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The Power to Love

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John 14:15-21

This passage from Jesus’ Farewell Discourse begins and ends with love. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” says Jesus. “What commandments?” you might ask? In John’s gospel, Jesus gives only a single commandment, and it occurs in the chapter just before this one: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:14-35). He repeats this in the chapter that follows this one: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:12-13). 

“Love, love, love,” as Lennon and McCartney wrote; “All you need is love.” What does this love look like?  Jesus shows us: It looks like serving others humbly without concern for status or station (John 13:1-17). It looks like healing the sick (John 4:43-54, 5:1-14), giving sight to the blind (John 9:1-41), raising the dead (John 11:1-43), conversing with outcasts in a way that grants them dignity as God’s children (John 4:1-28), standing up for what is right in the face of power (John 2:13-19), feeding the hungry (John 6:1-14), and laying down his life for those he loves.     

Love one another.  If Jesus is our model, that’s a tall order. No one can hope to love others as Jesus did without help, and so Jesus promises that help. He will not leave his disciples orphaned (John 14:18). He will send the Spirit.  John uses the Greek word parakletos, or, in English, Paraclete. The word literally means one who comes along side you. It has been translated as comforter, helper, counselor, and encourager; the New Revised Standard Version translates it as “advocate,” the one who pleads your case, who takes your side, who intercedes for you, and who stands up for you. Note that Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit not as “the Paraclete,” but as “Another Paraclete.” Jesus was the first, which explains why this Paraclete will come only after Jesus himself departs. 

There have been Christian traditions that interpreted the Spirit’s advocacy role as interceding for us before God like a lawyer in a courtroom before a judge. In this interpretation, the Spirit is one who pleads our case that, though we have sinned, because of Jesus and his sacrifice we deserve to be forgiven. The picture of God that this implies – God as needing to be persuaded to love and forgive us – doesn’t fit with John’s confession that “God so loved the world that God gave the only Son…” (John 3:16).  David Lose writes, “So perhaps it’s actually the other way around. Perhaps it is the Spirit who intercedes on God’s behalf before us. That is, perhaps the Spirit is the one who comes to remind us of our identity as children of God, as sheep who recognize the voice of our shepherd, those for whom the good shepherd lays down his life. Because, Lord knows, that can be a hard identity to hold onto, a hard identity to believe is really ours, especially when we are stressed or frightened, unsure about our future and it feels like everything has been turned upside down.”

It is that very advocacy, that comfort, that encouragement that we need in order to keep Jesus’ commandments – in order to love one another. “We love because [God] first loved us” (1 John 4:19).  Jaime Clark-Soles writes, “What appeared to be bad news to the disciples, namely Jesus’ departure from them, turned out to be the best of news for both them and us. While Jesus walked the earth, his ministry was limited to one locale and one person, himself. Upon his departure, his disciples are given the Spirit and moved from apprentices to full, mature revealers of God’s love. And this happens not just to the first disciples, but all those who would come later, those who never saw the historical Jesus. You see, the evangelist [that is, the author of the Gospel of John] insists that present believers have no disadvantage in comparison to the first believers. Everything they were taught and they experienced is available to the same degree and with equally rich texture to us.”

Available to the same degree.  This is stunning, when you think about it. Jesus says, “In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:18-19). Wrap your head around that: Jesus is in God, and we are in him, and he is in us. We are included in him and in his ministry. Clark-Soles coined the word “Quattrinity” to describe John’s view of Christ’s believers: “In John, Jesus insists that the intimate relationship that exists between him, God, and the Spirit also includes believers. The believer does not stand close by admiring the majesty of the Trinity; rather, she is an equal part of it. John tries to push at this by grabbing hold of a number of terms and repeating them: abide, love, the language of being “in” (14:17 and 20), and later in the Discourse, an emphasis on “one-ness” (cf. 17:21-23). Johannine believers don’t ‘imitate’ Jesus; they participate in him wholly.”

In a couple of weeks, on Pentecost Sunday, the Church celebrates the Holy Spirit, our Advocate, our Helper, the one who helps us love by assuring us that we are fully loved.  In the Book of Acts, the Spirit comes after Jesus has ascended to God (Acts 2).  In John’s Gospel, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit directly from Jesus that first Easter night (John 20:21).  What matters is not how or when but our experience that the power of God’s love for us in turn empowers us to love.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:

David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2020/05/easter-6-a-spirit-work/   

Jaime Clark-Soles, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sixth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-1415-21-2

Refuge and Refugees

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Psalm 31: 1-5, 15-16

Commentator Joel LeMon puts it simply and bluntly: “This psalmist is a refugee.” He adds that the entire Psalter is refugee literature, written by refugees for refugees, giving voice to those who yearn for safety and protection. Though scholars disagree on exactly what date the psalm was written, this part of the book of Psalms is typically viewed as a response to Israel’s experience of exile.

“In you, LORD, I take refuge. … rescue me speedily. Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me.” Certainly, nearly everyone at some point longs for refuge and deliverance. This psalm speaks to us and for us in those moments. “I need your help, God. Rescue me; deliver me.” But LeMon reminds us that there are those for whom this is not a mere moment, a temporary crisis. There are those who live this psalm for months, years, even decades.

There is 7-year-old Alia, who fled her home in Aleppo, Syria and is currently living in Damour, Lebanon, and there is Bizimana, who fled his home in Rwanda and is now living in Nairobi, Kenya.

There are Wictoria, Vova, and their son, Sasha, who fled their home in Kyiv, Ukraine.

There is 75-year-old Achan, who fled her home in Pajok, South Sudan and is currently living in a refugee camp in Lamwo District, Uganda, and there is 24-year-old Fouzia, who fled her home in Kabul, Afghanistan, and lived for 14 years in Tajikistan,.

There are Noorkin and her son Yacob, who fled their home in Myanmar when Myanmar’s military and Buddhist extremist groups started clearance operations against Rohingya people. Noorkin is 40-years-old and Yacob is 10, and they’re living in Bangladesh.

The United Nations reports that as of the end of June 2025, 117.3 million people had been forced to flee their homes globally due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order. Among them were nearly 42.5 million refugees along with 67.8 million people displaced within the borders of their own countries and 8.42 million asylum-seekers. Incredibly, more than 1 in every 70 people on Earth has been forced to flee their home.

This psalm provides a stark reminder of the plight of refugees in every age. Though the identities and threats change, the experience of refugees remains consistent. They exist at the dangerous periphery of society. They are afraid, but they are also feared by the communities where they land. In 2025, the U.S. Government indefinitely suspended immigrant visa processing from 75 countries (see the full list, below). The common denominators appear to be poverty and/or countries populated largely by Muslims and people of color. The only more or less European country on the list is Russia.

The reason given for these exclusions is keeping the United States safe from terror. As Marci Glass points out, there is a risk in welcoming people to the U.S. “because people are people. We harm each other. We are not always kind. We have differing levels of mental health and stability. We have complicated family relationships and different understandings of how to live together. … We humans are a risky business.” But the real issue is the nature of that risk. Our fears – or at least, the administration’s fears – are not rational. A meme circulating the internet a while back illustrates the problem: “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.” Statistics show that we have a far greater chance of dying by being hit by a bus or falling out of bed than we do of dying by terror from a refugee from one of the countries listed on the ban.

This psalm reminds us of God’s fundamental identity as refuge. Again and again Psalm 31, like so many other psalms, portrays God as the place of protection for those seeking refuge. So what does that mean for Christians? Doesn’t it define Christian ministry as a ministry of and for refugees? Perhaps it invites us to recognize that people don’t become refugees by choice. As Marci Glass writes, “When your village is bombed, you flee. When ISIS invades your area, you flee. When famine or war make living in your home unsafe, you flee.” Perhaps it invites us to make an effort to meet some refugees and hear their stories.

Perhaps it invites us to join in the holy work of being a refuge.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
The list of countries banned from partially or completely banned from U.S. immigration:
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Myanmar, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, The Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, North Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Rwanda, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Yemen.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/12/restricting-and-limiting-the-entry-of-foreign-nationals-to-protect-the-security-of-the-united-states/

Joel LeMon, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-psalm-311-5-15-16-5
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/14/full-list-75-countries-visa-processing-suspended
Marci Glass, https://marciglass.com/2017/02/01/risk-and-refugees/, February 1, 2017.
https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/listicle/13-powerful-refugee-stories/
https://www.unhcr.org/about-unhcr/overview/figures-glance

Abundant Life

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John 10:1-10

It’s an occupational hazard of being a Christian that there are other Christians who think you don’t measure up. One of my favorite cartoons is one of Wiley Miller’s “Non Sequitur” strips in which a man and woman are standing in front of a church, looking at the church sign. The sign says, “The Church of We’re Absolutely Right and Everyone Else Is Wrong.” The man says to the woman, “…And ironically, it’s non-denominational.”

This narrow view of who owns the truth – of who’s in and who’s out with God – has driven many people away from organized religion all together. In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, a precocious child named Adah muses, “According to my … Sunday-school teachers, a child is denied entrance to heaven merely for being born in the Congo rather than, say, north Georgia, where she could attend church regularly… This was a sticking point in my own little march to salvation: admission to heaven is gained by the luck of the draw. At age of five I raised my … hand in Sunday school to point out this problem to Miss Betty Nagy. Getting born within earshot of a preacher, I reasoned, is entirely up to chance. Would Our Lord be such a hit-or-miss kind of Savior as that? Would he really condemn some children to eternal suffering just for the accident of a heathen birth, and reward others for a privilege they did nothing to earn? … Miss Betty sent me to the corner for the rest of the hour to pray for my own soul while kneeling on grains of uncooked rice. When I finally got up with sharp grains imbedded in my knees I found, to my surprise, that I no longer believed in God.”

This passage from Chapter 10 of John’s Gospel seems at first glance to be one of those “I am the only way” texts that people have relied upon to set Jesus up as a hit-or-miss savior. “I am the gate,” says Jesus. “If anyone enters through me, he shall be saved and shall find pasture.” This is pretty unequivocal. Christ is the gate. I think what’s important about this statement, and all of Jesus’ statements to this effect in the Gospels, is just that: HE is the gate. Christ is the gate. We, on the other hand, are not the gate, nor are we the gatekeepers. Back in the ‘80’s there was a nightclub in Manhattan called Studio 54. It was famous in part because bouncers stood by the door with a clipboard, looking over the crowd outside to decide who looked cool enough to be admitted. When it comes to salvation, we are not like the bouncers at Studio 54. It is Christ’s job to decide who is saved and on what basis, and for what reasons. It is not our job. If you don’t remember anything else about this passage, remember that it isn’t our job, it isn’t the job of any human being or group of human beings, to decide or even to worry about who is or isn’t saved.

Perhaps more importantly, though, Jesus doesn’t say what he means by “saved.” The traditional assumption, like Adah’s assumption in The Poisonwood Bible, is that he’s referring to an afterlife; that those who are “saved” go to heaven after they die, and those who are not, well, something else happens. But Jesus isn’t talking about heaven here. In Greek and Roman politics of Jesus’ day, kings and emperors were described as “good shepherds” who promote and provide a life of security and abundance for the empire’s subjects. John consistently presents Jesus as an opponent to imperial rule, so much so that he is killed for his opposition to Caesar. Biblical scholar Warren Carter writes that this description of Jesus in John 10 mirrors the role of the emperor as a ruler who keeps secure borders, a warrior who saves the people from attack or economic harm, and a benefactor who offers provision and even abundance. But unlike the emperor, Jesus is a true good shepherd, one who genuinely seeks to protect human lives from the thieves and bandits in imperial leadership. In the Roman world where 70 to 80 percent of the population was food insecure, protection from theft and the image of a green pasture was a poignant promise. So John’s Jesus offers not heaven in an afterlife, but a critique of the Roman Empire, which claimed (as reported in the writings of Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, and others) to bring wholeness and wellbeing to society, while its structures actually brought sickness and poverty to most of its subjects.

In other words, Jesus means it quite literally when he says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). When imagining Jesus as “the gate” (John 10:7, 9), it’s easy to think of the gate as penning in the sheep and restricting their movements. However, the purpose of the gate is to protect the sheep from those death-dealing forces in the Roman world, and to provides access for the sheep to the pasture (John 10:9). Rather than a hit-or-miss savior obsessed with our eternal souls, this passage shows us a savior concerned with our well-being: our health, our wholeness, our shalom. Not after we die, but here and now, in this life.

© Joanne Whitt 2026 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Wiley Miller, “Non Sequitur,” in the San Francisco Chronicle, March 15 (year unknown).
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (New York: HarperPerenniel, 1998).
Warren Carter, “Jesus the Good Shepherd: John 10 as Political Rhetoric,” in Come and Read: Interpretive Approaches to the Gospel of John, ed. Alicia Myers and Lindsey S. Jodrey (Lanham, MD: Fortress Academic, 2020).
Laura Holmes, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-101-10-7
Lindsey Scott, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-of-easter/commentary-on-john-101-10-5

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).

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

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).