bible

Bread of Life

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John 6:24-35

I confess I often find John’s Jesus annoying.  He speaks in code and then seems to scold people for not getting it.  In this passage, he declares, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  He is offering himself as metaphorical bread.  But what does that even mean?  What does it mean when so many people need real bread, real water; when way too many people would dearly love never to be literally hungry or thirsty again?  Just last week, the United Nations reported that progress in fighting global hunger has been set back 15 years, leaving around 733 million people going hungry in 2023, equivalent to one in 11 people globally and one in five in Africa. 

I agree with biblical commentators that by equating himself with bread, Jesus is saying he is essential for life.  Some commentators explain that Jesus is not referring to physical life, but “eternal life,” a phrase Jesus uses in this passage.  Many if not most Christians have been taught that “eternal life” begins when we die.  Brian D. McLaren posits that what Jesus actually meant by “eternal life” might better be translated “life of the ages,” or “life to the full.” Jesus was not proclaiming what Diana Butler Bass refers to as an “elevator religion,” focused on getting people up and away from a troubled earth to heaven.  Rather, Jesus came to be the savior of the world, this world, the world that God so loves (John 3:16).  God’s primary mission, embodied in Jesus, is saving the earth and its inhabitants from human evil and folly.  Thus, “I am the bread of life” must mean something more important, more earthly and more urgent than, “Believe in me and you’ll go to heaven.”

This passage follows John’s version of the feeding of the five thousand.  In John 6:1-24, a crowd is following Jesus to hear and be healed by him.  They grow hungry, but Jesus’ disciple Philip says, “‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’”  They learn that a boy in the crowd has five barley loaves and two fish, clearly not enough.  Yet after giving thanks to God, Jesus distributes the boy’s meager contribution, and everyone has enough to eat.  As McLaren writes, “When I was a child, these stories were explained to me as evidence of Jesus’ supernatural power … But now … I see that Jesus is engaging in powerful prophetic drama, demonstrating through sign and wonder a radically different economy, one that doesn’t depend on spending more and buying more, but on discovering what you already have and sharing. … This is a different economy, indeed – one based on contemplative gratitude and neighborly sharing, not consuming more and more, faster and faster.”

So, what makes Jesus “bread” – what makes him essential to our survival?  I’m borrowing liberally from Brian D. McLaren:   

  • Jesus reveals a God who loves us not because we are so deserving and loveable, but because God is so loving, without limit or discrimination.
  • In case after case, Jesus calls people to repent from the goal of growing their personal wealth portfolios, and instead he calls them to grow their good deeds portfolios for the common good, especially the good of the poor and marginalized.
  • He challenges people to believe there could be a better, more human, more satisfying alternative to the economy of the Roman Empire, and to our own economy of unsustainable consumer capitalism.
  • In story after story, we see that the driving motivation in Jesus’ life is love.

It comes down to this: What is it that will save this world?  Hate, or love?  Fear, or love?  Indifference, or love?  Violence, or love? Greed, or love? 

Jesus as “bread” also reminds us of the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist.  Doug Gay and Werner Jeanrond write in the introduction to their treatise on theology and economics: “The central Christian practice of sharing in the Lord’s Supper is a definitive sign of how all that comes from God is to be offered back to God and shared with our neighbors.” They quote Chris Wigglesworth: “The economy is for God which means it is for my neighbor; it is for my neighbor which means it is for God.”

Sometimes poetry helps these images clunk into place.  This communion prayer comes from a Christian base community in Lima, Peru:

God, food of the poor,
Christ, our bread,
give us a taste of the tender bread
from your creation’s table;
bread newly taken from your heart’s oven,
food that comforts and nourishes us.
A fraternal loaf that makes us human;
joined hand in hand, working and sharing.
A warm loaf that makes us family;
Sacrament of your body,
your wounded people.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:

“Fight against global hunger set back 15 years, warns UN report,” July 24, 2024, https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/07/1152451

“The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024,” published by UNICEF, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, International Fund for Cultural Development, World Health Organization, World Food Programme, https://data.unicef.org › wp-content › uploads › 2024 › 07 › SOFI2024_Report_EN_web.pdf

Brian D. McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian (New York: Convergent, 2016)

Brian D. McLaren, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crisis, and a Revolution of Hope (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007)

Calum I. MacLeod, “A Place at the Table,” August 5, 2012, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL, https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2012/080512.html

Does Power Corrupt?

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2 Samuel 11:1-15

   Let’s get one thing out of the way: This passage about David and Bathsheba is not about sex, and it isn’t even about adultery in any way we would define it today.  You can’t call it cheating on your husband if you don’t have a choice, and you can’t call it cheating on your wife if you have multiple wives and concubines in your harem.  The only way this is adultery is in the 1,000 B.C.E. context that David violated Uriah’s property rights in his wife.     

   Older interpretations of this passage like to implicate Bathsheba.  She was just so alluring that David couldn’t help himself.  In 2024, we understand that it doesn’t matter what a woman wears, where she walks alone at night, or whether she bathes naked on the roof.  She is not “asking for it.”  When the king orders his messengers to go get a woman and bring her to his bedroom, this is not a seduction; it’s certainly not a love scene.  The power difference between David and Bathsheba means there is no way there could be anything approaching mutual consent.

   This story is about abuse of power. 

   Some details of this story might be lost in the formal biblical language.  The timing of Bathsheba’s ritual purification is mentioned because it means only David could be the father of her child.  That’s why David panics.  After trying unsuccessfully to get Uriah to sleep with his wife, David sends him to the battlefront, specifically instructing his commander to make sure Uriah is left unprotected, “so that he may be struck down and die.”  Which is what happens. 

   David saw something he wanted, and he took it.  When it looked as though there might be repercussions, he ruthlessly arranged a cover-up.  Bathsheba didn’t matter; Uriah didn’t matter.  That is the definition of abuse of power: When someone – an individual, nation, corporation, religious or ethnic or any other group – says, “I’m going to get what I want, and I don’t care about you.”  There is no aspect of life untouched by the abuse of power: business, the workplace, the schoolyard, politics, international relationships, personal relationships, parenting, policing, the church – you name it.  We all have seen power go to people’s heads.  One word for these people is bullies. 

   In the 19th century, John Dalberg-Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Some studies seem to support a theory that we all try to get away with as much as we can, and that the only thing that keeps us in check are rules and punishments.  But there is other research that supports something Abraham Lincoln said: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

   When people become truly powerful, they often start believing they got there on their own.  But no one gets where they are alone.  Parents, education, a mentor or a team, privilege, advantages of all kinds, even luck land people in power.  Power is given as much as taken, and if power is to continue, the people underneath you have to be willing to allow you to remain in power.  So as it turns out in these other studies, people who recognize that their achievements are due not only to their own talent, hard work, or cleverness, but also to the help and support of other people, don’t participate in corruption.  Corruption is a byproduct when a person in power is arrogant instead of grateful.

   David forgot who he was and how he got there.  He forgot whose he was – God’s own man.  Would this troubling story even be in our Scripture if David had been grateful to God and to the people who were counting on him, rather than arrogant?

   There’s also research showing that power brings out the best in some people.  These experiments reveal that power doesn’t corrupt, after all; it heightens pre-existing ethical tendencies.  If people are inclined to dirty tricks, shady dealings, or grabbing whatever they want, more power makes that more apparent. Which makes you wonder whether, as someone put it, power doesn’t corrupt; it’s just that power attracts the corruptible. 

   The grace in this story is that we aren’t stuck with it.  God transforms this story; that’s next week’s passage.  Until then, there is grace in knowing that this narrative of abuse of power and of the inevitability that power corrupts is not the narrative we inherit as God’s people.  In Jesus, we are given a powerful contradiction to this story.  Jesus teaches and lives so clearly the power of love, the one power that consistently changes people for the better.

   David’s story sheds light on an important truth that applies as much to us as to any king, or, as we barrel toward the November elections, to any president.  Stan Lee, author and artist of the Spider-Man comic book superhero series, wrote, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”  Jesus said the same thing: “From the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:

Brian Resnick, “How Power Corrupts the Mind,” July 9, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/07/how-power-corrupts-the-mind/277638/;

David Berreby, “Study: To Prevent Abuse of Power, Focus on Procedure, Not Results,” http://bigthink.com/Mind-Matters/study-to-prevent-abuse-of-power-focus-on-procedure-not-results;

David Bergstein, “Why Power Corrupts,” January 17, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bergstein/why-power-corrupts_b_4611433.html.

Romesh Ratnesar “The Menace Within,” July/August 2011, https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=40741. 

Christopher Shea, “Why Power Corrupts,” October 2012, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-power-corrupts-37165345/?no-ist. 

Luke 12:48 (NIV)

Rest a While

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Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Did Mark include this vignette just for pastors?

It goes like this: You realize you need a break. You see your co-workers are getting burned out, too. You know that to keep doing ministry with energy, imagination, and compassion, you all need time off. You know this. So you arrange a vacation, a break. It’s not selfish; it’s the responsible thing to do. Then something happens. The matriarch of the congregation dies. A child is diagnosed with cancer. There is yet another mass shooting and this time it’s local. The sanctuary roof collapses.

They are like sheep without a shepherd and you are the shepherd. You put off taking that break.

It isn’t just pastors, though, is it? It’s anyone in a caregiving job or relationship. Including parenting.

It’s tempting to conclude that the all-the-time lesson of this passage is that Jesus doesn’t take a break; we should always choose self-sacrifice over self-care. Luckily, the Gospel reveals that Jesus took frequent breaks. Again and again, he went off to be alone to pray (Mark 1:35, Luke 4:42, Luke 5:16-18, Matthew 14:13). If his ministry had lasted more than three years, I’m sure we would have seen even more examples of his withdrawing, resting, re-centering, reconnecting with himself and God. If you expect your ministry to last more than three years, you’ll need frequent breaks, too.

But, like Jesus, sometimes our plans are interrupted because we have compassion for those who rely on our care. That doesn’t mean we never take breaks. It just means we reschedule.

As someone who served in congregations for 25 years, I know you simply can’t sustain ministry without some balance. Time off, exercise, family, friendships with people who don’t call you “Pastor So-and-So,” hobbies, therapy, spiritual direction, travel, play – these aren’t self-indulgent. They are self-compassion, and they contribute to your ministry by contributing to your physical and mental health. They also connect you with the world beyond the parish, and that, too, is vital to ministry. The same goes for parenting or caring for an aging parent or incapacitated family member. Without time away, genuine compassion so easily turns into resentment. Without time away, we often look for other ways to escape: numbing or “taking the edge off,” disconnecting from our feelings or other people’s feelings, even acting out in ways that turn out to be self-destructive, or that destroy our effectiveness in ministry. Burn out is a real thing.

Does anyone still believe exhaustion and busy-ness are status symbols? Did COVID knock out of us the inclination to over-schedule, over-commit, and overwork? If so, while there are few silver linings to the pandemic, perhaps that is one.

Jesus shows us here that there will be times when we need to show up for a crisis. We have the resilience to do that if we are rested, refreshed, and restored. So maybe that weekend away you’d planned doesn’t happen this weekend. Ink it in for next weekend.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

A Rash Promise

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Mark 6:14-29

This is one of many stories in the Bible that make you wonder whether the folks who insist that the Bible be taught to school children have read the Bible.

The passage begins with people wondering who this Jesus is. His fame is spreading. Some speculate that he is John the Baptist returned from the dead. But what happened; why is John dead? Because Herod had John executed, and the story of how that came about is the rest of the passage.

The Herod in this story is Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great and one of eight Herods in the Herodian dynasty. He has married Herodias, the former wife of his younger brother, yet another Herod. Like George Foreman, I guess Herod the Great figured there wasn’t a better name than his own to pass on to both (all?) his sons.

John the Baptist wasn’t the only person to criticize Herod for marrying his sister-in-law. We don’t know if he was the only person punished for it. John was well-known and respected; maybe that made it especially important to muzzle him. But Herod fears John; he knows John is “a righteous and holy man,” so while he sends John to prison, he doesn’t have him killed, not at first.

The story continues with Herod’s stepdaughter Herodias (yes, the same name as her mother, the sister-in-law that Herod scandalously married) dancing for guests at a party. We don’t know how old Herodias is at this point. The Greek calls her a κορασίῳ, korasion, which could be young girl or maiden. Is she a child who has made her stepdad proud? Is she an attractive young woman? We also don’t know anything about the dance. Was it as chaste as Judy Garland tapdancing with Mickey Rooney? Or was it provocative, which would make this story truly creepy? All we know is that it must have been some dance. Herod is in such high spirits that he makes a rash promise, so rash that although the text says nothing about it, I wonder if Herod wasn’t drunk as well as impressed. He promises Herodias anything she wants, even half his kingdom, the kind of fairytale promise that you know is going to backfire. The girl asks her mother, who has no warm feelings for John at all, and the mother tells her to ask for John the Baptist’s head on a platter. The king apparently made an oath to keep his promise and so John is executed in prison, and grizzly paintings ever since remind us how brutal this wish was, and that power really can corrupt.

What is the moral of this story? What’s the lesson? I quote David Lose: “The rich and powerful are used to getting what they want; are willing to do most anything to keep or advance what they have; and those who stand up to them, advocate for the oppressed, or dare to inspire people to imagine that life can be different usually get trampled.”

Is this a lesson we want to teach our children? I doubt that those arguing that the Bible should be taught in schools would think so. But maybe that’s exactly what we should be teaching people in today’s political climate. It’s certainly a good reminder for adults, if we include along with it the lesson that God still stands with the oppressed, and whatever the cost, so should we. Isn’t that what Jesus did?

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2012/06/mark-614-29/

Out of the Depths

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Psalm 130

   Once you reach a certain age, you realize that into everyone’s life come times of crisis, times when it seems the bottom has fallen out.  Psalm 130 begins, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.”  We don’t know what happened to the psalmist.  Tradition says this prayer reflects King David’s anguish at the death of his son Absalom.  Absalom led an insurrection against his father, which must have been horrible enough.  David sent word to his army to spare the life of his son, but in spite of that, Absalom’s life came to a violent end.

   I’m glad the psalmist isn’t specific about Absalom or anything else because that way we can insert our own experience of what has caused the bottom to fall out.  When I served a congregation, I could look out at the folks in the pews on a Sunday morning and know that many people’s lives were going very well, at least that morning.  But sitting two pews up from these happy worshipers, or right behind them, or maybe even right next to them, chances are there was someone who was either in the midst of a crisis or whose memory of a crisis was very fresh.  Someone who had been out of work for months.  Someone dealing with dementia.  Someone who had just received a frightening diagnosis.  Someone whose child wouldn’t call them, or whose marriage had grown cold. 

   For many people in crisis, God seems not only distant but absent; it can feel as though God has abandoned you.  Notice that in Psalm 130, the psalmist assumes that Someone is already there to hear the cry.  “Let your ears, O God, be attentive to my need.”  The simple, unadorned cry for God to hear and to help is a prayer, and any prayer puts us squarely in front of God and opens our hearts to what God can do in us and through us.  Our prayers don’t need to be pretty or full of churchy words.  Joanna Adams writes, “If you ever find yourself in a valley so dark it makes the bottom of the well look like sunshine, remember this.  You do not have to outline the situation with appropriate sentence structure for the Almighty.  You do not have to compose perfect paragraphs.  You just have to know your need and know that God knows your need before you even put words to it.  God’s love is steadfast.  God’s love is plenteous enough for any terrible situation.  A cry in the dark suffices.”    

   Note also that the psalmist doesn’t blame God for whatever happened.  On a rainy night in 1983, William Sloane Coffin’s son Alex died in a car accident. Coffin, a minister and civil rights activist, was at his sister’s house the next day when one of her friends came by to offer comfort and a stack of quiches.  When the woman saw Coffin, she shook her head and said, “I just don’t understand the will of God when something like this happens.”  Coffin says instantly he was up and in hot pursuit.  “I’ll say you don’t, lady!”  He knew the anger would do him good, so he continued: “Do you think it was the will of God that Alex never fixed that lousy windshield wiper of his?  Do you think it was the will of God that Alex was driving too fast in such a storm, that he probably had had a couple of [beers] too many?  Do you think it is God’s will that there [is] … no guard rail separating the road and Boston Harbor?  My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that when the waves in Boston harbor closed over the sinking car, God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.” 

   Out of the depths we cry to God and discover that God is there ahead of us.

   In verse 3, the psalmist refers to his wrongdoings, his “iniquities.”  It’s very common for people in the depths to wonder, “Why is this happening to me?  Is God punishing me?”  Certainly actions can have consequences and bad actions can have bad consequences.  But the psalmist is correcting a wrong belief that God is a God of retribution.  He is denying the image of an angry God pacing back and forth up in heaven with a rolled up newspaper just ready to swat someone.  The psalmist tells us that he knows he has sinned but so has everyone else, and he knows that’s not why he’s stuck in the depths.  If that were the case, there would be no hope for anyone; the depths would be the only possibility.  But that is not God’s way, says the psalmist.  Forgiveness is the way of the Lord.  God’s way is reconciliation, not punishment. 

   The psalmist’s prescription is waiting and hoping, which is very, very hard when physical, emotional, or spiritual pain is severe.  That’s where the rest of us come in, those of us who are not in crisis, who are not in the depths – for now.  When church folks said to me, “I don’t have any hope left,” that’s when I’d say, “Then you’ll have to let those of us who love you hope for you.  You are carrying enough.  We will carry the hope for now.”

   Anne Lamott wrote in Traveling Mercies, “Our preacher … said recently that this is life’s nature: that lives and hearts get broken – those of people we love, those of people we’ll never meet.  She said that the world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that we who are more or less OK for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes.  You sit with people, she said, you bring them juice and crackers.”

   That, my friends, is what church should be. 

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Faith in the Face of Fear

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Mark 4:35-41

There’s plenty going on right now to make me afraid: How do we respond to the climate crisis? How do we address economic inequality? How do we deal with entrenched racism and privilege, and how much will white nationalism impact the upcoming election? What will happen to women’s rights, reproductive rights, human rights, the freedom of the press and freedoms, generally, if the authoritarian Project 2025 is realized?

Scary stuff. So, what moves people from fear to faith? That’s the question raised by the story in Mark in which the disciples wake Jesus to calm the stormy sea. This is the kind of story that gives some people fits because they don’t believe it really happened. But “Did it really happen?” isn’t the question. The question is, “What does it mean?”

Both fear and faith make sense in relation to something that’s unknown or threatening. Those are the kinds of things that make us afraid, right? Yet it’s those same things that summon us to have the faith to face them. Faith doesn’t so much overcome fear as make it possible to cope with it. Maybe that’s the issue here: Not whether you’re afraid, but how you respond when you’re afraid. So, what allows us, even if we’re afraid, to act in faith rather than to be paralyzed by fear?

It’s interesting that the miracle itself doesn’t rid the disciples of their fear. We might think a miracle would help us find our faith when things are scary, but here, the disciples seem more afraid after the miracle. Still, something shifts for them. Instead of “Don’t you care?” they’re asking, “Who is this?” Pastor and professor David Lose points out that this shift might mean the answer to the question, “What moves us from fear to faith?” is relationship. It’s the move from what to who, from event to person, from ambiguous miracle to the actual person of Jesus.

Faith is a relationship. Contrary to popular belief, faith is not believing in certain doctrines or reading the Bible literally; in fact, trust is a much better translation of the Greek word that most Bibles translate as faith because trust implies an action – it’s a verb – and a relationship. Christian faith is about a relationship with the God revealed by the teachings and actions of Jesus. Throughout Mark’s Gospel, Jesus points to a God who cares passionately for the welfare of all God’s people. He does this by healing the sick, feeding the hungry, welcoming the outcast, even overcoming death. Jesus invites people to trust in that God. Trust, in the end, is the only thing that overcomes fear.

The most frequently repeated command in the Bible is “Do not be afraid.” These words are spoken by angels, prophets, and apostles, and now, they are to be spoken by communities of faith. We are to say to one another, “Do not be afraid.” “Do not be afraid, because God loves you. God cares what happens to you. God loves and cares about everybody, and God has ways of making the impossible possible. God continues to call us, to call you, to imagine, hope for and create new possibilities. God calls you to remember, even in this scary world, that, as Edward Everett Hale put it, ‘I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can.’ Do not be afraid.”

Resources:
David Lose, http://www.davidlose.net/2018/06/pentecost-5-b-moving-from-fear-to-faith/.

The Ongoing Pentecost

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Genesis 11:1-9, Acts 2:1-21

The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis is an origin myth, the kind of myth that explains how something came to be.  The Tower of Babel explained to the ancient Hebrews why there are many languages, but the story goes much deeper than a “how the tiger got its stripes” kind of story.  The Tower of Babel deals with the consequences of human hubris.  Hubris is more than pride in doing things well.  Hubris is arrogance, an over-confidence usually due in part to a failure to recognize that we have limitations; that we don’t know and understand everything.

The hubris of the people who decide to build the tower includes the conviction that this tower is the right way to reach God – the right way for everyone.  Usually, what we think is good we are likely to think is good for everybody.  What we think is bad we are likely to think is bad for everybody.  It’s hard to get outside our own perspective to see the way things look to others.  The tower builders in Genesis are so sure of their perspective that their stairway to heaven becomes a monument to their conviction that they’re right, a colossal stone sign that says, “My way or the highway.”  The problem is that “My way or the highway” always leads to violence; it leads to forcing something on someone else, against that person’s will.  Three times in the Genesis passage the people say, “Let us” – let us make bricks, let us build, let us make a name.  But the “us” doesn’t really include everyone because not everyone has a voice in this; I suspect the enslaved people carrying the bricks didn’t.  “Us” also doesn’t include God.  My way or the highway is not God’s way.  In the story, mid-way through the tower’s construction, God confuses the people’s speech, bringing the entire project to a halt. 

The Acts passage tells the story of Pentecost.  It’s a story that doesn’t see different languages as a threat.  The disciples were scattered in fear after Jesus’ crucifixion.  On Easter, they were amazed when the risen Jesus appeared to them, but in the first chapter of Acts, Jesus abandons them again.  He promises that they will receive the Holy Spirit, which will give them the power to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth.  Until then, he says, they are to wait in Jerusalem.  And then he’s gone. 

They’re waiting in Jerusalem, gathered in one place, when suddenly there is the sound of the rush of a mighty wind.  Flames appear above each of the disciples.  Without warning, these Galilean fishermen begin speaking languages that every Jew gathered from the Diaspora can understand.  The message they hear, each in their own native tongue, is the good news of God’s deeds of power.  The skeptics in the crowd believe the disciples might just be drunk, but Peter stands before the crowd and quotes from the prophet Joel.  Joel says God’s Spirit will be poured out on all flesh – all people – men and women, slave and free.  All people will have the power to tell the truth, to reveal God’s truth on God’s behalf.

   Marcus Borg writes, “The coming of the Spirit is the reversal of Babel, the beginning of the reunion of the human community.”  We are in the middle of the ongoing Pentecost; the wind of Pentecost is pushing us even now to speak and listen to new languages.  The different languages in Acts are a metaphor for being able to reach across the chasms of difference that can divide us, but our reaching across the divide has less to do with what we say and everything to do with the way we say it.  In our increasingly polarized culture, our reach across the divide must begin with a rejection of hubris, a reclaiming of Christ-like humility, and time spent learning about each other, learning to understand each other. 

   Perhaps the Spirit is blowing us toward a deeper understanding and respect for what it means to be “spiritual but not religious,” or what it means to be suspicious of organized religion, or even what it means to believe nothing at all.  The Church doesn’t own or control the Holy Spirit.  As Jesus told Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”  The world in which we live is a world of many languages and perspectives, many ways of being, but it is a world in which God is already at work, and not just through people who believe what we believe or who want what we want; not just in the Church but far beyond it. 

   Perhaps the Holy Spirit is blowing us towards reinventing the church, and I don’t just mean what kind of music we listen to on Sunday mornings.  Pentecost is a never-ending story, and the Spirit surprises us all.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved. 

Resources:

Chapter 2, “The Tower of Babel,” Reinhold Niebuhr’s Beyond Tragedy.

Robert Coote and Robert Ord, The Bible’s First History.

A Prayer for Those Sent

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John 17:6-19

   I’m not a big fan of the Farewell Discourse, the long pep talk that Jesus gives the disciples in John’s Gospel the night before his arrest.  John’s Jesus is mystical and prescient; I much prefer Mark’s down to earth Jesus.  The Farewell Discourse showcases this mystical Jesus, and besides that, it repeats many variations of “I’m in God, and God is in me, and I’m in you, and you’re in me, and God is in you …” to which one of my fellow seminarians responded under his breath, “Goo goo a’joob.”  If you don’t get the reference, go ask a baby boomer.

   John 17:6-19 is the prayer that follows the Farewell Discourse.  The repetition continues with Jesus using the word “world” over and over.  The Greek word is κόσμος, or cosmos, which we probably think of as the universe, but in Greek it implies a system, an order, and especially in John’s gospel, the human system that creates alienation from God.  The cosmos is the social construction of reality that divides people, that creates systems of who is in and who is out, who is at the top of the heap and who is at the bottom.  This is the system that would oppose a reality with God’s love at the center.  In John 3:16, we’re told it’s this very cosmos that God loves; it’s this cosmos that God intends to save.

   Some read this passage and conclude that because the disciples “do not belong to the world, just as I [Jesus] do not belong to the world” (vs. 14), Christians should turn their backs on the world.  Some Christians separate themselves from the secular world; they won’t vote, take up arms, take oaths, or hold public office.  But Jesus is sending his disciples into the world, into the cosmos, into the social construction of reality: “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”  As a Presbyterian, part of the Reformed tradition, I have inherited a long-held belief in living our faith in the world: whatever concerns humanity and its welfare is the concern of Christians.  There is nothing that is not God’s business.

   Jesus sends his disciples into the cosmos, into the social construction of reality, in order to transform it.  Thus, the Reformed Tradition has a long history of political activism aimed at helping God transform the world to look more like God’s Kingdom; going upstream, as it were, to address discrimination, poverty, disease, war; advocating for the marginalized and oppressed.  Presbyterians have a big fat book of social witness policies adopted by our General Assembly on everything from gun violence to racism to abortion to capital punishment to LGBTQ+ rights.

   A brief cul-de-saq: In any discussion of churches and activism, someone inevitably wonders about the “separation of church and state.”  The First Amendment to the Constitution restricts governments, not churches.  It says Congress can’t establish a religion; it can’t make any religion the official religion the way the Anglican Church is the Church of England.  The courts have interpreted this to mean the government can’t do anything to promote any particular religion or religion in general.  So you can’t require prayer in public schools, or put a nativity scene on public property.  The First Amendment also says Congress can’t get in the way of religious practices.  The government can’t require Jews to work on Saturdays or Jehovah’s Witnesses to salute the flag, and it can’t stop any student in any school, public or private, from praying before an exam.  Essentially, the government can step in only if a religious practice is dangerous to health or safety. 

   This point is crucial in our current political climate: The First Amendment allows churches to advocate for political change, but not to replace the secular government with a faith-based one.  My Presbyterian ancestors fought for this.  Simply put, if someone says, “I can’t do that.  It’s against my religion,” that’s perfectly fine.  That’s religious freedom.  But if someone tries to say, “You can’t do that.  It’s against my religion,” the First Amendment should put a stop to it. 

    But back to the Farewell Discourse.  Like Jesus, all good leaders, teachers, pastors, mentors, and parents know that you do your best to prepare folks and then you send them out into the world.  You pray you’ve done enough to get them ready for what they’ll face, and you pray that what they’ll face won’t hurt or destroy them.  In this season of graduations, Jesus’ prayer is particularly poignant. 

   At the end of the War of Independence, General George Washington had fulfilled his duties as Commander-in-Chief of the army. He sent his own farewell letter to the governors of the thirteen states, closing with a prayer that echoes Jesus’ prayer for his disciples and all our prayers for those whom we send:

    “Almighty God; We make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt keep the United States in Thy Holy protection; and Thou wilt incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government; and entertain an affection and love for one another and for all Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for those who have served in the Field.  And finally that Thou wilt most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility, and pacific tempter of mind which were the Characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation.  Grant our supplication, we beseech Thee, in the Name of Jesus Christ. Amen.”

   We are sent into the world.  And Jesus continues to pray for us.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved. 

Astounded

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Acts 10:44-48

We catch the apostle Peter literally mid-sentence in this passage in Acts. What comes before these verses is an important part of the story. Cornelius, a Roman army officer and Gentile in Caesarea, a believer in God but not a Jew, has a vision that he is to send for Peter. It so happens that Peter, a devout Jew, has a vision as well. He’s praying on the roof of his friend’s house in Joppa, anticipating a fine meal being prepared by his hosts. He falls into a trance and sees a sheet being lowered down from the heavens, filled with all of the foods that good Jews aren’t supposed to eat – animals considered to be “unclean.” He hears a voice: “Get up Peter, kill and eat.” Peter responds, “No, way! I’ve never touched this stuff, let alone eaten it!” He hears this answer: “What God has made, you must not call profane.” This happens three times, which is God’s way of saying, “And I really mean it, Peter.” And while he’s still trying to figure out what it is that God means, Cornelius’ men are knocking at the door to invite Peter to Caesarea.

A good Jew wasn’t supposed to hang out with Gentiles, but the Holy Spirit gives Peter a nudge out the door. He travels to Caesarea, meets Cornelius, and realizes this Gentile is having a genuine experience of God. Peter starts preaching about this God who’s giving Cornelius visions, and about how Peter has been awakened to a reality he never understood before: “I truly understand,” he declares, “that God shows no partiality.” But before Peter can finish his sermon, the Holy Spirit short-circuits the usual order of things, and that’s where we pick up the story. The Holy Spirit “fell on all who heard the Word,” on a whole crowd of Gentiles, as evidenced by their ability to speak in tongues and their inclination to praise God.

Rick Morley notes that the two words in this passage that “stick out as if they have neon lights attached to them,” are “astounded” and “even.” Gentiles are coming to faith in God in Christ, and the Christians of Jewish descent are “astounded” that the Holy Spirit of God is being given to “even” the Gentiles. In other words, they didn’t expect this. They couldn’t have predicted this. I suspect they didn’t even want this.

God is doing something new, something that the apostles couldn’t control, predict, or anticipate. This passage is often preached to remind us that the Church should be inclusive, but limiting this passage to who is included or excluded from the Church feels like a conversation for 25 years ago. Certainly, God expects churches to be inclusive. But God doesn’t stop there and to limit our analysis to the Christian Church feels oddly self-referential in 2024. As if God can’t be reached by other routes. As if the apostles’ understanding of God, or ours, is the only right way, the only possible way. As if we control God’s Holy Spirit.

Limiting the conversation to church puts us, in the Church, in a position of privilege and control. We welcome you. We let you in. Aren’t we special? When the point of this passage is that God is already at work in places and in ways beyond our imagination, in ways that will astound us. The Church needs the stranger, the foreigner, the “other” to show us the Holy Spirit isn’t the Church’s property. Otherwise, we might start thinking there’s limited space under the tent, or that it’s our job to make the tent bigger, when the thing is, it isn’t our tent. It’s God’s tent, and we don’t know the extent of it, the size of it, the reach of it. Morley writes, “It’s like when we look out into the world around us, we see just a sliver – just the tiniest wedge of possibilities. But, God sees the whole sky. The whole infinite expanse of the universe brimming with possibilities.”

At least the apostles in Acts were “astounded,” as opposed to “disgusted,” or “dismayed.” There’s some hope there.

William H. Willimon writes, “Faith, when it comes down to it, is our often breathless attempt to keep up with the redemptive activity of God, to keep asking ourselves, ‘What is God doing, where on earth is God going now?’” As with Peter, it’s an ongoing conversion.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Rick Morley, “Even Astonished – A Reflection on Acts 10:44-48,” http://www.rickmorley.com/archives/1585
William H. Willimon, Interpretation: Acts (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1988)

Vines and Branches

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John 15:1-8

Jesus describes himself as the vine, while his disciples are the branches. One way to look at this is that the disciples get nourishment, fuel, even life from Jesus. His teachings inspire them, and will bear fruit in them.

But this metaphor also implies attachment. Branches are connected to the trunk. Jesus uses the word “abide.” “Abide in me as I abide in you.” Jesus is describing a closeness, a connection, an attachment that, frankly, makes me uncomfortable. It feels claustrophobic. Maybe that’s in part because as a woman born in the mid-20th century, I bristle at the thought of being subsumed by anyone, disappearing into someone else as most women have been required to do for much of history. Just who is “Mrs. John Smith” after all? We have no idea, right? She’s disappeared into Mr. John Smith.

There’s also that pruning metaphor. Hacking away branches so the plant can produce more fruit? And these branches are burned? There seems to be a warning or at least a scolding in here. What do we do with that?

Can these verses be understood in a way that does not give me the creeps?

It’s crucial to note these verses are part of the Farewell Discourse which, in John’s Gospel, Jesus delivers the night before the crucifixion. Jesus knows what’s coming and is saying goodbye. As Karoline Lewis writes, “‘I am the vine and you are the branches’ is both promise and possibility.” In this metaphor, the disciples are given a purpose: go bear fruit. Bear the fruit of the relationship, the lessons, the life they have witnessed in Jesus. The promise is that they won’t be alone. “Abide in me as I abide in you.” No matter what the days ahead bring, Jesus will be with them.

Further, if I step back from my initial claustrophobic reaction, I’m challenged to take seriously the questions, “What does it mean to be a branch on Jesus’ vine? How might this promise shape our actions?” In recent years, we’ve seen a rise in what’s called Christian nationalism, which, as someone put it, is “just plain old nationalism in which Jesus is trotted out as a mascot to endorse something that bears absolutely no resemblance to the Sermon on the Mount or apostolic Christianity.” What is glaringly missing from Christian nationalism are these very questions. I have seen no conversations from among Christian nationalists about what Jesus, the Jesus we meet in Scripture, actually wants for us or for our world, or about what he might actually do in the face of the issues with which people are concerned.

Perhaps we, as his followers, need to be reminding ourselves that Jesus is the vine, and ask how his branches ought to live.

Bearing fruit is a condition of being a disciple. Disciples are recognized by their fruits; that is, by their actions. Bearing fruit means loving our neighbors as ourselves and doing the work of spreading God’s love to all our neighbors. If we turn to Scripture, and we should, Jesus taught that our neighbors include everyone and most particularly, the lost, the least, the despised, the outcast; the people most folks really would rather not have as neighbors.

Which brings me full circle to my claustrophobic response. Jesus’ vine and branches metaphor is communal. It speaks of dependence, interdependence, and mutuality. The branches need the vine, but the vine also needs the branches. Not only are we not lone rangers or self-made in spite of our culture’s pretending otherwise, but, as Debie Thomas writes, “…the point of my Christian life is not me.”

In February I met one of my daughters for a weekend in Paso Robles (which, sadly or hilariously, locals pronounce păs´-ō rō´-bŭls), California. We toured a vineyard, and because it was February, there were no leaves on the vines. Without leaves, the grapevine’s branches were a bare, chaotic tangle growing out of the trunk. They reminded me of Muppet hair, maybe Beeker’s or Animal’s wild mane.

Debie Thomas again: “We are meant to be tangled up together. We are meant to live lives of profound interdependence, growing into, around, and out of each other. We cause pain and loss when we hold ourselves apart … in this metaphor, dependence is not a matter of personal morality or preference; it’s a matter of life and death.”

And in our world, today, it clearly is.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Karoline Lewis, , https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-john-151-8-6
David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2021/04/easter-5-b-2021-vine-branch-questions/
Debie Thomas, Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories (Eugene OR: Cascade Books, 2022).