. It isn’t even “accepting Jesus into our hearts,” whatever that might mean. “By this everyone will know you are my disciples,” said Jesus, “—if you have love for one another.”

When Jesus was asked which of the commandments was the most important, he went straight to love. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. There are no greater commandments. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Do this and you will live.”^[1]

When some of the people in Corinth got all wrapped up in their charismatic gifts and started to take a kind of overweening pride in their spirituality, St. Paul wrote to them with a word of caution:

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge—if I have so much faith that I can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions—even if I give up my body as a martyr—but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

A few years later, Paul said in his letter to the Christians in Rome:

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Paul’s descriptions of love in 1 Corinthians and Romans are excellent and instructive. But they’re also rather passive. When Jesus talked about love, he seems to have had something more active in mind. Often when he talked about love, he would combine it with action. “I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”^[2] “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.”^[3] When a lawyer tried to find a loophole in the commandment to love your neighbor by asking, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus responded with a story about a Samaritan who rescues a traveler who had been left for dead after being beaten up by bandits. Clearly, loving your neighbor involves action. Love also involves generosity. The Gospel of John tells us that God so loved the world that God gave God’s unique son to us. Giving is an act of love.

All people are called to love, not just Christians, but followers of Jesus have been commanded to love so that we can be known as his disciples. Love is supposed to be the thing that identifies us. Love is what we’re supposed to be all about…but how do you that? Especially, how do you do that part about loving your enemies—or even just people you don’t particularly like?

You may already know that the ancient Greek language in which the New Testament was written had four different words for love: agape, eros, philia, and storge. Storge was a word used to describe duty to family and country—think of it as patriotism. Philia is friendship. It meant a lot to call someone your friend in the ancient world. True friendship, then and now, is a kind of love. Eroswas the most commonly used word for love in the ancient world. Our word erotic comes from eros, but properly understood there’s a lot more to it than that.

Agape is the word for love that’s used most often in the New Testament. Agape is a love that is unconditional. It has no motive other than to seek the well-being of the beloved. It can be spontaneous, but usually it is decisional—you simply decide that you are going to love that other person or those other people. Period. Agape is indifferent to any kind of reward and it doesn’t seek reciprocity— agape doesn’t ask to be loved in return. Agape is the simple yet profound recognition that giving of yourself is a worthy and good thing to do. It is an unconditional willing of good. Agape loves the beloved for their own sake, whether they are worthy and deserving or not.

Eros, on the other hand, speaks of desire and longing. Eros seeks to possess what we find valuable but not to covet or desire a person at the expense of overall well-being. Edward Vacek defined erosas “loving the beloved for our own sake.”^[4] Plato thought that eros was the pathway to God. His reasoning went like this: I see a beautiful person or thing and I desire them or it, but if I look beyond the person or thing I find that what I am really desiring is beauty. But beauty is truth, so if I look beyond beauty, I find that what I really desire is truth. But truth comes from God, so what I am really desiring is God.

Ilia Delio reaffirms that the heart of eros is passion or desire. “Eros,” she writes, “is that ineffable longing that stretches beyond oneself for the sake of oneself.” She goes on to suggest that eros and agape aren’t so much in contrast with each other as related to each other and that philia—friendship—is the thread between them. In philia a person gives themselves over to the relationship. Philia is expressed in camaraderie and companionship, in life together in community. Edward Vacek says that philia “may be the most cosmic form of love because it is based on mutuality, reciprocity, and cooperation—with the purpose of promoting overall well-being.” That’s how the Quakers understood it, which is why they officially called themselves The Society of Friends.

Agape is the word for love that’s used most frequently in the New Testament, but there are moments when philia comes into the text to give love a meaning that is broader and deeper. Jesus brings agape and philia together in John 15:13 when he says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” No one has greater agape than to lay down one’s life for one’s philon—those who are loved with the deep bond of philia. He goes on to say, “You are my friends (philia/philon) if you do what I command you.” And what did Jesus command?—that we should love one another with agape love as he has loved us.

So how do you love—how do you obey the command to love? Well to start with, it helps to realize that the kind of love Jesus commands doesn’t have to involve any warm, fuzzy emotions. You can decide that you will unconditionally will and work for goodness for others without expecting anything to come back to you. You can decide to love with agape. That’s the starting point.

But agape can be a poor kind of love if it doesn’t bloom into something more than just a decision. If it remains simply a decisional kind of love, it can become rote, individualistic, non-mutual, and even task-oriented. Yes, agape is patient and kind, it’s not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, it does not insist on its own way, it rejoices in truth, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and doesn’t quit—agape has all those qualities that St. Paul pointed out to the Corinthians. But agape can be all that and a bag of chips and still not be warm enough to bloom into a real relationship. Love, complete and healthy love at work in a community of faith, starts with a good base of agape, but mixes in a good dose of philia, friendship, and even a dash of eros, to keep us longing for God, for each other, and for the beauty of our relationships.

From the beginning of creation, God has been pouring love into the universe and calling us into relationship. Love is the force that brings quantum waves together to form hydrogen atoms and hydrogen atoms together to form stars. Love is the force that drives evolution, overcoming entropy to continually transform biological life into higher, more complex, more aware forms of life—forms capable of loving. We are commanded to love because it is intentional love that identifies us as followers of Jesus, but even more importantly, because love is what God has been using throughout all time to transform the all of creation. When we reflect that love back to God and to each other, we participate in God’s formative and transformative work.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire.”

Love is patient and kind. Love does bear all things and believe all things and hope all things, and endure all things. But love goes beyond that. Love puts gas in the car and leaves the keys in the ignition so that beloved strangers can escape to new life. Love promises there will be peace.

May the Spirit ignite in all of us the bright flame of God’s transforming love.

^[1] Mark 12:28-34; Matthew 22:36-40; Luke 10:25-28

^[2] Matthew 5:43

^[3] Luke 6:27

^[4] Edward Collins Vacek, Love, Human and Divine: The Heat of Christian Ethics, 1994, pp. 157-158; as quoted by Ilia Delio, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, Orbis Books, 2013, p.42

Extravagant Love

April 4, 2022Steve Beckham Leave a comment

John 12:1-8

Shah Jahan, the Fifth Mughal emperor of India, was so deeply in love with his 3^rd wife, that when she died in 1631 he spent the equivalent of a billion dollars to create a final resting place for her, an exquisite mausoleum that would speak to the world of the grace and beauty of the woman who was laid to rest within its walls. He called it the Taj Mahal, naming it after his beloved wife. It has inspired lovers for centuries and is now designated as a world heritage site.

When Amytis, the daughter of the king of Media, was sent to the flat and arid desert kingdom of Babylon to cement the political alliance between the two kingdoms, she became terribly homesick for the mountains and forests of her homeland. Her husband, Nebuchadnezzar II, the king of Babylon, thought she might feel more at home if she had a garden. So he created one for her, the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Out of love for her, he created a place in the desert where she could be surrounded by lush greenery, and his extravagant monument to his love for her came to be revered as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

History is filled with extravagant acts of love and devotion—Queen Victoria’s legendary decades of mourning for Prince Albert; Lucille Ball refusing to be part of I Love Lucy, a show named for her, unless her husband Desi Arnaz played her husband on the show; Joe DiMaggio sending roses to adorn the grave of Marilyn Monroe several times a week for decades—those were all inspiring and extravagant acts of love. But the most famous act of devotion in history happened one night at a private dinner in the little town of Bethany on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

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 them with her hair.

This has to be one of the most evocative and sensual moments in the whole Bible. 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. Even 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 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.”

The Gospel of John tells us that Judas 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. In Matthew and Mark the dinner is held at the home of Simon the Leper and the woman who lavishes both expensive ointment and intimate attention on Jesus is not named. In Luke the dinner is held at a Pharisee’s house. Once again the woman is not named, but then neither is their host, the Pharisee. 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 wasteful.

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 get some of us up on our high horse and turns us into critics? What is it about lavish gestures of affection that suddenly turns some of us into outspoken proponents of philanthropy for the anonymous poor?

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—and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.”

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 Jesus 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.

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 extravagance? We should be accustomed to it. At least, we should be if we’re paying attention. “If the landscape reveals one certainty,” wrote Annie Dillard, “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. And God has been extravagant in love poured out into all of creation.

“There is a time for risky love,” said Max Lucado. There is a time for extravagant gestures. There is a time to pour out your affections on one you love. And when it comes—seize it, don’t miss it.”

May the extravagant love of Christ fill our hearts and give us courage to extravagantly love each other. In Jesus’ name.

Nobody Here But Us Chickens

March 14, 2022Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Luke 13:31-35

When some Pharisees came to tell Jesus that he should get outta Dodge because Herod wanted to kill him, Jesus made it clear that he wasn’t going to let the Pharisees or Herod disrupt his mission. “Go and tell that fox for me,” said Jesus, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Then I’ll be on my way.” I wonder if those Pharisees were brave enough to actually go back to Herod with what Jesus had said.

Calling someone a fox was not a compliment. Today if you call someone a fox you usually mean they’re pretty good looking, but it meant something very different in those days. A fox, in both Greek and rabbinic literature, was what you called someone who was crafty, sinister, dishonest. Herod would not like being called a fox, and we should remember here that Herod was dangerous. He had already killed Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist. The Pharisees were saying that he wanted to kill Jesus, too. So maybe calling him unflattering names wasn’t the safest thing to do.

But Jesus had even more to say in his message for Herod. “Tell that fox I’m casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. On the third day I’ll be on my way to Jerusalem because it’s unthinkable for a prophet to be killed anywhere else.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I hear Jesus being a little bit snide here. Just a little. Getting in a dig. “Hey Herod, come see me, buddy. Those demons that have been making you act like such a putz? I can get rid of those for you and heal your shrunken heart at the same time. But don’t think about it too long. I’ll only around for a couple of days, then I’m on my way to Jerusalem because that’s where prophets go to be killed. Sorry, I know you wanted to murder me here, but that job has been reserved for someone higher up the food chain.”

Well, maybe that’s not the tone of voice Jesus was using, but he was making it clear that he was not afraid of Herod, the man who had killed his cousin. He wasn’t going to let a threat from Herod stop him from healing people and freeing them from whatever was bedeviling them.

So, Jesus sent the Pharisees back with a message. And because he had mentioned Jerusalem, it got him thinking about where he was headed and what was waiting for him there. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem. The city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I wanted to gather your children together like a hen gathering her chicks under her wings. And you were not willing.”

I hear such sadness in these words. A lament. It’s heartbreaking to hear the yearning in the heart of God expressed this way. It’s painful to think of all the times God has reached out in love to gather and guide and protect, but like rebellious adolescents (which is a pretty apt description of humanity on the whole) we have turned away.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, The city that kills the prophets. The city that stones the messenger. Jesus calls out Jerusalem, but his words apply to any place, every place where people refuse to hear plain-spoken truth if it isn’t the “truth” they want to hear. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem. Long Beach, Long Beach. America, America. Russia, Russia. Humanity, Humanity. How many times have I wanted to pull you all together in one protective and loving embrace, but you would not let me.”

Like a hen gathering her chicks when danger threatens, when a hawk is circling overhead, when a fox or weasel is slinking around nearby—this is how God has yearned to protect us from all the craziness that we throw at each other in this world.

Like a mother hen.

When we talk about God helping and protecting us, I don’t think the go-to animal image for most of us would be a chicken. When the prophet Hosea was telling the people how angry God was with them, he said God was going to come at them like a lion or a leopard. God, he said, was going to come down on them like an enraged mother bear who’s been robbed of her cubs. (Hosea 13:7-8) Yeah! Hosea is talking about Angry God, here, but I think that’s what most of us want Protective God to be like, too. When we feel threatened, I think most of us want Angry Bear God to show up. But no, says Jesus. That’s not how God does things. God will not be a predator on our behalf. But God, Jesus, will put himself between us and whatever predatory trouble is coming at us. God, Jesus, will take the first and hardest hit.

Barbara Brown Taylor said, “Jesus won’t be king of the jungle in this or any other story. What he will be is a mother hen who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm. She has no fangs, no claws, no ripping muscles. All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body. If the fox wants them, he will have to kill her first.”

Mother Hen God is no chicken. When the fangs and claws come after her defenseless brood, she doesn’t run away. She puts her whole self between the danger and her babies. That, said Jesus, is what I’ve wanted to do for you always and everywhere.

But we won’t let him.

The longer I live, the more I am convinced that there are really only two essential forces at work in this world: fear and love. That’s it. They come in a lot of different guises, but it’s really only the two. Fear, forever resisting the full, transformative power of love. Love, forever trying to mitigate the destructive power of fear.

Greed, lust, rage, hate, violence, blind ambition, exclusion, a thirst for power—those things are all born in fear. Grace, forgiveness, courage, generosity, helping, healing, peacemaking, goodness—those things are all rooted in love.

The militant Jesus imagined by Christian Nationalism, the Jesus who looks like Rambo, is an expression of fear. But that’s not the Jesus of the gospels.

We will never be done with fighting and war until we conquer our fear. We won’t be able to get on with the practical work of building a sustainable and peaceful humanity until we rid ourselves of the fear that spawns violence. “Violence,” said Martin Luther King, “is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win their understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness,” he said. “Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” Fear cannot drive out fear. Only love can do that, too.

“There is no fear in love,” says 1 John 18, “but perfect love casts out fear.”

When fear starts to stalk us like a fox, when pain or disruption seem to be aimed right at us, Jesus wants us to know that there is a safe place under the shelter of God’s wings where we can catch our breath and be still while we wait for trouble to pass.

“In you my soul takes refuge;” said the Psalmist. “In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge until the storms pass by.” May we all learn to be willing to place ourselves under the protecting wings of Christ. May we all learn to embody Christ’s love that lifts us up and out of fear. And just as we have found shelter under metaphorical wings of Jesus, when trouble threatens may we be loving enough and brave enough to spread out our wings to shelter others. May we all be as brave as a mother hen.

When God Sings

January 24, 2022Steve Beckham 1 Comment

There’s a song I used to sing to our kids when they were younger. Sometimes I would sing it to them simply because I would have one of those moments when I would look at them and just be filled with joy from the simple fact that they exist. It just made me happy that they were there. So I would sing this silly song to them. But sometimes, more often, really, I would sing the song because they were in a snit about something and being pouty and cranky and not their real, better selves. So I would sing.

Look at that face, just look at it, look at that fabulous face of yours!

I knew first look I took at it this was a face that the world adores.

Look at those eyes as wise and as deep as the sea!

Look at that nose! It shows what a nose should be.

As for your smile, it’s lyrical, friendly and warm as a summer’s day.

That smile is just a miracle, where would I ever find words to say

The way that it makes me happy, whatever the time or place.

I’ll find in no book what I find when I look at that face.^[1]

Did anyone ever sing over you? To you? About you? It’s hard to remain gloomy if someone is singing to you.

Most of the Book of Zephaniah is full of doom and gloom. For two long chapters, the prophet makes it abundantly clear that God is mightily upset with idolatry, the ways the rich are taking advantage of the poor, and the way justice is being perverted. But then suddenly at the end of his long, angry poem, the prophet changes his tune. Suddenly his song about the end of the world becomes a song of grace and forgiveness.

Sing aloud, daughter of Zion; shout, all Israel!

Rejoice, daughter, and exult with all your heart, daughter of Jerusalem!

The Judge of All Flesh has taken away the judgments against you…

The sovereign of Israel, Creator of the Heavens and Earth,

is in your midst, daughter; no longer shall you fear evil.

The Ageless One, your God, is in your midst, daughter,

a warrior who will deliver salvation;

who will rejoice over you with gladness, daughter,

God will renew you in love, daughter,

God will exult over you, daughter, with loud singing.

Zephaniah had been telling the people that God was about to erase them from the face of the earth, but then he stops and says, “No, that’s not what God’s going to do at all.” God forgives you. God loves you. God is with you, next to you. God claims you as a daughter. So let’s sing!”

It’s a kind of resurrection. Zephaniah had declared them as good as dead. But then… grace! Forgiveness! Joy!

God will renew you with love.

God will exult over you with singing.

Loud singing.

Can you imagine God exulting over you?

Can you imagine God singing about you?

The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus is the Word who became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth, but maybe we could also see Jesus as the Song that God sings to us, the embodiment of the music of all creation who was and is in our midst bringing grace, restoration, and resurrection.

That’s what the gospels are about, you know. They are songs of restoration and resurrection.

At the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, right after Jesus has cast out an unclean spirit in the synagogue, he goes to the home of Peter and Andrew, accompanied by James and John. There he discovers that Peter’s mother-in-law is ill with a fever. Jesus takes her by the hand and lifts her up and the fever leaves her.

When Jesus has restored Peter’s mother-in-law, Mark tells us that she served them. We tend to bristle at that. Personally, I like Wilda Gafney’s translation here. She says that Peter’s mother-in-law “ministered to them.” The verb in question is diakoneo and it can mean both to serve and to minister to. That’s the verb that’s used in Mark 10:45 when Jesus describes himself as one who came not to be served, but to serve. He tells the twelve that “whoever wishes to be first must be last and servant of all” and “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.”

Serving is the mark of faithful discipleship. It’s what followers of Jesus are supposed to do, and at the end of Mark’s gospel, we see that it is the women who followed Jesus who really understood about serving. They were the ones who remained faithful to the end. It’s entirely possible that Peter’s mother-in-law was among those women. She rose to serve. And maybe she just kept on serving Jesus all the way to Jerusalem.

Jesus took her hand and lifted her up. What it actually says in the Greek is that he raised her up. It’s the same language that is used in Mark 16 when the startled women at the empty tomb are told that Jesus has been raised up. Mark wants to understand that resurrection wasn’t just the end of the story, it was part of the daily ongoing story of Jesus. The verb egeiro, to raise up, is used repeatedly in Mark’s healing stories. In Mark 2:9, it’s the verb Jesus uses when he tells the paralytic to rise up. In Mark 3:3 he tells the man with a withered hand to rise up and come forward. In Mark 5:41 it’s the word he uses when he takes Jairus’s daughter by the hand and tells her to rise up. In Mark 9:27, when a boy who has had a seizure is lying on the ground “as if dead,” Jesus takes him by the hand and tells him to rise up.

So often we yearn for Jesus to take us by the hand and give us the strength to rise up. When it feels like life has just knocked us flat—when we get some bad news, when our most important relationships seems to be high on tension and low on love, when we feel alone and beset by one dang thing after another, when life feels like a small death and a series of tragedies, we yearn for Jesus to take us by the hand and raise us back to life. We yearn for a small, everyday resurrection.

We all know that need. We all know that feeling, that yearning for the hand of Jesus.

Thomas A. Dorsey wrote a powerful song about it. It was Martin Luther King’s favorite song and he asked Mahalia Jackson to sing it at civil rights rallies. Leontyne Price sang it at the state funeral of President Lyndon Johnson. Aretha Franklin sang it at Mahalia Jackson’s funeral. It’s a song about our yearning for everyday resurrections.

Precious Lord, take my hand,
Lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
Through the storm, through the night,
Lead me on to the light:

Take my hand, precious Lord,
Lead me home.

When my way grows drear,
Precious Lord, linger near,
When my life is almost gone,
Hear my cry, hear my call,
Hold my hand lest I fall:

Take my hand, precious Lord,
Lead me home.

This is Jesus’s ministry of resurrection. Everyday resurrections. Time after time in the gospels, time after time in our own lives, he takes our hand, lifts us up and sings us back to life.

Christ sings us back to life so we can rise up and serve each other and carry the song of resurrection, the song of new life, the song of God’s great love to the rest of the world. Jesus takes us by the hand and raises us up out of our feverish troubles and pain so we can raise up others out of their feverish troubles with the outstretched hand of Christ and the promise of Zephaniah. God is in your midst. Christ is with you.

Rise up. God will renew you with love. And God will exult over you with singing. Loud singing.

^[1] From The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd, Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newly

Light a Candle

December 1, 2021Steve Beckham 4 Comments

You find yourself glancing at the calendar and the clock with a slight sense of panic. So much to do and the days are rushing by. Busyness blinds you to the presence and the present of the Present. Decorating. Shopping. Wrapping. Mailing. Visiting. Hosting.

Stop. Light a candle.

You find yourself constantly wondering just how much Christmas you can afford. You feel as if you dare not shut off your mental calculator and the joys of the season are clouded by the Ghost of Bills yet to come. Every gift becomes a bit of addition which, in turn, becomes an anxious subtraction.

Stop. Light a candle.

You find yourself lost in a lonely daydream as the Ghost of Christmas Past fills your thoughts with scenes of happier holidays from days gone by. An old familiar song reminds you of friends and family no longer near at hand and your heart aches more than just a little.

Stop. Light a candle.

You find yourself dizzy from trying to steer your way through the year-end collision of events. Reformation. Halloween. Election. Veterans Day. Christ the King. Advent. Christmas. New Year. Taxes. Fiscal Planning.

Stop. Light a candle.

You find yourself simply feeling as if something is missing, as if you’re forgetting something, as if there must be something more.

Stop. Light a candle.

Five candles. Three blue and one pink for Advent. One white for Christmas.

First, ignite the flame of Hope, the Prophecy Candle. Let this flame remind you that God’s promises not only echo through the past but draw us toward the future. Let the light remind you that just as a feather will rise naturally above the heat of a single flame, so you, too, can be lifted without effort by the Spirit that warms and enlightens us all.

Next, light the flame of Peace, the Bethlehem Candle. Let this flame remind you that the peace of God is found in humble moments and humbler places. Let this light remind you that the real gift we all seek is something no amount of money can buy. Peace.

Then light the flame of Joy, the candle of a different color, the Shepherd’s Candle. Sing the old familiar songs of Joy and surround yourself with light and music. Dance with the Ghosts of your past and know that they are very much alive in your memories and in the presence of God. Watch the old movies, taste the old, familiar flavors. Let this light rekindle your senses and remind you that this song of Joy is eternal.

Now light the flame of Love, the Angels Candle. Let this light bring equilibrium to these days of celebration. Let it guide you through the maze of these impacted days. Let the flame of Love burn a pathway through the adiaphorous clutter. Let its warmth empower you to embrace the days. Swallow its light whole so that it shines through you.

Finally, sit in the presence of the light of Christ. Let the Candle of Christmas remind you that the most humble child born in the most unlikely circumstances bears the image and likeness of the Maker of Us All. Let it remind you that the thing that has been missing in our lives, the object of our unsettled yearning, is not a thing or an object at all, but the very Source of our Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.

O come, O come, Emmanuel.

Tough Love

October 11, 2021Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Mark 10:17-31

In 1962 while on a visit to America, Karl Barth, the famous Swiss theologian, was asked by a student if he could summarize his whole life’s work in theology in a single sentence. Barth replied, “Why yes, I can. In the words of a song I learned at my mother’s knee: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

I realized the other day that I haven’t reminded people of this simple truth nearly enough in my years as a pastor. Jesus loves you. I hope you can hear it again—maybe hear it fresh as if for the first time: Jesus loves you. The Holy Spirit loves you. God loves you. Let that sit with you for a minute.

The simple truth is that God’s love for you is the starting point for…everything. Why are you here on earth having a life? Because God loves you. God worked through all of the history of the universe to make sure you would be here to be loved.

That is such an extraordinary thing to think about. Jesus loves me. This I know. When you hold that thought in your mind and heart for even a five uninterrupted minutes of contemplation, it’s mind boggling.

I think that a lot of us who have lived any time at all in the embrace of the Christian faith, and especially if we have lived in the bosom of the church—I think we’ve forgotten this. Or maybe just taken it for granted. But the plain truth is that being loved by God is a thing that should astonish us at least once a day. Preferably when we first get up in the morning.

The thing that got me thinking about all this is that there is a moment in verse 21 of our gospel text for this week that catches me off guard every time I read it. It’s only in Mark’s account of Jesus’ encounter with the man “who had many possessions.” For some reason Matthew and Luke don’t record this detail. Here it is:

Jesus, looking at him, loved him.

I don’t know which is more odd: that Mark bothers to make note of this or that Matthew and Luke don’t.

I’ll circle back to this in a minute.

This passage, Mark 10:17-31, is so rich with things that deserve our attention that we could look at this together for weeks and still just be scratching the surface. For instance, there’s the question Jesus asks the rich man right at the beginning of their conversation: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” Why does he say that? What are we supposed to make of that?

There’s the matter of eternal life…which is not the same thing as endless life. Do you know the difference? There’s a distinction there that is definitely worthy of more attention.

The rich man has asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” That’s a strange question. An inheritance is something that’s left to you. Given to you. Passed down to you. You don’t “do” anything to inherit things except maybe try not to get disinherited. Even if you work very hard to be in the good graces of your benefactor, though, in the end it’s their decision that determines if you will or won’t inherit anything.

Jesus tells the man, “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” Why does he add “you shall not defraud” to the list? That’s not one of the Ten Commandments. Matthew and Luke don’t include this, either. So why does Jesus include this in his list of commandments here in Mark? The word in Greek for defraud is apostereō. It means “to cause someone to suffer loss through illicit means, to illegally deprive someone.” In Deuteronomy 24 in the Greek version of the Old Testament, a form of that word is used in the statute that prohibits withholding wages from the poor, the needy, and immigrants. Is that why Jesus, in Mark, thinks that the rich man needs to be reminded of this statute? Is there something we’re missing here? That would be worth some study.

Finally, of course, there’s the issue that appears to be the whole point of this encounter. “You lack one thing,” said Jesus. “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

When the rich man heard this, he was shocked. And went away grieving. For he had many possessions.

The rich man had asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit eternal life. And Jesus, forthright as always, told him. Go sell your stuff. Give the money away. Then come and follow me on the Way to eternal life.

Eternal life flows from God as a gift of grace…but you can’t fully receive that gift if something is getting in the way between you and God. The rich man didn’t realize it, but he had another god standing in his way—standing between him and the one true God—between him and life eternal.

If Jesus had just told him that he was dangerously close to committing idolatry, he probably would have denied it. He probably would have quite truthfully responded that he had never bowed down to an idol or visited the temple of another god. But idolatry is rarely as simple as just worshipping graven images.

If Jesus had just told him that there was another god standing between him and God, an idol who was strangling the flow of life from God so that the river of life had been reduced to a trickle, he probably wouldn’t have understood. He probably would have pointed to his wealth and said, “But clearly God has been blessing me.”

“Show me what you trust, what your heart clings to, and I will show you your god,” said Martin Luther. The rich man’s heart was clinging to his many possessions. They were dragging him away from the thing he wanted and needed most. They were throttling his spiritual growth. So Jesus told him to just get rid of it all.

But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t imagine himself doing what Jesus prescribed for him. Jesus might as well have asked him to jump over the moon. Or try to squeeze a camel through the eye of a needle.

So why did Jesus ask him to do the impossible—or at least something impossible for him? I think the answer is in that odd line that only appears here in Mark:

Jesus, looking at him, loved him.

Jesus looked at him…and really saw him. He saw what he wanted. He saw what he needed. He saw what was in the way. Jesus saw him. Everything about him.

And he loved him.

When you love someone, you’ll do anything you can to help them be healthy and whole. Sometimes the things love demands of us are really difficult—like letting your kids make their own mistakes, for instance, because you know that’s how they’ll really learn. Sometimes love makes you say hard things for the good of the beloved. Like telling an alcoholic that they flat out have to stop drinking before it kills them and your relationship, too.

Jesus loved the rich man. So he told him that if he really wanted eternal life—not just endless life, but eternal life, that bountiful, all-encompassing, loving life in the constant companionship of God—then he had to quit his addiction. Cold turkey. He had to get rid of his stuff.

And that brings us back around to where we started. Jesus loves me. This I know. Jesus love you. This I know, too. And that means that Jesus will do whatever it takes to help us be healthy and whole—which, by the way, is the original meaning of salvation—to be made healthy and whole and swimming in the eternal stream of God’s love.

So work out your salvation with fear and trembling. And remember, if you feel Jesus is asking you to do the impossible for your own good, it’s because he loves you. And with God, all things are possible.

Living in Love

May 10, 2021Steve Beckham 1 Comment

John 15:9-17

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

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

The warmth of the childhood relationship with the mother matters long into adulthood:

Men who had “warm” childhood relationships with their mothers earned considerably more per year than men whose mothers were uncaring.
Men who had poor childhood relationships with their mothers were much more likely to develop dementia when old.
Late in their professional lives, the men’s boyhood relationships with their mothers—but not with their fathers—were associated with effectiveness at work.

The warmth of childhood relationships with fathers correlated with:

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

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

So Jackie DeShannon was right back in 1965 when she sang What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love^[3]. And the Beatles were right two years later when they sang All You Need is Love. But Jesus said it first. A long time before they did.

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

The word “love” here is agape which is a particular kind of love. This isn’t a sentimental or emotional love, although it can develop into warm feelings. But agape doesn’t start that way. Agape is a decision. It starts in the head before it moves to the heart. Madeleine L’Engle described it this way: “Agape love is…profound concern for the well-being of another, without any desire to control that other, to be thanked by that other, or to enjoy the process.” Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their own sakes… Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both. It is redemptive goodwill for all people. It is a love that asks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love…And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love people not because they are likeable, but because God loves them.” When Saint Paul writes that Love is patient and kind, that love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude, that it doesn’t insist on its own way, that love it is not irritable or resentful, that it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth…when he writes that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, when he writes that love never quits, he is describing agape.

When Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you,” that’s the kind of love he is talking about. Talk about a “warm relationship!” Agape may start in the head as a decision, but how could you not have warm feelings for someone who loves you like that? And how could you not develop a certain tenderness in your heart when you’ve decided to love someone that way? You can’t help it. Because when you love, you make yourself vulnerable. That’s part of the decision.

“Abide in my love,” says Jesus. Most of us don’t use the word “Abide” too often unless we’re huge fans of The Big Lebowski. The Greek word that’s at work here is meno, which means to stay, to remain, to continue, to continue to exist. It’s in the imperative form, so Jesus says it as a command. “Continue to exist in my love.” That puts a bit of a different spin on it, doesn’t it?

There are two ways to think about that. One is that Jesus surrounds us with divine love and commands us to stay inside the parameters of that love as we act and interact with each other and the world. This is something of the understanding Saint Paul has when he talks about being “in Christ.” The other way to understand it is to see that our lives have been infused with the love of Jesus and we are now commanded to continue to regenerate that love for those around us. Both understandings work and keep the love of God flowing. And Jesus assures us that if we keep the commandment to love, we will continue to abide, to exist, within the love of God.

“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” This statement always catches me by surprise. I’ll be honest, I don’t usually think of Jesus as joyful. You certainly don’t see him depicted that way very often in the gospels. We see him arguing with scribes and Pharisees or impatient with his disciples when they’re being dense. Healing people, yes. Casting out demons, there’s certainly something energetic about that. But joyful? But when you think about it, these episodes of cranky Jesus that we see depicted are brief and they’re probably very much the exception rather than the rule. We do see him dining with tax collectors and sinners. Those were probably fun times. He does tell the occasional joke—you know, a camel through the eye of a needle? And joy would explain why huge crowds came to see him. Joy is attractive. It’s charismatic.

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

As I have loved you.

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

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

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

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

When you love with divine love, when you let divine love flow through you, you begin to love, as John Duns Scotus says, things in themselves, for themselves, and not for what they do for you. That’s when you begin to love your spouse. That’s when you begin to love your neighbors–when you start seeing them detached from you, what they do for you, or how they make you look, or what they can get for you. It takes work to learn to love them in themselves, and for themselves, as living images of God.

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

Reality will start giving you joy, inherently. And you will start overcoming the gap between you and everything else.

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

Amen.

Prayers of Intercession – Easter 6B

Growing in faith, lifted by hope, guided by love, and alive in the risen Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we bring our prayers before God who promises to hear us and answer in steadfast love.

A brief silence

Loving God, you call us to be your fruit-bearing church. Strengthen the bonds among all Christian churches. Toda we pray for the Moravian Church, giving thanks for the life and witness of Nicolaus von Zinzendorf, renewer of the church and hymnwriter. Hear us, O God. Your mercy is great.

Creating God, the earth praises you. The seas roar and the hills sing for joy. Fill the earth with your love so that by their song , all creatures of land and sea and sky, burrowing and soaring, may call us to join with them in praise. Hear us, O God. Your mercy is great.

Faithful Savior, you conquer the world not with weapons but with undying love. Plant your word in the hearts of the nations’ leaders and give them your Spirit, so that the peoples of the world may live in peace. Hear us, O God. Your mercy is great.

Gracious God, as a loving mother comforts her child, you comfort us. Bless mothers and mothering people in our lives. Comfort those who miss their mothers, mothers who grieve, those who grieve because they cannot be mothers, and those who have never known a loving mother. Your mercy is great.

Caring Healer, you forget no one and accompany the lonely. Be present with those who are sick or suffering. Provide for those needing homes or medical care and point us towards life-changing responses to these needs in our own communities. Be present with those who are sick or suffering. We pray especially for Lance Hailstone, for Donna’s grandson, Matthew Erickson, for Edie’s grandson, Harry Plummer as he recovers from a broken back, a punctured lung and a broken leg, we pray for Baby Arthur, the child of Candy’s friend, for Peggy Bockman, for Charley Hartwell, for Mike Engle, for Janet Simms, for Vickie Gammar, for Jim Schoup, for Dianne Keil, Judi Mellow, Dee Perretta, Ranae Wright, for Sandy Nelson and for Bruce Chinn, for Lyn Hicks, and for all those on the Prayer Wall. Reveal your power to heal and save. Hear us, O God. Your mercy is great.

Gentle Redeemer, all who die in you abide in your presence forever. We remember with thanksgiving those who shared your love throughout their lives. Keep us united with them in lasting love. In the hope of new life in Christ, we raise our prayers to you, trusting in your never-ending goodness and mercy, through Jesus Christ our Lord who taught us to pray…

^[1] Stossel, Scott (May 2013). “What Makes Us Happy, Revisited: A new look at the famous Harvard study of what makes people thrive”. The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 7 June 2017. Retrieved 25 June 2017.

^[2] CBC News Staff (31 July 2009). “Study proves Beatles right: All you need is love”. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 26 April 2017. Retrieved 25 June 2017

^[3] Written by Hal David and Burt Bacharach

^[4] The Universal Christ, Richard Rohr (213-214; 219)

Thoughts Along the Way

Thoughts Along the Way and Occasional Music from Pastor Steve Beckham

Tag Love

Out of Love for the Truth

Teach Us to Pray – Part 2

Familiarity Blindness

Love Story

Extravagant Love

Nobody Here But Us Chickens

When God Sings

Light a Candle

Tough Love

Living in Love