Sabbath Freedom

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Luke 13:10-17

In these verses, Jesus is confronted with a rule that, in this context, seems harsh. The disagreement arises when a woman with a debilitating spinal condition shows up on a Sabbath while Jesus is teaching. Jesus sees her, touches her, and heals her, earning him a reprimand from the leader of the synagogue: “There are six days on which work ought to be done.” He’s referring to the fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments: “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.” Presumably the religious leader isn’t against healing; he just wants Jesus to wait until tomorrow. After all, she’s had this condition for eighteen years. What’s one more day?

Jesus responds that the Sabbath is the perfect day to set someone free from an eighteen-year bondage to a crippling condition. With this reference to freedom, Jesus is saying the well-meaning religious leader doesn’t understand what the Sabbath is all about. Jesus is alluding to Deuteronomy’s version of the Ten Commandments, which adds, and I’m paraphrasing, “Remember when you were slaves in Egypt? Remember when you had no day off at all? That’s why you get a day off.” Everyone, not just the upper classes, not just the priests and elites and the king have the right to rest one day a week. One day of freedom for everyone, including your animals.

So there’s a very good reason for keeping the Sabbath. Jesus doesn’t say rules don’t matter. He’s saying that sometimes a reasonable rule or a good law that works well for some people causes suffering for others, or just plain leaves people out. Take eating organic, for example, a rule I try to follow. During seminary I took a course in environmental ethics. A couple of my fellow students did a report on organic food: how much better it is for the planet, how much better it is for farm workers and the people who consume the food. No argument there, right? They gave the class slices of organic and non-organic carrots for a taste test, and the organic carrots actually tasted better. And then another student asked, “How much more do the organic carrots cost than the other carrots?” At the time, it was a considerable difference; still today, organic produce costs about 50% more on average than regular produce. The student pointed out, with some impatience, that eating organic was a luxury not everyone could afford. That whole communities of people were left out of the health benefits of eating organic, not to mention that good feeling of knowing they were doing the right thing for the planet.

The religious leader is sticking up for the principle of law and order, and I think many of us can support that. But it’s easy for him to maintain his principles without suffering. The woman didn’t have that freedom. Jesus isn’t saying get rid of the Sabbath. He’s saying that demanding rigid observance of the law without empathy for how that impacts people doesn’t keep the Sabbath “holy.” Rather, it creates a “systemic barrier,” one the religious leader doesn’t even see. That’s what privilege is. It’s being able to ignore or not even see things that confront other people every day. Jesus is saying the point of the Sabbath, the point of all God’s laws, is to serve God’s people and draw them more deeply into the abundant life God offers not just to some people, not just to the people who don’t have to think twice about the rules, but to all people. God is a God of love, mercy, compassion, and justice. Focusing on those qualities honors God. Focusing on those keeps the Sabbath holy.

The religious leader forgot this. Which is easy to do when following the rules is easy for us.

My favorite part of this story is at the end. “The entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things he was doing.” They got it. Ordinary people, living their lives, doing the best they could, working hard, caring for their families, and once a week on the Sabbath, being reminded that each life matters to God, our God who wants freedom for everyone. Everyone. “The entire crowd was rejoicing.” You bet they were.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

References:
Exodus 20:8-11
Deuteronomy 5:12-15
David Lose, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2699.
John M. Buchanan, “Expansive,” http://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2007/082607.html.
Dan Shepard and Maggie Davis, “Organic produce now costs as much as 53% more than conventional alternatives, and the price disparity is getting worse,” April 17, 2025, https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2025/04/17/organic-produce-now-costs-as-much-as-53-more-than-conventional-alternatives-and-the-price-disparity-is-getting-worse/

Interpreting the Present

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Luke 12:49-56

   With what’s going on in our world, it seems the last thing we need is a gospel text that encourages more division.  This is not a reading that offers comfort.  But hang with me here.  Jesus did not have an evil twin or suddenly get a personality transplant.  This is the same Jesus who reminded us that the two greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.

   Jesus is frustrated, and he says as much, and if nothing else, this passage shows Jesus responding to stress in a very human way.  He says he has work to do and he’s under incredible stress to complete it in the time he has left.  Does that mean Jesus knew for sure he was going to be arrested and crucified?  Maybe, or maybe it just means he knew the risks of putting love of God and love of neighbor first.

   Which is Jesus’ point, here.  Relentlessly loving God and neighbor is risky.  In his words and actions, Jesus shows us that when he says love your neighbor, he means not just the neighbor who’s easy to love, but the neighbor who’s very hard to love.  The one you’d rather not sit next to on the bus, or in the classroom.  The one you don’t want for a colleague.  The one you avoid at the family reunion.  The one you hope won’t go to the polls in a presidential election.  The one who sees the world entirely differently from the way you do, who believes different truths than you do.  Love that neighbor, which includes working toward his well-being, even if it looks to you as though he’s doing everything he can to work against your well-being.  Jesus shows us that loving your neighbor means questioning the religious, social, and economic status quo that undermines your neighbor’s safety and security.  It means speaking the truth in love to that neighbor and doing the hard work of forgiveness and reconciliation with that neighbor.  When Jesus talked about love and modeled it in his actions, that’s what love looks like. 

   That kind of love is risky.  It doesn’t make people popular.  We all can rattle off a long list of peacemakers and justice-lovers who loved their neighbors just this way and were killed or jailed for their efforts: Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Bobby Kennedy, Oscar Romero, Anwar al Sadat, Nelson Mandela, Harvey Milk, Yitzhak Rabin, Rachel Corrie, environmentalist Tim DeChristopher; and others whose names we’ll never know who resisted the Holocaust, fought for civil rights and thought women ought to have the vote.

   Jesus wasn’t saying that he wants people to turn against each other.  He’s saying that if people follow him, really follow him, they can count on offending someone, even someone close, even someone they love.  This was certainly true for Jesus’ original audience.  I wonder: Is it any less true for us?  How would our family and friends and co-workers react if we really acted like Jesus did?  How would our government act; how would ICE agents or the National Guard act?  What Jesus is concerned with here is the persecution, if you will, not of people who choose one faith over another but of people who strive to love God and neighbor. 

   Sometimes when people see someone committed to doing what’s right, they feel critiqued, even if that’s not the point at all.  What concerns Jesus is this: When anyone has the nerve to look at the way things are and say, “This isn’t right,” it divides people.  “This isn’t right” challenges the status quo.  Those who benefit from the status quo will fight tooth and nail to oppose anyone who tries to change things.  Jesus sums up his frustration by noting that people can look at the clouds and predict the weather, but they can’t see the way things are here and now.  They can’t look at what’s going on around them and “interpret the present.”  Why?  Because they are satisfied with the way things are right now and don’t want to change. 

   What are we to do, then, in order to interpret the present faithfully? 

   It is hard to look at the broken and hurting world around us and see in the hurt and the brokenness a call that something has to change – that we might just have to change.  It can seem overwhelming but maybe we just start by mending a little corner of the world, our tiny corner.  Anne Lamott uses the metaphor of stitching: “You start wherever you can. You see a great need, so you thread a needle, you tie a knot in your thread. You find one place in the cloth through which to take one stitch, one simple stitch, nothing fancy, just one that’s strong and true.”

   We mend what we can.  If households are not to be divided, mother against daughter, father against son, it will be because, through the grace of God, we reach across those divides instead of accepting them as insurmountable, and take small steps, make small stitches. 

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:

Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair (New York: Riverhead Books, 2013).

Don’t Be Afraid

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Luke 12:32-40

There are some things that just don’t go together. Toothpaste and grapefruit juice, for example. Baseball and sushi, even if you can buy sushi at Oracle Park. A “certified organic” label on a pack of cigarettes. And the phrase, “Do not be afraid,” followed shortly by “Sell all your possessions.”

These words are part of the response that Jesus gave to the man who approached him in last week’s Luke passage. The man asked Jesus to mediate an argument he had with his brother over property. Jesus declined and then told the parable of the rich fool who built bigger barns for all his grain. The lectionary skips the verses that come right after that parable, which include Luke’s version of the familiar passage in Matthew about the lilies of the field. In those verses, Jesus says not to worry about what you you’ll eat or what you’ll wear. God knows you need those things, says Jesus. So don’t worry – besides, he adds, can you add a single hour to your life by worrying?

That’s where we pick up with Luke 12:32-40. “Don’t be afraid” might feel like an unreasonable admonition right now, even without the instruction that immediately follows it to sell all our possessions. I receive dozens of texts every day from politicians telling me to be afraid – and give them money. Even if I don’t respond with a contribution, these doomsayers have a good point. Things are scary right now.

“Don’t be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell all your possessions, and give alms.” How do these ideas fit together, and is there any good news here?

First, notice that it’s God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. Like a loving parent, God takes delight in giving God’s children good things. This is what God is like. Not a rule-enforcer, a power player, or an authoritarian tyrant; rather, a parent who delights in giving gifts.

Second, God gives us the kingdom. Use kin-dom, reign, whatever word you choose if “kingdom” sounds too patriarchal. The kingdom of God is the way Jesus described what this life on earth would be like if God were our only king. The point Jesus makes here is that we neither earn the kingdom nor create it. We can participate in it, and as Christ’s followers, we are called to do so. But God’s promise is to give us the kingdom.

Then Jesus tells a parable about being ready. In Scripture, Jesus describes the kingdom of God as “near.” Dorothee Soelle writes that when Jesus spoke of the nearness of the kingdom of God he was never speaking of an event in the future, at some date on the calendar yet to be decided. “Jesus and the Jewish people of his time do not think in linear terms but in relationships, above all relationships to God. In Jesus’ language there is not even a word corresponding to the word ‘future.’ The next day is called ‘what is to come.’ … ‘What is to come’” – the kingdom – “is expected not only by suffering men and women but also by God, with longing and hope.” Soelle writes, “The nearness of God cannot be measured in intervals of time, but must be measured in the strength of the hope which is spreading among people.”

That is what readiness looks like: “The strength of the hope which is spreading among people.” In the verses the lectionary skips, Jesus says, “Strive first for the kingdom …” and you’ll have all you need. This is because in the kingdom of God, everyone has enough. Is this a pie-in-the-sky fantasy? No; God has given the world all that we need for everyone to be clothed and fed. As Mahatma Gandhi put it, “Earth provides enough to satisfy [everyone’s] need, but not [everyone’s] greed.” What might happen if enough people lived as though this is true? How might that strengthen the hope which is spreading among people?

So then, what is a faithful response to “Sell all your possessions”? In many ways, it would be easier to work for the kingdom if we abandoned our lives entirely and started over. But most of us have responsibilities and attachments we’re not going to abandon, and that it wouldn’t be kind, ethical, or faithful to abandon. What Jesus is expressing with these words is urgency. It is a wakeup call. Last week’s parable of the rich man pointed to the folly of attaching to possessions. What is it about our attachment to possessions that is folly, that gets in the way of our participation in the kingdom and needs to be urgently addressed? Is it the way we ignore the toxic impact of mining the rare earth minerals required for our technology? Or the fact that only one-tenth of the world’s greenhouse gases are emitted by the 74 lowest income countries, but those countries will be most affected by climate change? Or the fact that cheap clothing has a hidden cost: the exploitation of vulnerable labor forces, especially children? Is it the fact that a fraction of billionaires’ wealth could end starvation and homelessness? Or is it simply that we measure our worth by the quantity and quality of stuff we own?

By clinging to our possessions, are we helping to create a sense of scarcity? As Parker Palmer writes, “The irony, often tragic, is that by embracing the scarcity assumption, we create the very scarcities we fear. If I hoard material goods, others will have too little and I will never have enough. If I fight my way up the ladder of power, others will be defeated and I will never feel secure. If I get jealous of someone I love, I am likely to drive that person away. …. We create scarcity … by competing with others for resources as if we were stranded on the Sahara at the last oasis.”

Author Barbara Ehrenreich was asked in an interview what she would give up to live in a more human world. She answered, “I think we shouldn’t think of what we would give up to have a more human world; we should think of what we would gain.” Don’t be afraid, says Jesus. Don’t be afraid because God has something better in mind. It’s God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Dorothee Soelle and Luise Schottroff, Jesus of Nazareth (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2002).
Jaya Nayar, “’Not So “Green’ Technology: The Complicated Legacy of Rare Earth Mining,” August 12, 2021, https://hir.harvard.edu/not-so-green-technology-the-complicated-legacy-of-rare-earth-mining/
Ruma Bhargawa and Megha Bhargava, “The Climate Crisis Disproportionately Hits the Poor. How Can We Protect Them?” January 13, 2023, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/01/climate-crisis-poor-davos2023/
Suha Fasih, “The Fast-Fashion Dilemma: Unraveling Forced Labor in Global Supply Chains,” October 21, 2024, https://lawjournalforsocialjustice.com/2024/10/31/the-fast-fashion-dilemma-unraveling-forced-labor-in-global-supply-chains/
Mark G. Miller, “A fraction of billionaires’ wealth could end starvation and homelessness,” March 5, 2025, https://millermarkg.com/2025/03/05/a-fraction-of-billionaires-wealth-could-end-starvation-and-homelessness/

Rich Toward God

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Luke 12:13-21

I was disappointed to learn that the old adage, “Money can’t buy happiness,” isn’t actually true. To tell the truth, it never made intuitive sense to me. I knew from personal experience as a struggling student as well as observing parishioners that if you don’t have enough money to cover basic expenses, it causes unhappiness in the form of anxiety. So money definitely buys relief from anxiety, which perhaps is not the same as happiness. Nevertheless, studies now show that real happiness improves as income increases, and continues to rise alongside one’s bank account with no clear upper limit. Still, I wanted the saying to be true. As a person who has chosen a career guaranteed to keep me free from excessive wealth, I wanted it to be true that once basic needs are met, people are equally happy.

The parable in this passage in Luke doesn’t dispute the new research. However, it does suggest that the happiness that comes with wealth isn’t what really matters in the long run. Responding to a request for financial advice from someone in the crowd, Jesus warns against greed, which ancient philosophers believed to be a form of depravity and a lack of self-control. He explains, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions,” and then tells the parable about a rich, apparently happy man. We hear the rich man’s inner monologue: He wonders how to store his overabundance of crops and belongings, and the obvious solution is to build bigger barns. That’s when God shows up, a rare occurrence in a parable, and tells him he’s a fool. He’s going to die that very night, and, as another old saying goes, you can’t take it with you. “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Jesus doesn’t say the man is wicked. He doesn’t say he’s evil. He says he’s a fool. Given that money can buy happiness, what makes this man a fool? He’s a fool, says Jesus, because he stored up treasures for himself, when he should have been “rich toward God.” But what does “rich toward God” mean?

Maybe the man isn’t “rich toward God” because he only considers his own interests, needs, and desires. The conversation he has with himself is utterly self-focused. Has he grown apathetic to the needs of others because of the insulation that his wealth provides? He seems to have no concern outside his own comfort and contentment. He has no empathy for others; no sense of the needs of his neighbors; no sense of how his blessing could be a blessing to others; no sense of connection to anyone. It is foolish to live locked in your own little world, oblivious to the presence, humanity, and needs of others.

Perhaps he isn’t “rich toward God” because he has made wealth his goal. Has wealth replaced God in his heart? “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:34) A 2003 study describes “the money and happiness paradox”: Even though having more money is associated with happiness, seeking more money impairs our happiness. The study found that people with strong financial success goals reported lower satisfaction with family life, friendships, and jobs. It found that “the greater your goal for financial success, the lower your satisfaction with family life, regardless of household income.” This paradox teaches that money boosts happiness when it is a result, but not when it is a primary goal, or as one researcher noted, “It is generally good for your happiness to have money, but toxic to your happiness to want money too much.” When money becomes our God, it jeopardizes our happiness.

Maybe he is not “rich toward God” in the way he seems to assume he alone can take credit for his wealth; that his wealth belongs to him and him alone. Psalm 24 teaches, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it; the world, and those who live in it.” Our lives and possessions are not our own. They belong to God. We are merely stewards of them for the time God has given us on this earth. Elisabeth Johnson writes, “We rebel against this truth because we want to be in charge of our lives and our stuff.” God’s surprise announcement is a stark reminder that, ultimately, control of our lives is an illusion. Sooner or later we learn that no amount of wealth or property can secure our lives. No amount of wealth can protect us from a genetically inherited disease, for instance, or from a tragic accident. No amount of wealth can keep our relationships healthy and our families from falling apart. In fact, wealth and property can easily drive a wedge between family members, as in the case of the brothers fighting over their inheritance at the beginning of this passage.

Maybe he isn’t “rich toward God” because his focus on his own comfort ignores God’s good Creation. We aren’t told this man achieved his wealth by misusing other people or exploiting the planet, but we know this accounts for much of the extreme wealth in our world today, as well as the historic levels of income inequality we’re witnessing. Jesus follows this parable with Luke’s version of the “lilies of the field,” concluding, “Instead, seek God’s kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well” (Luke 12:31). In God’s kingdom, Jesus’ metaphor for the world governed by God’s love for all of God’s Creation, everyone has enough because people share, people do not hoard, people do not exploit others or the earth so that the earth can sustain all God’s creatures. In other words, people love their neighbors as themselves and it is apparent in the economy.

In our consumer culture, our worthiness is measured by what we own, can afford to buy, and the power that comes from vast sums of money. This makes it a hard sell convincing anyone that the happiness generated by wealth isn’t what really matters. But we only need to look around us to see the tragic consequences of wealth that insulates people from the struggles of the rest of the world and contributes to the destruction of the planet. It is abundantly clear that it is not “rich toward God.” It is, in fact, foolish.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Aimee Picchi, “Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness: the More Wealth You Have, the Happier You Get, Research Finds,” July 26, 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/money-buys-happiness-study-finds-rich-are-happier-research/.
Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, “This is a funny story. We laugh. But we’re laughing at ourselves,” July 17, 2019, https://www.christiancentury.org/lectionary/august-4-ordinary-18c-luke-12-13-21
John Jennings, “Does Money Buy Happiness? Actually, Yes,” February 12, 2024, https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnjennings/2024/02/12/money-buys-happiness-after-all/
Elisabeth Johnson, “Commentary Luke 12:13-21,” August 4, 2019, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-18-3/commentary-on-luke-1213-21-4

Teach Us to Pray

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Luke 11:1-13

Jesus’ disciples ask him to teach them to pray as John the Baptizer taught his disciples. Jesus accepts the challenge, and begins, “When you pray …” Not if you pray, but when. So, the first part of the lesson is that praying is what Jesus’ disciples do.

He then teaches them a model prayer, Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew’s version, imbedded in the Sermon on the Mount, is slightly different (Matthew 6:9-13). Jesus doesn’t say this is the only prayer we should pray, but the Lord’s Prayer does teach us about prayer in general.

We are to begin prayer, says Jesus, by noticing that God is like a loving parent and we, each of us, all of us, are part of God’s family (“Our Father”). Yet God is also a Holy Mystery that can’t be limited to one image and is deserving of our reverence (“hallowed be thy name”).

Then, we are to orient ourselves to what God wills for God’s Creation, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” But just what is God’s will? That question is worth an entire sermon series, but for now, I’ll note that Jesus doesn’t confuse God’s will with fate or destiny. Rather, when Jesus says, “thy will,” he means God’s desires for God’s world. He describes this with the metaphor, “the kingdom of God;” thus, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth …” The simplest way for Christians to determine what “God’s will” means is to look at Jesus himself. If we do this, we’ll see in Jesus’ life and teachings that God’s will is that we love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves. We’ll see that we are to welcome outcasts, forgive others and accept forgiveness, and be reconciled with our enemies. We’ll see that we are to help those in need regardless of who they are, and that all manner of healing is more important than almost anything else we can do. When we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth,” we pray that we will adjust, adapt, and transform our lives, desires, and hopes to these desires of God for all of God’s world.

Next, Jesus teaches that we are to bring our needs to God: our need for survival and sustenance (our “daily bread”), and our need for forgiveness and reconciliation (“forgive us …, as we forgive others …”). On the one hand, every pronoun is in the plural – our daily bread, not my daily bread. We are praying for the welfare of all. On the other hand, being open and honest with God about our personal, individual fears, needs, and vulnerabilities helps us recognize them and put them in the context of God’s love. Praying is how we form and maintain a relationship with God, and honest communication is always better for relationships.

Finally, we are to remember that, in many ways, the world in which we live does not reflect God’s will, and we pray to be spared those temptations, those “trials,” that might throw us off track.

Jesus follows his model prayer with some especially challenging verses: “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” Does Jesus really mean we’ll get whatever we pray for as though God were a giant vending machine in the sky? No. Careful reading shows that Jesus makes only one promise: When we pray, God will give us God’s Spirit.

But what does that mean? When what you really want is for your loved one to survive cancer or for your child to stay off drugs or for people to be treated justly or for the bombs to stop falling, God’s Spirit may not sound like enough of an answer to prayer. I know many people who pray and wonder, “Is anybody listening?”

Søren Kierkegaard said, “The function of prayer is not to influence God but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” That is certainly my own experience. Debie Thomas writes, “…[O]ften … I want God to sweep in and fix everything much more than I want God’s Spirit to fill and accompany me so that I can do my part to heal the world. Resting in God’s yes [to give us the Spirit] requires vulnerability, patience, courage, discipline, and trust — traits I can only cultivate in prayer.”

God’s Spirit is the source of those traits. God’s Spirit is exactly what we need to participate with God in healing the world. Perhaps the precise way prayer changes us is as individual as each one of us, as complex as our complex lives, but the goal is always healing: healing ourselves, healing God’s world.

The old hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” includes these lines:
Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged,
Take it to the Lord in prayer.

I won’t tell anyone that they should never be discouraged. However, I agree with the hymn that we should bring everything to God in prayer. Everything. Not because God will fix everything, but because it means we’re showing up. We’re maintaining the relationship. Nothing we bring to God will surprise God. I realize prayer is in many ways mysterious; how it “works” or changes us is hard to measure or prove but Jesus said “when.” “When you pray…” Not “if.” So we pray, with and without words, on our knees and in real and metaphorical bunkers, in desperation and in gratitude, and we count on the promise that God’s Spirit will change us, heal us, and change and heal the world through us.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Debie Thomas, “When You Pray,” in Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories: Reflections on the Life of Christ (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022).
Brian D. McLaren, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbl6hPBA5rU.

Hospitality

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Luke 10:38-42

In this passage, Martha has welcomed Jesus into her home, which should get her the special blessings that go to those who receive Jesus or his disciples. As Jesus said, “whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” But what does Martha get instead? She gets corrected by Jesus for not doing it right! He’s gentle about it, but still, kind of annoyingly patronizing. “Martha, Martha….” You can just see Jesus shaking his head. And it seems Jesus is setting up a rivalry between Martha and her sister Mary, the one who is doing it right.

It’s hard not to choose sides, especially because Luke wants us to choose sides. Unfortunately, this has felt like a double bind for a lot of people, and for women in particular. If, like Martha, you focus on the details of a meal, the menu, the preparation, the clean-up, you risk being labeled “over-functioning.” If, like Mary, you sit and listens too long, nothing gets done. What many folks I know want Jesus to say is, “You’re absolutely right, Martha. What was I thinking? Why don’t we all come into the kitchen and help with the dishes and talk while we work?”

But this story is about Martha and Mary. Not Martha versus Mary, or even Martha or Mary. Jesus does say that Mary has chosen the “better” part and it won’t be taken from her. This might sound harsh to Martha but it’s radical news for women: he affirms a woman can choose to sit in the circle of men as he teaches. “Sitting at his feet” means being a disciple, and at this point in history women were not allowed to sit at the feet of rabbis; they were not allowed to be disciples. But Jesus won’t send Mary off to the kitchen, even if the other disciples and Martha think she belongs there.

Jesus also says something about hospitality. He doesn’t tell us that acts of hospitality are unimportant, but Mary has chosen the “one thing” that is needed. Here, that one thing is the purpose of hospitality itself, and that is the interchange between the host and the guest. I looked at a handful of websites that offer some version of “10 Tips for Giving the Perfect Dinner Party” and they all include something like, “Get out of the kitchen and enjoy your guests. They came to see you, not just to eat your food.” Jesus sees that Martha is “worried and distracted.” Maybe’s she’s so worried and distracted that she misses the point of welcoming a guest in the first place. The interchange between the host and the guest is what really matters.

This isn’t about doing versus being. It’s about doing what’s called for by the situation, and the situation of welcoming a guest calls for paying attention to the guest because that is one important way we love our neighbor, and it’s one important way we recognize the face of God in our neighbor. I love the way Melissa Weintraub puts it: “For us, revelation does not usually happen in thunder and smoke. Most often it happens in simple face-to-face conversation over coffee and cake.”

The experience of God, the encounter with God – which is what revelation means – the encounter with God does not usually happen in thunder and smoke. Not for most of us. Most often it happens in simple face-to-face conversation over coffee and cake. Or over a latte, or a beer, or a potluck casserole. And like any true encounter with God, genuine hospitality changes us because the encounter with the Other, with any other human being, always changes us.

Hospitality might sound trivial given what’s going on in our current socio-political atmosphere but think about it. Think about how extending hospitality to anyone and everyone, including those with whom we disagree or even those who infuriate us, think how that could change the way we see everything. Imagine if we listened to everyone as though they matter, as though what they have to say really matters. Imagine if we expected that we might very well encounter something of the Divine Presence in a conversation over coffee and cake.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Melissa Weintraub, “Revelations of the Other, Face-to-Face,” February 18, 2006, http://www.encounterprograms.org/sources_sermon.html
Fred B. Craddock, Interpretation: Luke (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990).

The Good Samaritan

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Luke 10:25-37

In seminary, I learned that while myths and fables “build worlds,” in other words, create a framework for why the world around us makes sense, parables “explode worlds.” A parable is supposed to turn our current understanding of the way things work on its head. We’re not supposed to read it, nod agreeably, and walk away comforted.

What is it about the well-known and well-loved parable of the Good Samaritan that explodes worlds? A man asks Jesus “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” He’s saying, “Show me the path to the life of God.” Jesus knows the man is a lawyer, so he asks, “What’s written in the Law?” The lawyer gives Jesus an A+ answer, quoting Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus congratulates him for giving the correct answer. “Do this, and you will live,” he says. But the man isn’t satisfied. He wants specifics. “Just who, exactly, is my neighbor?” When you think about it, that’s the same as asking “Who is not my neighbor?” This lawyer wants to know where to draw the line.

Jesus tells the parable of two important people who walk past a bloodied man by the side of the road, followed by the Samaritan, who stops to help him. Then he asks, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of bandits?” Our clue about how the parable explodes worlds is when the lawyer answers Jesus’ question. He says, “The one who showed him mercy.” He can’t even make his lips form the words, “The Samaritan.” Samaria was the next province over from Judea. The Samaritans were ethnically related to Judeans and practiced a similar but not identical religion. By the time Jesus told this parable, they hated each others’ guts.

And yet Jesus chooses a Samaritan as the hero. The man who stopped to help could have been anybody, and the point could have been, “Anybody can be your neighbor.” That’s a nice, broad principle, and even if it doesn’t specifically say that a Samaritan can be a Judean’s neighbor, it includes it, right? Then we could call it the Parable of the Good Person. But this is a story intended to upset our categories of good and bad. It’s intended as a sharp rebuke to the lawyer’s question, “Just exactly who is my neighbor?”

Note that Jesus doesn’t answer that question. He doesn’t say, “Your neighbor is the faceless, nameless guy in the ditch.” He turns the question on its head, basically saying, “You want to know precisely how the Law defines the word ‘neighbor’? Never mind that. Here is how to be a neighbor.” When you’re being a neighbor, then the question, “Just who is my neighbor?” is irrelevant.

Who is the last person on earth you’d ever want to think of as a good guy? Whom do you have the hardest time imagining God working through? Think of a group of people that scares or angers you. That’s what the Samaritan represents. If that group or person makes you feel uncomfortable, you know you’re on the right track.

The Samaritan teaches us several important lessons. First, God comes where we least expect God to be, because God comes for all and to all. Second, “loving” looks like helping those in need. And third, the Samaritan, the one who acted as a neighbor, crossed a boundary. The hatred between Samaritans and Judeans went both ways, and yet this Samaritan stepped outside of his national and ethnic loyalty. He did not say, “I save my compassion for my own people.” He crossed a boundary that was a hard and fast line to Jesus’ listeners. When Jesus says, “Go and do likewise,” that boundary crossing is part of what he’s telling us to do.

“Anybody can be my neighbor” is an abstract feel-good idea. It doesn’t raise any of our specific prejudices. That’s why the church I served for many years hung a “Black Lives Matter” banner on the front of the church building. It wasn’t meant to say, “Black lives matter more than white lives” or “Black lives matter more than police lives,” any more than Jesus was trying to say that Samaritans are more important or better than Judeans. The point of saying “Black lives matter” is that Black lives are in danger and at the same time, unfortunately, the phrase “Black lives matter” still sticks in the throat of a lot of white Americans. Recently, the large yellow “Black Lives Matter” painted on the street one block from the White House was ordered removed.

When we say, “Lives matter” or “All lives matter,” we can think about generic people, who we just might picture as white. As William Sloan Coffin said, “To show compassion for an individual without showing concern for the structures of society that make him an object of compassion is to be sentimental rather than loving.” That’s why Jesus chose a Samaritan for this story: To preach love of neighbor, unity with neighbors, and togetherness with neighbors, even when that means challenging the structures of society that would tell us specific people are not our neighbors, not worthy of our love.

Do this, and live, says Jesus.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Deuteronomy 6:5
Leviticus 19:18
Debie Thomas, “Go and Do Likewise,” July 3, 2016, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1023-go-and-do-likewise
William Sloane Coffin, Credo (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2004)
Doug Muder, https://weeklysift.com/2015/11/02/samaritan-lives-matter/.

Naaman’s Surprise

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2 Kings 5:1-14

This is a “Once upon a time….” story, part of a series of stories in the Hebrew Scriptures legitimating royal succession and describing the holy men, in this case, the prophet Elisha, through whom God speaks and legitimates rulers. In the process, these stories also tell us something about Israel’s God.

Naaman is a powerful general of the Aramean army who has led his country to many victories, including over Israel – thanks to God. In the ancient worldview, it made sense that God granted an enemy victory. Given that Israel confessed their God as the one true God, supreme over all other gods, the only way to explain a defeat like the one suffered at the hands of the Arameans (1 Kings 22) was to interpret it as God’s will.

Naaman’s life should be a bed of roses except for the fact that he has leprosy, which in biblical terms could have been any number of skin diseases, not just Hansen’s disease. What matters is that because of his disease, he is considered unclean. This was a serious issue, not just physically, but also vocationally and socially; it’s likely he’s unable to do his job. Skin disease stands between Naaman and full honor.

General Naaman owned a slave girl captured in a battle with Israel. Though pivotal to the story, the girl is not named. She tells Naaman’s wife (also unnamed) that there is a prophet in Samaria (the southern portion of what would later be called Israel) who could help Naaman. The wife passes this information along to Naaman. Naaman figures it’s worth a try; nothing else has worked. He takes it up with his own king, who gives him the green light. The king probably wants his general fully functional. The king offers to write a letter of introduction to the king of Israel. Kings talk to other kings, not to prophets and certainly not to slave girls or wives.

The king’s letter of introduction says, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” Letter in hand, Naaman and an entire entourage head out to meet with the king of Samaria with what Frederick Buechner summarizes as “a suitcase full of cash”: gold, silver, lots of clothes (no idea why), chariots, horses.

Before arriving at the Samarian court, Naaman has his king’s letter of introduction delivered to the king of Israel/Samaria. Upon reading it, however, the Samarian king is beside himself with fear and anger. He tears his clothes (a sign of mourning) because he believes the general has concocted this impossible request as an excuse to provoke war. He says, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me” (2 Kings 5:7).

Somehow the prophet Elisha gets wind of the king’s concern. He sends word to his king to calm down and just send Naaman to him, “that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel” (2 Kings 5:8). Naaman shifts gears and drags his whole entourage and all that treasure to Elisha’s house. I believe that we, the audience, are supposed to be giggling at this point.

Elisha is home, but instead of coming to greet the general himself, he sends one of his messengers. Through the unnamed messenger, Elisha tells Naaman he should go wash himself seven times in the river Jordan. That’s it.

The general is furious. He came all this way, with all these fabulous gifts, with his entire entourage, expecting to be treated like the important man he is, and not only does this guy tell him to degrade himself by dipping into a local river, which he could have done back home, but Elisha doesn’t even have the courtesy to come out and greet him and tell him this himself. He turns around to head home.

But then an unnamed aid stops him and says, “If the prophet had given you a hard task you would have done it. Why not do it when it’s something easy.” So Naaman returns to the Jordan River and after immersing himself seven times, he is miraculously cured.

The lectionary doesn’t include the verses that follow, in which Naaman goes back to Elisha’s house to thank him and offers to pay him a princely sum, which Elisha refuses because it was God who made it happen, not Elisha.

This compelling little story offers us a handful of lessons:

• Naaman had a lot of things working against him. He was a foreigner, pledged allegiance to a foreign king, and most likely had defeated Israel in battle. He was ritually unclean. He worshiped a foreign God. And yet, Elisha heals him. God heals him. The scandal of this story is the reason Jesus mentions it centuries later (Luke 4:27). God’s healing, favor, and blessing are not limited to “our side” – our tribe, our religion, our ethnicity, our nation.

• While this story features two kings, a general, and a prophet, it is the unnamed, ordinary, “less than” people who make things happen. The slave girl, the wife, the messenger, Naaman’s aid; these people have the compassion, the wisdom, and perhaps the vulnerable creativity to think outside the box, to see that things don’t have to work the way we might expect them to work, or even the way we might think we deserve to have them work. The slave girl, in particular, a spoil of war and likely separated from her family, showed Naaman unexpected compassion. God can work through anyone, of course, but this isn’t the only place in Scripture where it seems God prefers ordinary folks. Don’t be surprised if God accomplishes God’s goals through someone you might not expect, including you.

• It would be unfair and cruel and to say that one must be humble in order to be healed. That puts the responsibility for healing on the person in need of healing, in a “blame the victim” sort of way. However, there are situations in which pride and power get in the way of learning, growing, and discovering. Here, Naaman was able to set aside his assumptions about the treatment he deserved. Disease is indeed the great leveler. But it was a near miss. We do well to keep an open heart and mind to the movement of God’s Spirit.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Brian C. Jones, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-14-3/commentary-on-2-kings-51-14-7
Stephen B. Reid, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-14-3/commentary-on-2-kings-51-14-5
Dennis Sanders, “In 2 Kings 5, the VIP Characters Aren’t the Ones Who Make a Difference,” https://www.christiancentury.org/sunday-s-coming/ordinary-people-2-kings-5-1-3-7-15c
W. Dennis Tucker, Jr., https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-after-epiphany-2/commentary-on-2-kings-51-14-4
Robert B. Coote and Mary P. Coote, Power, Politics, and the Making of the Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1990).

Drop Everything

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Luke 9:51-62

This passage begins, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” The phrase “set his face” is unique to Luke and signals Jesus’ single-minded intention to face what is waiting for him in Jerusalem. This passage is peculiar to Luke, describing first an encounter with hostile Samaritans, and then interactions with three potential disciples whom Jesus dismisses as insufficiently committed to costly discipleship. Together, they focus on what it means to live a Christian life, to live as a follower of Jesus.

Messengers have gone ahead of Jesus and the disciples to arrange for lodging and food, but this Samaritan village does not welcome them. Luke explains this is “because his face was set toward Jerusalem” (verse 53). Although Jews and Samaritans worshiped the same God and claimed the same ancestors, they were divided over other aspects of their religion. While Jerusalem was the only proper location for Jewish worship, Samaritans worshiped at Mount Gerizim. The fact that Jesus was headed to Jerusalem for Passover meant he was planning to keep the feast in the wrong place.

His disciples suggest taking revenge on the inhospitable Samaritans by raining fire down on them. Whether or not they believed they had the power to do this, Jesus rebukes them. Vengeance is not the way of discipleship; restoration is. He moves on to another village, which may also be Samaritan, but perhaps more hospitable. Certainly, this is not Jesus’ last word about Samaritans.

In the three interactions with wannabe disciples that follow, it sure sounds as though Jesus is saying, “If you can’t be all in right now, don’t bother.” With Jerusalem on his mind and in his future, undoubtedly he knows discipleship will become more dangerous, if not deadly. Part of what’s going on might be that he needs those who follow him to know that they may face the same danger, or even the same death.

But he also wants to convey the urgency of the Kingdom of God and the total commitment required by the revolution of hope that he’s leading. This passage is about the Kingdom of God. Jesus mentions it twice in these verses. The Kingdom of God is the metaphor Jesus used to describe what our world would look like if God were the ruler of all of our hearts and minds, rather than the current rulers of this world. In Jesus’ context, the current rulers included Caesar and his lackeys, men like Herod, who had colonized the whole Mediterranean world through force and domination. They were motivated by greed and power over others, and did whatever it took – corruption, violence, exploitation – to stay in power. It also included the religious elite who had created a caste system from the law. There were the privileged few who had the time and means, not to mention the right gender and ethnicity, to follow the law meticulously so they could be insiders, and there was everybody else, who ended up “less than.” These kingdoms or systems kept people poor and powerless. People were not free to determine their own lives or their own future. And they were stuck in that way of looking at the world.

There is an alternative: the Kingdom of God, and Jesus says again and again that the Kingdom of God is here, now, among us. The prophet Micah describes the Kingdom of God this way: “[T]hey shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” Brian McLaren puts it like this: “At the center of the beloved community is good news – a framing story that calls humanity to creativity, harmony, reconciliation, justice, virtue, integrity, and peace, because these values reflect the character of the Creator whose world is our home and in whose presence we live and move and have our being. In short: we are all part of one kingdom, one beautiful whole, with one caring Creator, who is faithful to us even in our stupidity and sin. God calls us to reconcile with God, one another, and creation, to defect from the false stories that divide and destroy us, and to join God in the healing of the world through love and the pursuit of justice and the common good.”

The framing story that currently dominates the world has no power over the Kingdom of God framing story except the power people give it by believing it. Believing an alternative and transforming framing story may turn out to be the most radical thing any of us can ever do. But believing takes commitment. It takes keeping your hands on the plow. So Jesus tells the would-be disciples to drop everything and get on board with the Kingdom of God. Does he really mean we shouldn’t take care of our beloved family members’ funeral arrangements, or even say goodbye? I don’t believe he does. I think he’s reacting to his own disciples’ cluelessness in seeking revenge against the Samaritans. They are showing him they still don’t get it.

I hardly need to list the ways humankind is self-destructive and world-destructive; I hardly need to catalogue what we’re doing to ourselves by buying into, believing in, clinging to the old way: We’ve threatened the very survival of creation with an economy that doesn’t respect the limits of the planet; there’s a growing gap between rich and poor, triggering resentment, blaming, and hatred; people continue to solve these and other problems with violence and retribution; and the world’s religions, including our own, not only fail to address all this this but often make it worse, and to a large degree would rather focus on what happens to us after we die.

Broken, broken, and broken. The only way out is believing with all your heart – all our hearts – that God wants something better for us and offers it to us – now. Of course we need to care for our families – bury our loved ones, say goodbye when we leave – but the disciples’ reaction to the Samaritans reminds Jesus how our preoccupation with our own families, our own tribe, can get in the way of seeing ourselves as citizens of the kingdom of God. This is the same Jesus who welcomed little children and healed lepers, who included outcasts and spoke with women and Gentiles. He’s not opposed to caring for families. There are times when dealing lovingly with our families is the kindest, most compassionate, most faithful thing to do; the problem is when we get stuck in thinking only about “me and mine.”

Jesus leads us away from the fanatic extremism that elevates one tribe, one belief system, one country over all others. Jesus is saying, “Drop everything” – drop the tribal, me-and-mine, us-versus-them way of seeing the world. Fanaticism – ethnic, religious, national, whatever – is the old way, the old framing story that gets us in trouble.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Brian D. McLaren, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crisis and a Revolution of Hope (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007)
Jeannine K. Brown, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-13-3/commentary-on-luke-951-62-8

The Sound of Sheer Silence

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1 Kings 19:1-15a

Once again, this week I’m looking at the Hebrew Scripture passage, where we find Elijah, the prophet of God, tired, discouraged, and suicidal. And yet, God is with the prophet.

The story begins with King Ahab reporting to his wife Jezebel that Elijah not only trounced the prophets of Baal in a contest of “Whose God is the Real God?” but followed this up by slaughtering them all. Yikes. This is why we preach the New Testament, right? Jezebel responds by threatening Elijah, which means Elijah must run for his life. He heads for the wilderness, which as one commentator notes is less like Vermont or Oregon and more like an Arizona desert. He’s on foot but he keeps running, fearing Jezebel’s men are in pursuit. Finally, utterly exhausted and spent as well as terrified, he sits down under a tree and prays, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life.” (verse 4).

Maybe most of us never had to run for our lives, but I know few people who haven’t at some point been so tired, so exhausted, so emotionally spent and dejected, so completely discouraged and maybe hungry as well that they haven’t wondered whether there was a reason to continue.

God sends an angel who tells Elijah to get up and eat. Drink some water. Such great advice, and besides, the angel provides the picnic. Strengthened, Elijah heads to Mount Horeb, known elsewhere in Scripture as Mount Sinai. It’s the mountain of God; Elijah wants to meet with God. Elijah ducks into a cave and God asks him an excellent spiritual direction question, an invitation to take stock and reflect: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah recites his complaint: “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away” (verse 10). It sounds as though Elijah is feeling sorry for himself, but really, who can blame him? He’d done all the right things: he humiliated the prophets of Baal and their sponsor, Jezebel; he’d proven the Lord God is the Lord God. Instead of glory and gratitude, however, he’s running for his life.

God tells Elijah to stand before the mountain because God is about to pass by. There at the mouth of the cave, Elijah witnesses a mountain-shattering wind, an earthquake, and a raging fire. But the passage tells us God is not in the wind, earthquake, or fire. After the fire is “the sound of sheer silence” (NRSV), translated elsewhere as a “gentle whisper” (NIV), or a “still small voice” (KJV) (verse 12). This is when Elijah wraps his face in his mantle, presumably to protect himself from the face-to-face encounter with God. God is revealed not in the dramatic forces of nature but in silence, in a still, small voice.

God repeats the question, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (verse 13). The prophet gives the exact same response, word for word. Did he learn nothing from the encounter with God? Is he still feeling sorry for himself? Or, perhaps, something is different. Perhaps the prophet is no longer afraid. Perhaps he’s ready to listen when God gives him his marching orders to go to Damascus. Go, continue the work God has given you. Elijah isn’t alone. In fact, there are at least 7,000 others faithful to God, some of whom will be anointed as God’s prophets (verses 15-18).

The story describes God’s chief prophet hitting his lowest point. One lesson might be that success doesn’t always lead to victory, vindication, and glory. As Peter Gomes put it, “failure is often the price of success.” But perhaps at rock bottom, Elijah is able to recognize that the work to which he is called is God’s work, not his own. Like the wind, earthquake, and fire, the work is God’s doing. At the mouth of the cave, he experienced the strength of God. It is God’s strength he needs to rely on, not his own strength. Relying on God’s strength, he can go do the new tasks God gives him, including anointing his successor.

The themes of reversal, disappointment, and exhaustion may feel current to congregations (and pastors) worn down by political polarization, threats to democracy, immigrants in peril, economic hardship, deferred dreams, dislocated populations, and the specter of global war. Or where ministry itself feels like a desert. Elijah’s story assures us that God provides food for the journey as we wander through our metaphorical deserts, remembering what we have left but not knowing where we will end up. Daniel Hawk writes, “It removes the burden of pursuing the spectacular, the exciting, and the dramatic, resets our focus on the unspectacular, quiet voice of God that animates ministry within the mundane, and tells us that neither we nor God are finished yet. There is more yet to do and more yet to be disclosed, in a new and unfamiliar desert.”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
L. Daniel Hawk, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-12-3/commentary-on-1-kings-191-4-5-7-8-15a
Peter J. Gomes, Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1998).
Roger Nam, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-12-3/commentary-on-1-kings-191-45-78-15a-3