christianity

Don’t Be Alarmed

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Mark 13:1-8

   It’s the Tuesday before the crucifixion, and Jesus has just watched a destitute widow put all she has in the Temple coffers, while the scribes are living the high life.  He leaves the Temple never to return.  The wealthy scribes contrasted against the desperate widow convince him the Temple is no longer serving the purpose God intended.  So when a disciple admires the large stones of the Temple, Jesus’ first response is that the Temple will be destroyed. 

   His four closest disciples ask Jesus privately: “Just when is all this going to happen?”  And perhaps even more anxiously, they ask, “Will this be a sign of the end of time?”  What follows is what’s called Mark’s “Little Apocalypse.”  It was written after Christians had been persecuted for a generation, and when the Temple had already been destroyed by the Romans in 71 A.D.

   Apocalyptic literature is born out of times when things are so bad that it seems the only possible way out is a cataclysmic intervention.  When you’re oppressed or despairing or persecuted, you think to yourself, “Surely God has a plan to even the score.”  The early church hoped that God would even the score when Jesus returned, and they expected that to happen any time.  Depending on what your life looks like right now, or how you perceive the recent election results, it may or may not be hard to put yourself into their shoes.

   The early church had seen the Temple fall.  What more could happen?  Jesus tells them that events like wars, earthquakes, and famines, while reminding us that things are not the way they are supposed to be in this world, also serve to remind us that everything is very right because everything is happening just as Jesus said it would.  We need to be cautious with such claims.  This doesn’t mean that when war is declared we merely shrug our shoulders and go back to our crossword puzzles.  This doesn’t mean that when a hurricane wipes out Asheville and we see the horrific pictures on CNN, we say “ho-hum” and flip the channel over to “Suits.”  Just because Jesus says that such things are going to happen does not mean that we as his followers do not seek to relieve suffering and promote peace and justice.  The gospels teach us that.  

   Whenever we read apocalyptic literature in the Bible, it’s tempting to read into it that God is behind it all; that God will somehow change from the God of love we see in Jesus and start to bully us.  Jesus tells the disciples to beware of false prophets, but he doesn’t tell them to beware of God.  Our God is the God who says, “Do not be afraid.  I am with you.  I will help you.”  So when the awful things happen, Jesus says that we, as followers of Jesus Christ, are not to be alarmed.  This is why when wars and rumors of wars circle the globe, and earthquakes or wildfires or hurricanes flatten parts of the world, or a pandemic changes life as we know it, it is the disciples of Jesus who are the first to push back.  We are the ones who protest for peace and justice; we are the ones who volunteer to rebuild.  We are not the ones to insist that getting a vaccine means you don’t trust God enough.  We are not the ones to pretend that the pain of people half a world away does not matter. 

   But is it time for Jesus to return?  With all that’s going on around us – increasing income disparity, climate change causing storms and fires, inflation, a global rise in fascism – you can see why people wonder.  Every generation of believers has asked whether the end is here, or at least near, yet the answer has been “No” over and over and over again.  The danger of focusing on the end of the world is that it keeps people from responding to human need and suffering, and it leads to isolated individual survival.  People shore up their own “salvation” and forget about community.

   Winston Churchill offered this advice in the darkest days of World War II: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”  Jesus tells us simply, “Don’t be led astray; don’t be alarmed.”  And then he says, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”   “Birth pangs” point to joy; that wonders have not ceased; that possibilities not yet dreamt of will happen.  Hope is an authentic stance. 

   I recommend a TikTok video by Brian D. McLaren who argues that, globally, something is dying.  “A world of white supremacy is dying.  A world of dominating, angry, greedy men without empathy is dying.  A world without concern for planet earth itself – that world is dying.  … A world that measures value by wealth not health – that kind of world is dying.  … And like a dying cornered animal, that kind of world bears its teeth and its claws and it will destroy as much as it can before its done.  If you only look at what is dying, you’ll feel despair.  But something else is trying to be born. … It’s not as loud and angry as what is dying, but it’s far more important.  What is being born is beautiful, and you know because you feel it; it’s being born in you.  The pain of these moments – they might feel like death pains.  But they’re really labor pains.” 

   For the complete video: https://www.facebook.com/651042029/videos/1079652193679063/

   Don’t be alarmed.  Possibilities not yet dreamt of will happen.  Hope is an authentic stance.  These birth pangs will end in joy. 

© Joanne Whitt 2024 

Really Seeing Each Other

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Mark 12:38-44

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take that into the voting booth with you today.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

As Yourself

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Mark 12:28-34  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Greatness

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Mark 10:35-45

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:

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

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

The Eye of the Needle

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Mark 10:17-31

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024

He Took a Little Child and Put It Among Them

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Mark 9:30-37

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

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

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.

Why I Bother with the Trinity

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John 3:1-17

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, the only Christian holy day that celebrates a doctrine. Most of our holy days have a good story attached to them. At Christmas, we have the baby and no room at the inn; at Easter, we have the Last Supper, the arrest and crucifixion, and the empty tomb. Last Sunday we celebrated Pentecost, with the rush of wind, tongues of fire, and the apostles able to be understood in many languages. Even our non-biblical holy days have stories: Reformation Sunday has Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg church. Whether it’s true or not, it’s a good story.

A good story gets a point across in a way that captures our imaginations and speaks to our hearts. That’s why Jesus used stories. The story the lectionary gives us for Trinity Sunday is the story of the Pharisee Nicodemus and his late-night visit to Jesus, but don’t look for that story to solve the puzzle of the doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus talks to Nicodemus about God and Spirit, and so all three members of the Trinity appear in the passage. But while Nicodemus asks concrete questions, Jesus answers with imagery and metaphor, helplessly confusing poor Nicodemus

But maybe that’s the lesson. There have always been ideas, thoughts, and experiences that are hard to put into words. That’s when people turn to poetry. By poetry, I don’t mean verse or rhyme; I mean language that uses vivid imagery, that relies on metaphor, that contains a meaning and a message beyond the words themselves; words that stir the imagination, that have a quality of spontaneity and grace.

The Trinity is poetry. Whenever we speak about God, we are limited to metaphors and analogies. Most of us carry around a picture of God in our imaginations, and that probably helps us have a more personal relationship with God. Jesus called God “Abba,” which is like papa or daddy; many people are still very attached to the metaphor of father in their language about God. I heard an indigenous lay pastor speak this past weekend; he prefers to speak of God as a wise grandmother. But we can never claim that any one image of God captures the fullness of the Divine. We can never claim any of the words we use to describe God are literal. God is ultimately unknowable, a mystery. We trust our experiences of God and the biblical witness of God, but part of what they show us is that God is more than we can know.

The Trinity is the poetry hammered out by the Church long ago to describe God in a way that is faithful to scripture and to the experience of Christians over the centuries. The Trinity gives words to our very personal encounter with God the Creator, the One who is mindful of each one of us and by whom we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139). Scripture declares we are made in God’s image; therefore, we who are made in the image of God are called to be mindful of one another, to love one another, as God loves us. We describe the power to do that as the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a power we feel and know, the power to keep on keeping on when we’re pretty sure we don’t have it in us to keep on keeping on.

At the heart of our Christian faith is a more radical, even scandalous trust that God also suffers with us. The cross planted at the center of our faith declares that God descends with us to the depths of life: “There is no pain that you can bear that I have not embraced,” God tells us from the cross, “there is no darkness that can overtake you that I have not seen; there is no fear that might grip you that I have not known. I have passed through it, and when you pass through it, I am with you.”

But why bother? Why try to explain the Trinity, or even to accept the Trinity as a mystery beyond understanding? The answer is that the way we talk about God and envision God profoundly influences everything else that we say about Christian life and faith. As my theology professor used to say, “Theology matters.”

It matters how we imagine God. One meaning and message in the poetry of the Trinity is that the glory of the triune God consists in sharing life with others. The Trinity describes God’s power not as coercive but as creative, sacrificial, and empowering love. Within the Trinity, the eternal life of God is life in relationship. God exists in community.

Our creating, saving, and empowering God created us for community that saves and empowers. In Wendell Berry’s novel, The Wild Birds, one of the characters quotes the apostle Paul in an argument with his friend. “The way we are,” he says, “we are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain’t in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don’t.”

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

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.