Suggestions for Getting Through Election Day

November 5, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

I’m normally not anxious; it’s just not my natural state of being. But today, I am anxious. The stakes are high. In 2016, it was inconceivable that Donald Trump could be elected as the President of the United States. I can’t help but think of Vizzini, the character played by Wallace Shawn in “The Princess Bride.” But like Vizzini, I learned that what I’d thought was inconceivable could happen, and it actually did. It is no longer inconceivable.

How do we get through the day, when, as the Washington Post puts it, “Whoever wins, half of voters will be surprised”? I’m not staying plugged into nonstop news; I’m not checking social media too often. My husband asked me if I’d watch the returns on TV tonight. I said I can’t not watch the returns.

But until then, I’m doing a handful of things to stay sane, and maybe these suggestions will help you, as well.

I’m walking, with and without my dog. Walking is a spiritual discipline for me, a way of praying. Solvitur ambulando.

I’ve been praying an excellent Prayer for Peace and Justice on Election Day by Teri McDowell Ott, published in the Presbyterian Outlook: https://pres-outlook.org/2024/11/a-prayer-for-peace-and-justice-on-election-day/ This prayer lifts up poll workers and election workers, about whom I have particular concern today.

I’m not on TikTok, but I’m grateful that a pastor colleague shared an extremely hopeful TikTok by author Brian D. McLaren in which he simply and compassionately describes the cultural forces that have brought us to this place in history. As he says, “Something is trying to be born, and something is dying.” https://www.tiktok.com/@brianmclaren/video/7432884450091961642 If you don’t know about Brian D. McLaren, I can’t recommend his books enough. Check out Faith after Doubt, Do I Stay Christian? And The Great Spiritual Migration.

That same pastor colleague shared a video by a man named Neal Foard, entitled “A Postcard from 1969.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaMkOES-y3Y. It turns out Foard has a YouTube channel chock full of encouraging stories about small kindnesses that speak powerfully of the goodness of people. I subscribed! Neal Foard will be a regular resource for me going forward. https://www.youtube.com/user/nealfoard/videos

For lunch today, my husband and I sought out a Mexican restaurant not far from our house. Like many restaurants in my city of Richmond, California, the people who work there clearly don’t speak English very often. It felt like the right place to be. Maybe your town has a similar restaurant where they speak mostly Spanish, or Vietnamese, or Chinese, or Farsi, or …. ?

I wrote and posted a blog that lifts up the values we should be taking into the voting booth if we claim to be followers of Jesus. https://solve-by-walking.com/2024/11/05/really-seeing-each-other/

I will probably make an Election Day playlist before the day is over. It will include, among other songs, “Yes We Can Can” by the Pointer Sisters, “Stand” by Sly and the Family Stone, “Put a Woman in Charge” by Keb Mo, and “Respect” by Aretha Franklin. Your ideas and suggestions are welcome.

How are you staying sane?

Really Seeing Each Other

November 5, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 12:38-44

The first thing we need to know about the Widow’s Mite, as this story in Mark’s gospel is often called, is that it is not one of those, “Wow, I need to be more like that” stories. Certainly, generosity and even sacrifice are praiseworthy, and we’re challenged by God’s abundance to be generous. But Jesus is not pointing to the widow who dropped her last two coins in the treasury so that the disciples can feel appropriately guilty that they didn’t do what she did. The lesson here is not, “God wants everybody to give away everything they have.” So take a deep breath, and relax.

This story is part of a larger set of passages that focus on Jesus’ confrontation with the scribes and Pharisees. It’s in this context that the widow comes forward with her offering. We can’t hear Jesus’ tone of voice as he watches her. Is Jesus saying the widow is an example of great faith and profound stewardship, or is he expressing his remorse that she’s given away the little she has left, and perhaps even feels compelled to do so? Notice that Jesus doesn’t commend the woman. He doesn’t applaud her self-sacrifice or tell us to “go and do likewise.” He just describes what he sees. Combined with his ongoing critique of the religious establishment, this tells us he’s more likely lamenting; maybe even accusing.

This widow has no way to support herself. The men in her life are supposed to be doing that; that’s how it was supposed to work in this ancient Middle Eastern culture. For some reason, the system isn’t working. We don’t know whether her male relatives refused to take her in, or whether they’ve all died. We do know that Torah requires that widows be cared for. Again and again, widows and orphans are lifted up as those who need society’s care because they can’t fend for themselves. And again and again, the Old Testament prophets condemn the rich and powerful for failing to do so. Jesus echoes those prophets with his warning at the beginning of the passage: “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes … They devour widows’ houses” – shorthand for taking pretty much everything they own – “and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.”

Something is broken. Instead of taking care of widows and orphans, the system somehow encourages these preening scribes, swishing about in their long robes. This widow has been encouraged by the tradition to donate as she does, but no one should be expected to give “all she has to live on,” particularly when she isn’t being cared for as the tradition promised her, while the religious elites grow richer. Jesus is condemning the hypocrisy and injustice that allow this woman to be poor and then keep her poor.

Perhaps most remarkable about this exchange, and maybe the heart of the passage, is that Jesus notices the woman in the first place. He sees her. This widow is just one in the crowd, with a small, even paltry offering. Yet Jesus sees her.

Who are we not seeing as we go about our daily lives? Who is it that deserves not only our notice, but our Christ-like compassion?

Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party’s paramilitary forces, Hitler Youth, and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany 86 years ago this coming weekend (November 9th and 10th, 1938). The problem was not that the Nazis didn’t notice the Jews living around them, but rather that they did not see them as genuine human beings deserving compassion and respect, let alone as kindred children of God. Rather, they saw them as opponents to be feared. “Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy,” said Captain G. M. Gilbert after the Nuremberg trials. Gilbert, an American psychologist assigned to German prisoners, became a confidant to several of the Nuremburg defendants, including Hermann Göring.

When I’ve seen photos of neo-Nazis and swastikas in the news lately, I can’t help but wonder whether my father, a World War II veteran, is rolling over in his grave. He would certainly be heartbroken. World War II: Talk about sacrificial giving. Would our nation be where we are now, on Election Day 2024, if more World War II veterans who put their lives on the line, who lost friends and loved ones, were still around? If there were more people still alive today who saw the Holocaust and responded with compassion? I think not. This coming Monday is Veterans Day. Veterans are often used as patriotic tropes in our country, but how often do we see veterans with compassion? Between 2001 and 2021, more than 6,000 veterans committed suicide each year, and the rate of suicide is dramatically higher for younger vets. About a quarter of all homeless people in this country are veterans. Maybe a day off school and excessive flag-waving isn’t the best way to really see, thank, and honor our veterans.

David Lose writes, “… I think God is inviting us to look around and see each other, those in our community we know and those we don’t. And I mean really see each other – the pain of those who are discriminated against because of their ethnicity, the desolation of those who cannot find work and have been abandoned to fend for themselves, the despair of those who have given up on finding work and have lost hope, the anguish of those who have been exploited by sex traffickers. God is inviting us to see them, to care for them, and to advocate for a system that does not leave anyone behind.”

Take that into the voting booth with you today.

As Yourself

October 29, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 12:28-34

The exchanges at the beginning of the twelfth chapter of Mark remind me of the ongoing presidential campaign. The authorities question Jesus, debate him, even try to trap him. Jesus is nimble at avoiding the “gotchas.” Then a scribe steps forward and asks a short, sharp, simple question: What is the greatest commandment? It’s a hard fastball. It will show who Jesus really is. And so it does. Jesus answers, “Love God completely, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Everyone would have expected the first part of his answer, loving God. It is the watchword, the touchstone, the core of the Jewish faith in Deuteronomy Chapter 6. They may not have expected the second part, loving neighbor, but it wasn’t new; it’s in Leviticus 19. What’s new and surprising is the way Jesus connects the second part to the first part in a way that means that these two laws can’t really be separated, that they can’t really be understood apart from each other. You can’t love God, in other words, apart from loving each other.

The scribe says, “You’re right!” Jesus tells him, “You are not far from the kingdom.” The scribe is “not far from the kingdom of God” NOT because he gave the right answer – this isn’t about being the smartest kid in the class – but because the scribe understands this link between the two laws – that the only way truly to love God is to love other people as we love ourselves.

We tend to gloss over that last clause – the “as yourself” part. We might hear this from a contemporary, psychological perspective, a mandate for the kind of self-love that, in 2024, we know is important: the kind of self-esteem or self-respect that protects us from allowing others to bully or abuse us, that allows us to navigate life in a way that reflects that we are worthy of love and belonging. It’s an intriguing question: “Can we love others more than we love ourselves?” Many would argue that we really can’t.

But as interesting as that question is, that isn’t what the biblical writers have in mind. The Greek word Jesus uses is agape. C. S. Lewis defines this kind of love: “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” The biblical writers begin by assuming that people want their own ultimate good and will act accordingly. I believe this is true; even when we think of tragic examples of self-destructive behavior, behind them is a sadly broken idea about what it takes to achieve the ultimate good.

What that phrase, “as yourself” means is that we are to seek the well-being of our neighbor – of others – with the same zeal, the same energy, the same creativity, and the same commitment that we would pursue our own well-being. It means that your neighbor’s well-being is to have the identical priority to your well-being. Are you hungry? So is your neighbor. Feed him. Are you thirsty? Give your thirsty neighbor a drink. Are you lonely? Befriend someone who is lonely. Are you frightened, or sad? Find someone to comfort.

I suspect that when most people hear, “The well-being of your neighbor is to have the identical priority to your own well-being,” it sounds a little scary. Maybe a lot scary. What creeps into our hearts is fear – perhaps fear of scarcity, fear that there won’t be enough for me and mine, for my family, my tribe, my country – enough resources, enough well-being, enough whatever. Perhaps fear for safety, fear of the one we think of as “the other.” Again and again, we see that hatred isn’t the opposite of love; it is fear.

Here’s the thing: God doesn’t look at anyone and see “the other.” God is One, Deuteronomy tells us, and God includes us all in God’s oneness. The scribe in today’s passage gets it that we can’t love God without loving our neighbors, because the life of loving others is the life that creates justice, and freedom, and peace for us all. It is the life that is truly life, the best life, the life that the God wants for every one of us, God’s beloved children.

The best story I’ve heard that explains this is about an anthropologist who proposed a game to children of an African tribe. He put a basket near a tree and told the kids that the first one to reach the basket would win all the fruit. When he said, “Go!” they all took each other’s hands and ran together, and then sat down under the tree together, enjoying the fruit. The anthropologist asked them why they ran like that; one of them could have been the big winner. The children said, “Ubuntu; how can one of us be happy if all the others are sad?” “Ubuntu,” as an old friend explained to me , is a Zulu or perhaps Nguni Bantu word that is best summed up, “I am, because we are.”

We can’t achieve the life that God wants for us is by going it alone. We were never meant to go it alone. That is what is at the core of “love your neighbors as yourself.” That is the reason for the two Great Commandments. We are because our neighbors are. Our American myth of the self-made man is just that: a myth. It is a myth that denies the reality, the truth, of the two Great Commandments, and it is a myth that drives us farther away from the Kingdom of God. Dependence starts when we’re born and lasts until we die. Given enough resources, we can pay for help and create the mirage that we are completely self-sufficient. But the truth is that no amount of money, influence, resources, or determination will change our physical, emotional, and spiritual dependence on others. Not at the beginning of our lives, not in the messy middle, and not at the end. As Bob Dylan sang, “May you always do for others and let others do for you.”

Refusing to Be Silenced

October 26, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 10:46-52

“Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly.”

Bartimaeus is a blind man. He depends on the generosity of his neighbors, but they can’t do more than help him maintain his current situation as a blind beggar. Bartimaeus wants more than that, and this is central to this story, because when the people tell Bartimaeus to keep quiet, the subtext of what they’re saying is, “This is the best you can hope for.” Maybe they’re even saying, “This is just the way it is. This is normal.”

Walter Brueggemann writes that the crowd always has a stake in pretending that something that really is abnormal, in this case, blind begging, is normal. If it’s normal, it means no one needs to change. The folks around him don’t have to ask, “Why are some people forced to beg to survive, while others have more than enough? Why aren’t we taking steps to fix that? How could we fix it if we wanted to? What’s wrong with us that we are allowing this abnormal situation to continue?”

Nevertheless, Bartimaeus cries out. Jesus doesn’t hear him the first time, so Bartimaeus cries out more loudly. Eventually, Jesus does hear him, and does see him, and he heals Bartimaeus.

Silence can refer to something good: to awe before holiness, to peace amidst chaos. But in this story where the people are silencing Bartimaeus, it’s a form of coercion. This is a pattern we see throughout history and even today. Voices of dissent and voices on the margins are silenced. We see them silenced with voter suppression and gerrymandering, with smear campaigns and threats of violence, with gas lighting and mockery, with censorship and blacklisting, and with mass incarceration. It’s football season; a few years a quarterback who took a knee was silenced by teams who refused to hire him.

The Christian Church is and always has been challenged to decide whether to sign on with the silencers, or with the silence breakers. On October 31, 1517, 507 years ago this week, the story goes that Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the Wittenberg church, attacking the corruption of the Christian Church. When the Church attempted to silence him with excommunication, Luther is said to have defended himself, with, “Here I stand. I can do no other, so help me God.”

Luther’s namesake, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to the moderate white mainline Protestant pastors in Birmingham. They had tried to silence King and others in the Civil Rights Movement by labeling them extremists. This label implied that it was King and the civil rights advocates who were somehow dangerous, rather than racism that was dangerous. King wrote, “… though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.’ … Was not Martin Luther an extremist: ‘Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.’ … So, the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?”

In Bartimaeus and in these stories from church history, we see that silencing is a way to maintain the status quo in terms of power, wealth, and inclusion, and in terms of who is heard, who is seen, and whose stories are voiced. Silence breakers, on the other hand, are those who insist that the old patterns must be disrupted where those patterns hurt or oppress, and where those patterns allow or even encourage us to keep thinking something hurtful is just normal. Silence breakers seek transformation, and, yes, reformation.

We have an important election coming up in this country. Our vote is one of the most powerful and peaceful ways for us to speak the truth, to break the silence, to cry out about all the things that we should not accept as normal; things like school shootings, white supremacy, the fact that our very planet is in jeopardy, the fact that people remain unhoused and even the middle class is struggling to afford housing. It doesn’t make any difference what political party you claim: these situations are not normal. Your vote is your voice; your vote is a way to shatter the silence.

Greatness

October 16, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 10:35-45

When humorist Dave Barry landed a college internship with a magazine in Washington D.C., he wasn’t prepared for “the great Washington totem pole of status.” Barry writes, “Way up at the top of this pole is the president; way down at the bottom, below mildew, is the public. In between is an extremely complex hierarchy of government officials, journalists, lobbyists, lawyers, and other power players, holding thousands of minutely graduated status rankings differentiated by extremely subtle nuances that only Washingtonians are capable of grasping. For example, Washingtonians know whether a person whose title is ‘Principal Assistant Deputy Undersecretary’ is more or less important than a person whose title is ‘Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary.’” Washington parties, Barry says, were serious affairs at which everybody worked hard to figure out where everybody else fit on the totem pole, and then spent the rest of the evening sucking up to whoever was higher up.

In the Mark passage, the brothers James and John approach Jesus to ask for special treatment. Interpreters disagree about what motivates them. Is this a totem pole way of looking at discipleship? Could they be so clueless about who Jesus is that they’re imagining a triumphant scene with themselves sitting in positions of honor at King Jesus’ right and left? Or is it that Jesus has just told them for the third time what lies ahead in Jerusalem and they’re starting to wonder about their own futures? Either way, their request is grounded in their love for Jesus. Maybe that’s why Jesus doesn’t reprimand them, and instead, tells them they don’t know what they’re asking. He gently brings them back to the hardships that will come first, through the images of the cup of suffering and the baptism of death.

The other disciples aren’t pleased that James and John are jockeying for position. It seems that all the disciples are stuck in a totem pole way of looking at power: who’s on top, who gets the best seat at the table. Meanwhile, Jesus is up-ending the seating arrangement. He says that what the world usually calls greatness is not great at all. He refers to the Gentiles, the Romans who occupy Judea. These Gentiles think tyrants are great. Then Jesus gives the disciples a new recipe for greatness. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”

To be great is to serve. I believe many of us struggle with Jesus’ words as much as the disciples did when they first heard this, even if we’ve heard it many times. Sure, we know serving is good, but if you wish to be great, you must be a servant?

In order to grasp why serving leads to greatness, and not just in some sort of irrational, Jesus-always-loves-a-paradox sort of way, we need to remember that Jesus has been steering his disciples toward transformation – and along with them, us, and the whole world. Jesus knows that what’s behind the totem pole scenario is fear: fear that we won’t have enough, be loved enough; that we are not enough. He knows that what’s behind it is a way of looking at the world that says there are only so many pieces of the pie and so I’d better get my piece; that there are winners and losers in the world, and I’ll do whatever I can to be a winner.

It’s a way of looking at the world that has caused much of the suffering, disconnection, and violence that humanity brings upon itself. It’s this way of looking at the world that Jesus turns on its head when he heals people, forgives sins, touches the untouchable, includes the outcast, and breaks the rules that drag people down and disconnect them from community. From the beginning of Mark’s gospel, he’s insisted that God is near and claims us as God’s beloveds. Jesus has modeled the compassionate life that God wants the whole world to live; this, he says, is what God’s kingdom looks like. Jesus proclaims that this is good news, not just for those at the bottom of the totem pole but for all. Now, Jesus is showing the disciples that serving is the way out of the fear of “not enough,” and even the way out of “not enough” itself. Serving changes us, and changes our world.

Serving helps others, and it helps us. It heals others, and it heals us. It connects us with others, and it connects us with ourselves and with God. Serving is how God transforms the world and transforms us. Jesus’ lesson here is summed up by Richard Rohr this way: “Unless and until you give your life away to others, you do not seem to have it yourself at any deep level.”

“Unless and until you give your life away to others, you do not seem to have it yourself at any deep level.” Good parents always learn this. People in recovery in Twelve Steps groups learn this. The twelfth step is about serving others who need help with recovery, and the universal experience is that it turns out to be life-changing and healing for the person who is doing the serving, as well. A woman in recovery writes, “At first, I didn’t understand when my sponsor said, ‘You’ve got to give it away to keep it’ but after being around the Program for a while, I began to feel a lot of gratitude. I wanted to give back some of what was given to me so freely. I began to be a temporary sponsor for newcomers. It was then that I realized how this helping others business revitalized and strengthened my own personal recovery. I needed to help others as much for my own recovery as for theirs.”

“Unless and until you give your life away to others, you do not seem to have it yourself at any deep level.” The predictable trio of money, power and fame cannot give you yourself or protect you from the fear of “not enough.” The drive to be at the top of the totem pole cannot give you yourself, and in fact it feeds the fear of “not enough.” The greatness promised by the totem pole is illusory, a trap that leads to more fear, and more disconnection from self, others, and God. “Unless and until you give your life away to others, you do not seem to have it yourself at any deep level.” In a very real, non-paradoxical way, that is greatness.

Resources:

“Dave Barry Goes to Washington,” 2002, http://www.thisisawar.com/LaughterDaveWashington.htm.

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011).

The Eye of the Needle

October 6, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 10:17-31

Even people who claim to be Biblical literalists have their limits. You can practically see the skid marks when folks come to a screeching halt in front of this passage in Mark. “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me,” said Jesus. All of a sudden, reading the Bible literally isn’t so appealing. This is probably one of the scariest passages in the Bible.

But what if it isn’t a scary story? What if it’s a healing story? What if the key phrase in this passage is in verse 21: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him…”? Without this phrase, we can read Jesus’ instructions to give everything away either as a test to see if this man was faithful enough, or worse, as a requirement for entrance into the Kingdom of God. When we hear that Jesus says what he says out of love, however, that changes everything. Now Jesus is not setting the bar, he’s responding to need.

“You lack one thing,” Jesus goes on to say. Jesus doesn’t mean “lack” in the sense of “you can’t get into the Kingdom without it.” Rather, it’s more like, “There is one thing keeping you from the full and abundant life that God wants for all of us.”

Jesus was a master at inviting people into transformation in exactly the terms that they needed. His response was always tailored to the individual standing in front of him, the person saying, “What must I do to live?” So, this man came asking what he could do to find the peace that has thus far eluded him, and Jesus has a specific prescription for him. “This is what will set you free. Let go of your wealth.” Now, wealth is essentially morally neutral, but it can be dangerous in these ways: It can make us believe we don’t need each other. It can cause us to believe that we are more deserving than others. We can fool ourselves into believing that we alone are responsible for our wealth, while we ignore all the factors besides our own hard work that contribute to our situation, factors like race, privilege, the GI Bill, parents who were educated or could loan us a down payment, living in safe neighborhoods with good schools, and on and on. Almost invariably, wealth insulates us from other people’s needs. In the Mark passage, this man’s wealth has formed a wall around his life and Jesus is inviting him to something better – something risky, and free, and full of the transforming power of the Spirit.

Jesus tells this man that the one thing that is keeping him from enjoying the abundant life God promises here and now is all his possessions. And this is important: he doesn’t just tell him to give away what he has. He tells him to give it to the poor. According to Jesus, our lives are inextricably bound up with the lives of others.

The man walks away, deeply troubled, because he can’t imagine that what Jesus is offering him is better than all his stuff. Jesus knows it’s hard. That’s why he says it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God. And no, the eye of the needle is not a small door in a larger gate into Jerusalem where the camels would have to be unpacked before entering. That interpretation is based on a fiction invented in the nineteenth century, a fiction that comforted people who liked to think that if it isn’t actually impossible for a camel to get through the eye of a needle, then it isn’t impossible for them to enter the Kingdom. But this gate-in-the-wall fiction misses the point because that interpretation assumed this passage is about going to heaven after we die, and it is not. The Kingdom of God, as Jesus said, is among us, within us, it is “at hand,” because the Kingdom of God is living now, now, as though we are part of God’s Kingdom, as though God is the ruler of our hearts and minds, here and now. What Jesus is saying with his eye of the needle comparison is that it’s very hard for people to let go of the belief, to be healed of the belief that living walled in by your money and possessions is better than what Jesus offers. Jesus invites this man to a life in which he is truly aware of his connectedness with God, God’s creation, and God’s people, aware that his well-being is intimately tied to the well-being of others – and that is what living in the Kingdom of God looks like.

We are left wondering: Would we walk away, too? I like the fact that we don’t really know the end of this story. We don’t know whether the rich man eventually got it. Faith is a journey, and it takes a long time to be a disciple. It is a process of transformation, being changed from the inside out and the outside in over the course of a lifetime. What this actually not-so-scary story in Mark tells us is that whatever Jesus asks of us, he will ask out of love, and in order to heal us. And as someone else once said, “A trip becomes a journey after you’ve lost your luggage.”

No Bouncers

September 24, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 9:38-50

Just before this exchange with his disciples, Jesus catches them arguing over which one of them will be the greatest. In this passage, the disciple named John has learned of somebody who is healing in Jesus’ name, imitating the work of Jesus. John has problems with this healer’s credentials. He’s not following us, John says. How do we know he has it right? The disciples seem to think that it’s important for those who follow Jesus to do so in one prescribed way, their way. This healer is not following the rules. It’s not surprising that the disciples would conclude their way is the right way; they’ve given up a great deal to follow Jesus. They’ve left their homes, families, and livelihoods. But it looks as though they’ve also become attached to being the special ones, the insiders.

Jesus gives a two-part response: First, he answers the specific question. Don’t stop him. If he’s doing it in my name, he’s on the right track. If he’s not against us, he’s for us. Look at what he’s doing, not at his credentials.

It’s the second part of his response that’s harder to read. These verses are often interpreted as a dire warning about temptations to sin. But what’s interesting here is that the warning is aimed at his disciples directly in response to their challenge to the credentials of an outsider. Jesus knows the damage that can arise from “I’m right, you’re wrong” relationships. His ongoing conflict with the Pharisees is over their insistence that anyone who doesn’t follow their rules is a spiritual outsider. Maybe he even had some insight into the evils that would be done in his name in the millennia to follow, when Christians encounter others, both other Christians and non-Christians, who aren’t doing things or believing things in exactly “the right way.”

Jesus is clearly exasperated. “Don’t get in the way of those who believe in me,” says Jesus. Don’t put obstacles, stumbling blocks, in the path of those who are not yet strong in faith. If you do, says Jesus, then you, the disciples, have stumbled; you’ve messed up big time. His harsh tone tells us how important it is that the disciples understand it’s their job to take the wide view of faith, not the narrow one. The followers of Jesus aren’t supposed to be a little clique off in the corner. One writer put it like this: “If, to use one of Jesus’ own analogies, the coming of the kingdom is like the start of a grand dinner party, then Jesus wants his followers to be like gracious hosts welcoming the guests…. Jesus neither needs nor wants bouncers guarding the door to the grand feast he is initiating.”

We are to welcome, wherever we find them, the allies of the Christian faith. When we see people doing those things that Jesus taught and in which Jesus rejoiced in others – mercy, justice, integrity, reverence, faith, love – welcome them. Make room for them.

Then Jesus says, “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” In the ancient world, salt was used to cleanse and preserve as well as to season. Jesus seems to be referring to both uses. The cleansing/preserving aspect is that the disciples are to be harder on themselves than they are on others; they are to hold themselves to high standards of service and compassion while at the same time making room for others on the journey of faith. If they do this, they will bring good flavor – saltiness – to their ministry, and to the world. They will be at peace with each other because they won’t be competing to be the greatest or scrambling to maintain discipleship as an exclusive, private club.

Resources: “A Season of Discernment: The Final Report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church,” approved by the 217^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) (2006).

He Took a Little Child and Put It Among Them

September 20, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 9:30-37

This chapter in Mark’s gospel begins with a glorious vision, what we call the Transfiguration. Three of the disciples see Jesus on a mountaintop, talking with Moses and Elijah, and they hear a voice coming from a cloud: “This is my Son, the Beloved: listen to him.” The disciples now have a better understanding about who Jesus really is and they must have started thinking in terms of what sort of power and glory was in it for them. Jesus, however, orders them to say nothing to anyone. Then for the second time he tells them that betrayal and death are in his future. They must be in utter denial about this because on the road back home to Capernaum, a few of the disciples begin to dream of being in high places with Jesus.

Back in Capernaum, Jesus asks, “What were you arguing about on the way?” but he already knows. He sits down and tries again to get through to his disciples: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” No wonder they were silent; they had argued about who was greatest of all and Jesus calls them to be last of all. They had heard these opposites before – to save your life, you have to lose your life, to be first you have to be last, to be great you have to be a servant. Jesus was always talking this way, but it was probably nearly as hard for the disciples as it is for us to reject the conventional definitions of what greatness is, what success is, who is important. We don’t really believe the meek inherit the earth, do we? In our culture, success is measured by where you live, what you drive, who you know, how much money you make, where you went to school, the degrees following your name, how many people you influence on TikTok; we live in a very competitive, status-conscious society.

So Jesus takes a little child and puts the child in the midst of the disciples. You might wonder why it just so happened that there was a child handy. In first century Palestine there were almost always children handy. Children were part of the fabric of life, and generally were allowed to roam freely in and out of people’s homes and workplaces. They served as neighborhood communication links. I can imagine a first century child reporting what’s happening over at the neighbor’s house, just like children do today. Maybe something like, “Joshua’s dad got a new camel.” But children had no status. They were little more than their fathers’ property. They didn’t “count,” quite literally. In the stories of the feeding of the crowds with the loaves and fishes, three out of the four gospels tell how many men were present but don’t mention women and children, who were most certainly there. A child was socially invisible.

But Jesus sees the child. And Jesus wants them to see the child. He wants us to see the child, too – and welcome the child, not because the child is innocent or perfect or pure or cute or curious or naturally religious. Jesus wants them to welcome the child because the child was at the bottom of the social heap. Children in Mark are not symbols of holiness or innocence; more often they are the victims of poverty and disease. Jesus brings the child from the margins into the very center. This child is not a symbol but a person, a little person easily overlooked, often unseen and unheard. And at the same time, a stand-in for all people at the bottom of the heap, regardless of age.

In 21st Century North America, we look at children differently, at least for the most part. We all want our kids to be safe, happy, and free from want or worry. We all want our kids to learn how to work hard and make sacrifices. The question is, “For what purpose?” To increase their status, or their parents’ status? Or to make the world a better place? To succeed as the world defines success? Or to serve the world as God calls them? Certainly, we need to value our children, encourage their gifts, and celebrate their successes. But even more, we need celebrate that they and every other child on the planet are beloved children of God regardless of their achievements. We need to treasure and care for not just our own offspring, but everyone, including the least, the last, and the vulnerable, with whom Jesus identifies in verse 37: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Be Opened

September 5, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 7:24-37

After a confrontation with some Pharisees, Jesus needs some alone time. He sets off for Tyre on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, north of Galilee, in present-day Lebanon. It was a region inhabited by Gentiles – pagans, non-Jews – so Jesus has left the land and people who are “clean” to enter a land that is “unclean.” He tries to remain incognito but almost as soon as he arrives in Tyre, a Gentile woman kneels at his feet, begging him to heal her daughter.

Unlike Jesus, this woman is in the land of her ancestors; the Israelites and their Jewish descendants are the more recent arrivals. But the Jews see her as foreign, maybe in the same way some people see Mexicans in Texas and California as foreign even though they arrived generations before the white settlers. In response to the woman’s plea, Jesus brushes her off, quoting an old proverb: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” I wish I could tell you that in the original Greek or in the context of first century Middle Eastern culture Jesus is not insulting this woman. But then as now, comparing someone to a dog is rude. Ancient Israelites and Jews in the first century despised dogs. Dogs were unclean scavengers.

It’s not what we expect from Jesus, but then again, maybe this is a glimpse at the humanity of Jesus. Like humans in our own culture, he looked at the woman and put labels on her: Gentile, pagan. Those labels came complete with a whole story that had nothing to do with the woman, because he knew nothing about her. The story had everything to do with the very human first century culture in which Jesus was immersed. The story that Jesus and everyone else he knew were told and believed was that his group, his people, were more deserving, more worthy of attention, benefits, privilege, healing, holiness. Her group, in contrast, was less than worthy in all those ways.

For centuries, commentators have tried to soften this story by saying Jesus doesn’t really have such an ugly prejudice; he’s just testing her. She passes the test, and so her daughter is healed. But that interpretation would make the woman the only person who has to pass the test of putting up with a racial slur before receiving Jesus’ mercy. That just doesn’t work for me. I am convinced that this woman changed Jesus’ mind. I’m convinced Jesus learned something.

If the woman is offended by Jesus’ remarks, she doesn’t let it show, but her response also contains a challenge – a lesson. She says, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” In essence: “We all eat the same food. Why shouldn’t we be at the same table?” Her response cuts to the very heart of Jesus’ own boundary-breaking, taboo-busting ministry of table fellowship. After all, he’s the one who eats with tax collectors and prostitutes. He’s the rabbi who breaks bread with sinners. The table is where Jesus shows the world who God is, and so the table is where the woman calls him out.

Jesus hears her. The ethnic and religious Other teaches him that Syrophoenician lives matter, reminds him of his very own Good News, and then shows him how he might push that Good News beyond the narrow confines of one people, one culture. The Jesus who never loses a verbal contest with anyone else in Scripture concedes to an audacious, female “foreigner”: “Because of your teaching, the demon has left your daughter.”

In other words, Jesus changes. He allows himself to be humbled, rearranged, and remade. Barbara Brown Taylor describes the moment this way: “You can almost hear the huge wheel of history turning as Jesus comes to a new understanding of who he is and what he has been called to do.” The Syrophoenician woman’s faith and persistence teach him that God’s purpose for him “is bigger than he had imagined, that there is enough of him to go around.”

Right after this encounter, Jesus heals a deaf man – another Gentile – in the region of the Decapolis. Placing his fingers in the man’s ears, Mark tells us that Jesus looks up to heaven, sighs, and says, “Be opened.” Jesus sighs. What kind of a sigh is that? Is it something like chuckling to himself when he realizes the words, “Be opened,” are about to come from his own mouth? Or – from God’s mouth? Be opened. Get it, Jesus?

Be opened. Be opened to the truth that being human isn’t so bad because like Jesus, we can learn, grow, and change. Be opened to the disruptive wisdom of people who are nothing like us. Be opened to the widening of the table. Be opened to Good News that stretches our capacity to love. Be opened.

Resources:

Herman C. Waetjen, A Reordering of Power (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1989).

Debie Thomas, September 2, 2018, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1907-be-opened

Wil Gafney, “The Woman Who Changed Jesus,” http://www.wilgafney.com/2017/08/20/the-woman-who-changed-jesus/

Stand!

August 24, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Ephesians 6:10-20

In the past, I’ve avoided preaching this passage because of the militaristic imagery of “putting on the full armor of God.” We humans have proven ourselves too ready to pick up actual weapons, and the church is guilty of conspiring with empire, intentionally and unintentionally, in its use of non-metaphorical force. The language in this passage can be dangerous.

However, the writer intended it to be metaphorical. Early Christianity was so pacifist that some early clergy refused to baptize members of the military unless they renounced their profession. The writer of the letter to the Ephesians subversively adapts a rhetorical form called peroratio that would have been familiar to his readers. A perortorio was the speech a Roman general gave to stir his troops before battle. I’m picturing Aragorn’s speech at the Black Gate in “The Return of the King.”

The use of military equipment as a metaphor is also subversive. All the equipment named is used for protection, not attack, except for the sword of the Spirit. That sword is the word of God, or spoken proclamation, and at verse 15 we’re told that what is to be proclaimed is peace. Some commentators note that the specific pieces of armor mentioned here are likely taken directly from the book of Isaiah which refers to belt (11:5), breastplate (59:17), footwear (52:7), helmet (59:17), and sword (49:2). And of course, each piece of armor stands not for something violent or oppressive, but for or truth, righteousness (not self-righteousness, but commitment to what is right), faith, and salvation. If the word “salvation” bothers you, another word for “salvation” might be wholeness, healing, shalom.

This text is not a battle cry in which a militant church will bring about God’s kingdom by attacking all the forces that oppose God. Rather, the call is for the new Christians to stand firm, to withstand the attacks from the society and culture around them. It’s important to note that the Ephesian Christians were a small minority of the population. They were surrounded by a culture with values very different from those taught by Jesus. If a majority population used these military metaphors, it could sound very different.

I was reminded of the effectiveness of a perortorio toward the end of Tim Walz’ acceptance speech at the recently concluded Democratic National Convention. Walz, a former football coach, said…

You know, you might not know it, but I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this. But I have given a lot of pep talks. So let me finish with this: Team, it’s the fourth quarter, we’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field. And, boy, do we have the right team. Kamala Harris is tough, Kamala Harris is experienced, and Kamala Harris is ready. Our job—our job for everyone watching—is to get in the trenches and do the blocking and tackling: one inch at a time. One yard at a time, one phone call at a time, one door knock at a time, one $5 donation at a time. Look, we got 76 days. That’s nothing. There’ll be time to sleep when you’re dead. We’re going to leave it on the field.

As it happens, I hate American football. I never liked football very much, but my brother-in-law’s slow deterioration and death because of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) from his years of playing football gave me an excuse to hate it. Still, I don’t have to like football to understand the purpose of pep talks. I understand that Walz is using blocking and tackling as a metaphor for taking a stand, for doing something when there is a fight worth fighting, and when losing that fight could mean disaster for many people. In the same way I don’t have to approve of war to understand military imagery when it is used to encourage and inspire people to take action in the face of evil. All the pronouns for “you” in this passage are plural: standing firm is not something we can do alone.

The writer’s call to “stand firm” reminds me as well of the 1969 song “Stand” by Sly and the Family Stone:

“Stand! For the things you know are right. It’s the truth that the truth makes them so uptight.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q49vjFN6Fsw.

Do Christians need this pep talk now? As noted, the armor is designed to help folks stand fast: it is not armor for aggressive action. Standing fast does not require a person to hurt a neighbor in any way. Still, it’s dangerous to classify those with whom we disagree as agents of evil. It would be especially dangerous if done by a majority population. So perhaps the question for us is whether those of us who trust that God is love and trust that loving God and neighbor is what it means to follow Jesus are in the minority in our society today. Then again, perhaps the better question is whether we need encouragement to keep putting one foot in front of the other as we follow Jesus.

Perortorio, pep talks, protest music. All are calls to take a stand; all are intended to prepare, fortify, and motivate people to face the fight ahead of them with determination, courage, and perseverance.

Resources

Sally A. Brown, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-21-2/commentary-on-ephesians-610-20-7

Richard Carlson, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-21-2/commentary-on-ephesians-610-20-6

Brian Peterson, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-21-2/commentary-on-ephesians-610-20-4

Sarah Henrich, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-21-2/commentary-on-ephesians-610-20-5