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Stand Still

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

Mark 10:46-52

One of the things you can do to really bring stories from the Bible to life and get more meaning from them is to picture yourself in the story.  Read through it slowly and think about each of the characters, then ask yourself, “Who am I in this story?”  

So let’s go through this episode again, and as we do, think about who you might be if you were one of the characters in this narrative.  

Jesus and his disciples are on the way up to Jerusalem.   As they pass through Jericho, there’s a large crowd with them because by this time Jesus has become pretty well known, but also a lot of people are travelling to Jerusalem for the coming Passover.  As they’re leaving town—Jesus, the disciples, the crowd—they encounter Bartimaeus, a blind beggar sitting at the side of the road.  Very few of the minor characters in Mark’s gospel are named, so we have a clue that maybe we should pay a little more attention to Bartimaeus.  

Bartimaeus hears the crowd shuffling by and when he hears someone mention Jesus, he shouts out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!”  The crowd tries to silence him, but he persists and shouts out all the more loudly, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!”  

And this is when a fascinating little thing happens in the story.  It’s fascinating, but it’s small, so it’s easy to slide right past it.  It says in the text, “Jesus stood still.”  Jesus hears Bartimaeus over the hubbub of the crowd and he stops.  And stands still.  

Can you picture it?  Jesus is standing perfectly still, so the crowd stops.  They stand still, too.  Everybody stops to see why Jesus has stopped and is just standing there, right there in the middle of the road.  That—that moment when everything has come to a standstill—that is when Jesus says, “Call him over.”  So someone in the crowd calls out to Bartimaeus, “Cheer up! On your feet!  He’s calling you!”  

Bartimaeus throws off his cloak, leaps to his feet and sprints over to Jesus.  So now they’re face to face, and Jesus says to Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?”  “My teacher,” says Bartimaeus, “let me see again.”  The Jesus says to him, “Go.  Your faith has healed you.”  And just like that, Bartimaeus can see again.

But he doesn’t go.  At least he doesn’t go back to what he was doing before.  Instead, he follows Jesus on the way.

So if you put yourself in this story, who are you?

Maybe you’re a bystander.   You live in Jericho in a nice little house right there on the main road.  It’s a great place for people-watching.  Everyone who’s on the way to Jerusalem goes right by your door.  You see Jesus passing through, and you’re interested.  You’ve heard a lot about him.  You would certainly be willing to engage in a polite conversation with him if he suddenly wandered over to your porch and asked for a drink of water.  But he seems determined to keep moving, so that’s not going to happen.  Plus there are all those other people with him, so even if you felt moved to go over to him, how close could you get?  And what would you talk about anyway?  No, all things considered, it’s easier to just watch the Jesus parade from the safe distance of your front porch.  You don’t need to get in the middle of it.  Better not to get involved.  But wait a minute… he’s stopping.  He’s just standing there.  What’s he doing?  O look!  He’s going to do something about that annoying beggar who’s always just sitting there across the road from your house, bothering people for spare change.  About time somebody did something about him.  You know, there ought to be a law to keep people like that from cluttering up nice neighborhoods like this.  

So is that who you are in this story?

If you’re not a bystander, maybe you’re one of the disciples.  You’ve been following Jesus for quite a while now, so long that sometimes you forget why you’re still with him, especially with some of the things he’s been saying lately—telling you he’s going to be rejected by the priests and authorities and then crucified… What the heck does all that mean, anyway?  He’s got to be talking figuratively, right?  You’d ask him to explain it again, but it’s so hard to get any time alone with him lately.  This crowd is around all the time and it just seems to keep growing.  He talks about getting to Jerusalem like it’s so urgent, but then he’ll stop to heal someone or share an observation about something or debate someone, and the next thing you know you’ve lost half an hour—or half a day.  Maybe after Jerusalem, after the Passover, things will get back to normal…not that your time with him has ever been anything like normal.  You can’t remember the last time you just had a day off to sit in the shade and think.  Every time you try to get away the crowd seems to find you and they bring along everyone who so has so much the sniffles to see if he can heal them.  It seems like you’re spending all your time and energy lately on crowd control.  And even when you’re on the move there are people on the road who want his attention—like that noisy blind beggar over there.   Aaaand, there it is.  He’s stopping.  Huh… he’s just standing there.  Okay, here we go, he’s calling the beggar over to him.  The way things have been going, that guy’s going to want to join the group and follow you.  Just what you need.  Another hanger-on.  Another mouth to feed.  Maybe after Jerusalem you can just chuck it all and head back to Galilee.  

So is that who you are in this story?  One of the disciples?

Maybe you’re part of the large crowd.  You’ve been trying to get closer to Jesus so you can hear what he’s saying, and there’s so much you want to ask him, but every time you think you see a way to squeeze in closer, someone jostles you aside and you’re back where you started.  It’s no fun just being part of the crowd, surrounded by all this noise.  Every time Jesus starts to say something the people right behind you start talking about some mundane thing or another and you can’t hear Jesus over their loud voices.  It seems like everybody just shouts, and the bigger the crowd gets, the louder they get.  Haven’t they ever heard of nice, quiet conversational voices?  Oh great.  Who’s shouting now?  Someone tell that beggar to shut up.  It’s hard enough already to hear what Jesus is saying.  Wait… what’s Jesus doing?  He’s stopping.  He’s just standing there.  Everybody’s stopped.  Hey, this is your chance to get closer to him while everyone’s just standing there.  Oh no.  He’s calling the beggar over to him.  And isn’t that just your luck.  Well, it’s still a good hike to Jerusalem.  Maybe you’ll find a way to get close to him while you’re on the way.

So is that who you are in this story?  Someone who is travelling the same road in the same direction but not really getting close enough to Jesus to get the full picture of who he is and what he’s about and what he means for you?

Are you, maybe, Bartimaeus?  You sit passively by the side of the road as the rest of the world rolls along in front of you, waiting for any little bit of grace or kindness that someone might toss your way.  You would be proactive, making your own way forward, but there’s that one great affliction that stops you, that limits your opportunities and abilities.  And you’ve become so dependent.  If only you could see again.  Or hear again.  Or walk again.  Or think again.  Or laugh again.  Or feel again.  If only there was some light in your darkness, or music in your silence, or strength in your limbs, or clarity in your heart and mind.  You are so tired of being invisible on the sidelines, so tired of the miasma that your life has become.  You hear the crowd ambling by and out of your darkness you ask over and over again, “Anything for me?  Can you spare anything for me?”  And then someone mentions Jesus.  Jesus of Nazareth.  The teacher.  The healer.  The life changer.  You grasp at the straw.  You’re surprised at the force of your own voice as you cry out, “Jesus, Son of David!  Have mercy on me!”  Somebody tries to silence you.  They’re annoyed with you.  They tell you not to bother them—and not to bother the teacher with your need.  With your existence.  But suddenly all the noise stops.  There’s an unnerving silence.  The shuffling crowd is standing still, holding their breath.  Then someone says, “He’s calling you.”  You throw aside everything as you leap to your feet.  Finally, there’s hope for you.  Unseen hands guide you to him until you feel his presence right in front of you.  With you.  And then he asks you the oddest question:  “What do you want me to do for you?”  And part of you just wants to scream.  Can’t he see your affliction?  Can’t he see the great obstacle that’s keeping you from really entering into the fullness of life?  But then it dawns on you…Jesus is not presuming that dealing with your obvious affliction is the thing you most want most from him.  He is treating you like a whole person.  He is waiting for you to tell him what you want most.  And you realize that what you want most, what you need most, is to follow him, but you could do that so much more easily if first he heals you.  So you say let me see again.  Let me hear music again.  Let there be a spring in my step again.  Let my mind and heart be clear again.  Let me laugh again.  Let me feel again.  

So is this who you are in the story?  Are you the person in need at the side of the road?  There’s no shame in that.  Most of us have been that person at one time or another, waiting for our moment of healing.  Is that you?

Or are, perhaps, you’re Jesus?  Don’t dismiss that idea with false humility.  Don’t inflate it with ego, either.  Martin Luther said we are called to be “little Christs” to each other.  Saint Paul tells us that as followers of Jesus on the Way, Christ is in us and we are in Christ.  Jesus, himself, said that just as he was immersed in the life and love of the Father, so we are immersed in his life and love.  “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us… The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one,  I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one.” (John 17:20-23)

So you could be Jesus in the story.  You could be the one who brings compassion and healing and sight to someone crying out from the side of the road.

Is that who you are?

I think we have all been all of these—the bystander, the distracted disciple, the person going along with the crowd, the person in need.  But for a moment, let’s just stand still.  Let’s stand still so we can hear the voice calling out for mercy.  Let’s stand still so we can see the need that’s begging at the side of the road.   Then from this turning point on the Way, may God empower us to be “little Christs,” bringing attention, compassion, and healing to those who cry out from the side of the road.

In Jesus’ name.

Image © Julia Stakova, Bulgarian artist

A Deeper Kind of Seeing

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

John 6:35, 40-51

There are lots of things we can’t see, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.   Ultra-violet rays, viruses, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.  We can’t see them, but if we don’t protect ourselves from them, we’re in trouble.  Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen—we can’t see these things, but we trust that they’re really there because we see the way they act on us and the world around us.   They’re invisible, but we know that we benefit from them.  We say we see the wind, but what we’re really seeing is the effect of the wind as it blows things around.

If you were to stand face-to-face with another person right now and really look at them—I mean really look at that person as fully and carefully and completely as you can—there is a whole lot of that person that you would not be able to see.  And I don’t just mean because they’re wearing clothes.   

For instance, you wouldn’t be able to see their microbiome.  The average person has about 30 trillion human cells in their body and somewhere around 39 trillion bacteria, according to Ron Milo and Ron Sender, researchers at the Weizman Institute of Science.  Even though you can’t see them, those 39 trillion bacteria play an important role in shaping that other person you’re looking at.  A change in the balance of the bacteria in that person’s biome can alter the condition of their skin and hair.  It can alter mood and personality.  A change in their biome can even lead to genetic changes.  Their  invisible biome has a profound effect on the person you’re seeing, even though you can’t see it.

You can’t see their thoughts, either.  You may see hints of their thoughts in their facial expression or body language,  but the thoughts themselves remain invisible. 

Have you ever gone to the refrigerator or the cabinet to get something and, no matter how hard you look, you just can’t find it, but then someone else takes a look and it’s right there in plain sight, right where you were looking?  For some reason, you really could not see it.  You had a mental blind spot.  Those mental blind spots, by the way, have a name.  They’re called schotomas.  

Sometimes we have a schotoma, a mental blind spot, a failure to see what’s right in front of us because we just don’t expect to see it or because it’s not where we think we should see it.  We can be blind to things that don’t fit our preconceived idea of how things are supposed to be.

In John 6:40 in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus says a really interesting thing—a thing I didn’t really see for the longest time.  Jesus says, “This is the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”  I think we all catch the part about believing, but it’s easy to overlook the part about seeing Jesus.   

The word that’s used here for see in the original Greek is theôron.  It means “to observe something with enhanced attention; to perceive.”  In other words, to really see as completely and fully as possible.  Jesus wants us to see him.  That makes all the sense in the world, because to really and truly believe,  to trust him, we first have to see him for who he is and what he is.

That’s the problem the religious leaders who confronted Jesus are having in today’s gospel lesson.  They have a schotoma, a mental blind spot.  In spite of all his miracles and the wisdom of his teaching, they are simply unable to see Jesus for who he is and what he is.  Their preconceptions about God and religion and the way the world works just don’t have any room for Jesus as the Son of God, as Immanuel, as God With Us.  Their theology gets in the way of what God is doing right in front of them.

“Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph?,” they say.  “We know his parents!  How can he say he came down from heaven?”   Their skepticism is understandable.   It’s more than a little bit of a leap from “Jesus, the teacher and healer” to “Jesus, the divine presence in our midst who has come to us from heaven.”  It’s such a leap, in fact, that a lot of people try to put Jesus in a category with less outrageous claims.  They think of him as a great moral teacher or an important social pioneer.

But here’s the thing…C.S. Lewis said we either need to take Jesus at his word, or put him aside altogether.  In Mere Christianity, Lewis wrote: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg — or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”  

To really believe in Jesus as the Son of God, first you have to see him that way.  But a lot of people—maybe most—just aren’t prepared to see him that way, and the most brilliant theological arguments in the world won’t change their minds.  Jesus understood that.  “No one can come to me unless the Father draws them,” he said.  And the word “draws” here, by the way, is the same word that’s used for hauling in a fishing net.  People come to faith because God draws them to faith.  Martin Luther wrote, “I believe that I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him by my own reason or strength, but instead, the Holy Spirit has called me.”

God can reel you in, but God won’t force you to believe.  It’s like they say about a horse and water: God can make us come to Jesus, but God can’t or won’t make us believe or trust.  God will lead us to the bread of life, but God won’t force it on us. 

Jesus is inviting us to a faith that’s anchored in love and trust.  Jesus wants us to believe in him because we see him for who and what he really is.  And Jesus wants us to learn to see each other as children of God, too—as persons who are created  in the image and likeness of God—even when it’s a stretch, and the person you’re looking at seems far removed from God or anything like God’s grace, generosity, compassion and love.  

Jesus wants us to really see him.  And he wants us to learn to really see each other.  That requires a deeper kind of seeing.  That requires us to put aside a lot of preconceptions that tend to create a schotoma—a mental blind spot—around Jesus, and frankly, around each other, because so often we seem to be truly blind to each other as children of God, shining in the image and likeness of God.  

Sometimes, in order to really see Jesus, we even need to put aside our creeds and theology.  The problem with them is that they make us think we understand what it means to believe.  They give us a formula to recite, boxes we can check off, things we can assent to in theory.  But that’s not what Jesus has called us to.

Creeds, professions of faith, theology, doctrine and dogma—these all have their place, and once we come to faith they can help us see more deeply the life we’re experiencing.  But it’s important to remember that God did not write a creed for us in words that can be debated or that change their meaning.  Instead, God gave us a living example.  God gave us a life that we can see—a mirror to show us how we are to be in the world and with each other.  Theology can be argued about.  Faith, as a life, can only be lived.  

Jesus is the bread of life who not only sustains us in a living faith, once we learn to see him, but who opens our eyes so that we can see him and each other more deeply—so that we can see God With Us, in him and in each other.

Dear Nicodemus

Steve Beckham 3 Comments

John 3:1-17

Dear Nicodemus,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Do You Read It?

Steve Beckham 2 Comments

In the Gospel of Luke in chapter 10, a lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life.   Jesus responds by asking the lawyer a question: “What is written in the law?  What do you read there?”  At least that’s how it’s translated in the NRSV.  A better translation, though, would be “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”

How do you read it?  How do you interpret it?  How do you understand it?  The lawyer replies to Jesus by quoting from Deuteronomy and 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.”  Then Jesus says him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But this is when the lawyer really begins to answer the second part of the question “How do you read it?” because this is where he starts to look for wiggle room.  Wanting to justify himself, Luke tells us, he asks, “But who is my neighbor?”  And that’s what prompts Jesus to tell the parable of the Assaulted Traveler. You know it by another name.  But I’ll come back to that.

A man was travelling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, said Jesus, when he was set upon by bandits who stripped him and beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.  A little while later a priest comes along, sees the unfortunate man, but passes by and does nothing for him.  Not long after that a Levite comes by, a man dedicated to serving God.  He also sees the assaulted traveler bleeding, bruised and naked at the side of the road, but he, too, passes by and does nothing to help.  Fortunately,  right after that a Samaritan happens along.  He takes pity on the man.  Gives him first aid, takes him to a nearby inn, gives the innkeeper two days wages to care for the man, and promises to pay for any additional expenses on his way back.  

After telling this story, Jesus asks the lawyer, “Which of these three was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the bandits?”  “The one who showed mercy,” said the lawyer.  “You go and do likewise,” said Jesus.  

You know this story well.  You have a familiar name for it.  But I gave you a different name for it.  I did that because the name we usually call it, “The Good Samaritan” carries a boatload of interpretive baggage.

Some context.  

When Jesus tells this story he is on his way to Jerusalem.  He is still in the countryside.  To the people in the countryside, bandits were not necessarily bad guys.  Because of economically oppressive systems inflicted by Rome and the heavy tithe system from the religious structure represented by priests and pharisees, and limited labor opportunities, many men turned to highway robbery.  Those listening to Jesus tell this story probably assumed that the man who was assaulted and left for dead was a rich merchant—bandits wouldn’t rob poor people, no money in it—and rich merchants were not trusted.  The common people in Jesus’ time had a world view of limited good; if someone was well off it was almost certainly at someone else’s expense.  Bandits tended to even the scales.

So bandits robbing a merchant—not shocking.  But a priest and Levite walking by and doing nothing?  That’s shocking.  These are men who have an obligation to help according to Torah.  Actually, according to Torah, anyone who can should help.  Most shocking of all, though, is that the person who does stop to help is a Samaritan.

I wonder if we can really understand how much Judeans hated Samaritans.  I suppose I could give some examples, but I would surely offend someone.  And that’s the point.  The people listening to Jesus, including the lawyer, would have been greatly offended that the Samaritan was the hero of the story.  The mutual hatred between Jews and Samaritans had deep historical roots.  When Jesus asks, “who was the neighbor?” the lawyer can’t bring himself to say the word Samaritan.  He simply says, “The one who showed mercy.”

This is an anit-racist story, pure and simple. When the lawyer asks Jesus, “But who is my neighbor?” he’s really asking “who is it okay for me to hate?”  So Jesus tells him a story where the hero is a person he is going to be automatically inclined to disregard and disrespect.  In the end, it turns out that the long answer to his original question of how can one inherit eternal life turns out to be, “Love God, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and that means you can’t be a racist.”

We call this episode “The Parable of the Good Samaritan.”  Earlier I called it “The Parable of the Assaulted Traveler.”  What if I called it “The Encounter With A Racist Lawyer”?  Changing the title can change the way you read it or hear it.  It can shift the focus.  In the same way, learning more of the background information can change the way you understand the story.  We’ve always heard it as a story about helping those in need—and it certainly contains that element—but it’s really a story about racism.

How do you read it?  This is such an important question for us to ask ourselves about the scriptures, about the news we’re reading and watching, and about life.  

How Are You Translating?

Steve Beckham 1 Comment

For this is how God loved the world—all of it, everything: God gave God’s unique son so that everyone who trusts into him need not be destroyed but may have eternal life. For God did not send this son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be made whole through him. – John 3:16-17 (my translation)

I know.  That’s not the way your Bible says it.  It’s not the way my Bibles say it, either.  I have several.  It goes with the job.  No, that’s not the way it reads in your Bible or mine, but it is a perfectly legitimate translation from the ancient Greek text.

So how does it sound to you, this word about the Word in different words?  Does “trust into him” make you pause?  Before you mentally substituted the more familiar “believe in him” did you stop to think about the difference?  What do you mean when you say “believe?”  Is there a difference between believing as intellectual affirmation versus trusting?  Can you believe in someone but still not trust them with your life?  What’s the difference between in and into?  Subtle, that one.  But doesn’t in sound more like stasis, something settled, while into is more of an ongoing process?  Why do so many translations say condemn when the Greek word most frequently means to judge.  True, it can mean condemn, but why leap to that?  Oh, and saved.  Such an interesting, interesting word.  Sozo in Greek.  It can mean to be rescued, to be made safe, to be removed from danger, but its oldest meaning is to be healed, to be made whole.

So how do you prefer to hear it?  Heard one way it can be about God’s plan for fire insurance of the eternal kind. Heard another way it can be a message about God’s intervention to heal this world, all of us and everything else.  Which translation speaks to you?

How are you translating the world around you?  How are you translating the other people you encounter in life?  How are you translating yourself?

“Love one another as I have loved you,” says Jesus, later in the Gospel of John.  He makes it a commandment of all things.  Really loving each other involves learning to really hear each other and see each other. David Augsburger wrote, “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” To love you, I need to hear you.  To love me, you need to hear me.  We need to translate each other accurately.  To do that we each need to know something about how the other person is translating the world and interpreting their experience.

We are not looking at the world through the same eyes or hearing it through the same ears, but if, when we disagree, we stop to ask why we are seeing and hearing things so differently—if we take the first step in translating each other—then we’re taking the first steps in loving each other.  If nothing else, paying close attention to those around us can teach us all kinds of interesting things, even when they are not being particularly relational. “I learned silence from the talkative and tolerance from the intolerant and kindness from the unkind,” wrote Khalil Gibran.  And that’s love, too.

The Penalty For Neglect

Steve Beckham Leave a comment

Thoughts Along the Way…

For the past 2 years our congregation has been enjoying a Sunday morning Adult Ed class called Occupy the Gospels. It has been an enlightening and stimulating study and discussion that has taken all of us who participated into a deeper level of understanding of why each gospel is so different from the others and just what each of the gospels is all about. We’ve done a close reading of each gospel examining such questions as who was it originally written for, what kinds of stresses and pressures were they dealing with in that community, why does Jesus say things one way in this gospel but differently in another gospel, and so on.

If you’re going to call yourself a Christian, a follower of Jesus, an apprentice of Jesus, it’s important to be deeply familiar with what Jesus said and did. In his tract How Christians Should Regard Moses, Martin Luther suggested that we are not really properly equipped to understand the rest of the Bible unless we first come to a clear understanding of the gospels.

One advantage of doing a close reading together in a group is that very often others will spot things you haven’t seen before or ask questions that hadn’t occurred to you. I honestly couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve been through the gospels, but in our class together I was frequently seeing new things or seeing them from a different perspective than I had before. And sometimes that new little thing I saw would sit with me for weeks and make me rethink a lot of other things about my faith and my understanding of my faith.

Here’s a case in point. The 25th chapter of Matthew has always been important to me. I’ve even sometimes called myself a “Matthew 25” Christian. This chapter is the only place in the gospels where Jesus, himself, describes the final judgment, where the “sheep” are separated from the “goats,” and the criteria are not at all what a lot of people expect. He doesn’t say a word about what you believe or don’t believe. There is no mention of whether or not you accepted him as your personal Lord and Savior or invited him into your heart or any of those other popular ideas that some people think are the doorway to being “saved.” Nope. Nothing like that at all. No statement of creed. No tally of church attendance. Not a bit of it. Instead, the final exam is all about one thing and one thing only: how well did you take care of people who were in need?

34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

A few years ago I realized that the “sheep” in this text, the people who did these good things and are being rewarded and inheriting the kingdom, are quite surprised to find that they are, in fact, the Grand Prize Winners! They didn’t know that by taking care of those in need they were also taking care of Jesus, himself. They just did it because it was the right thing to do.

Rereading this text in our class a few weeks ago, though, I was suddenly hit between the eyes by yet another little epiphany. Words I had read maybe hundreds of times before suddenly hit me in a way I just had not thought of before. And this time it was the flip side of the coin. This time it was the “goats,” who got my attention– you know, the ones who did not feed the hungry or visit the sick or give a drink to the thirsty, the ones who ignored those in need, or worse, went out of their way to do nothing for them.

41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink…

These are the words that hit me like a ton of bricks: “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” I confess, I’m not real big on the idea of Hell and eternal punishment. I like to think that God’s grace trumps everything in the end. On the other hand, the punishment motif crops up several times in the Gospel of Matthew, so in this gospel, at least, it is kind of unavoidable. But seeing that the “goats” get punished wasn’t the thing that arrested me. It was that they were being consigned to a punishment prepared for the devil and his angels. In other words, the failure to take care of those in need is not merely a “failure” or sin of oversight. It is something far worse. It is evil. If the punishment is the measure of its severity as a sin, then the failure to care for those in need is demonic.

I think the ramifications of this are huge. Jesus, as I read it here, is saying that any actions on our part that deprive those in need of food, water, clothing, shelter or medical care, actions that deprive the imprisoned of hope and comfort, actions that alienate the stranger– such actions are evil, even demonic; the punishment is the measure of the crime.

At our little congregation, the little church with a big heart, we have much to be proud of in the ways we have fulfilled the positive side of this equation. We have been wonderfully generous in feeding, clothing and providing for those in need. Our benevolence is extraordinary, and I am so proud, as their pastor, of this congregation’s generosity in spirit and in practice. I know and trust that we will keep up the good work that leads us into God’s presence.

But think about those “goats.” As you read the headlines or watch the news, as you watch what our elected officials are voting for or against, what they are funding or not funding, remembering that they do all this in our name as our representatives, think about those “goats.” Think about the final exam as Jesus describes it. Think about how Jesus sees it. Are we on the road to inherit the Kingdom? Or are we stumbling toward that place prepared for the devil and his angels?

Pro Gloria Dei

Pastor Steve