The High Way

Genesis 12:1-4

John 3:1-17

All of us have moments when we do impulsive things. Like, when your friend says, “Let’s go out for ice cream!” and you weren’t planning to do that, you were actually planning to go home and do laundry, but then you thought, “Ice cream? Why not? You only live once, right?” We have all done something impulsive once in a while. But probably not leaving your home and walking off toward an unknown destination. I’ll bet you haven’t done that.

I wonder what Abram thought when God called him to walk away from his home and his people and go to a place God would show him.  There must have been something – or a few things – on his mind.  

But we don’t know.  The text doesn’t say.  It just says that Abram went, as the Lord told him. I try to imagine why. 

Maybe Abram was a thrill seeker, always up for an adventure. But I doubt it.

Or maybe Abram was the most obedient, submissive man to ever live – the ultimate Do-Bee. I doubt that, too.

Is it possible that Abram had the sense that there was something more to his life than what he was currently living? Maybe there was a yearning, then there was a call, and Abram just knew this was what he had been waiting for. And so he went.

For all his life, Abram had been doing what was expected, keeping his head down, following the well-trod path. Then one day he heard a higher calling. And he went.

Sometimes discipleship happens like that. But not always.

Other times it’s more like Nicodemus, who approached Jesus hesitantly and stealthily.  He came in the dark of night.  And it’s no wonder he came at night.  After all, he was a Pharisee – a teacher of Israel.

He was breaking ranks with his fellows, who were, of course, emphatically opposed to Jesus.  Something pulled at Nicodemus, though, leading him to make this night visit.  But he came with all his hesitation and doubts and uncertainties, and a certain amount of resistance to being made new – some fear of what was unknown. 

And this baggage Nicodemus brought with him seemed to make it impossible for him to take that leap in understanding. It weighed him down. Nicodemus asks Jesus, how can these things be?  and you can almost hear the quiver in his voice when he asks. His shoulders slumped, his head down, Nicodemus couldn’t even see that high way Jesus was showing him.

Nicodemus arrives in the dark and he leaves in the dark, seeming to have gained nothing.  He is not able to step onto that road with Jesus. He can’t even see the possibility of it. Maybe we know, ourselves, what it’s like to be in the dark, unable to take that step into something new.

Nicodemus was asked to let go of some things.  He needed to let go of certain ways of looking at the world – this idea of what it means to be born, for example – born from above, born of water and Spirit. He needed to let go of his concepts of truth, of certainty.  He needed to let go of the way he understood God’s actions in the world, and even who he was in relation to God and all of humankind.  Nicodemus was being asked to let go of some really big things.  

And Nicodemus, as we see, was not very successful at it. This conversation we hear between Jesus and Nicodemus is funny, in a way. Jesus is speaking on a level that Nicodemus doesn’t grasp, his words seem to fly right over Nicodemus’s head, and Nicodemus responds with questions that completely miss the mark. 

The problem seems to be that Nicodemus wants answers, but answers that fit into his boxes. And Jesus is handing him a whole new set of boxes. Nicodemus can’t deal with it, he’s drowning in his confusion.

Then Jesus tries to throw him a lifeline: he tells him about God’s unfathomable love. But, maybe it is just plain unfathomable to Nicodemus. He doesn’t say anything more, and we might assume he walked away into the night.

If only he could have recognized the help he needed. If only he could have accepted the love Jesus offered. If only he could have known that such love is strong enough to make him strong – strong enough to stand up against whatever is holding him down.

We feel sad for Nicodemus, because we certainly know what it is like to be utterly confused by something, like he was confused by Jesus. We understand how it feels to be losing control of things, the way Nicodemus was losing his grasp on everything he believed to be true; to feel the dissonance between the life you are living and the sense that God is offering you a different way. We might even worry about him. Maybe you find yourself wondering: whatever became of Old Nic?  

Let me tell you. 

Nicodemus made another appearance in the story in chapter 7. Jesus is teaching among crowds of people at a religious festival. The Pharisees are about ready to have him arrested, but Nicodemus is there, and he says something to the others to slow things, calm them down. Now, Nicodemus is no longer skulking around in the dark of night. He is openly challenging the conventional wisdom of his fellows. That’s a step up for Old Nic. But there is more.

Nicodemus makes one final appearance. After Jesus is crucified. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus take his body from the cross to the tomb. Nicodemus brings the myrrh for his burial.

What could possibly have moved Nicodemus to take such a public action for a dead criminal? Only one thing. 

I don’t know where Nicodemus goes from here, but I think at this point his story is a lot like Abram’s story. Stepping out into the unknown, risking everything you have known, everything you have held close, all for the sake of following this higher calling. Living into the new story God is writing for you.

Where is God calling you to go this season? What is standing in the way of you accepting the help Jesus wants to give you, of receiving the powerful love of God? How is God inviting you, urging you, to participate in the work of saving the world?

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The Wandering Way

Matthew 4:1-11

Lent began four days ago on Ash Wednesday. We gathered together to remember our sin and our mortality and received ashes. I said the words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. And people thanked me for saying so, which always feels a little funny to me.

But I do the same. When I receive the ashes smeared on my forehead in the shape of a cross, and hear these words, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” I say, “thank you.” Maybe it’s because we already know it deep within us, and it feels right to hear the truth spoken out loud every once in a while. We are small in the large scheme of things. A small speck of dust in a vast wilderness. We need to find a power greater than our own to navigate this journey.

The Israelites had such a power. As they journeyed out of the land of their enslavement toward the land of promise, they followed the pillar of cloud and fire into the wilderness. They didn’t know where on earth they were headed. Moses was their courage, and so they followed him – but Moses was relying on a greater strength than what he had in himself. All of them together walked in the direction God led them. They spent the next forty years in the wilderness, because that is how long it took to get them ready to take the next step. To be transformed – from slaves to God’s chosen ones, in possession of a promised land. It was forty years of training and reshaping.

Wilderness is good for that sort of thing. I have seen pictures of the wilderness where Israel abided, and it looks very intimidating, fierce. But a wilderness doesn’t even have to be external; it can be something that happens inside of us. Wilderness can happen without even going anywhere. 

On Ash Wednesday, I shared a word I just learned – peregrinatio. I think of it as a holy wandering. We do not set the itinerary, we do not know the destination of a peregrinatio; it is a holy wander undertaken for the love of God.

It’s particularly challenging for people like us, because we prefer to have a plan. We go to the supermarket with a grocery list, we come to church every Sunday with an order of worship, we run our committee meetings with an agenda – we like to have a plan. And goals.

But a peregrinatio doesn’t go according to a plan; you don’t set the goals. On Wednesday I shared a story about three 9th century Irishmen who one day got into some small boats called coracles – they were actually round wicker baskets – and without any oars they drifted across the sea. After seven days, they came ashore in Cornwall, the southernmost tip of England. They were taken to King Alfred, who had some questions for these men. He wanted to know where they were from and where they were going. They answered, “We stole away because we wanted, for the love of God, to be on pilgrimage, we cared not where!’

A peregrinatio is undertaken for the love of God. The destination is unimportant. The journey is all.

And while it may very well be a real outward journey, across the sea in a wicker basket or a trek across a desert land, it does not need to be so because the peregrinatio is an inward journey. Our Lenten journeys are often of this sort. 

One of my companions on my Lenten journey this year is Esther de Waal, a writer, a scholar of Celtic Christianity. She introduced me to the idea of the peregrinatio. She would say that it is not a type of pilgrimage that is undertaken because someone tells you to do it. Or because all your friends are doing it. The peregrinatio comes from an inner prompting, a passionate conviction that you simply must follow. 

There is an unease with how things are that must be accommodated. There is a hunger that must be fed. There is a desire that the heart must follow. 

And this unease within is stirred by the brokenness we see all around us and know in ourselves. This hunger within is suffered when we recognize the injustices that are committed even in our own community. The desire that swells in our hearts is for the crooked paths to be made straight, the brokenness to be healed, the hate to be overcome by love.

We may know what we want, what we need; but we don’t really know how to get there. Because we are so small. We are dust.

And there is no map for the peregrinatio. There’s not a tour bus we can hop on for the ride. So we begin our inward journey to somewhere…our holy wander. It’s sort of a trust walk.

And you might say that doesn’t sound too hard, since you don’t need to have a plan, you can just wing it. But it is hard, for you don’t just wing it – attentiveness to the movement of the Spirit is required. You might say it sounds safe, because you don’t have to travel to another land, an unknown, unfamiliar, uncomfortable place. But it is not safe, because the inward journey may take you to places you have never dared to look at before. It is a journey that can make you estranged from your normal, familiar, ordinary life – even while you are still in it.

Still, it is not an aimless amble of the spirit. Nor is it anything like running away from something.  The peregrinatio is grounded in the reality of being at home in one’s own true self.

And we really need that grounding, because when you allow your spirit to wander for the love of God, as the Irishmen put it, there are dangers, for sure.

A few centuries before those three men set off in their coracles, Saint Patrick wandered through Ireland for the love of God, and he is well remembered for his journeys and the extraordinary impact of them. As beloved as he is now, Patrick was seen as a serious threat by much of Ireland during his life – a threat to kings and religious authorities. He is called the Apostle to Ireland, and the stories about his life remind me of the stories about the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts. Both tell of harrowing escapes and near misses and the unending courage of these men to go on.

Patrick composed a prayer that became known as the breastplate of Saint Patrick. If you are like me, you might have thought it was a literal breastplate – a piece of armor he wore on his travels. It wasn’t. It was a metaphorical shield; a prayer for protection. Saint Patrick “wore” this shield wherever he went. This beautiful prayer proclaimed God’s strength and power, enough to protect him from all the evil forces in the world. There was then, and is now, a fair quantity of evil force in the world. And Patrick was, like us, only a speck of dust in a vast wilderness.

The journey of faith, the holy wander, cannot be undertaken alone, without help. We are not enough, in ourselves, to do this. The peregrinatio is not untethered, for as Patrick’s breastplate testifies, wherever we go we may have Christ and all the power of heaven with us. 

We know that Jesus had this power with him on his wilderness journey – this is the power that enabled him to defy the devil and all his temptations to place his trust in something other than the powerful love of God.

The journey we are on in this season is an inward journey. We don’t follow a road map, we don’t navigate. But we allow ourselves to drift as those faithful Irishmen did in their coracles – through the perils of the sea. We go on this holy wander tethered to the holy Word, tethered to Christ, remembering these words from Saint Patrick’s breastplate: 

Christ beside me, Christ before me;

Christ behind me, Christ within me;

Christ beneath me, Christ above me:

Christ to the right of me, Christ to the left of me;

Christ in my lying, my sitting, my rising;

Christ in heart of all who know me,

Christ on tongue of all who meet me,

Christ in eye of all who see me,

Christ in ear of all who hear me.

For my shield this day I call:

A mighty power –

the Holy Trinity!

Affirming threeness,

Confessing oneness

In the making of all – through love.

On we wander, for the love of God, in the power of the Spirit, to the heart of Christ.

Photo: https://unsplash.com/photos/a-small-boat-floating-on-top-of-a-body-of-water-geoiVmYZomE

The Gift of Radical Grace

Matthew 5:21-37

When I was a young child I loved the TV show Romper Room. Miss Delores or Miss Marjorie or Miss Nancy, or some other Miss, would sing a little song about two bees, a Do-Bee and a Don’t-Bee, to teach lessons about good behavior. “I always do what’s right; I never do anything wrong. I’m a Romper Room Do-Bee, a Do-Bee all day long.” 

I was all on board with this, being a Do-Bee. Romper Room Lady had all my attention, my complete loyalty. My grandmother would tease me about this, though. She would sing, “I always do what’s wrong; I never do anything right.” And I always reacted the same way, utterly scandalized that she would mock the idea of the Do-Bee. She would just laugh, tickled pink. It never got old – poking at my little four-year-old prissiness.

I just thought it was important to be perfect, that’s all. And I thought as long as I knew the rules and they were manageable, I would make it. 

And although I grew up, and I learned to poke fun at the Do-Bee song too, I still hate to be wrong.

Even when we outgrow the Romper Room Do-Bee song, we still work hard to see ourselves as faultless. And one of the ways we manage that is by comparison. This is how it works.

If necessary, we acknowledge that we may have possibly upset someone, but then we say, “At least I’m not as careless as she is, or a liar like he is,” or whatever criticism seems most apt. As long as I am not like that, I think I am okay.

This is where it is important to have a bar, a dividing line – and to know what side of the line you are on – the Do-Bee side or the Don’t-Bee side. The law provides such a line.

If you can say confidently that you have never murdered anyone, then you’re in good standing.

If you can say confidently that you have never committed adultery, then you’re safe. And on it goes. Comparative goodness: when we say, “compared to some other people, I’m doing pretty good!”

You just have to find someone you can be very critical of. Someone you can look at and think, “O my goodness. How could they do that?” Someone you can point at and say, “I would never do that, ever.” I’m a Romper Room Do-Bee.

In our weekly Bible study, we have been reading the Old Testament stories about the kings and the prophets of Israel, and we see quite a few examples of Don’t-Bees. There is a sentence that we read again and again, “they did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” And we say to each other, “Incredible. They did it again. What is the matter with these people?” 

The stories are repetitive, stories the same bad behavior we have seen a hundred times before – it’s not even original. And we look at these sinners disapprovingly. Because we have read the books of the law, haven’t they? We know what is permissible and what is not permissible, don’t they? Are they incapable of learning? Of getting something right?

And there is something satisfying about this, for us, to point at them and condemn them for their sins. To hold them at arm’s length and think how incredible this is that they keep screwing up. 

But sometimes I wonder, what if someone wrote a book about us? Would it possibly sound the same way? Would there be the refrain, “They did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” They worshiped idols of all sorts, they nurtured hate in their hearts to varying degrees, they mocked people they found disagreeable. They were careless about keeping sabbath and worshiping God and caring for the most vulnerable among them. They did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, in the most ordinary and banal ways.

It’s an uneasy feeling, thinking that these things could be said about us. We wouldn’t call ourselves evil; we have been careful to stay well away from that line in the sand, keeping evil far away from us. We like to think we are safely on the right side of the line. I never killed anyone. I never swore falsely against anyone. 

But then Jesus kind of whisks that line away. 

You have heard that you should not murder, but I say to you that if you harbor anger toward a brother you are liable to judgment. And who has not harbored anger?

Jesus says, you have heard that you should not commit adultery, but I say to you that if you have looked at another with lust in your heart you are guilty.

If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. And before you know it, you feel like you are drowning. How is it possible to live like this? How is it possible to be okay? Where is that line now?

Honestly, I think that was Jesus’ agenda. Take the line away. Because it just makes it far too easy to excuse ourselves. Take that line away. Because if your concern is simply not crossing the line onto the wrong side, then you are doing the bare minimum. But is that really good? The bare minimum? 

If you are only concerned about avoiding doing wrong, then are you giving any thought at all to what it would look like to do right?

If all your attention is on the boundary line, and looking at the people who are on the outside of the line, the wrong side, then do you ever bother turning the other way and looking toward the center? 

A character in Graham Greene’s story, The Heart of the Matter, goes to confession once a month, and he says to the priest, “I have done the minimum.” This is what he has spent his entire life doing – he has scrupulously kept his eye on the line. He has utterly failed to see and understand the heart of the matter.

This week we begin the season of Lent, which is a period of penitence, of reflection. As we prepare our hearts and minds for the coming of Easter, we are encouraged to take an honest look at ourselves, to begin – or re-begin – a walk of spiritual discipline. We are invited to take up a practice that will aid us in this journey.

When we immerse ourselves in something like this, we are likely to see differently. To see that figuring out how to do the minimum is not the desired goal. 

Jesus said from the mountaintop, “I didn’t come to abolish the law.” But he did intend for us to understand the law in a whole new way.

That is, to understand that it’s not about us, it’s about God. It’s not about how good we are, how we measure up, whether we stay on the right side of the line. It’s about the truth that no matter where we are, in relation to the line, God loves us. No matter how we measure up, or don’t, God accepts us. No matter how good we are, or are not, God forgives us. 

God’s mercy is wide and God’s grace abounds. And the truth, as Jesus shows us, is that all of us are in need of that grace.

Of all of God’s gifts that keep on giving, this one is the most meaningful. The gift of God’s radical and abounding grace. 

Grace will see us through all the times we stumble. Most amazingly, grace will help us worry less about that line and enable us to see the heart of the matter, the love that God is drawing us into. Grace will equip us to show more compassion toward those people we figure are hopelessly, outrageously, on the wrong side of the line.

For, as Jesus also said, the whole of the law can be summed up in these two commandments – love the Lord your God with all your heart and your soul and your mind and your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. And if love is the essence of the law then we know these things:

That it is right to seek reconciliation rather than retribution.

That we should speak the truth always, in love.

And that we should never, ever lose sight of the essential humanity of anyone. 

Heaven knows, God doesn’t lose sight of it. Remember that. God calls us to stand in that place where Jesus stands, and God’s grace will lead us there. 

Photo: ChurchArt,com

The Gift of Public Witness

Matthew 5:13-20

One of my favorite films of all time is It’s a Wonderful Life. We never used to call it by the title, though. In our home when the kids were young, it was just “George Bailey.” We watched it so many times, we knew it so well, you could just stick the VHS tape in the player and let it play from wherever it was stopped the last time we played it. Kira, as a little girl, liked to do just that. A little George Bailey to unwind at the end of a tough day at kindergarten was just the thing. It didn’t take much to do the trick.

George Bailey is a man who has lived a very ordinary life. He’s never been anywhere, never done anything really special. And then one evening he is feeling like whatever luck he had has run out. His life, he decides, is worth nothing. He never made a difference in the world. It didn’t matter that he was born, and it wouldn’t matter that he died.

But he was wrong, wasn’t he? That night George was given the amazing gift of being able to see just exactly what difference he did make, and to whom he made a difference. George was never an important person in the ways the world defines that – nonetheless, his life truly made a difference. This is true for each one of us, ordinary as we may be. You matter. What you do, or do not do, matters. 

From the moment of your birth, you made a difference. Out of the primordial waters of your mother’s womb, you swam into the world. The doctor or midwife who caught you lifted you up and said, “It’s a boy! Or it’s a girl! Or yes, it’s just what you already knew because everyone knows now well before the baby is born. 

And all eyes in the room were on you; you were at that moment the most important thing in the world. 

And then there was that moment when you locked eyes with the ones who had been waiting for you. You stared at each other, meeting each other for the first time – in curiosity and wonder. 

In earlier times, it was customary to salt the baby, as you would a chicken breast or a roast. The salt, people believed, kept away the evil spirits, protecting the newborn from harm. Every effort would have been made to keep this new life from any potential danger, for you were loved from the moment you took your first breath.

Even if your mother, your father, didn’t know how in the world they were going to raise you, provide for you – bringing a new life into the world is the greatest leap of faith – that was okay. Somehow, and by the grace of God, there is love. You matter.

Then, maybe one day, they carried you into the church to be baptized. A few drops on the forehead, or full immersion in the waters; they called your name and said, “You are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Once again, there might have been salt. Many years ago, it was customary for the pastor to take a pinch of salt and place it on the baby’s tongue. You probably liked the taste of it, like most people do. “A covenant of salt,” the pastor might have been thinking in that moment. Salt is a good preservative. It makes things last a long while – maybe even forever. 

On that day when you were baptized, the church gathered together and, once again, all eyes were on you. Each one watching remembered their own baptisms, somewhere deep inside, because every baptism is a moment for us all to remember that we have been baptized. In this baptism we were, each one of us, called into a new life, anointed as Christ’s own. With every baptism, we enlarge this big, beautiful family. All of us brothers and sisters of Jesus – there can never be too many. 

And this means that we are brothers and sisters to one another. And so with every baptism we say, welcome to the family! We’re a little bit quirky, kind of dysfunctional, but we love each other and that’s what counts.

Welcome to the family, little one. We have some rules, which you will learn, probably by osmosis because, to be honest, we don’t really talk about these things enough. You just learn by hanging out with us. 

Rules like, saying “I love you” is optional, but showing your love is mandatory.

Rules like, if one of us is in trouble, all of us are there to help carry the burden, because you really are your brother’s keeper, your sister’s keeper. 

And here is an interesting one: It’s not only the people in our family that matter. All the people in the neighborhood matter, and any one of them could, potentially, become a member of our family – anytime. We are a family with very porous boundaries. So this means our love and our care extend beyond the walls of our house. 

It’s a big task, we know, and that is the reason we gather together, because none of us could ever do it alone. We do it together because that is exactly what Jesus has called us to do. This is exactly who Jesus has called us to be.

Way back in the first days of his ministry on earth, Jesus stood up on a high place so everyone around could hear him, and he said, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” He was talking to all of us, together. Salt and light – this is the life we have been called into. This is our new identity. And that’s kind of a big deal.

Maybe none of us will ever be a big deal in worldly terms. Maybe we will never be newsworthy for anything we have done. Maybe our lives will be just as insignificant as George Bailey’s was. But here’s the thing: We are salt of the earth – always flavoring things, protecting and preserving things, making an actual difference in our world. And we are the light of the world, which should never be hidden away. The world needs our light. The world needs our saltiness.

When I was a graduate student at the University of Texas, our campus minister, PJ, would offer us communion every Sunday. and the first thing he would do, before giving us the bread and the cup, was to put a little pinch of salt on our tongues, saying, “Remember your baptism.”

I have borne witness to this today – that when you are baptized, you are enough. You have the Spirit within you and the whole community of faith around you. You are well equipped to carry the gospel out into this world. You are well equipped to fight back against the powers of evil around us. You are well equipped to stand up against injustice wherever you see it and speak up for your neighbors wherever they need it. You have what you need, church. 

It is a gift to be able to bear witness to this good news. Now the gift, dear ones, is yours. Every day you take the gospel out into the world with courage and love, just boldly being who you are – salt and light – you are surely blessed.

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The Gift of Poetic Challenge

Matthew 5:1-12

During our weekly Bible study we have talked about the fact that some things cannot be explained with words. It tends to come up when we encounter a passage where the words are confusing. We muse about it for a while, and we begin to think that this might be one of those situations that words cannot describe.

Still, we try, because words are the best device we have. If you have ever found yourself in a foreign country where you didn’t understand what anyone was saying, and they didn’t understand you, you know how frustrating it is to not have words. You try gestures, pointing, maybe drawing pictures, but nothing works as well as words.

We sometimes call ourselves people of the book – both Christians and Jews – because we rely on the words of scripture so completely. What would we do without words? And yet we know very well, if we spend enough time in the scriptures, that there are many instances where words can actually lead us astray.

There are a bunch of reasons for this – problems with translation, multiple manuscripts that don’t entirely agree, incomplete manuscripts where words are missing. All of these, but the most significant reason, I believe, is that we are trying to use words to say something that there are actually no words for.

Jesus is doing that all the time. He wants to tell us about heaven, the realm of God. But there are no words adequate to really give us a clear understanding of heaven.

The prophets of the Old Testament had the same challenge, as they tried, repeatedly, to tell the people what God wants them to know. Imagine being given the task of speaking for God. So prophets end up doing really weird stuff. Like the prophet Ahijah, who took his brand new, never yet worn, garment and tore it in 12 pieces, because he wanted to say something about the 12 tribes of Israel. Or Ezekiel, who lay down on his left side for 390 days to demonstrate the length of punishment for the land of Israel – just one of the many weird things Ezekiel did. Sort of like performance art, really. 

They say not all art is meant to be beautiful and I believe that’s true. Because not everything that needs to be said is beautiful.

Even when the subject is the kingdom of heaven. To what can the kingdom of heaven be compared? Mustard seed? Yeast? Absurd images, aren’t they?

What is the kingdom of heaven like? This is something we want to know. Those of us who want to dwell in the kingdom, we want to know what we are looking for. What are we hoping for?

In the last chapter, we were with Jesus as he began to call his disciples, saying “follow me” – they abruptly rose, letting go what they held in their hands, and followed him. And then, with these disciples, he began walking all through Galilee, healing the people of their suffering, proclaiming the kingdom of heaven – sometimes with words. 

Soon he had accumulated a crowd of people following him, and he sat down on a mountain and began to speak.

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And on he went, lifting up one truly miserable state after another – the mourning, the meek, the hungry and thirsty – and calling it blessed.

Not every single one would be called miserable, no. I can appreciate merciful, pure in heart, peacemaker – which are all admirable. It’s just that – well, we don’t choose those things too often, do we? We like mercy in theory, but given a choice, nine times out of ten we would choose to see our enemy punished. 

And it gets worse.

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they persecute you, when they slander you –

For yours is the kingdom of heaven.

Who can blame us, then, if we believe that only suffering will get us to our eternal reward. Doesn’t that seem like what Jesus is saying?

When I was working as a hospital chaplain years ago, I walked into a patient’s room to say hello. Introduce myself. I could immediately see she was suffering. And she already had a visitor at her bedside. He was a deacon from her church. He struck me as very chipper, high-spirited. He held the hand of this elderly woman who was obviously in pain, and he loudly proclaimed to her – and me, and anyone who happened to be nearby in the hallway – how very fortunate she was because clearly God favored her to give her such suffering. I thought, that is some kind of crackpot theology – also, just bad manners. I think the woman in the bed might have thought so too, although she was as polite as she could be, given the amount of pain she was experiencing. 

I promise I won’t ever tell you that God gives you suffering to earn your reward in heaven. I don’t believe that. But it is true, nonetheless, that all of us suffer. We all have pain and hardships, and there is no point in denying it. And I think that fact is closer to what Jesus is saying.

Pain is real. Mourning is real. Injustice is real. And those things are particularly real if you have a kingdom mentality.

Because in the kingdom of heaven, we know the pain of others as we know our own pain. We feel injustice toward others as if we, ourselves, were being treated that way. This way is the kingdom way, where we feel the grief of a child being separated from his parent, where we feel anger when innocent people are knocked to the ground and have pepper spray shot in their faces. Or worse, bullets.

Kingdom people don’t ignore the pain of others. We don’t pat them on the hand and tell them, it’s just God’s way. It’s not God’s way.

God’s way is the way of mercy and justice and grace. Things that are actually hard to say in words – which takes me back where I started. Every word Jesus said about the kingdom of heaven is a metaphor for something that could not be said. Poetry.

Thank God for the gift of poetry. Metaphors. Images that convey things that cannot be said in ordinary prose. Thank God for music, which bypasses the mind’s censors and allows us to just feel something true. And for a tender human touch, which can be a thousand times more powerful than any words we might say. Thank God for all the ways we have to express the goodness of God. 

 Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

God's Grief

This morning I picked up a devotional book called, For Such A Time as This, by Hanna Reichel, turned to page 46 and read this bit of verse from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

People turn to God when they are sore bestead;
pray for help, ask for peace and bread;

seek release from being ill, guilty, and dead;
so do they all, all, Christians and heathens.

People turn to God when He is sore bestead,
find him poor, scorned, without roof and bread,
devoured by weakness and sin, near dead:
Christians stand by God in God’s grief.

God turns to all people when they are sore bestead,

feeds their souls and bodies with God’s bread;

for Christians and heathens at the cross

God meets death: and gives both of them relief.

(translated from German by Martin Tel and Hanna Reichel)

This week our grief and confusion, our fear and anger are heightened by the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Bonhoeffer wrote this poem while he was imprisoned. He expresses the idea that people of all faiths or none will turn to God when in deep distress – “sore bestead,” as he says. He also suggests that, when there is great suffering in the world, God, too, is “sore bestead” right along with us.

We know God has a special concern for any who are suffering injustice and oppression. We read in Jesus’ Parable of the Judgment on the Nations, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).

All people cry out to God when they find themselves in the darkest valley. But the difference for a Christian is this essential thing: to cry out to God when we see another in that darkest valley. To be a Christian is to make the commitment to stand with the hungry, the persecuted, the stranger – just as God does.

As Bonhoeffer wrote, “Christians stand by God in God’s grief.” Amen.

Photo by Outcast India on Unsplash

The Gift of Bold Action

Matthew 4:12-23 

This sermon was recorded and released before hearing about the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Such reckless violence and cruel loss of life adds weight to the need for Christians to act boldly.

I once had a pastor who loved Taco Bell. It was his go-to. I think their taco supreme and nacho cheese chips were a staple in his diet – that is, until the day he decided to participate in a boycott of Taco Bell.

This was back in 2001. There was a nationwide boycott of the restaurant chain in support of migrant farm workers – the ones who pick the tomatoes for the tacos. The concerns included poor working and living conditions and extremely low wages for workers who had very little power to stand up for their rights. Several denominations supported it – the PCUSA, the United Methodist Church, the Disciples of Christ, as well as the National Council of Churches, all promoted the boycott to draw attention to an injustice and put pressure on a corporation to deal more fairly with these workers. 

I remember when this pastor spoke about it from the pulpit. He wanted us to know that he believed in the power of taking such actions if, by doing so, you could improve the lives of vulnerable people. After all, isn’t this what Jesus taught us – to care for the least of these?

The boycott finally ended in 2005 when the corporation that owns Taco Bell finally agreed to work with the farmworkers organization. For four years our pastor had lived without his tacos and nachos. And he again spoke from the pulpit to let us know the boycott was ending because they had achieved their goal. Also that he was looking forward to hitting the drive-through as soon as possible.

Some people laughed at him. They thought it was a quirky thing, or even a silly thing for him to do. But he wasn’t embarrassed by it. He knew in his heart that he was doing the right thing, and he rejoiced when the boycott ended. 

The Montgomery Bus Boycott is a similar example of bold action taken for the sake of justice, a desire to make a change for the better. Many churches were involved in organizing and supporting this effort, along with all the other efforts for civil rights. This boycott turned the city’s transit system on its head; it required considerable sacrifices from the participants and those who supported them. It took a year to achieve their goal of desegregating the bus system. And the people rejoiced when it ended.

Boycotts are just one, relatively simple, way to stand up and take action for the sake of making a change for the better.

This story in Matthew’s gospel about the calling of Simon and Andrew and James and John is a tale of bold action. It might strike us as impulsive action. It seems as though they were in the middle of one action – Andrew and Simon casting their nets; James and John mending theirs – when they all suddenly dropped their nets, stepped out of their boats and followed Jesus. No telling if they already knew him or if he was a perfect stranger. No telling if they had already been thinking about this when Jesus approached them or if it just came out of the blue. 

And it doesn’t really matter exactly how it happened. The point of the story is this: when it is about following Jesus, sometimes bold action is necessary. Sometimes certain sacrifices are required. Risks need to be taken.

These men took the risk of following Jesus as he unfolded a vision of a more just world. They took a risk every single day in the years that followed. And after Jesus was executed, they continued to follow his vision, his way – as the Holy Spirit guided them in bold action.

I see people of faith taking action every day as they follow Jesus – to love and serve their neighbors. Most of the time they are doing it quietly, even anonymously. But there are also times when we are called to muster our courage, come together, and act boldly.

Christians are still called today to respond to an unjust and sinful world with their bold actions. At our best, we do it together. Like the communities of faith peacefully protesting in the streets of Minneapolis: protecting their neighbors; guarding day care centers, because young children have been used as bait to draw parents out, so they can be detained and removed. Imagine this happening to your own child. Taking bold action for a more compassionate world is an appropriate Christian response.

Simon and Andrew and James and John didn’t know what they would be called to do until they were called to do it. None of us knows, either, until the moment we do. 

May the Spirit give you strength and guide your steps when you hear the call.

Photo by Chris Slupski on Unsplash