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Cut to the Heart

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Acts 2:14a, 36-41

    This passage in Acts reports that three thousand people joined the Christian movement as a result of one sermon – a very humbling statistic for any preacher.  In contrast, where I live, if you confess to being a Christian you’re likely to get funny looks.  Recently I learned there are people describing themselves as Christians who say empathy is toxic, a means of manipulating people’s emotions to accomplish a “liberal” agenda. Yikes. No wonder we get funny looks.

    At first blush, it seems that the words of Peter’s Pentecost sermon would be the last thing we’d say to people who already think we Christians are curiosities at best, loathsome at worst.  “Repent, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven … Save yourselves from this corrupt generation,” preaches Peter.  It isn’t only our un-churched friends and neighbors who are uncomfortable with that kind of language. A pastoral intern I worked with called words like these – repent, sins, save – “stained-glass words.”  They are churchy words, words that have been trivialized in our culture, shrunken into something simple and even punitive when they have a deeper, richer, more life-affirming and more hopeful meaning than most people outside the faith, and many within it, assume.

    Sin might be the scariest of these words.  Maybe it’s easiest to think about sin in the context of another of these stained-glass words, repent.  In Scripture, repent is not feeling really sorry for what you’ve done, nor is it feeling ashamed of the horrible person you are.  In the Hebrew Bible, to repent means to return to God, to reconnect with God.  According to this definition of repent, sin is being disconnected from God.  This disconnection happens when, individually and corporately, we ignore God, turn from God, don’t take God into account.  Which we all do, at least some of the time. 

    Repent has the same meaning in the New Testament, with one nuance.  The Greek roots of the word combine to mean “go beyond the mind that you have.”  Go beyond the mind shaped by culture to the mind that you have in Christ.  In the New Testament, repentance is the path of reconnection, the path of transformation.

    Salvation simply means to be saved from our predicament.  What is our predicament?  Peter says we need to be saved from this corrupt or crooked generation.  These words have a hellfire and brimstone sound to them, but what they require us to do is look at sin as something that surrounds us.  Sin isn’t just personal peccadillos but is pervasive in the structures and systems of society.  When Peter says to the crowd, “this Jesus whom you crucified,” he isn’t talking to the people who hammered the nails into Jesus’ hands, or even to the crowd who shouted, “Crucify him!”  He’s not looking for particular people to blame.  He’s referring to this systemic aspect of sin.  We are not all equally blameworthy for the systems of violence, injustice, and death that surround our personal lives, our society, and our world.  But we are all caught up in vicious cycles of violence and injustice, whether as victims or victimizers or some of both.

    That is our predicament.  This predicament looks different for different people.  We can look around us and see victims of obvious violence and oppression: victims of war, punitive immigration policies, racism or sexism or homophobia, and we can say, yes, those people are in a predicament.  Those people need to be saved.  But for others, the predicament might feel like something’s missing or wrong or broken.  Your daughter is getting a divorce.  Your son is trapped in an addiction.  You’re in debt, you hate your job, your relationships give you more pain than joy.  You can’t get off the hamster wheel of getting ahead or spending or worrying.  You’re afraid that this is all there is.

    Peter’s listeners are “cut to the heart.”  Perhaps the story of the crucifixion has opened their eyes to their predicament and to their need for rescue from all that led to the crucifixion: empire, domination, injustice, the fear of losing privilege and power.  Or perhaps they’re overwhelmed with the good news of great joy that God is willing to die at the hands of God’s people and then come back again, not to make them pay, but to give them more love. 

    It turns out it isn’t Peter’s preaching that saves three thousand people.  What saves them, what saves all of us, is the story itself.  A better translation of “save yourselves” is “let yourselves be saved.”  Salvation is an experience more than a doctrine; it is that moment when you feel cut to the heart, and you have a clarity about God’s love that both reveals your predicament and empowers you to address it.  When the people ask Peter what they should do next, it isn’t to get step-by-step instructions for salvation – it’s to respond to what they have already received by the grace of God through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.  Peter says, “Be baptized.”  Baptism is just the symbol of that new power and new life.

    Grace, baptism, the power of the Holy Spirit.  More stained-glass words.  This story in Acts is about God’s mission in Christ to us as well as to Peter’s First Century audience.  We are included in the promise he proclaims: “For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls.”  But it is also about God’s mission through us. As Christ’s disciples, we are given the task of spreading the Good News of the promise we have received – the promise, as Frederick Buechner put it, “that Jesus lives on among us not just as another haunting memory, but as the outlandish, holy and invisible power of God working not just through the sacraments [of baptism and the Lord’s Supper] but in countless hidden ways to make even slobs like us loving and whole beyond anything we could conceivably pull off ourselves.” 

    That is the Good News.  How do we spread it?  How do we do that in a culture that not only doesn’t like the word salvation, but much of the time, is oblivious to any predicament calling for it?  A culture that often seems to be actively working to maintain our predicament, even to the extent of treating empathy as toxic – unless, of course, that empathy is directed toward people in their own group, and toward efforts that support the structures that privilege that group and deny the humanity of other groups?

    At a church I served, carved into the wood on the inside of the pulpit where no one but the preacher could see it was a verse from John’s gospel: “Sir, we would see Jesus” (John 12:21).  That reminder is not just for preachers.  It is for all of us.  Individually but even more, as the church, the body of Christ in the world, it is our job to show people Jesus. To show them the loving, empathetic, compassionate Jesus who relentlessly sided with outsiders and the downtrodden, who forgave sinners and preached peace, who stood up to empire rather than collaborating with it, whose cross tells us how far God’s love will go to bring us back to God. Who “lives on among us not just as another haunting memory, but as the outlandish, holy and invisible power of God working … in countless hidden ways to make even slobs like us loving and whole beyond anything we could conceivably pull off ourselves.”   

    When George Buttrick was the chaplain at Harvard, a student came to his office and announced that he didn’t believe in God.  Buttrick responded, “Sit down and tell me what kind of God you don’t believe in.  I probably don’t believe in that God either.”  I wonder what I’d hear if I asked one of my neighbors who is likely to give me a funny look, “Tell me what it is you think Christians believe and do that is so threatening.  I probably don’t believe those things either.  Tell me what kind of church you mistrust.  I’m willing to bet that I don’t go to that kind of church.  Tell me.”

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.   

Resources:

Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of Christianity (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancico, 2003).

Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1991).

Debbie Blue, “Reflections on the Lectionary,” in The Christian Century, March 25, 2008.

William H. Willimon, Interpretation: Acts (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1988).

Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (New York: Walker and Co., 1995).

The Easter Laugh

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John 20:19-31

I served a church in Marin County for nearly 15 years, and for nine of those years, we celebrated the Sunday after Easter as Holy Humor Sunday. Holy Humor Sunday is the revival of an old Easter custom begun in the early centuries of Christianity known as “Risus paschalis,” the “Easter laugh.” The custom was rooted in the musings of early church theologians, including Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom, that God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead. For centuries in Eastern Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant countries, the Sunday after Easter was known as Bright Sunday, and the week following Easter Sunday was observed by the faithful as days of joy and laughter with parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.

I’m not sure when this fell out of fashion. Was it with the Puritans, or during the Victorian Era? Was it during the 20th century with its own brand of Puritanism? Somehow, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection with joy and laughter became sorely neglected. Let’s face it: laughing in church hasn’t been encouraged. Many of us learned at an early age that giggling or laughing in church would earn us an angry “Shush!”

The custom of the Easter laugh has been recovered and reclaimed in recent decades, and I think it’s about time. I for one can’t imagine that the disciples didn’t laugh with surprise and joy at seeing Jesus, hearing his voice, maybe even giving him a hug, once they were past the fear stage. They knew the joke was on them, because they hadn’t believed what he told them. And far from being somber, I suspect Jesus himself was grinning from ear to ear.

It’s odd, when you think about it, that we assume that Jesus always spoke with a serious if not disapproving tone and a cross expression. Given the descriptions of his willingness to break bread with outsiders and the accusation that he was a glutton and a drunkard (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:24), I suspect that Jesus often spoke with a twinkle in his eye, maybe even with a chuckle or a belly laugh. Why is it that we insist Jesus was harsh and humorless? I believe that says more about us than about Jesus.

Take the speech he delivers to poor Thomas, the only disciple who was missing when Jesus showed up at their hideout that first Easter night. When Thomas finally shows up, he only asks to see what everyone else had already seen, and yet he’s known as “Doubting Thomas,” as though somehow his request proves his faith is inferior to the other disciples. But what if, rather than condemning or chastising Thomas, Jesus speaks not only with compassion but with humor. I invite you to imagine that when Jesus spoke to Thomas, he was laughing – not mocking him but chuckling with humor and tenderness. “Oh, Thomas, thank God you’re here at last! You have some serious catching up to do. And bless all those, all the coming generations of my disciples who will doubt, and question, but whose trust in me will nevertheless change who they are, and what they do with their lives.” And then he claps Thomas on the back, and they all share a good laugh.

As Reinhold Niebuhr once said, “Humor is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer.”

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

We Rise

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Matthew 28:1-10

I heard a true story about a priest at an Easter morning mass. He went to the pulpit and said, “You’ve heard the story. Think about it.” And then he sat down.

It’s tempting. How do you explain a story that defies explanation? The question on many minds Easter morning is, “Did the resurrection really happen?” I get it. Even though we shout, “Christ is risen!” in our calls to worship and sing, “Jesus Christ is Risen today…”, if I had asked my congregation to be as honest as possible in answering the question, “Do you believe in the resurrection?” I’d have heard about 250 different answers on a spectrum ranging from, “Yes, absolutely,” to “No way.”

Of all the Gospels, Matthew’s version might win the prize for “least believable.” Only Matthew describes an earthquake, a bookend to the earthquake at the time of Jesus’ death (Matthew 27:50-54). The earthquake announces the angel, whose appearance is “like lightening” – I picture him sort of sizzling and popping with power, radiating danger; I’d cast Chris Hemsworth in the role, so just picture Thor in dazzling white clothing. In the other gospels, the tomb was already open when the women arrive, but this buff angel rolls back the stone as the women look on. Jesus is gone; apparently, the stone was no obstacle. The angel sits on the stone, crossing his angelic arms, and glances over at the security guards – only Matthew mentions these guards (Matthew 27:62-66) – who are in some sort of terror-induced coma. You see the irony: the living look dead and the dead are alive? The angel doesn’t speak to the guards. His assurances are only for the women: “You don’t need to be afraid.”

The angel says Jesus has been raised, just as he said he would. Jesus predicted his resurrection three times in Matthew’s gospel (Matthew 16:21, 17:9, 20:17-19). The angel then says, “Go tell the disciples. Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee.” The women take off and run headlong into Jesus. In awe and surprise, they grab onto him and Jesus echoes the angel: “You have nothing to fear. Go tell my brothers I’ll meet them in Galilee.” Matthew doesn’t explain how all this works, or even what it all means. Like the priest, he tells the story and sits down.

The Gospels don’t spell out what resurrection means. They do show us a lot about the person who was raised – about Jesus. As a child, he was a refugee (Matthew 2:13-15). As an adult, he had no place to lay his head (Matthew 8:20). He broke the rules about holiness. He spoke out against the government (Matthew 22:15-22). He insisted that mercy triumphs over judgment (Matthew 5:7, 9:13). He chose to love and live among religious and political outcasts and called them beloved children of God – and that made him an outcast, as well (Matthew 9:10-13). He called proper, upstanding people hypocrites (Matthew 23:1-36) and said that love was more important than money, power, status, everything (Matthew 22:36-40) – so important that we need to love even our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48) – our enemies, for God’s sake. That’s why he was killed. As someone put it, Good Friday is not a celebration of religion; it’s a warning to religion.

That’s who Jesus was and that’s who was raised. That’s who God chose to raise. It wasn’t just shocking; it was positively scandalous. So what does that tell us about God? What does it tell us about us?

The New Testament has an unusual way of describing Jesus after the resurrection. He’s “the firstborn of the dead” (Colossians 1:18; Revelation 1:5), or the “firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15); the firstborn “of many brothers [and sisters]’ (Romans 8:29); the pioneer of faith (Hebrews 12:2), leading the way into a new day, a new era, a new way of life, a new creation. So it makes sense that the risen Jesus calls the disciples his brothers.

Easter doesn’t celebrate that one man rose from the dead. Easter celebrates new resurrection life for all of us. For all of us, now. Jesus was just the first, but all humanity can rise from what is deadly – deadly to us, and deadly to our whole world. Not sometime in the future, but now. The Gospel writers call Jesus “the son of man,” an enigmatic title that one of my seminary professors translated as the “the new human being.” We tend to skip over this “son of man” talk because it’s confusing, but maybe the gospel writers used it all the time because it matters. Maybe what they’re trying to tell us is that Jesus is the first of a new generation of humanity; Humanity 2.0, we might say. Resurrection invites us to join him in Humanity 2.0, in “resurrection life.” Resurrection life says, “You don’t have to wait for some distant future to start practicing compassion, nonviolence, reconciliation, reverence, joy, hope, and peace. You can leave the old humanity behind and start practicing Humanity 2.0 now.” We can join the resurrection, now. We can rise. Now.

“Did it happen?” is the wrong question. The right question is, “Is it happening?” The promise of the resurrection is not simply what God has done, but what God is still doing. Brian McLaren writes, “As the sun rises Easter morning, everything changes. The emphasis shifts from what lies behind to what lies ahead of us, from what we have done to what God is doing, from what we have been to what we shall become.”

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Herman C. Waetjen, The Origin and Destiny of Humanness (San Rafael, CA: Crystal Press, 1976).
Brian D. McLaren, “Joining the Resurrection,” April 8, 2012, http://www.patheos.com/Progressive-Christian/Joining-the-Resurrection-Brian-McLaren-04-09-2012

Palms, Passion, or Bagpipes?

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Matthew 21:1-11
Matthew 26:14 – 27:66

The two Matthew passages in this Sunday’s lectionary are designated “Liturgy of the Palms” (Matthew 21:1-11) and “Liturgy of the Passion” (Matthew 26:14-27:66). If you’re a preacher, do you choose one or the other, or both? Choosing one feels like skipping an important part of the story. Choosing both is a lot. As I sifted through these passages, I realized there are many, perhaps too many, possible points of contact: How do we honor the One who comes in the name of the Lord? What do we mean when we shout, “Hosanna!” which means “Save us!”? What would happen if we stood up to power, however peacefully? How are we complicit in injustice? Do we blame others and wash our hands of the matter as though we’re powerless? Do we disappear when the going gets tough, as the disciples seem to have done? Who are the innocent victims in our world today? Can love overcome violence? Is there such a thing as redemptive suffering? These passages explore betrayal, ritual and sacrament, friendship, crowd dynamics, remaining silent in the face of accusations, corrupting power, Jesus’ identification with every person who ever felt God-forsaken, and Jesus’ and therefore God’s experiencing rejection and suffering. And this is far from an exhaustive list.

As one commentator notes, “This story is not a documentary; it is also not a fiction. Instead, it is a proclamation of faith.” It is a proclamation of faith that these events happened and even more, that these events have meaning for us. We know Mark, Luke, and John tell the story slightly (and at times widely) differently. In all the Gospels, however, we see humanity at its worst and God’s answer of abiding, forgiving love that conquers death. So, must we decide which fragment of this story ought to be the focus in worship? How do I know what the person in the pew needs to hear this weekend? How can I guess which verse hits you where you live, or offers you the solace you desperately need?

I’m grateful to Brian Maas, who writes, “There is something about the wail of a bagpipe that just seems especially appropriate to the nexus of experiences and meanings that takes place on Palm/Passion Sunday.” He describes a practice in churches he has served in which the palm procession is accompanied by a bagpipe. Maas writes, “The piper bears an instrument ideal for the day and its colliding narratives and competing themes. No matter what they play, some will hear celebration, some militancy, some somberness. Whatever the notes, the meaning belongs not to the piper but to those who hear them.”

Maas continues, “The preacher too is an instrument of proclamation on Palm/Passion Sunday, and needs to be given permission – encouragement – not to try to address all that’s happening as Holy Week commences. It is enough to speak the truth, to repeat the stories of the day, and to let each listener hear what they need for the moment. In merely proclaiming (not explaining or reconciling) the triumph and the threat, the nobility and the betrayal, the preacher will make it possible for each listener to hear what they need of the Gospel – be it the hope of a coming king, the acknowledgement of a prophet in conflict with injustice, or the empathic compassion of a suffering servant.”

Holy Week offers a huge buffet for the grieving and the guilty, for the battered and the bruised, for the heart-sick and the hopeful, for those seeking justice and those seeking peace. Offer the whole story. Offer music, because it speaks to the heart. Even offer a bagpipe.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Melinda Quivik, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sunday-of-the-passion-palm-sunday/commentary-on-matthew-2711-54-4
Brian Maas, “There is something about the wail of a bagpipe that seems especially appropriate this Sunday,” in The Christian Century, March 31, 2023, https://www.christiancentury.org/sunday-s-coming/palms-passion-preachers-and-pipes-matthew-21-1-11-26-14-27-66

Lazarus

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John 11:1-45

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died,” say the dead man Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha, to Jesus. It is a familiar pang, a familiar feeling during times of grief or tragedy, or when we’re overwhelmed by monumental problems: “God, where are you?” “God, couldn’t you have done something to prevent this?” “God, why did this happen?” “God, I feel so helpless.”

The story of Lazarus is highly symbolic, full of meaning, and full of questions. Jesus says and does all sorts of things that not even the people right there with him understand, not to mention those of us trying to figure it out two thousand years later. Why did Jesus lollygag? Why is he so extremely disturbed – the Greek word for “greatly disturbed” is very strong here – when it appears that he could have arrived in time to heal Lazarus? For whom does he weep? Is it for Lazarus? For humanity? Or for himself, because in John’s Gospel, this episode turns out to be the match that lights the fuse of the plot to arrest and kill him?

The miracle itself is the most spectacular moment in the story, but the miracle dramatizes the central point, revealed in the conversation when Martha questions Jesus about his delayed arrival and Jesus assures her, in turn, that her brother will rise again. Martha agrees and recites the belief that at the end of time all the dead will rise from the grave. This is the correct religious response, and yet Jesus pushes her beyond this, or more accurately, he pulls her back from the distant future into the immediate and concrete present. “I am the resurrection,” Jesus says, “and the life.” “I AM.” The meaning and consequences of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection have immediate implications. And then, Jesus shows us this symbolically with the raising of Lazarus – not after Easter, not after his own death and resurrection or at the end of time, but right then and there.

The promises of God are not only about life eternal with God after we die or something that kicks in at the end of time. Rather, the Gospel should make a real, concrete difference now, make things possible now, open up opportunities and options now, transform relationships now. The promises of God are present tense, not just future.

In the dramatic scene by the tomb, Jesus asks the mourners who surround the sisters to roll away the stone. Then he calls Lazarus by name. Lazarus hears and emerges from the tomb, but in order for him to be truly free from death, the by-standers need to unbind him from his burial cloths. They help Lazarus into the new life Jesus offers. Both in rolling away the stone and in this unbinding, we see that Jesus’ power over death, his power to give us life, is passed along to the community. The community, in other words, is to participate in God’s action, to join in completing God’s redemptive act.

The Greek word for church is ekklesia. The word literally means, “the called out ones.” Like Lazarus, those in the Church are called out. We are called out from that which is death-dealing to that which is life-giving. As God’s called out ones, we are to call out others, and to do the dirty work of removing the wrappings that bind people to a living death, that hold them back from the life of love and belonging and connection that God wants for all. One way we are called out is to be community for each other. Community all by itself is life-giving and death defying; we see this in the close friendship of Jesus with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. A church community, in particular, is life-giving in the way it welcomes people, enjoys fellowship, and seeks to respond to people in crisis. A life-giving church community does these things not just because the people like each other but because we are called out – called out to defy death, and community defies death. We are the ones to whom Jesus can say, “Unbind him. Let her go.”

Lazarus will die again, but the community empowered to unbind and set loose has endured, persisting through the centuries in works of courage and mercy. None of the changes in worship or music style, leadership, buildings, technology, or even cultural changes like secularism, post-modernism, and pluralism can stop the power of the Holy Spirit working through communities to make a difference in God’s world right here, right now.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
David Lose, “Present-tense Salvation,” April 2, 2014, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3135
Gail R. O’Day, “John,” in The Women’s Bible Commentary, Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe, eds. (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992).
Elisabeth Johnson, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1924
Herman C. Waetjen, The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple (New York: T & T Clark International, 2005).

I Will Fear No Evil

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Psalm 23

“I will fear no evil.” I long for these words to be true for me. Sometimes they are true. Other times they are a hope. Not that I wish I were never, ever afraid. There really is such a thing as healthy fear, as every parent of teenagers wishes kids would remember. Fear helps keep us safe, and we are hard-wired for self-preservation.

But fear can also be unhealthy and unreasonable. Freud said it’s reasonable for a person to be afraid of snakes in the heart of the jungle, but it’s not reasonable to be afraid of snakes under the carpet in your apartment. Unhealthy fears can paralyze us, rob us of joy, make us hide our true selves, and live a diminished life. Fear can also cause us to try to control or dominate others, develop hatreds and prejudices, build up armies, start wars, commit acts of terrorism, and fail to stand up for what we know is right. Rather than preserve us, these fears poison us.

So when the psalmist says, “I will fear no evil,” it’s these fears to which he refers. It’s these fears that not only do not preserve us but actually threaten our safety and the safety of the world. In response to a terrorist attack a few years ago, public theologian and author Brian D. McLaren wrote, “As a first step in protecting our values and safety, we must know who and where our greatest enemy is. Our greatest enemy is not the enemy out there or over there. Our greatest enemy is the invisible army that lives inside each of us and therefore among all of us, camouflaged, hidden, subtle. Within us hide terror cells of fear that tempt us to react in folly rather than act in wisdom.” This enemy within tempts us to respond to evil with evil, rather than seeking to overcome evil with good. It tempts us to build power bases among “some of us” by building fear and prejudice against “others of us.” The ringleader of all these inner enemies, writes McLaren, is pride, both personal and national, that tells us we are better than others and so we deserve special privileges or special exemptions.

How do we figure out which fears are really the enemy inside us? Which are the snakes under the carpet? Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote that more often than not, fear involves the misuse of the imagination. So perhaps a place to begin is with an honest look at our fears. What is true? What is folly? Maybe all our fears have both a degree of truth and a degree of ridiculousness, and the trick is figuring out what’s ridiculous, and then treating it that way. For example, there was a meme making its way around the Internet a while back that said, “Muslims make up 1% of the population, commit .5% of the mass shootings, and account for 10% of U.S. doctors. So if you’re ever at the wrong place at the wrong time and get shot by a Christian, don’t worry. There’s probably a Muslim that can help.”

How do we deal with those fears that have more truth than ridiculousness? The psalmist tells us, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me.” In The Message, Eugene Peterson translates this verse, “Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I’m not afraid when you walk at my side.” The temptation, I think, is to rely on platitudes about God’s presence. God’s presence with us is profoundly true, but how does that become real for us when we’re afraid? We know the psalmist doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be afraid of. The Lord is not a shepherd who makes all the bad and scary parts of life go away. This is a psalm that says there are green pastures but also dark valleys and enemies. It says we can get lost, and sometimes we do. It doesn’t say there’s no evil, or that evil will never touch our lives. It doesn’t say God will intervene to protect us, as much as we wish that were true.

And yet, says the psalmist, in the face of evil, he will not fear. Walter Brueggemann writes, “It is God’s companionship that transforms every situation.” But what good does God’s companionship do when bombs land on a girls’ school or ICE agents murder protesters? I can imagine the response of some might be, “You can keep your God; give me an assault rifle. Or an M-1 Abrams tank.” But then, is that standing up to evil? Or is it capitulating to it? Isn’t that what fearing evil looks like? I agree with William Sloane Coffin, who wrote, “Frankly, nothing scares me like scared people, unless it’s a scared nation.”

Rabbi Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, said, “The Twenty-third Psalm is the answer to the question, ‘How do you live in a dangerous, unpredictable, frightening world?’” That sounds like a lot to ask from a psalm, even a comforting and familiar psalm. But there’s more to it than comfort and familiarity. Besides addressing fear, the psalm talks about revenge. If our first impulse in the face of evil is fear, our second impulse is vengeance. “You spread a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows,” writes the psalmist. The psalmist doesn’t ignore the cold, hard fact that there are people in the world who mean him harm. But as soon as the psalmist mentions his enemies and confesses his frankly petty desire to make them jealous by eating a sumptuous feast right in front of them while they look on with their mouths watering, he moves into a more important confession. He confesses the goodness of God and the bounty with which he has been blessed. The movement in the psalmist’s thinking goes like this: “I have enemies. Man, I would really love to rub their noses in the fact that God has blessed me. Wow, God has blessed me! Surely goodness and mercy will follow me.” And it’s that last thought that carries the day. His impulse to take revenge is short-circuited by the deep awareness of God’s grace and love. The energy he would have spent on retribution is transformed into joyful thanksgiving.

It’s a different way of approaching a threat, isn’t it? Pausing to reflect on God’s love and grace before reacting in fear and revenge? It opens up the possibility of transformation, which might even include the enemy.

It is love and only love that transforms us from people who live in fear and seek revenge into people who choose to end the cycle of fear, hatred, and revenge. It always has been. It always will be. John’s first letter tells us, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:1819). Martin Luther King, Jr., again, wrote: “Hate is rooted in fear, and the only cure for fear-hate is love. … We say that war is a consequence of hate, but close scrutiny reveals this sequence: first fear, then hate, then war, and finally, deeper hatred.” The same sequence causes the hatred we call prejudice. It’s fear – the fear of loss of economic privilege or social status – that leads to the hatred that leads to dehumanizing treatment and even violence, which in turn create more fear and hatred.

We love because God first loved us. This transforming kind of love comes from God, and it takes prayer and practice and community and time – maybe a lifetime – to let God’s limitless love come alive in us. That’s why theologian Karl Barth said, “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”

This poem by Michael Leunig speaks to our time, and perhaps to all time:
There are only two feelings. Love and fear.
There are only two languages. Love and fear.
There are only two activities. Love and fear.
There are only two motives, two procedures,
two frameworks, two results. Love and fear.
Love and fear.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:

F. Emelia Sam, “3 Reasons Why Fear Is Actually a Good Thing,” October 8, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-f-emelia-sam/why-fear-is-a-good-thing_b_8258746.html.
Brian D. McLaren, https://medium.com/@amprog/we-protect-our-nation-s-values-and-safety-by-continuing-to-strive-to-live-up-to-our-ideals-d0ab27b8896e
Timothy F. Simpson, “The 23rd Psalm in an Age of Terror: A Pastoral Response to Boston,”
April 16, 2013, http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/the-23rd-psalm-in-an-age-of-terror-a-pastoral-response-to-boston/
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Antidotes to Fear,” in Strength to Love (Harper and Row, 1963; reprinted as a gift edition by Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010).
William Sloane Coffin, “Loving Your Enemy,” February 6, 1983, in The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin: The Riverside Years, Volume 2 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008).
PBS Interview with Harold Kushner, November 26, 2004, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/november-26-2004/harold-kushner/15271/
Michael Leunig, https://mail.leunig.com.au/works/prayers

Blessed Are the Peacemakers

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Matthew 5:9: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

We all woke up Saturday to learn that we Americans have begun another Middle Eastern war based on dubious intelligence claims. This morning we learned that Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed 3 U.S. service members, at least 9 people in Israel, and 4 people in other countries in the region. In Iran, the U.S.-Israeli strikes have killed at least 133 civilians, including, reportedly, dozens of school children, and wounded 200 others, according to HRANA, the media agency of an Iranian rights group based in Washington.

War is deadly. That’s the point. I grieve for the civilians who died, and I grieve, as well, for the members of the military who were killed. Maybe all soldiers are aware they could die in combat, but soldiers don’t make policy or decide when to go to war. Did these soldiers or their grieving loved ones have a personal stake in this particular conflict? I doubt it.

When I was a teenager during the Vietnam War, I was certain I was a pacifist. I find the question of pure pacifism more complicated now than I did then, and I look forward to reading a book on the topic written by my colleague Ben Daniel, to be published later this year. Ben’s book, Grace Over Guns: Pursuing Peace in a Militarized World, should be released by the end of this summer.

What I am certain about is that Christians are called to be peacemakers. In 1980 (practically ancient history at this point), my denomination’s General Assembly adopted a report entitled, “Peacemaking: The Believer’s Calling.” Based on Matthew 5:9 as well as the rest of the rich scriptural heritage of peace and justice in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, and based also in the Reformed tradition that historically has been committed to world-transforming action, the forty-plus page report states, among other things, “we believe that these times, so full of peril and tragedy for the human family, present a special call for obedience to our Lord, the Prince of Peace. The Spirit is calling us to life out of death. … We are at a turning point. We are faced with the decision either to serve the Rule of God or to side with the powers of death through our complacency and silence.”

We are faced with a decision either to serve the Rule of God, or to side with the powers of death through our complacency and silence. So, what does it mean to be a peacemaker? I’m grateful for some excellent exegetical work done by April Hoelke Simpson, who writes, “One way to answer this question is to pay attention to how the term eirēnopoios [the Greek word translated as “peacemakers”] was used in the ancient world.” The word occurs in the New Testament only in this verse, but outside the New Testament, it’s used by Xenophon and Plutarch to refer to “those who are committed to peace rather than to war.”

Another clue is that Jesus, a devout Jew, certainly would have been shaped by the rich meaning of the Hebrew word for peace, shalom, which includes not only lack of conflict but also safety, welfare, prosperity, and completeness on an individual and group level. “Peacemaking,” therefore, is the active pursuit of wellbeing for all, especially those for whom such wellbeing has been denied. As “The Believer’s Calling” puts it, “We know there can be no national security without global security, and there can be no global security without political and economic justice.”

Jesus says that peacemakers will be called huioi theou; literally, “sons of God,” or, in more contemporary and inclusive language, “children of God.” While I celebrate that all God’s people are “children of God,” the way Jesus uses this phrase here may point to something more. Simpson writes, “[I]n the context of the first-century Roman Empire, when Matthew was written, the term ‘son of [a] god’ was politically significant. Multiple emperors – not least Rome’s first emperor, Augustus – were granted the title ‘son of god.’ … In texts about Augustus, we find repeated reference to the idea that he was an agent of peace for the whole Roman Empire.” This means Jesus’ choice of words here, naming his peacemaking followers “sons of God,” is subversive. Simpson writes, “Whereas Roman rhetoric portrayed its rulers as those who had the divine right to rule and establish peace, Jesus tells his followers something different: true peace comes not through Rome but through you. You are agents of peace in the world, agents who bring reconciliation and genuine wellbeing to those who need it. By being thus, you will be rightfully called the heirs of God. … The point is that Christians are called to be agents of peace in the world, and they are emphatically not to do so through a model of domination that conquers and suppresses in the name of ‘peace.’”

Are some wars necessary? I’m not sure. I am sure, however, that this war is a choice. There were diplomatic options for most of the stated aims of this armed conflict, a conflict not approved by Congress, a conflict that does not make Americans or the rest of the world safer. I turn again and again to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s wisdom:

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says, “Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Ben Daniel, Grace Over Guns: Pursuing Peace in a Militarized World (Harvey, ND: Herald Press, 2026
Peacemaking: The Believer’s Calling, https://www.pcusa.org/sites/default/files/8-peacemaking-believers-calling-1980.pdf
April Hoelke Simpson, “Commentary of Matthew 5:1-20,” January 22, 2023,
https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/beatitudes/commentary-on-matthew-51-20-3
Nicholas Kristof and Stephanie Shen, “A War of Choice Does Not Make Us Safer,” February 28, 2026, video:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010744432/a-war-of-choice-does-not-make-us-safer.html?searchResultPosition=2
Nicholas Kristoff, “The Folly of Attacking Iran,” February 28, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/opinion/trump-iran-war.html
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Loving Your Enemies,” in Strength to Love (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010)

How Does God “Keep” Us?

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Psalm 121

Psalm 121 is “A Song of Ascents.” Eugene Peterson (The Message) calls it “A Pilgrim Song.” It is a psalm sung by the people of God as they made their way to the temple in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is built on a plateau; no matter how you approach it, you’re traveling uphill. The temple was located on the highest part of the city of Jerusalem, so the entire journey was a journey uphill. The psalms were not just about the worship life of the people of God, however. The psalms were about all of life, every aspect, all goings and comings. The psalms remind us that our whole life is about how we worship God and how we abide in God’s presence, not just on holy days or on Sunday mornings, but at all times and in all places. As Wendell Berry writes, “There are no unsacred places. There are only sacred places and desecrated places.”

A form of the Hebrew word for “keep,” shamar, appears six times in the eight verses of Psalm 121. Clearly, God’s “keeping” is the psalm’s focus. What does it mean for God to “keep” God’s people? We might be tempted by the facile notion that if we trust in God, nothing bad will ever happen to us. “[God] will not let your foot be moved” sounds as though that may be the case. But we know that bad things happen to good people (and to bad people, and to all people) all the time. So, what does this “keeping” mean for us today? What does it mean for us to commit ourselves to God’s keeping, to trust in God’s keeping?

Verse 2 of the psalm gives us a clue:
“My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.”

It is central to this psalm that God is the author of Creation; as Psalm 24:1 puts it, “The earth is the LORD’s, and all that is in it; the world, and those who live in it.” We are part of Creation; we are of nature, not in it. The world God created sustains us with all we need to survive and thrive: food, water, clean air, rest, companions, our rational judgment, our compassion, and so much more. God’s creation “keeps” us; it is the “help” that God provides to every single one of us.

You might argue that not everyone has sufficient food and water, sufficient rest, sufficient companionship, and so on. God’s intention to “keep” us is threatened, not by anything God has done, but by human choice and action. The Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development notes, “’The foundational moral experience is reverence for the human person, and her/his environment.’ For centuries, Christian moralists have focused almost exclusively on the first part of this statement – ‘the person.’ The current environmental crisis extending from the later 20th Century to the present raises numerous challenges to that focus and other traditional approaches to Christian Ethics.”

It is impossible to have reverence for “the person” or any other creature without reverence for the Creation that sustains them. We always assume God cares that we stay within moral and spiritual boundaries. What about the moral and spiritual boundaries that preserve and care for God’s Creation? In an interview with Krista Tippett, biblical scholar and professor Ellen Davis said, “[T]he best index in the Bible of the health of the relationship between God and Israel or between God and humankind is the health of the land of Israel or the earth as a whole, its fertility. And I think at the root of it is the notion that we are a part of an intricate web of physical relations, which are at the same time moral relations.”

Our relations with the rest of Creation are moral relations. So doesn’t trusting God to “keep” us include reverence for God’s Creation? Doesn’t it mean committing ourselves to those boundaries that allow God to continue to sustain us, to “keep” us? Boundaries that value our fellow creatures, rather than driving them to extinction? Boundaries that ensure that our own species will survive and thrive? The question becomes not, “How does God ‘keep’ us?” but “Will we allow God to continue to ‘keep’ us?”

In the psalm, when the pilgrim lifts his eyes, he is making a choice (Psalm 121:1). He is choosing to look towards God, to worship God. There is no definition of worshiping God that does not include reverence for God’s Creation. We, like the pilgrim, are faced with a choice, a choice to live as though there are no unsacred places.

In this vein, the United Church of Christ reworked Psalm 121 as a Lenten prayer:

Living Psalm 121—Second Sunday of Lent

I lift up my eyes to the snow-capped mountains-
The green-sloped fields and the cliffs by the bay.
Oh, beautiful world!
Where will our help come? I cry to the skies.
Our guidance comes from God, our Co-Creator of heaven and earth.

Even as we sleep, our Maker will not rest.
Even when we turn our face away from creation’s needs,
God will continue to call us.

God who molds and carries the lands of
Israel and Palestine, United States and Mexico,
Russia, Botswana, Bhutan, Ecuador, and Australia
will neither slumber nor sleep-
Not as human walls are crafted, as sea levels rise, as land burns.

Our Maker offers us shade and tools
when temperatures climb and as hate surges.
Even as Creation burns with fevers,
we’re gifted the sun’s comfort and the moon’s compassion
to accompany us around the clock.

God our Maker will call us from all evil.
“Children, care for one another.
See this world as an extension of me and you,”
God will beg us.

And as we extend our hands to our neighbors,
to the grass below and sun above, we will see that God our Maker will keep our going out and our coming in
from this time on and until Heaven and Earth pass away.

Amen.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship-planning/selah-life-in-a-minor-key/second-sunday-in-lent-year-a-lectionary-planning-notes/second-sunday-in-lent-year-a-preaching-notes
Wendell Berry, “How to Be a Poet,” in Given (Washington, D.C.: Shoemaker Hoard, 2005).
https://interfaithsustain.com/to-care-for-the-earth-ethics-and-the-environment/
Ellen Davis, in an interview with Krista Tippett, https://www.dailygood.org/story/2497/the-art-of-being-creatures-krista-tippett/
https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/living_psalm_121_creation_justice_lent_2/

We’ve Been Telling This Story Poorly

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Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

Why were these verses in Genesis chapters 2 and 3 selected for the Hebrew Scripture lectionary on the First Sunday in Lent?

Many people would answer this question from the perspective of church history and tradition: these verses describe “the Fall;” they describe how “Original Sin” became a part of the human condition. For those of you from traditions that do not emphasize “Original Sin,” it’s the Christian doctrine that describes the state of sinfulness “inherited,” literally and physically, by all humans from Adam and Eve because of their disobedience to God in this very story. This doctrine insists that all people are born with a tendency to sin; we can’t help it any more than we can help the fact that we have blue eyes or curly hair. The connection with Lent is that, in many traditions, Lent is a “penitential season,” a time for renewed focus on our sins and our sinful nature, and therefore our need for remission of those sins through Christ’s death and resurrection. (Don’t get me started on atonement theory.)

Instead, notice that neither the word “fall,” nor the word “sin,” original or otherwise, appears in these verses. What we are dealing with are many layers of interpretation by men (yes, I do mean men) over many centuries, from the Apostle Paul to Tertullian to Augustine to Ambrose and on through the ages to Luther and Calvin; men who recognized their own inability to conform their behavior to God’s will for the world (i.e., love, justice, mercy, fairness, peace, generosity), and needed an explanation for it. Or perhaps an excuse. Certainly, there are snippets of scripture implying that we just can’t help sinning. The psalmist laments, “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). But as Cameron B. R. Howard writes, “The Bible is not the place to go if you want, like Joe Friday in the old TV show ‘Dragnet,’ ‘just the facts, ma’am.’ The Bible is not a collection of facts. It is a collection of stories, poems, songs, prayers, and remembrances.” The poetry of Psalm 51 describes the sorrow and regret of recognizing your faults and limits – which we all have. The etiological story of Adam and Eve helps to explain important questions about certain realities in life – why there is pain in childbirth, why the ground is hard to work, why snakes crawl upon the earth. Neither Psalm 51 nor Genesis 2 was intended to provide us with facts, either historical or biological.

As Marci Glass puts it, “We’ve been telling this story poorly for a long time.” Recent biblical scholarship has reframed the Genesis 2-3 creation story:

• The human has work and responsibility from the very beginning. God places the man in the garden “to till it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Eden wasn’t a work-free vacation.

• The traditional reading of the story assumes the first couple was perfect, without sin. The text doesn’t say that. The creation story in Genesis 1 describes the world as “good,” and an ancient Israelite wouldn’t have assumed that meant either perfect or sinless.

• The scene is usually portrayed with the woman alone as she’s tempted by the serpent, but a careful reading suggests that the man was present. The scene is of one piece: the serpent and the woman engage in conversation, she takes and eats the fruit, and she gives the fruit to “her husband, who was with her” all along! (Genesis 3:6). Why does this matter? Historically, Eve – and through her, all women – have been blamed for bringing sin into the world. This has been used as an excuse to keep women silent and prevent them from leadership in the Christian church (1 Timothy 2 :11-14). Dennis Olson writes, “The man failed to speak up, to speak out, and to join the woman in an alliance against the serpent’s attempt to appeal to the suspicions and yearnings that somehow were already within the humans’ heart” (emphasis added).

• The serpent is a very clever and talkative animal “that the LORD God had made” (Genesis 3:1). In other words, the serpent is one of God’s own creatures, not a satanic being from outside of creation. At any point, the humans could have told the serpent he was wasting his time, but as Olson noted (supra), there was something already in the human – before the bite of the apple – that was drawn to the alternative explanations the serpent offered them.

• If we decide to read this story as a “Fall,” we must see human curiosity and knowledge as a problem. Frank Yamada writes that the idiom, “good and evil,” which describes the forbidden fruit, means that the tree contains complete knowledge or knowledge from A to Z. Wouldn’t full knowledge be essential for human life? Isn’t curiosity not only desirable, but necessary for human thriving? Feminist biblical scholars have emphasized the theme of maturity in these verses. Even if acquired through disobedience, this exciting, if potentially dangerous, maturity is vital for human flourishing.

Following that line of thought – that what we see in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is not the introduction of sin into the world but a necessary if painful maturing to the realities of the human existence, Marci Glass compares the Adam and Eve story to the recent movie, “Barbie” (2023). After reading Glass’s insightful sermon, I wonder whether filmmaker Greta Gerwig had Adam and Eve in mind.

Barbie and Ken are having the time of their lives in the seemingly perfect world of Barbie Land, although in this tale, the women – the Barbies – run everything. Ken, on the other hand, is a helper, the secondary creation, an accessory to the main creation.

Things begin to sour for Barbie. Besides thoughts of mortality, her feet are no longer permanently curved for those tiny Barbie high heels. She faces a crisis similar to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Does she choose to stay ignorant of complex emotions and the reality of death by staying in Barbie Land? Or does she choose to step into the real world, with all its nuances, pain, beauty, and death? At first, she wants to return to the Eden of ignorance and bliss, but she recognizes that Reality is where she’ll figure out what’s happening to her.

Barbie encounters the person who invented her, played by Rhea Perlman. Glass writes that her creator “doesn’t control Barbie. She’s curious and even surprised to see the choices Barbie is making as she grows up and decides to become fully human, complex emotions and thoughts of death included.” She also warns Barbie of the consequences of the choice to become human: “Being a human can be uncomfortable. Humans only have one ending,” says the creator. Barbie weighs the consequences. Writes Glass, “She’s realized that she wants the complexities, and even the thoughts of death, that come with being fully alive. Because the real world is also where the magic happens. Where humans surprise us with kindness and beauty. Where we find community and love. And Barbie also wants creativity, which is a gift of the complexity of human existence. She wants to be ‘part of the people that make meaning, not the thing that is made.’”

We have indeed been telling the Adam and Eve story poorly for a long time. Perhaps it is less about the origins of sin than the reality of what it means to be human, including our tendencies to rebel, explore, question, and yearn for more than what we currently see and experience, some of which leads to pain and destruction, but some of which leads us to wonder, fulfillment, beauty, and truth. The serpent is simply one of God’s creatures; the yearnings and suspicions of the humans about God’s motivations are somehow already embedded within the human heart from the beginning – from the moment of creation. They simply needed the encouragement of the serpent to bring them out and convert them into action.

Humans continue to rebel against God, to resist the gracious boundaries that God has set for us, often to our own peril or to the peril of others. I’m not arguing there is no such thing as sin. However, I am arguing that this story doesn’t explain how sin entered the world. I don’t believe humans ever existed in a state of perfection. What this means is that Lent is not a path back to some mythic perfection. Rather, it is a reset, yet again. It is starting over, again and again, as we reflect on our relationship and our responsibilities to God’s boundaries, trusting, as Anne Lamott put it, that God loves all of us more than we can possibly imagine, exactly the way we are. And God loves us too much to let us stay like this.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Valerie Bridgeman, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-genesis-215-17-31-7-7
Justin Michael Reed, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-genesis-215-17-31-7-6
Cameron B.R. Howard, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-genesis-215-17-31-7-3
Dennis Olson, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-genesis-215-17-31-7
Frank M. Yamada, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-genesis-215-17-31-7-2
Marci Glass, “Leaving the Garden,” September 10, 2023, ttps://marciglass.com/2023/09/10/leaving-the-garden/
Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999).

Christ for Today

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2 Peter 1:16-21, Matthew 17:1-9

Most people have an, “I was there” story. “My mom took me to Woodstock” or, “I was in Milan when Ilia Malinin was the first person in 50 years to land a backflip in figure skating at the Winter Olympics.” The Second Peter passage is an, “I was there” story with a purpose, but also a couple of thorny challenges.

Sunday is Transfiguration Sunday, and both Second Peter and the gospel lectionary passage, Matthew 17:1-9, describe the event called the Transfiguration. Matthew’s version is part of his larger story of the life and ministry of Jesus. The author of Second Peter refers to the Transfiguration in a letter written sometime later. In this letter, the author has written the letter to a Christian community because he’s concerned that they are being misled by teachings he considers to be “false.” The letter is an attempt to get the church back on track. To bolster his authority and convince the church that it should listen to him rather than to these other “false” teachers, he says, essentially, “Trust me. I was there. I was there at that amazing and holy moment when Jesus was transfigured on the mountainside, and we heard the voice of God claiming him as God’s beloved son.”

The first of the thorny problems is that this writer wasn’t there. This letter is written in the name of the apostle Peter but biblical scholars as far back as the third century have been nearly unanimous in agreeing it could not have been written by Peter. It wasn’t uncommon in that era to write under the name of someone famous to borrow the authority of that more famous person. That sounds nothing short of fraudulent to us today, but this borrowed identity authorship was an accepted practice.

The next challenge is that the problematic teaching concerns the Second Coming of Jesus. In the early years of the Christian church, people were certain that Jesus would return at any minute. When he did not, some people adjusted their clocks and started making predictions about when it would happen sometime in the future, but others said it just isn’t going to happen. There are still parts of the Christian church that focus heavily on Christ’s return at end of the world and God’s concomitant judgment. In my tradition, the Reformed Tradition, we continue to use the language of the traditional belief in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, for example, but emphasize that Christians are called to transform society and enjoy the goodness of the creation here and now, not wait or even hope for it to be destroyed.

So we have this writer who thinks the church is going to hell in a hand basket because people have quit believing in a doctrine that isn’t central to many of us, and he lies about what he saw in order to impress his readers. You might be wondering, about now, whether the main lesson from this text is: “Don’t preach from Second Peter.”

But there is a better lesson. The author sees that the church in his time is losing life and hope; its viability and purpose are being threatened. What does he do? He returns to the Jesus story – to the life and teachings of Jesus. He returns to the roots, to the foundations, and in particular, to a story that describes an eyewitness account of a dramatic and mysterious event that speaks to Jesus’ uniqueness and to God’s power and presence. He is saying that the gospel, the good news, the Jesus story, is the source of his authority. He challenges his readers to confront those teachings that do not give life and hope for his time. The way he does that is to call on the memory of the eyewitnesses of Christ, glorified, to bring people back to what was foundational. He returns to the Jesus story.

Just like the author of Second Peter, we need to figure out how the Jesus story speaks in our time.

There are plenty of folks who don’t think much of that story, who don’t believe that Scripture or the Christian Church speaks very eloquently to our time. Is it fair to say that many if not most folks outside the church believe Jesus is irrelevant to the very real human social problems that we face; that his message is about the soul, its guilt before God, and the afterlife, rather than our world and its current crises? Is it fair to say that the conventional view of the Bible is that its purpose is to explain how to go to heaven, to legitimize certain religious institutions, and to serve as a timeless rulebook for certain aspects of moral living? People are longing for ways to respond to the big problems – violence, injustice, poverty, hunger, disease, the degradation of the planet – and they look at the conventional Christian Church and do not see that it offers any life or hope in our time.

In his book, Christ of the Celts, John Philip Newell raises the question, “Who is Christ for us today?” That is the question that German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked in the midst of the terrible wrongs that were being done in Nazi Germany. The question, Bonhoeffer believed, was not “Who has Christ always been?” but “Who is Christ now?” We too live at a time of transition as well as a time of deep wrong, including the destruction of the very creation that sustains us. On the one hand, never before has humanity been more aware of the oneness of the earth: that we are an interdependent living organism. On the other hand, that awareness is being opposed by some of the world’s mightiest political, economic, and religious forces. So who is Christ for us now? What is it we are to bring from the great treasure trove of our Christian household to the most urgent problems facing not just humanity but all of God’s creation? Can we be a part of leading this new consciousness instead of opposing it or being unrelated to it?

Second Peter challenges us: What doctrines or teaching of the Church, in our time, do not offer life and hope? Which of the teachings of the Church feed discord, separation, exceptionalism, discrimination, and human supremacy? When we return to the Jesus story, which of his teachings show us that compassion, empathy, and our connection to God’s creation matter more than legalism or “correct” doctrine?

It is time to ask:
• What doctrines or teachings of the Church permit us to exploit matter and dominate creation? On the other hand, what teachings of Jesus show us that matter matters, and domination of others is never okay?
• What doctrines or teachings of the Church create the impression that vengeance and judgment are what fuel the universe? What teachings of Jesus reveal that God’s self-giving love is at the heart of everything?
• What doctrines and teachings of the Church encourage the idea that my well-being is separate and unrelated to your well-being? What teachings of Jesus point to a salvation that comes only with one another, not in separation from one another?


Twentieth Century theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “No particular religion matters, neither ours nor yours. But I want to tell you something has happened that matters, … A New Creation has occurred, a New Being has appeared; and we are all asked to participate in it. …We want only to show you something we have seen and to tell you something we have heard … that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation, usually hidden, but sometimes manifest, and certainly manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ.”

Here and there. Now and then. In our time. In the Jesus stories, and in ourselves, may our hurting world see glimpses of the glory, the hope, the love, and the healing that our world so desperately needs.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Herman Waetjen in New Proclamation for Sunday, March 2, 2014, https://members.newproclamation.com/commentary.php?d8m=3&d8d=2&d8y=2014&event_id=19&cycle=A&atom_id=19694.
Pheme Perkins, Interpretation: First and Second Peter, James and Jude (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1995).
J. Philip Newell, Christ of the Celts (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).
Brian D. McLaren, Everything Must Change (Nashville TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2007).
Paul Tillich, The New Being (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955).