God’s Intervention, Part 3: New Life in an Old Place

Luke 8:26-39     

In the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, Chapter 16, there is a ritual prescribed for the atonement of sins. Two goats are presented to the Lord. One is offered as a sacrifice. The other goat is taken before the priest, who lays his hands on the head of the goat and recites the whole litany of the sins of the people. Once all the sins have been spoken and transferred onto the head of the goat, it is driven out into the wilderness, far away from the community. It is called the scapegoat.

Other ancient cultures had similar rituals. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, although we don’t think much of it now. Of course, the practice of scapegoating is still quite common, although not usually by conscious intention.

The herd of swine in this story from Luke sort of took the role of the scapegoat, didn’t it? In this outrageous story about a man tormented by demons, bound in chains by his community, crying out for help from Jesus. The demons that afflicted him are sent into the swine which then throw themselves into the lake. But the story makes me wonder who was the real scapegoat – the swine or the man?

It’s a crazy story. The episode comes at the end of a boat trip on a very stormy sea, Jesus and his disciples hit land in the country of the Gerasenes and are met at the shore by this local madman. He has been in this condition for a long time. They find him wild and naked, kept in chains for fear of what he might do. It isn’t really clear if they are trying to keep the community safe from this man or keep this man safe from himself. Perhaps it is both.

Then Jesus heals him of his affliction, casting out the legion of demons. The man suddenly becomes calm. The people of the city rush out to see what’s going on and they find him clothed, quiet and relaxed. He has been, at last, exorcised of the demons; he is once again himself. Although, to the Gerasenes, he seemed not at all himself – not the man they have known him to be. The scene they encounter is not what they expected, and they are afraid.

It seems a funny reaction to have, doesn’t it? But the truth is, in healing this man, Jesus has upset the careful equilibrium this community has come to rely on.

That’s the way systems work. Everyone has a role to play in a system – whether it’s a family, an office, a congregation. Some of these are official roles that everyone is aware of. But in other ways, we create unofficial, unspoken roles that just make the system work. Everyone fills their roles, strange as they may be, and the system runs like a well-oiled machine. Sometimes, it’s comical, the way it works.

There are a lot of funny movies about families coming together for the holidays and acting out all their flakiness. We laugh at them because there is something of ourselves that we recognize in their quirks. In every plot, we watch them draw close to the brink of disaster, then avoid going over the cliff, and all is well. They are still as flaky as ever, but it’s okay. It’s going to be okay, because every family, every group, every system has certain roles that just make things work, provide the necessary equilibrium.

Maybe you have seen this in your family. Maybe you have a bossy sister or a trouble-making brother, and somehow that never changes, no matter how old you get. When grown children come back home together, like in those silly Christmas movies, everyone is still expected to play the same role. No matter how much you might have changed since you were a child, when you all get together, the family still expects you to be that child, for the sake of the equilibrium.

Maybe you have seen this in the church. There are those people who can be counted on to bring deviled eggs to the potluck. There are the people who can be counted on to speak first in a small group. There are the ones who will notice if the scheduled ushers didn’t show up, and they will jump right in to fill the need. Everyone does their part, for the sake of the equilibrium. We expect them to.

Usually these expectations are pretty harmless. But not always. Sometimes one person is expected to carry far more than their fair share of the weight, for the sake of the equilibrium. And this is dysfunctional.

It may be helpful to say that the word dysfunction does not mean what you might think it means. When we say something is dysfunctional it might sound like we’re saying it is not functional. But, actually, dysfunctional means something is functioning through its brokenness, in pain.

Every group has some dysfunction in it. Some more, some less. But it happens sometimes that the way a group finds its equilibrium is when one individual carries the burden of the dysfunction. One person has to be sick.

The black sheep of the family. Or the one individual who seems to suffer lots of chronic illnesses. The one who is prone to uncontrollable anger. Or mental illness, or addiction. Sometimes, one person carries a burden for the whole group. In family psychology, this one person is called the identified patient.

And when a patient has been identified, the problem feels like it’s been contained. It feels like it can be managed. In a certain way, life becomes predictable, and even if it’s predictable in bad ways … that is good.

But if the identified patient refuses to carry the burden any longer and decides to get well, then anything can happen. We have lost our scapegoat and the real problems might be exposed.

This, I am suggesting, is what happened with the Gerasenes, when they found the man sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.

They were afraid – this is a telling response. It reveals health and wholeness is not their highest priority. It reveals that there is still some sickness in this community that has been ignored for a long time. It might have looked like all the demons were drowned in the lake, but I suspect that there were still lots of demons in this place.

The nature of the sin-sickness of the world is that we resist becoming well. We find it easier to be sick. You might have doubts about this, but let me ask you this:

Why is it that we develop bad habits so much more easily than good habits? And why do we find good habits so easy to slough off, while bad habits are so hard to break? Individuals and systems resist wellness. To be well, healthy, whole, requires work. And in spite of the transformative promises that this work offers, it is work that we sometimes say no to.

Jesus brought the possibility of wellness to the Gerasenes. But they refused it. They didn’t want to have to figure out how to live in this new transformed reality.

It is interesting that the former demoniac seems to recognize this right away. He takes one look at the mob who has been seized with fear at the sight of him. Then he looks back at Jesus and he says, “Take me with you.” He does not want to be left here in a community that is afraid of his wellness.

But Jesus insists that he stay there. He is now made whole, he has been given new life. And his new life is to be a witness to his community. He now must take his new life into this old place.

“Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you,” Jesus says to the man. He now has a new role to play. He is not the madman chained out by the tombs; he is the witness to new life. The community might put up a lot of resistance to his new role, but now it’s up to you, Jesus tells him. I’ve done my part, you do yours.

God intervenes in the world by bringing new life. But, like it or not, we are expected to be partners with God in this work of renewal. Here, in the land of the Gerasenes, Jesus set one person on a new course, and asked him to go and help his whole community get on course. It’s a tall order, but it’s the way things actually change – one person at a time. One person can have extraordinary effects. As he taught in his little parable of the yeast, when you change a tiny thing, it can permeate and change the whole in dramatic ways.

When I was younger, I read Dear Abby and Ann Landers columns every day, and there were so many letters from people who were suffering in hurtful relationships. They always said they tried to get their spouse or their children or their parents to go to counseling with them, but they refused. Abby and Ann would always tell them, “If they won’t go with you, you should go anyway.” There is wisdom in this, because if even one person in the system changes, that can start the whole system changing.

God does intervene to bring healing to a broken world. And then it is up to us, the ones who have experienced this healing, to share it with others, to be the light. The world will resist healing, but keep shining your light anyway. The world will want you to go back to your old ways, playing your part in a broken system, but keep shining your light anyway.

You do not need to try to change the whole world. But if you clothe yourself in this new life, the world will change.

Photo: The two Yom Kippur goats. Source: Chabad.org

God’s Intervention, Part 2: X-Ray Vision

1 Kings 21:1-21 

I don’t know if Elijah loved his job, but I have my doubts. Who could love a job where you have to constantly haul yourself over to the worst king in the history of Israel and confront him with bad news? He might not have loved his job, but he was good at it.

He had to be the best because he was dealing with the worst. Ahab was bad enough on his own, but everything was made worse by the fact of Jezebel, his foreign bride. She worshiped strange gods – the Baals, as they are sometimes called – and had strange ideas about the powers of royalty. In other lands in those days, including Jezebel’s homeland, kings had unlimited powers. They could take whatever they wanted to take. And so, it seemed mighty peculiar to Jezebel to find Ahab sulking on his bed like a moody teenager because he couldn’t get Naboth to sell him a vineyard.

Just for the sake of clarity, there was actually no law prohibiting Naboth from selling his vineyard. But clearly, there was a high value placed on keeping the land in the family from generation to generation. And, if some portion of land was sold outside the family, the scriptures specify that every 50^th year the land is supposed to be returned to its original owners. No one knows exactly how this worked, or how well it worked, but the intended effect is to keep wealth disparities from getting out of hand. You could acquire property, sure. But you could not pass it down from generation to generation; there would come a point when you would have to give it back.

So I think it is not terribly strange that Naboth has declined the king’s offer to buy his vineyard. If he was not in need of cash, why would he sell it? It seems evident from the scriptures that such a thing is not in keeping with God’s desires.

Naboth might not have figured in the opinions of Queen Jezebel, though. Because, although Ahab might go no further in pursuing his desires, Jezebel comes from a different ethical worldview.

She sets in motion a plan to get rid of Naboth so they might seize his property. Everything goes according to plan and she tells Ahab, “Now go get your vineyard,” and he gets up from his brooding couch and goes happily skipping down the road, like a birthday boy, to see his brand new vineyard.

There he encounters Elijah. One more encounter with the prophet of God, man of courage.

Once again, Elijah has to stand before him, look this corrupt leader in the eye and say, I see you. I see what you did. God sees what you did.

It is the job of a prophet to put his or her life on the line for the sake of what is right and good.

It is the job of the prophet to speak God’s truth in places where it has been forgotten, where it has been rejected, or where people have simply decided to avert their eyes.

In the days of King Ahab, Jezebel simply rejected God’s truth. It was not her truth. Jezebel’s ethical worldview was a narrow one that consisted of herself and the very small group of people she chose to be included in it. Hers was a black-white zero-sum value system in which everyone was entitled to get whatever they could get in whatever way they could get it.

Ahab may not have subscribed to Jezebel’s rules. It’s hard to say. But if he did not approve of her ways, he at least decided to avert his eyes. Because if you didn’t see it, you don’t have to do anything about it. And you can even benefit from it. And if there are a few people who act like Jezebel, there are many of us who act like Ahab at times.

But God sees when we do this. Make no mistake. Other people might not, but God sees. And sometimes when you become aware of that, it is as if you have been met on the road by the prophet Elijah, convicted of your sin. It is up to each one of us, then, to decide how to move forward.

This situation with Naboth’s vineyard puts me in mind of one of Wendell Berry’s short stories. There is a character named Wheeler Catlett, who is faced with a problem and trying to work it out for the best. The problem is this: his friend Jack Beechum has died and Jack’s will has just been read. Jack left his farm to his only child, his daughter Clara. But he knows that Clara cares nothing for the farm. So Jack has written down his wishes that Clara sell the farm to his tenant farmers, Elton and Mary Penn. The Penns love the farm and it will be in good hands with them. Jack suggested, in his note, what he deemed to be a fair price, one that the Penns could afford.

But this was just in a handwritten note, not a part of his will. So Wheeler explains all this to Clara and her husband, hoping that there will be enough trust among the three of them to carry this out and see that Jack’s real will be seen to. But Clara cares nothing for the farm. She says to Wheeler, “I don’t doubt you are telling the truth. I don’t doubt that this is what my father wanted. I don’t doubt that he loved the Penns. But my father’s loves are not mine.

So that’s how it will be. The farm will be sold at auction so Clara and her husband can get the highest possible price. Now there will be others competing with Elton and Mary – a neighboring farmer, a man who has been buying up small farms to maximize his holdings; and a town doctor, who wants to invest in property, and wants to keep Elton and Mary as his tenants, to make money for him. This is not what Old Jack wanted – for his farm to be swallowed up into a giant farm, or for it to become a profit-making machine, exploiting the labors of others. But it didn’t matter what Jack wanted because, as Clara said, “My father’s loves are not mine.”

When I hear Clara say this, I think about how many different ways we say it, in words or in our actions, with respect to our relationship with our creator. That what God desires is not what we desire. That what God holds to be true is not of any consequence to us.

If these matters present us with any kind of ethical dilemma, we might decide that what God desires is just not practical or convenient for us. That God’s wishes are simply unrealistic in this world we live in, and I suppose God’s will often does seem unrealistic. People want what they want, the law is the law. What more can anyone expect of us?

In Wendell Berry’s story, Wheeler Catlett could have washed his hands of the affair after Clara said, “My father’s loves are not mine.” He could have told himself that he held up his end of the bargain, he fulfilled his duty to his friend, and that was it. He could have averted his eyes when they organized the auction, and he could have taken a drive out in the country on the day the auction took place across the street from his office. But Wheeler had met the prophet on the road, and he couldn’t see his way clear to doing that.

Instead, he talked it through with Elton and Mary. He talked to the other prospective buyers. He stood behind Elton at the auction to lend him strength. He took on some responsibility for making things right. And even though he knew it might not come out right, he knew he could at least try and so he did.

In the end, the Penns got the farm. They had to pay a good bit more than Jack had intended for them to pay, so they were in deep. Wheeler went back to his office and got on the phone with the bank. He set aside an amount of money he could afford, just in case there came a time when the Penns needed help.

Perhaps you would say it is unrealistic to expect Wheeler to do that. Surely it was. But he expected it of himself, because, I would say, he believed God desired it of him. And because it was what God desired for him, Wheeler was pleased to do it.

When you meet the prophet on the road, you might run the other way and look for cover. But other times, when the prophet looks you in the eye, you might see through God’s eyes. And you’ll be pleased to do it.

Photo Credit: By חדוה שנדרוביץ - Hedva Sanderovitz via the PikiWiki - Israel free image collection project, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15272824

God’s Intervention, Part 1: The Power of Love

Acts 2:1-21        

In my middle year of seminary, I participated in a required cross-cultural experience: a planned three-week trip to another country, someplace that is guaranteed to pull you out of your comfort zone; its primary purpose is to offer students a greater perspective on how faith intersects with culture.

The cross-cultural trip might be to India, South Africa, Israel, Guatemala – in my year it was Cuba. There we were kept busy for three weeks traveling around the island meeting with local government officials and church leaders, touring their big medical school and a farming cooperative, and visiting lots of churches.

We visited churches of all kinds – Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Pentecostal. From impressive cathedrals to tiny storefronts. One Sunday morning when we were in a city called Ciego de Avila, we managed a double-header.

Two congregations had invited us to worship, so our group split up and half of us attended worship at the Pentecostal church while the other half went to the Baptist church. At the Pentecostal church, we were greeted with kisses from perfect strangers – which seems to be the Pentecostal way, at least in Cuba. During the service we experienced what we hoped were minor communication problems that we tried to fumble our way through. Being a guest can be difficult when you don’t know for sure what is expected of you.

The Pentecostal service started earlier than the Baptist service, and so when our bus picked us up and returned to the Baptist church to collect the rest of our group, they were still in the middle of worship.  We were torn between wanting to join them in worship and not wanting to disturb their worship.

This Baptist church was one of the tiny storefront churches. The front windows were open, but covered with iron bars. This was often the case in Cuban stores and homes as well. The church was quite full, and to walk in and try to find a place to sit would have caused a disturbance, we were quite sure. So we remained outside. And it was behind iron bars that we stood on the sidewalk watching the worship going on inside.

Well, our efforts to be unobtrusive actually caused us to be somewhat obtrusive. Some of the Cubans began handing hymnals to us so we could sing with them. For reasons I don’t think I could explain, we did not pull the hymnals through the bars so we could hold them comfortably, but instead we reached our arms through the bars to hold the hymnals on the inside.

It was a strange experience of feeling together and yet separated. We were worshiping with our American and Cuban brothers and sisters inside the church and yet we were very aware of the bars that separated us. I suppose you could say those bars were symbolic of the barriers between our two countries, our two languages, our two cultures. It was just another aspect of the daily struggle we experienced during our time there.

We reached the point in the worship service where they began the celebration of communion. At this point, the bars felt even more like an unwanted obstruction. What would we do? Could we share communion with one another through a set of iron bars?

On the day of Pentecost, Jesus’ followers were still occupying that upper room, the place they had gathered with Jesus before his arrest, the place they had huddled in fear after the resurrection, the place they had returned to again and again during this in-between period. After he ascended, leaving his followers behind, they returned again to the upper room and devoted themselves to prayer. That is what they were doing when the feast of Pentecost arrived.

Pentecost was a religious festival, a reason for Jews from all over the diaspora to travel on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, bringing the first fruits of the harvest to the temple. While the disciples were cloistered in their room, the streets below them were crowded with a vibrant mix of people, cultures, languages.

There is no reason these men of Galilee should have been able to speak the native languages of all who were together in Jerusalem that day. But the Spirit gave them power to do so. God who knew their needs more completely that any of them did, gave them the ability to speak in a way that could be heard. And it really started something.

The good news began its travels across languages, across borders, across mountains and seas; across nationalities, across races, across religions and creeds. The word of the Lord, by the power of the Spirit had wings.

Jews and Christians, and Muslims, as well, are called the people of the word. Our faith is founded on our understanding of the word of God. Particularly for Jews and Christians, who share a common testament, and understand the very creation of the world as an act of divine speech. God said, “Let there be light;” then God said, “It is good.”

Later, God spoke to a man named Abram, and guided him to a place and a promise that would reach all the peoples of the world through all the generations of the world. God brought life to barren men and women, God sustained life in barren places, all for the sake of this promise.

Later still, God spoke through judges, priests, and prophets, mending what had been broken, healing what had been wounded, all for the sake of this promise.

And then God spoke through Jesus, whose words and actions, life, death and resurrection from the dead, transformed people and brought them together for a common purpose: to carry the good news of God’s redeeming love to every corner of the world.

And yet – we continue to divide ourselves, to erect barriers that separate us, to shut people out, away from the promise. In our efforts to separate ourselves from others, we try to put limits on God’s redeeming love.

For God, of course, there are no language or cultural barriers. As the creator of all that is, God understands us intimately, completely. God speaks our language fluently, whatever language it might be. And it is only through God, and the amazing power of the Spirit, that the promise truly lives, moves and grows.

For us, it is a matter of letting God. The first followers didn’t need to open the window to let the Spirit in, she burst in on her own. Yet, looked at another way, they did let the Spirit in – in the way they devoted themselves, together, to prayer.

Do we invite the Spirit in and let the Spirit take hold? Or do we erect barriers, like those bars across the windows of the Baptist Church in Ciego de Avila? How can we share together in the body of Christ when we allow barriers to separate us?

On that day in Ciego de Avila, we didn’t. As we stood outside those iron bars listening to the great thanksgiving prayer of communion, we began to see how absurd it was. The Cubans inside looked at us outside, and we knew they weren’t going to pass the bread and the cup through a set of bars. The time had come to be a disruption. We all began to pour through the door, just as the Spirit blew through the walls of that upper room in Jerusalem. We had no common language, but we shared an understanding that the presence of Christ in the sacrament, the work of the Holy Spirit, eliminates barriers.

There is no barrier that can keep out the power of God’s Spirit. There is no wall that can stop the power of God’s word in action, communicating the good news of our salvation. There is no thing – no hate, no fear, no doubt that can stop the power of God’s love. Let it in, let the Spirit move in us and around us. Let the power that is God’s love fill the world.

Photo Credit: Ciego De Avila. By Leon Petrosyan - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25287658

Free

Acts 16:16-34    

Father Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest who serves the people of Los Angeles. He works in the poorest neighborhoods with the highest gang activity in a city that is considered the capital of gang activity. His parish is the epicenter of hopelessness. To be born in such a place is not really any different than to be born in prison.

The likelihood that a boy born in these neighborhoods will spend time in prison is almost certain – if he lives long enough. Father Greg spends a lot of time visiting the jails, the detention centers, handing out his business cards. He tells them all to look him up when they get out. He knows they will need his help when they get out.

He has been doing this for more than 30 years. He started a tattoo removal service early on because of a young man he met, recently out of prison. Ramiro had an obscene phrase tattooed across his forehead, covering every square centimeter of real estate. He told the priest he was having trouble finding a job. No wonder.

Father Greg learned early on that one of the best things he could do for these guys was to help them get jobs. So, among other things, he did just that. This was the beginning of Homeboy Industries.

He has accomplished an incredible amount in his ministry there. Into the hopelessness he brings hope – no small thing. Father Greg wants these guys to stay out of prison, but he wants much more than that for them. He wants them to be free.

He wants them to be free.

These two back-to-back stories in Acts 16 highlight the idea of freedom, in different ways. The girl with a spirit of divination that Paul and the other apostles meet in Macedonia is a slave. Afflicted with a spirit that gives her power to tell fortunes, she is held by this spirit. She is in the chains of this spirit; she is a slave to this evil spirit.

And, of course, she has owners – people who have, apparently, paid for her as if she were a piece of property, so they could profit from her affliction. She tells fortunes, they make money. This girl is a slave twice over.

When she encounters the Apostles, she seems to immediately perceive the Spirit of God in them – spirit recognizes spirit – and she begins following them, announcing to all within hearing range, who they are and who they serve and what they are there for.

By the power of this spirit that is within her, she is speaking the truth. And she continues following them around, speaking this truth at the top of her voice for several days. Understandably, it becomes an irritation. Eventually Paul snaps. He stops, turns, and orders the spirit to leave her.

Which is good for the girl –she has been freed from one master. But not good for her owners, who see their source of revenue instantly dry up. They take the apostles to court. Paul and Silas are jailed and chained – not the first or last time for Paul.

We know from Paul’s letters and other writings that he spent a good deal of time in jail. He was often pushing the boundaries of what is customary and acceptable in the places where he traveled, and as a result, sometimes landing in jail as he did here. Here in Macedonia, he was charged with disturbing the peace by bringing new and unlawful ideas and habits – namely, this: Paul wants to show the Macedonians how to live in the freedom of Christ.

It is not easy for us to understand this idea – freedom in Christ. In this world, freedom often means simply being able to do whatever we want. You are free to come to church – or not. You are free to choose. You are free to choose how you spend your time, how you spend your money, how you use your voice, and so on. Freedom means do what you want.

But we also know that being a Christian means you can’t just do whatever you want; that some things are just not okay. It matters how you spend your money, how you spend your time. It matters what you say, it matters what you do.

There is certainly a paradox on display here. The slave girl announced that Paul and the others were slaves of the most high God – slaves! In one sense, they were not free – they were servants, even slaves, of the one true God. Yet, in Christ, they were free.

Free of the burden of sin, free of death, free for this new life, a life that leads to life. Paul traveled to Macedonia and everywhere else he could go, to share the good news, to offer freedom – but that message of freedom was not always welcome.

It really isn’t any different today. Even for those of us who have accepted this message of freedom in Christ, we sometimes choose to live as though we are not free. We allow ourselves to become slaves to all kinds of things – jobs, possessions, unhealthy relationships or addictions. But we might also become slaves to fear. To hate. To anger. There are so many ways we may become slaves to sin.

In the neighborhoods of Los Angeles where Father Greg works, there is a particular kind of slavery that tends to afflict the people. People are slaves to vengeance. They are slaves to anger and hatred that demands revenge. They talk about their own death as though it is almost inevitable. But they say to their brothers, their closest friends, “I know if anything happens to me, you’ll take care of it.” Meaning, you will avenge me.

To bring a message of freedom, a message of hope, into such a place as this is a holy and radical thing.

Father Greg tells a story about George, who was serving time in juvenile detention. While in there, George made the decision to be baptized. Father Greg had known George on the outside, he knew George and his brother Cisco as gang members in the neighborhood. But now, in prison, Greg watched George become transformed. During the months of his imprisonment, something happened. He gradually turned away from his gang persona – which always needed to project a kind of hardness, dangerousness – to becoming a man in possession of himself and his gifts. He developed a degree of thoughtfulness and self-control and real confidence that he could never afford to have before. George was becoming free to be himself.

The night before George’s baptism, his brother Cisco was walking home. Rival gang members were waiting for him. They snuck up on him with their guns and they shot him as he was walking down the street, half a block from his apartment. Cisco died instantly, leaving behind a girlfriend, eight months pregnant with his child.

The next morning, Father Greg arrived at the detention center and saw George, positively beaming. This was the day he was going to be baptized and there was joy in his heart. Greg decided he would not tell George about Cisco – yet. Let him get through his baptism before telling him what happened the night before.

After mass was over, he put his arm around George and walked outside with him so they could be alone. He held him and said to him gently, “George, your brother Cisco was killed last night.”

George was transfigured by grief. He fell onto a bench – sobbing, rocking, heartbroken. His grief was there for all to see. But what was not there is just as important. There was no anger, rage, vows to avenge Cisco’s death. The old life has gone. The new life in Christ is his. George is free. Even while he is imprisoned, he is free.

And this is the freedom we see in the second story of this passage of Acts. Paul and Silas are chained in their cell when an earthquake hits, shaking the foundation, opening the cell doors, breaking the chains. It happens while they are praying and singing hymns – you could almost think that the earthquake was the divine answer to their prayers. A true act of God.

But now the jailer is overcome with despair and hopelessness. He knows that all the prisoners will escape, and it will somehow be his fault that they do. In his hopelessness, he is ready to take his own life. Until he becomes aware that no one has moved.

Not one prisoner has left their cell. Paul shouts loud enough for the jailer to hear, “We are all here.”

Paul does not need to run, because he knows what freedom is. He knows the freedom he has in Christ is a freedom that must be shared, and that even though he would prefer not to be in a jail cell, he will be less free should his escape lead to his jailer’s death. Paul knows that he is a little bit less free when others are enslaved. He knows that freedom in Christ is less about living for oneself and more about living for others.

The jailer and his family are baptized that very night. Then all of them, with Paul and Silas, sit at table and break bread together. Friends. Family.

In Christ we are offered freedom. Freedom to end cycles of vengeance and patterns of violence. Freedom to break out of old habits that might bring harm to others. Freedom to choose to respond in a new way – with love, with patience, with generosity.

In Christ we are offered freedom to make our swords into plowshares, to tear down walls instead of building them up, to reach across aisles and across borders and seek to know one another, because as Father Greg says again and again, you can’t demonize someone once you know them. In Christ we are offered the freedom to love one another and live for one another, to live in Christ by the grace of God.

Thanks be to God.

Help

Acts 16:9-15      

John 5:1-9 

Of all the stories about healing in the gospels, this one stands out to me as particularly interesting. In part, because it is puzzling. We don’t know exactly what is going on here. Apparently, this pool of water has healing properties, and people come to the waters to be healed of their disabilities. I have no doubt that water has healing properties. Just the other evening, my daughter told me the baby was having a complete meltdown. I prescribed a bath.

The peculiar thing about these waters was that, evidently, they would periodically become stirred up, and people believed that the stirring was caused by the presence of divine power. According to the King James Version, only the first person to get in the pool after the waters stirred up would be healed. This seems unfair. And it’s probably not even true, because newer translations have left it out. It seems that this detail was added somewhere along the way by a scribe, wanting to make some logical sense of the fact that this man had been trying and failing for 38 years to reach the healing waters.

Some others have wondered about this and concluded that this man didn’t really want to be healed. Surely, if he wanted to be made well, he would have gotten to the water by now. Even Jesus seems to be suggesting this, because he asks the man this very question. Do you want to be made well?

It’s easy to hear a little implicit blame in his question. We don’t know what his tone of voice was like, but it might have sounded like, “Do you even want to be made well? Because I – and some of the others here too – suspect that you like this. You like being helpless, not having to do anything, not being responsible for anything.”

Whether or not Jesus would be as snarky as that is questionable. Actually, I doubt he would have asked in that manner. But he did ask. And in asking, it might be that Jesus wanted this man to take a moment to reflect on his own desires, his own motivations. In this way, he was making him an agent in his own healing.

Last week I told you about the woman, Lynn, who was living in her car in the parking lot at the King of Prussia Target. Two women approached her. One of the first things they asked her was, “Do you want help?” Only when she said yes did they go any further.

Helping another person is not a one-way proposition. We might forget that sometimes, when we see ourselves as helpers and others as helpees. It would always be simpler, easier, if when we see a problem we have the means and desire to fix, we could just go ahead and fix it. But it’s usually not so simple. In reality, helping another person often gets complicated. There are many reasons for this.

People don’t always want the help we want to offer. If you have ever tried to help someone get up or cross the street and they batted your hand away, then you know this. The two women who approached Lynn in her car knew it was better not to assume she wanted the things they wanted to give her, so they waited for her “yes” before proceeding.

But when someone says yes, this opens the door to more complications. There can be further mismatches between the wishes of the helper and the helpee. There may be competing desires – what you want for the other person and what they want for themselves.

A few years ago, there was a family living in their car in the Walmart parking lot – this was just a few blocks from the church I was serving at the time. Some women noticed this family and, just like the women at the King of Prussia Target, they were moved by compassion. They learned that this family included a veteran and his wife, two disabled children, and a dog. They had been trying to get back home to Oklahoma when their car broke down.

Pretty soon the whole community was mobilized to help. The women who initially approached them organized fundraisers and put out notices on a community Facebook group. We took up a collection for them in our congregation. People donated food and other supplies, and someone even donated a car. Everyone wanted to help this family get home, and we did. Happy ending.

But within a few weeks this family came back. Their troubles did not disappear once they got back home, evidently. And they had found our community to be so warm and caring and helpful, they wanted to come back and draw more water from that well. But I’m not sure there was any more water in that well.

What the people of the community had signed up for was to help them get back home. What they wanted (or needed) was, apparently, something else.

The problem with helping is we often don’t know what kind of help is going to be needed. What’s more, we don’t necessarily have the ability to give what is needed, or the desire to give it.

In Norman MacLean’s story, A River Runs Through It, there is a father with two sons. It is very much like the parable Luke tells. The older son is hard-working and responsible, the younger son just can’t seem to help being a prodigal. He is restless. He can’t settle down. He is an alcoholic and a gambler, a slave to these two addictions. And, like all addicts, he resists help. His brother is dying to help him but fails again and again. And at one point, his father speaks to the older son about the nature of help. “Help,” he said, “is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly. So it is, that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don’t know what part to give or we don’t like to give any part of ourselves. Or, often, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed.”

A sobering assessment. But perhaps we need to make a distinction between “fix” and “help.” No one can fix an addict. But something as small as giving a drink of water or holding their head might help.

It is a bit easier when someone comes right out and asks for help. In the story from Acts, this is Paul’s dream – that a man from Macedonia stood before his eyes and said come on over and help us. Help us. And so he did.

I think Paul was grateful for the direct request, because before this point he had experienced a succession of failures. He had somehow been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to enter the lands they were trying to enter. It was like they hit a spiritual brick wall. So, they would turn and go a different way. Then another brick wall. When Paul received the Macedonia vision, he perceived a door opening up before him and he raced through.

And in Macedonia, he was able to help. The gospel was well received by Lydia, a woman of wealth and influence. Now the gospel of Jesus Christ had reached a new shore – because there was a request for help. Again, a happy ending.

But you might have figured out by now that the happy endings, more often than not, are quickly followed by further complications. Our work of helping one another doesn’t really end. The church was established in Macedonia, but we cannot possibly think that once they put the building up it was all smooth sailing. No doubt, there were arguments about what color to paint the walls, and difficulties raising enough money to fix the boiler. There were laments about how the youth didn’t seem to be interested in the church their elders had worked so hard for. There were fights about how the mission budget should be spent. How to be Christ to one another is a continual uphill struggle.

I think in many cases the problems we have with helping others have to do with why we are doing it and what we are looking for. Consider this story from John’s gospel.

When Jesus approached the disabled man at the pool, what did he ask him? Did he ask him if he wanted to be put in the waters? No, he asked him if he wanted to be made well.

The man’s answer, then, did not really fit the question. He told Jesus all the reasons why he had been unable to get to the pool. It would be so easy, at that point, to fall into an argument on the logistics of getting in the pool of healing waters. It would also be futile to get in that argument. One thing we know about Jesus is that he was expert at avoiding that kind of trap. He simply ignores the man’s response and suggests to him: Pick up your mat and walk. And so the man does.

What can we learn from this about helping someone? Perhaps we can learn that it is good to know what kind of help you can give and what you cannot give. And learn to be comfortable giving what you can give, not berating yourself for the things you cannot give.

Perhaps we can learn that the important thing is figuring out the real need – if possible. This man’s real need was not to get to the pool, but to be made well. Maybe he, himself, had lost sight of that, but Jesus saw it.

Perhaps we can learn that it is good, if at all possible, to respect the other person’s autonomy. Helping someone help themselves is one of the best ways to help another. I think the women who helped Lynn get out of her car and into a home were trying to do just that. It involves giving people the help they want, not necessarily the help you think they should want. It may be the case with the family we tried to help in Ohio that we misunderstood their desires. Maybe they didn’t really want to go home.

Anybody who ever said, “helping someone is simple,” didn’t know what they were talking about. It’s never simple, really. Because helping is never really an isolated incident – it’s always part of an interconnected chain. As human beings, we are always helping and being helped, one way or another.

In Richard Price’s book, Samaritan, there is a man named Ray who goes back to his hometown to devote himself to helping the needy and downtrodden. He learns how not-simple it is. He repeatedly runs into troubles. An old friend in town tries to help him with the troubles caused by his helping. What we see in the story is two different kinds of help. Ray has a past he wants to be vindicated from by his good works. But his friend, Nerese, wants to help Ray for simpler reasons: Ray once helped her, and she is grateful.

So, you see, Ray wants to help in order to receive gratitude. But Nerese wants to help out of her own gratitude. This is where we all should find ourselves. We won’t receive salvation because we help others. But knowing we are saved by the grace of God, we may be grateful.

And may our gratitude serve God by helping others.

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[1] I am grateful to Garret Keizer, author of Help: The Original Human Dilemma, for helping me think through this topic.

New Things

Revelation 21:1-6

John 13:31-35      

I came across a news story last week about a woman who was found living in a car in the Target parking lot. You might wonder if that’s really even news. There are so many homeless people in our country, so many of them living in cars – and some of these may not even consider themselves homeless because at least they are not sleeping in the bushes. At least they have a car and the car is their home. Yet we know it is a far from adequate home.

It was reported in the local newspaper, where it was considered to be newsworthy. Perhaps because it happened in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. King of Prussia is a fairly affluent suburban community outside Philadelphia. It has a very low rate of poverty. Life is generally pretty good. The shopping is excellent – King of Prussia is best known for its giant mall.

At any rate, perhaps it was news because it was in King of Prussia. I don’t imagine things like that are seen very often in King of Prussia. The staff at the Target store were asked by reporters if they knew she was out there in their parking lot, apparently living there. They said, yes, they knew. They chose not to respond – neither calling the police nor reaching out to help. Target remained neutral.

The fact that her car was a silver Mercedes might also have contributed to the newsworthiness of the story. She wasn’t parked out there in a beat-up old Chevy or a Ford van. This was a pretty nice car. One that many people would like to have if they could afford it. Yet, here was this woman, apparently homeless, with a really nice car. Well, it was a 12-year-old nice car, to be fair. But this still creates some cognitive dissonance for us – it doesn’t fit the stereotype of poverty we have in our heads. And we are not sure what to think of this situation.

This is the kind of real-life problem we tend to encounter when we are trying to figure out how to obey Jesus’ new commandment: to love one another just as he has loved us.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.

There was actually nothing new about love when he said that. Love was not a new concept at that time. The theology of God’s love had been around for quite a long time. The exhortations to love God and love one another were clearly outlined in the law of Israel. The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy include the commandments to love God, love the neighbor, even love the stranger, for you yourselves were strangers in Egypt, God says.

The idea of love is nothing new. But Jesus presents it as a new thing, and he seems to want his disciples to feel this command with a new spirit, a new energy, a new commitment. At this moment, Jesus is calling upon them to love with a new urgency in a new way. He is, after all, doing a new thing.

The story we hear today is taking us back to the days before Easter. Back to the place we were a few weeks ago, before he was arrested, before he was crucified. It takes us back to that upper room with Jesus and his disciples sharing a Passover meal before he is arrested. This is where we are at this moment:

The bread has been blessed and broken. Jesus and his disciples all reclined at the table together, relaxed, feasting. And suddenly Jesus says, “One of you will betray me.” They all looked at one another, not sure what to think. Jesus casually picks up the bread, he speaks again, saying, “The one to whom I give this piece of bread, he is the one.” He dips the bread into the wine and hands it to Judas. Judas takes the bread, eats it. Jesus says to him, “Go, do what you have to do,” and Judas immediately leaves.

None of the others, at this point, have a clue. The words about betrayal are disturbing, certainly, but nothing is yet clear to them. As Jesus continues, when Judas had gone out, he now speaks of glory, and love. It will only be in retrospect, after quite some time has passed, that anyone understands what he was saying here: that as I prepare to die I leave you this legacy of love. Love one another and they will know you are my disciples.

Love one another. And, just as we have done with many of Jesus’ most challenging words, we have zealously overanalyzed these words for the purpose of finding our way out of them. Surely he didn’t really mean to love everybody. Without qualification or stipulation? That doesn’t sound right.

To love someone, really love them – in action, not just in theory – is hard and sometimes confusing. We don’t know how to love all the others in the world. How do you love someone who is choosing to live in a Mercedes Benz in the Target parking lot? I mean, is the woman in that car included? And if so, what does that love look like?

The car was spotted by a woman on her way into the store. She looked at the woman in the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and instantly labeled her. A hoarder, she thought. The car was clearly packed with stuff. But she didn’t just let it go; she contacted a friend who was a social worker and together they approached the woman in the car.

They were afraid. They didn’t know how the woman in the car would react to them. Would she be violent? They didn’t know, but they knocked on the window anyway.

How do you speak to someone who has parked her car with all her worldly belongings in the Target parking lot? A woman who, from the smell of it, seems to have been cooped up with her two dogs in this car for a long time? What do you say?

They said, “Can we talk to you?” she said yes. They asked, “Are you living in your car?” She said, yes, for about two years now. They said, we’d like to help you. Do you want help? She said yes. Her name was Lynn.

And they learned the story about how Lynn had gone from enjoying a solid middle-class professional life to her current existence. Her fall had been dramatic and heartbreaking. After a series of losses, betrayals, and health crises, she found herself left with nothing but her car and her dogs.

It turned out that these two women had mutual acquaintances with Lynn, a professional network of friends. So they began reaching out to others and soon a network was woven together to help Lynn get out of her car and back in a home. People cleaned out and repaired her car, others helped Lynn and her dogs get cleaned and groomed, others gathered together clothing, others prepared meals for her and got her a hotel room while they sought permanent housing. They created a safety net for her and made sure that she would have some security.

The fact that two years went by before someone stepped up and loved Lynn enough to get her out of her car causes me to realize how far we fall short of Jesus’ new commandment. This new thing he is doing feels new to us each time we hear it, because it seems hard for us to believe that this is what he is asking us to do.

Love one another just as I have loved you. Love one another, and if you do, then everyone will know you are my disciples. In this love, they will see God’s glory. Christ’s glory. And his glory is to weave love through the brokenness of this world that killed him.

Indeed, as John writes in his Revelation, God is doing a new thing, God is making all things new. The home of God is among mortals, those who are mourning and crying and suffering pain of body, mind, and soul. God does not forsake the suffering in this world. On the contrary, it is God’s desire to be right in the midst of it – wiping away every tear, relieving all suffering, making all things new.

The newspaper columnist David Brooks writes frequently about the fabric of our society and how essential it is to weave a strong fabric. Much of the common cause that used to hold us together has been lost in recent decades, and it is easy to see the negative effects of that loss. What he is advocating for isn’t anything new; it’s actually something old. It’s just that when we lose it, we realize anew how much we need it, how much we need one another. Sometimes people can’t take care of themselves. Sometimes, we can’t pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and carry on. Sometimes we really, truly need one another. And when we do need one another, that is when we are closest to God. Because this is what God is: God is community. God is care for one another. God is love.

And the world will know us as Christians – if we love one another. What a wonderful world this would be.

Photo: Ed Yourdon from New York City, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons