christianity

So That They Might Live

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Luke 5:1-11

   Traditionally, this passage in which Jesus tells Simon Peter that henceforth, he will be “catching people” has been interpreted as being about evangelism.   And traditionally, evangelism has been interpreted as being about conversion to Christianity, about convincing people to become believers, and most often, specifically believers in the particular form or brand of Christianity endorsed by the evangelist.   

   I don’t believe that’s what Jesus ever meant by “catching people.”

   Let’s take a few steps back in Luke’s gospel.  In Chapter 4, Jesus announces his mission statement: to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19).  He infuriates the hometown crowd by explaining that God intends these blessings to flow to foreigners, outsiders, non-believers.  (Luke 4:21-30).  Then he heals a man who was an outcast because he was considered “unclean,” and follows that with healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law.  He says he needs to keep moving, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God to other towns.  (Luke 4:30-44).  Not one word about believing the right beliefs, or believing anything for that matter. 

   In this passage in Chapter 5, Jesus has been teaching a crowd so big that he gets into a boat so there’s more room for people on the beach.  He notices that the fishermen are cleaning up after an unsuccessful night.  They’d been fishing all night, Simon tells us, and brought back nothing.  No fish, no income.  No income, the family is hungry, the breadwinner is a failure.  So when he finishes teaching, Jesus tells Simon, who will be called Peter, to go into the deep water and try again.  And they do, and their catch is so big it breaks their nets and rocks their small boats.  Jesus addresses the real needs of the real lives of these fishermen.  Their families will eat tonight.  Certainly, that got their attention. 

   And then Luke uses a Greek verb rarely used in the New Testament that means, “to catch alive.”  Fishing with nets is always a matter of catching fish alive, but those live fish will soon be dead.  By using this different verb, this “catch alive” verb, Jesus is calling Simon Peter and his partners to something different, to a new vocation of catching people so that they might live.

   So that they might live.  So that they might not go hungry.  So that they might be healed.  So that they might no longer be perceived as outcasts.  So that the poor might have good news, the oppressed go free, and everyone be on an equal footing as happens in a jubilee year (“the year of the Lord’s favor,” Luke 4:19), regardless of whether people are “believers” or religious insiders.

   In 2025, catching people so that they might live sounds more like rescue than what we think of as evangelism.  Rescue from hunger, poverty, exclusion, prejudice, and oppression through domination politics, domination religion, or any other means.

   So that they might live.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

The Hometown Crowd

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Luke 4:21-30

This passage in Luke picks up with the last verse of last week’s reading. Jesus has announced the beginning of his ministry with a reading from Isaiah promising healing for those who have been cast off by the world. At first, his audience seems pleased, even proud of the hometown boy made good. But maybe that’s why Jesus presses on. “No, you don’t get it,” it’s as if he’s saying. “When I talk about God coming to free the oppressed and bless the poor, I’m talking about God’s blessing the people you can’t stand, the people you think are your enemies.” And so he reminds them of a couple of stories where God blessed not Israel, but Israel’s enemies: the widow from Sidon, Naaman the Syrian. After that, they’re so boiling mad that they’re ready to throw him over a cliff.

Why are they so angry? Could it be that Jesus told them the truth about their own prejudices, their fear, their shame? Nobody else had the guts to tell them what Jesus told them, and us: “You won’t be able to claim God’s blessings for your life unless you claim them for other people’s lives at the same time.”

If there’s one line that sums up the Jesus we encounter in Luke’s gospel, it’s this: God came to redeem everyone. When we focus on “redeem,” it’s good news, right? When we focus on “everyone,” and call to mind those we believe have done us wrong, who frighten us, whose lives or “lifestyles” we just can’t understand, or who voted for the other candidate, that same line can be terrifying.

On the one hand, many of us would nod approvingly at the message that the grace of God is not confined to one people, one religion, or one set of creeds or doctrines. We’ve seen the destruction caused when religions and religious people become exclusive and build barriers to protect insiders and keep out the others. Christians have a long history of condemning one another to hell, excommunicating each other for heresy, and basically reading one another out of the kingdom because of our disagreements on this and that doctrine. Sadly, that history is ongoing.

On the other hand, even if it isn’t about religion, we all draw our lines somewhere. We all tend to have our ways of thinking about who’s an insider and who’s an outsider, who deserves justice, healing, and well-being, and who does not. One of the most consistent themes of Jesus’ ministry is the message that God’s love is not just for a few favorites. It starts here in the Nazareth synagogue and continues right through to the end as he persists in proclaiming and demonstrating God’s welcoming grace to the unclean, the marginalized, the foreigner – precisely those people his culture excluded. Jesus’ main concern is not who we’re letting in, but who is being left out.

It’s the kind of message that can get a guy thrown off a cliff. The hard, uncomfortable thing about the God we know in Jesus is that whenever you and I draw a line between who’s in and who’s out, we will find Jesus on the other side.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
David Lose, http://www.davidlose.net/2016/01/epiphany-4-c-moving-beyond-mending-our-walls/.

Jesus’ Mission Statement (and ours)

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Luke 4:14-21

It is exceedingly rare for a sermon – an actual sermon preached by a clergy person in a worship service – to make the news, not to mention go viral.  But that happened Tuesday of this week, January 21st.  You can view that sermon here on the NPR website:

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/21/nx-s1-5270031/bishop-mariann-edgar-budde-confronts-trump-in-sermon

   The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C., preached the sermon.  Her text was the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel, Matthew 7:24-27.  Budde explored what it might take for a group, a people, or a nation to have a foundation so firm that storms and floods cannot destroy it.  Unity, she said, is what we as a nation need in order to be “founded on a rock.”  She listed three foundations for unity:

  1. Honoring the inherent dignity of every human being
  2. Honesty
  3. Humility

   The sermon made news because sitting in the front pew of the National Cathedral were the newly inaugurated President of the United States and his wife.  At the close of her sermon, Budde addressed the President directly, asking for mercy for those who are frightened, those who fear for their lives or their livelihood or their human dignity.  She specifically listed the LGBTQ+ community, the undocumented people who work in our fields and a myriad of other jobs and who are not criminals but are good, tax-paying neighbors, and the children who fear their parents will be whisked away.  Later, the new President responded in social media with several diatribes about Budde’s qualifications and demeaner.  Both of which are impeccable, by the way.

   Budde did not select as her text Luke 4:14-21, this coming Sunday’s lectionary gospel passage.  However, she relied on it; she lived it.  In that passage, Jesus is fresh from his time of discernment and temptation in the wilderness.  He enters the synagogue in his hometown, Nazareth, and someone hands him the Isaiah scroll.  He reads from it:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

   There are a handful of Scripture passages which, in my humble opinion, are central, crucial, definitive in revealing who and what Jesus was about. That means they also tell those of us who claim to be his followers what we are to be about.  At the top of my list are the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-7:29), the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), and this passage, Luke 4:14-21.  More clearly and explicitly than any other passage, these verses in Luke 4 define Jesus’ purpose and set forth his mission statement.

   Jesus doesn’t leave much ambiguity about this mission statement.  Certainly, we could quibble about what exactly he means by the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed.  We could argue whether it’s just the economically impoverished that will receive the good news, or the poor in spirit as well.  Captives would certainly include slaves and political prisoners, but does it also include prisoners of depression, or addiction, or lost hope?  Or prisoners of their pursuit of what our culture defines as success?  Does the oppressed mean those denied political power, or does it include those struggling with wounds to the soul?  Does blindness include the failure to comprehend, whether or not you have 20/20 vision?

   I’m inclined to believe Jesus had in mind every sort of blindness, captivity, oppression and poverty we can imagine, and then some.  The text in Isaiah refers to “the year of the Lord’s favor,” God’s jubilee, when according to ancient Jewish tradition, all debts are wiped out and the people and the land are set free to start over.  The year of the Lord’s favor – jubilee – is when everyone gets to start on a level playing field, in every way: personally, politically, economically, physically.

   So here’s the million dollar question: If we who are the church are the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-31a), then who, now, is being sent to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free?  Who, now, is anointed? 

   If you claim to follow Jesus, then you are.  Your church is.  The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde took up that calling on Tuesday and went viral.  Now it’s our turn.      

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved. 

Which Story?

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Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12

Our traditional notion of who belongs in the Christmas nativity scene comes from a blending of two different Christmas stories. In Luke’s Christmas story you’ll find Joseph and Mary traveling to Bethlehem, no room at the inn, the stable, the sky filled with angels, the amazed shepherds, but no kings. You have to go to Matthew’s gospel for the kings, except they aren’t kings, they’re Persian astrologers, “magi.” What’s more, it doesn’t tell us there are three of them, only that they brought three gifts. There could be 2 or 20, for all we know. And they don’t find Jesus in a stable; they find him in a house.

Part of Matthew’s inspiration for his Christmas story is Isaiah 60, a poem recited to Jews who had been in exile but returned to find the city of Jerusalem in ruins. Isaiah invites his discouraged community to look up, to hope, and to expect everything to change. Yes, he says, darkness will cover the earth. But there will be a shaft of light breaking through the gloom: “Rise, shine, for your light has come. … Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” That’s where we get the kings.

Matthew’s magi have seen a special star. They know about Isaiah 60, so they go to Jerusalem and take gold, frankincense, and myrrh, apparently appropriate gifts to give to a baby in those days, or at least, a baby king. But when the current king in Jerusalem hears about this, he’s not at all happy. Herod the Great, a vassal of Rome, built his kingdom on political tribute and bloodshed. A new king would mean a new political rival, and as with his other rivals, including his own family members, Herod makes plans to eliminate him.

Matthew’s Christmas story makes Luke’s overcrowded inn seem pretty tame. In his panic, Herod gathers the experts on the law and the prophets, and asks, “Just what does Isaiah 60 say? What’s all this business about camels and gold and frankincense and myrrh?” The scholars tell him: “You’re looking at the wrong story. And so are the magi who just scared the pants off you by telling you they’re looking for a new king.” “Okay, then,” asks Herod, “what’s the right story?” The scholars don’t want to be next on Herod’s hit list so they tell him the right story is Micah 5:2 with a little bit of Second Samuel thrown in for good measure: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.” Not Jerusalem, but Bethlehem. Not Isaiah, but Micah.

Micah was a prophet who was not impressed with wealth and power. He’s the one who said, “God has told you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God?” Micah imagined a different future for the people; he imagined they’d be able to organize and resist rulers like Herod. Micah’s story is about the well-being of the people, not of the empire.

Herod tells the magi about Bethlehem because he wants them to do his reconnaissance for him. He tells them to find this newborn king, and then come back and give him the details so he, too, can go pay homage. We, the audience, are supposed to be imagining Herod twirling his mustache like Snidely Whiplash. What Herod plans, of course, is something more deadly than homage.

The magi travel the nine miles from Jerusalem and Herod, from what is corrupt and deadly, to Bethlehem, to what is humble, loving, and world-changing. Matthew’s Christmas story is the story of two different human communities: Jerusalem, the center of the elite, and Bethlehem, with its rural peasants. In 2025, you don’t have to be from the country to be marginalized, and you don’t have to be from a big city to be arrogant. For us, it’s not about urban verses rural; it’s more about world view. But it is still a choice between two stories. A choice between the story that leads to death and darkness, and a story that leads to light and life.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:

Walter Brueggemann, “Off by Nine Miles,” in The Christian Century, December 19-26, 2001.

Jona Lendering, “King Herod the Great,” http://www.livius.org/he-hg/herodians/herod_the_great02.html.

The Word of God Came to a Nobody

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Luke 3:1-6

   After listing seven of the powers that be of the time, Luke concludes with “the Word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.”  Compared with the seven names mentioned just before, John is a nobody.  He’s in the wilderness, where no sensible person wants to be found, so he’s a nobody who’s nowhere.  Yet this is precisely where the Word of God went.  Not Jerusalem, or Athens, or Rome, or any of the other centers of culture and power, but to the margins.  And maybe that’s often where the Word of God shows up: just where we’d least expect it.

   This isn’t our first introduction to John in Luke’s gospel.  Mary’s cousin Elizabeth is miraculously pregnant beyond the normal years of childbearing.  When Mary visits Elizabeth with the news of her own miraculous pregnancy, Elizabeth’s child, John, does a cartwheel in the womb.  From the beginning, Luke’s gospel tells us that God is working to change the world through the weak and small – babies and barren women and unwed teenage mothers and wild-eyed prophets and itinerant preachers and executed criminals.  During Advent, we look not to Christmas but beyond, to the time when God’s work on this earth will be completed.  We just have to look around to know God isn’t done yet.  John reminds us that even today, God continues to work through unlikely characters to announce God’s good news of shalom, the Hebrew word that includes not only peace but justice, healing, love, and hope. 

   When you’re a minister, you end up telling your “faith journey” over and over, in seminary and to ordination and church calling committees and so on. When I tell my story, I always mention Bill Anderson.  I’d quit going to church in college.  My father’s rule was, “As long as I go to church, you go to church.”  That pretty much guaranteed that my sister, brother, and I would quit going to church when we moved away from home.  Even more than an expression of adolescent rebellion, however, it seemed to me that Christianity was all about who was getting into heaven and who was not.  I found this focus absurdly speculative, but even worse, it is mostly used to divide people, to manipulate people, to create insiders and outsiders; not to heal or bring people together. 

   When my older daughter was four, out of the blue she announced that she wanted to go to Sunday school.  I think she’d figured out that Sunday school was a chance to play with other kids one more day of the week, with the bonus that she could wear her Mary Janes.  I’d been raised Presbyterian, and a little church near the Marin County suburb where I lived at the time was the closest Presbyterian church.  I figured I could take her to church once, she’d get it out of her system and that would be that.  Sunday school was before the worship service and I wasn’t willing to leave my 4-year-old while I headed for a nearby coffee shop, so I stuck around for adult ed., which was held at the same time.  Adult ed. was a series on exploring things the church could do to help change the world.  That, by itself, was a surprise, but the guy who set the hook and reeled me in was Bill Anderson.  He was older than my dad, and he said Christianity was a social reform movement, a way to change the world – this world – to make it more just, more loving, more peaceful, more like God intends it.  Today I’d say, yes, it is that and so much more, but back then I’d never heard it put that way and it was exactly what I needed to hear. 

   During World War II Bill had been a military engineer who led troops onto Omaha Beach the day before D-Day.  His company was to secure the beaches to the extent possible before the actual invasion.  Bill wouldn’t talk about that day.  He’d get just so far into the story and then stop.  But it wasn’t Omaha Beach that caused him “to grow up fast and hard,” as he put it.  What really changed his life was being part of the military team that liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1945 and 1946.  It spurred him into the work of resettling refugees, which he did on and off, including after the Vietnam War.  He also served as a Witness for Peace in Nicaragua.  He went on three walks for peace in the Soviet Union, making connections with ordinary people who wanted peace and did not want to continue living under the threat of nuclear annihilation just because the Tiberiuses and Pilates and Herods of the world couldn’t let go of a grudge.

   Luke’s outrageous claim is that the “Word of the Lord” comes to a nobody named John in that no-place called the wilderness, and that this is more important than all the important people and events of the day.  And what is truly startling is that this is still possible.  Bill Anderson was a nobody in the grand scheme of things.  And yet, during the eighth year of the presidency of Ronald Reagan, while George Deukmejian was governor of California, and Diane Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco, the word of God came to Bill Anderson in Larkspur, California, who shared it with me.  Bill would be the last person to describe himself as a prophet.  When I’d tell him that he was largely responsible for the path that led me to ministry, he’d say, “Don’t blame me!” 

   Unlike John, Bill wouldn’t have used the word, “repentance” to describe what we’re supposed to do in response to God’s love.  But repentance, as loaded a word as that is, is exactly what Bill Anderson lived and preached, although he would claim he never “preached” at all.  To repent means to turn around.  It means quit going the direction you’ve been going.  John is saying, “Stop doing the things that sew hatred and strife and injustice; stop moving away from God’s shalom; turn around and move toward it.”  Bill Anderson lived and taught this for everyone to see.  He lived the good news that God loves everybody, not just some of us; that a loving God wants shalom for everybody; and the way we are to respond is to pitch in where we can.  In other words, we are to repent. 

   God is still working through the nobodies in the nowheres of our congregations, neighborhoods, and communities.  I hear God’s word of shalom, regularly, from many people; in what they say, and in what they do, which is often so much louder than words. 

   Frederick Buechner wrote, “Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.  Amen, and come, Lord Jesus.” 

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

What Is Truth?

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John 18:33-38

   Jesus faces Pontius Pilate.  The local religious authorities have hauled Jesus before the Roman prefect because the Romans can impose the death penalty for sedition, while the local authorities cannot.  Pilate questions Jesus.  “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus answers, “My kingdom is not from this world.  If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over.  But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” 

   Some bibles translate this as, “My kingdom is not of this world…” as though, somehow, we could withdraw from our world, or even to imply that Jesus isn’t concerned with this world.  But the Greek says that Jesus’ kingdom is not derived from this world – and a better translation of the phrase “this world” here might be “this system,” or “the version of reality that most people accept.”  What Jesus is saying is that were he and his followers from Pilate’s world, from that version of reality, then naturally they, too, would use violence to keep him out of Pilate’s clutches.  But at Gethsemane, Jesus told Peter to put away his sword. 

   Jesus tells Pilate he came to testify to the truth.  The lectionary leaves off verse 38, Pilate’s response: “What is truth?”  Pilate has worked his way up the loyalty ladder of an empire founded on domination, violence, and lies to become governor of Judea.  It makes sense that he doesn’t recognize truth, or perhaps even value it.  “Pax Romana,” they called it, the Roman Peace.  That “peace” was maintained through forced military occupation of people who feared and despised the Romans.  The Romans crushed revolts and imposed burdensome taxes, impoverishing the common people.  Whose “pax” was this, exactly?  Whose peace?  You can just imagine the lies: “We’ll protect you from the Goths, the Visigoths, and the Barbarians!  Your miserable little country will be great again!”  You can picture the sycophants like Herod who jumped on board and were awarded power and wealth for their loyalty.    

   We’re not told whether Jesus answered Pilate’s question, but it is Jesus himself, standing there, that is the answer: the humble, beat-up man from Nazareth, looking nothing like what the world expects from a king, in front of the governor with his guards and retinue and all the trappings of empire.  With or without words, Jesus is saying, “The truth is not what you think it is.” 

   Martin Luther King described the truth about violence this way: “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.  …  Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.  Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

   Jesus tells Pilate, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”  He’s not creating insiders and outsiders here; he’s inviting all those who long for genuine truth to listen to him.  Listen to what he taught throughout his ministry about a loving God who longs for shalom for all of God’s creation.  Listen to his description of the alternate reality he called “the Kingdom of God,” a reality we can choose to inhabit here and now, in this world and this life, if we love our neighbors as ourselves.  Don’t listen to those who are willing to lie and resort to violence to get and keep power and wealth.  “My kingdom is not from here,” said Jesus.  It is not from here, but it is for here.  It lives in the world and confronts the violence and lies; not with more violence and lies, but with the truth that God is love.  Could there be a more timely message? 

   This Sunday is Reign of Christ Sunday, the last Sunday in the church calendar.  Unlike the more traditional title, “Christ the King Sunday,” “Reign of Christ” points to Jesus’ kingdom as a state of being, a commitment to a particular way of seeing the world.  Those of us who are committed to living in this kingdom, however imperfectly we might do it, are called to witness to the truth.  We do not pretend to corner the market on truth or claim that any truth is pure and simple, because as someone put it, pure and simple truth is the luxury of the zealot.  But we trust the truth that God is love, and we do not abandon facts. 

   Yale historian Tim Snyder writes, “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.  If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.  If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.  The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”

   To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.  Pilate would have been familiar with, and probably adept at, delivering the occupied Judeans “bread and circuses,” the phrase a late first century Roman poet used to describe pacifying the populace with food and entertainment.  Bread and circuses are not truth.  The truth, as Jesus said elsewhere, will set you free.   

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:

Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1967).

Kathy Gill, “Tim Snyder: On Fascism and Fear,” July 8, 2024, The Moderate Voice, https://themoderatevoice.com/timothy-snyder-on-fascism-and-fear/

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).