I Shall Not Want

April 17, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Psalm 23

“I shall not want,” says the psalmist. My first thought is that everybody wants something. Some things we want are good: I want children to grow up feeling valued and loved; I want the unemployed to find work, and the unhoused to find homes. I want the planet Earth to continue to support human life. I want school children to be safe from gun violence. I want quite a lot, really.

But the psalmist in Psalm 23 isn’t saying he’ll never desire anything. What he means is he is free from want – he has what he needs. A better translation of verse 1 is, “I lack nothing,” “I have everything I need to live a healthy, peaceful life.”

We know this doesn’t apply to everyone, locally or globally. In Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond’s book, Poverty By America, he explains that the United States is the richest nation in the world and yet we have more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Almost 1 in 9 Americans lives in poverty, including 1 in 8 children. There are more than 38 million people living in the United States who can’t afford the basic necessities. At the same time, we see billionaires hoarding money they couldn’t spend in a lifetime while their workers struggle to get by on two jobs. So, you have to wonder: Is there a way that this verse – “I have everything I need” – can be true for everyone? Because if there isn’t, this psalm could feel like a cruel joke, a gloating paean to privilege.

The beginning of the verse gives us a clue to what the psalmist means. “The Lord is my shepherd.” We’ve heard this psalm so often that the power of those words may be lost on us. The Lord is my shepherd, says the psalm, and then it lists all the basic necessities a shepherd provides for the sheep: food, water, and protection. In the second part of the psalm, the gracious host also provides for these needs.

Psalm 23 affirms that life is essentially a gift, a gift from the shepherd. And even though the psalm is spoken in the first-person singular, we know that the shepherd cares for the entire flock. It’s fine for one individual, this psalmist, to sing a song of gratitude and trust for what the shepherd provides. It’s not okay for any one sheep – or for any one person – to assume God has singled out just one individual or even just one group of individuals for the abundance of God’s gifts.

What if we lived as though, “The Lord is our shepherd”? When we say, “The Lord is my shepherd” we reject the claims of anyone else who seeks that status. It’s like saying, “The Lord is my shepherd – you’re not.” Who is the “you” in “you’re not”? It depends on who or what is oppressing us. In some countries, tyrannical regimes try to take the place of trust in God. In our culture, we’re bombarded with ads telling us we need a new car every few years, we need to wear the latest fashions, we need the newest iPhone even if our current phone works fine. Wealth is status, security, and the measure of a person’s worth. It’s not surprising that our society is characterized by what Alan Greenspan once called “infectious greed.”

But consumer culture is not our shepherd. Greed is not our shepherd. The Lord is our shepherd. A few years ago, a world hunger summit in Rome concluded that there’s enough food in the world today to feed everybody. Hunger isn’t caused by a lack of food but by the fact that some people don’t have the money to buy food. The problem isn’t supply. It is distribution. The Shepherd has provided enough for the basic sustenance of life. That is how “I shall not want” can apply to everybody. What this means is that the Lord is not the problem. We are. As Mahatma Gandhi put it, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every [one’s] need, but not every [one’s] greed.” Or as Matthew Desmond puts it, “America’s poverty isn’t for lack of resources. We lack something else.”

In order to address poverty in our nation and world, I agree with Desmond that the most important step is acquiring that “something else” that we lack: We need the will, the desire; we need to become “poverty abolitionists,” as Desmond puts it. That is our calling as those who trust that the Lord is our shepherd. The psalm doesn’t tell us we won’t face challenges, enemies, even death, but God has given us all we need to meet them. And: we have God. The focal point of the psalm is, “Thou art with me.” The whole Gospel tells us God is with us. Jesus was called “Emmanuel,” and that means “God with us.”

God is with us. Author Barbara Ehrenreich was asked in an interview what she would give up to live in a more human world. She answered, “I think we shouldn’t think of what we would give up to have a more human world; we should think of what we would gain.”

Doubting Thomas

April 2, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

John 20:19-31

In John’s gospel, all the disciples except Thomas were there the first Easter night when Jesus appeared mysteriously, somehow passing through the locked doors and solid walls of the room where they cowered in fear after the crucifixion. Jesus showed them the wounds on his hands and side. We don’t know where Thomas was, but when he finally shows up at disciple headquarters, he says he’s not buying their crazy story about Jesus’ rising from the dead until he sees it for himself. Just like they did, by the way. Once he’s seen Jesus, he makes the chief confession in John’s gospel, calling Jesus not only “My Lord,” but also “my God.” Jesus takes the opportunity to bless all the disciples who believe without seeing. This is a blessing for future disciples, for the ones who will read this passage – for us.

You might be thinking, “Huh. Maybe I don’t deserve this blessing because I’m not sure what I believe.” “Believing” is a major theme in John’s gospel, but this is important: John didn’t mean what we usually mean when we say we “believe” something. The Greek word for “believe” might better be translated as “trust,” or “to give one’s heart to.” Again and again in John’s gospel, when Jesus says, “believe,” he means rely on, trust in, live as though your life depends on it. Frederick Buechner captured the difference by distinguishing between “believing IN” and “believing.” “Believing in God,” wrote Buechner, “is an intellectual position. It need have no more effect on your life than believing in Freud’s method of interpreting dreams or the theory that Sir Francis Bacon wrote Romeo and Juliet. … Believing God is something else again. It is less a position than a journey, less a realization than a relationship. It doesn’t leave you cold like believing the world is round. It stirs your blood like believing the world is a miracle. It affects who you are and what you do with your life like believing your house is on fire or somebody loves you.”

Believing is less a position than a journey. It affects who you are and what you do with your life like believing your house is on fire or somebody loves you.

So when Jesus says, “Believe in me,” he’s not asking whether you can recite the Apostle’s Creed without crossing your fingers. He’s asking whether you will trust that God so loves the whole world that more than anything God wants us to love each other the way God loves us. He’s asking whether it affects who you are and what you do with your life. In her book, A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L’Engle writes, “A winter ago I had an after-school seminar for high-school students and in one of the early sessions Una, a brilliant fifteen-year-old, a born writer … asked me, …‘Mrs. Franklin, do you really and truly believe in God with no doubts at all?’ ‘Oh, Una,’” she answered. “’I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts. But I base my life on this belief.’”

Jesus isn’t condemning Thomas for his doubts. He’s inviting the rest of us on the journey of trusting, of basing our lives on our belief with all our doubts. So, please: Can we let Thomas off the hook, and all of the rest of us, as well? Maybe give him a new nickname?

Joanna Adams tells a story I could have told. She writes, “There was a time in my early 20s when I was a full card-carrying member in the circle of Doubting Thomases. My doubt simply got the best of my faith, and I left the church completely, thinking it was for good. I had such a difficult time making sense of it all. I stayed away until my longing for God became too much for me. I sought the council of a minister at a Presbyterian church near our home. I walked into his office and sat down, saying, ‘I’m not exactly sure why I’m here. I don’t know what I believe about the virgin birth, the resurrection, the lordship of Christ.’

“The minister answered, ‘I accept that. I wonder if you would like to try to figure these things out with people who are on a similar journey.’

“’O yes,’ I said, ‘I would like that very much.’

“And he answered, ‘Well then, you are welcome here.’

Adams writes, “Those words, ‘Well then, you are welcome here,’ have been the pivot on which my entire life has turned. I was welcomed in love and invited to grow in my knowledge and understanding of the revelation of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’”

That sounds like Resurrection to me.

Sir, We Wish to See Jesus

March 13, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

John 12:20-33

By the twelfth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus has become something of a celebrity, and so some Greeks approach his disciples and ask to see him. They approach Philip, who, although he’s Galilean, has a Greek name. Maybe he’s more accustomed to Gentiles. The Greeks say to Philip, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” When Philip relays their request, Jesus answers with a response that seems unrelated to what they asked, typical in John’s Gospel. If the Greeks are actually right there, eavesdropping, and if they do hear Jesus’ answer, I’ll bet they’re confused.

The Greeks said they wanted to “see” Jesus, and in John “seeing” is code for understanding. They want to see Jesus, and perhaps, to follow him. This seems to be a sign for Jesus: the fact that people outside Judaism are looking for him means his hour has come. He says a grain of wheat will remain just that, a single grain, unless it falls into the earth and dies, and then it produces much fruit. And then he teaches that those who love their lives, who maintain the status quo, protect and conserve their lives, will lose them. But those who reject their lives – elsewhere he says, “lose their lives for my sake” – will find them, will have real life, a full life, a wholehearted life. I wonder if the Greeks were looking for that.

What does Jesus mean? Barbara Brown Taylor offers this possibility: “[T]he hardest spiritual work in the world is to love your neighbor as yourself – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it. All you have to do,” she says, “is recognize another you ‘out there’ – your other self in the world – for whom you may care as instinctively as you care for yourself. To become that person, even for a moment, is to understand what it means to die to your self.”

Loving others, really loving others, is to understand what it means to die to self. Don’t we experience the truth of this in our lives; don’t we see for ourselves that sacrificing for love, letting our hearts break open for love like a seed that breaks open, leads to more life? We see it in families where parents give up time, money, old dreams, and personal ambition so that their children might flourish. We see it where spouses set aside their own wants or needs to help their partner become who they are meant to be. We see it when someone cares for a frail parent, or a spouse with dementia; we see it when people show up for each other in a crisis. We see it when people stand up to injustice that doesn’t impact them personally. In a thousand places and ways we know this to be true. These may not sound like big deaths. They are the small deaths we experience throughout our lives when we love in big ways. But through them we live out the truth of Jesus’ words over and over again. Our “dying” multiplies, grows, spreads, and results in life.

If you want to see Jesus, it helps to know what you’re looking for. We see Jesus when we see profound love, love for another or for many others that is powerful enough that some part of the self must die, the part that gets in the way of love. We see Jesus when we recognize that this kind of death leads to more life. And so based on what Jesus taught, we see Jesus …
• … when someone dies to refusing to forgive.
• … when someone dies to arrogance and self-righteousness.
• … when someone dies to greed.
• … when someone dies to revenge.
• … when someone dies to violence as a solution.
• … when someone dies to the need to control or manipulate.
• … when someone dies to the need for power, privilege, and prestige.
• … when someone dies to hate.

“Sir, we would see Jesus.” In many older church sanctuaries, this Bible verse is carved into the interior of the pulpit, where only the preacher can see it. Of course, this reflects a time when the person reading the verse, the person standing in the pulpit, was invariably addressed as “Sir,” never “Miss” or “Madam.” Still, the idea is to remind the person who occupies the pulpit that this is the desire of everyone sitting in the pews: to see Jesus; to encounter Jesus, the one in whom we best encounter the love of God. But here’s the thing: This is great advice, but not just for preachers. It is also our calling as the church, as those who call ourselves the body of Christ in the world: to let the world see Jesus, in us.

Resources:
Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World (New York, HarperCollins: 2009).
Janet H. Hunt, “When Dying Means Living,” March 18, 2012, http://words.dancingwiththeword.com/2012/03/when-dying-means-living.html

The Disruptive Jesus

February 28, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

John 2:13-22

The story we call “the cleansing of the temple” appears in all four gospels. That’s a pretty good clue that it actually happened. But while Matthew, Mark, and Luke put it at the end of Jesus’ ministry, just before the arrest that leads to his crucifixion, John puts it up front, soon after Jesus’ miracle at the wedding at Cana. As one commentator puts it, John uses the words of the other three gospels but never the tune.

It was at the wedding at Cana that Jesus turned water into wine. John gives us an important detail: the water was in stone jars, which meant it was used for the rites of purification. By the time of Jesus, there was an elaborate system of purification. Some things were considered pure or clean, and others impure or unclean. Women were unclean seven days after the birth of a son, 14 days after the birth of a daughter. Dead bodies were unclean; certain foods were unclean; the list had grown very, very long. The system created a world with sharp social boundaries between pure and impure, righteous and sinner, whole and not whole, male and female, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile. Changing this water into wine was symbolic of breaking down these barriers.

The Temple was the heart of the purity system. The animals being sold there were required for sacrifice. Moneychangers were an essential part of the system because it was idolatrous to use Roman coins stamped with the emperor’s image to buy your sacrifice. The moneychangers were giving pure tokens in exchange for impure money. When you added up the temple tax required of every Jewish male, the cost of animals for required sacrifices, the fee for the money changers, and the travel costs associated with coming to Jerusalem at least once a year, the whole thing added up to big business. It also meant the poorer you were, and the less able you were, the less access you had to a good relationship with God.

Jesus was not the first to cry out against this system. Centuries before Jesus, the prophet Micah asked, “Will God be pleased with thousands of rams, with 10,000 rivers of oil? …. God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” The prophet Amos raised a similar cry, “Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them,” says God, “but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” But the system persisted, so Jesus lost his temper. He drove the moneychangers and the animals out of the Temple and overturned their tables.

I’m very careful with this passage. Anyone who has ever lived with a person who explodes knows that the last thing that people with bad tempers need is biblical approval of their temper tantrums. I think we need a bit more humility than Jesus when it comes to a situation like this. As much as I affirm that we’re all to be more Christ-like, perhaps this is one of those times when we should ask, “What did Jesus mean?” instead of “What would Jesus do?”

There are several layers of interpretation possible here. Some commentators see a prophetic prediction of the destruction of the temple that occurred in 70 AD. Others understand the story as a restoration of the temple to its sacred purpose, as a place of prayer for all people, without exploitation. A third approach suggests that Jesus fulfills all the functions of the temple building as the place to meet God.

All these interpretations are compelling, but we also see that Jesus disrupts things. He challenged the rules that named things and people pure or impure in almost everything he did. Debie Thomas writes, “Jesus is not about ‘business as usual.’ Jesus is not a protector of the status quo. Jesus has no interest in propping up institutions of faith that elevate comfort and complacency over holiness and justice.”

That leaves us with a handful of questions. What are we passionate about when it comes to our faith? Have we settled for a way of being Christian that is more safe, casual, and comfortable than it is disorienting, challenging, and transformative? One of my heroes is Janie Spahr, the tireless evangelist for LGBTQ+ rights in the church. Janie says, “If you ever have the chance to get in trouble for the sake of Jesus — Do it.”

Are you willing to get in trouble for Jesus? Am I? These are terrific Lenten questions.

Resources:
Debie Thomas, “Not in God’s House,” https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2937-not-in-god-s-house
Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (New York: HarperColins, 1994)

Losing to Find

February 19, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 8:31-38

Three times during his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, Jesus speaks of his impending death and resurrection, and each time, he pairs this announcement with a teaching about following him. We read the first one here in Chapter 8, verses 31-38. In the New Revised Standard Version, Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

Scary, right? Whenever we hit a scary or difficult teaching of Jesus, the best approach is to look at it in the context of his other teachings. Jesus taught about nonviolence, a simple lifestyle, love of the poor, love of enemies, forgiveness, inclusivity, mercy, healing; he taught about not seeking status, power, privilege, and possessions. These teachings tell us that human beings matter to God; that who you are matters to God. So “deny yourself” and “take up your cross” can’t be read in a way that devalues human life and well-being. In other words, these verses cannot be a request that people denigrate themselves in order to “bear their cross” and suffer, as this passage has sometimes been read. Not all suffering is sacrificial or beneficial, and we should be deeply suspicious of any statements that justify abuse or oppression. We need to read these words in the light of what Jesus called the two greatest commandments: that we are to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.

That’s a good place to start in trying to understand this passage: To deny yourself and to take up your cross must in some way further these two great commandments. To deny ourselves and to take up our crosses must help us, somehow, to choose the connection with God and each other that God chooses.

We get a hint from Jesus’ conversation with his disciples. His disciples weren’t bombarded with 5000 advertising images every day as we are, telling them what they are supposed to look like and drive and wear and eat to be successful or cool or hip. But they still imagine that the secret to life is strength and power, the 3 A’s of appearance, achievement, and affluence, rather than vulnerability and love. So they interpret Jesus’ miraculous acts as demonstrations of power rather than manifestations of love. Jesus explains to them that the predictable outcome of insisting on living in God’s kingdom rather than in Caesar’s, of living the way of love rather than the way of domination, will be his death. The disciples, and Peter in particular, throw a fit. Jesus needs to win! Conquer! Defeat! Not be conquered and be killed. Jesus turns on Peter and accuses him of being the mouthpiece of the dark side. Peter’s way of thinking is the opposite of God’s thinking.

What Jesus is saying is that they, and we, need to go through some form of death – psychological, spiritual, relational, or physical – in order to loosen our ties to the way of winning and defeating, the way of the 3 A’s, the way of disconnection from God and each other. To “deny yourself” is to embrace the truth that we can’t live together peaceably, we can’t save our planet, we can’t thrive, without understanding that we’re all connected.

Karoline Lewis writes, “Lent is a denial of the self in the best way, the self that refuses community. The self that thinks it can survive on its own. The self that rejects the deep need of humanity: belonging.” This is a whole lot harder than giving up chocolate for 6 weeks. Jesus doesn’t sugar coat this. The images he uses are of sacrifice and death. Becoming aware of whatever it is in us that gets in the way of loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves, including loving ourselves, is hard work. As Richard Rohr writes, “Before the truth ‘sets you free,’ it tends to make you miserable.”

It is hard work but it is holy work and we do not do it alone. God is all about resurrection. The dailiness of the work fits my experience: every single day, daily dying to what does not give life, and daily rising to what does. Jesus promises this is what will save us. This is how we will find ourselves and each other.

Resources:

Karoline Lewis, “A Different Kind of Denial,” February 22, 2015, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3542

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011).

David Lose, http://www.davidlose.net/2015/02/lent-2-b/

You Have Something on Your Forehead

February 6, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

It’s Ash Wednesday evening, and you have attended an Ash Wednesday church service. Or maybe you’ve taken advantage of “Ashes on the Go” at the El Cerrito del Norte BART station, where I’ll be joining clergy colleagues this coming Ash Wednesday. You have a black smudge of ashes on your face. What do you say if someone tells you that you have something on your forehead?

In Scripture, ashes are a sign of mourning. Resurrection to new life, which we celebrate at Easter, is always preceded by death to the old life, and even if the promise of resurrection is the life you’ve always wanted, a whole-hearted life, life in the kingdom of God, any little change is a little death; any little death of ego; any little dying to thinking things are black and white is a little death. An even bigger change feels like an even bigger death. The ashes acknowledge the grief that goes with these deaths. So, you might say, “The cross of ashes reminds us that there are things we have to die to in order to live whole-heartedly. The ashes tell us that every little death brings grief.”

But in addition to announcing grief, those ashes proclaim resurrection. Astronomer and cosmologist Carl Sagan wrote, “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” Joni Mitchell put it more poetically in her song covered by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young: “We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon, And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.” It is an act of resurrection to become aware that we are all connected, that we are all in this together, and that today, in our world, this connection is more important than being “right,” maybe more important than anything else. So, if someone asks you what’s on your forehead, you might say, “Stardust. Billion-year-old carbon. What’s on my forehead is my connection to the past, present and future of humanity and of the other approximately 8 and a half million species on this blue-green planet that God gave us as our home. What’s on my forehead reminds me that we are part of everything, and everything is a part of us, and that there are ways that we can celebrate that and embrace that and be open to that rather than deny it.”

When I make the mark of a cross in ashes on someone’s forehead, I say, “You are stardust, and to stardust you will return.”

Ashes on the Go is returning to Del Norte BART in El Cerrito on Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2024. Come receive this blessing from local clergy, 4:30-6:00pm. All are welcome!

Contemplative Activism

January 31, 2024 / cjwhitt / 1 Comment

Mark 1:29-39

We’re told “the whole city was gathered” around Jesus’ door because he’s been healing the sick. Yet, in the morning, when it was still dark, he went to a deserted place to pray.

With so many social and global ills bearing down on us – war in several parts of the globe, climate change, gun violence, white supremacy, political polarization, homelessness, a growing disparity between rich and poor, just to name a few – you might think, “Who has time to pray? We need to act!” But as someone put it, the answer to the question, “Should I be an activist or a contemplative?” is “Yes!” With his early morning prayer in solitude, Jesus is our role model for “contemplative activism.”

Here’s the scenario: You’re passionate about a cause. Or many causes. You want to change the world, and the world sorely needs to be changed. Wrongs need to be righted; systems, structures, and individuals need to be confronted. Our righteous anger or moral outrage are motivating, but they are not effective as strategies. Further, they just aren’t sustainable. We lose hope, become exhausted, get burned out. Or we cause as many problems as we solve.

Thomas Merton wrote, “He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. There is nothing more tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action.”

Someone else put it this way: “We will respond to trauma either by praying for God to punish those who hurt us, or by praying, ‘Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.’” In order to be able to pray the latter, we need an approach to promoting social change that channels our best, loving selves, instead of our angry, resentful selves, an approach that allows for both self-examination and self-care. The term for that approach is “contemplative action.”

The guru of contemplative action is Father Richard Rohr, who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987 “…because,” he writes, “I saw a deep need for the integration of both action and contemplation. Over the years I met many social activists who were doing excellent social analysis and advocating for crucial justice issues, but they were not working from an energy of love except in their own minds. They were still living out of their false self with the need to win, the need to look good, the attachment to a superior, politically correct self-image.”

Rohr continues, “They might have the answer, but they are not themselves the answer. In fact, they are often part of the problem. … Too many reformers self-destruct from within. For that very reason, I believe, Jesus and great spiritual teachers first emphasize transformation of consciousness and soul. Unless that happens, there is no lasting or grounded reform or revolution. When a subjugated people rise to power, they often become as controlling and dominating as their oppressors because the same demon of power has never been exorcised in them. We need less reformation and more transformation.”

Jesus shows us what we must do. Even with the whole town clamoring at his door, with more work to be done, when it was still dark, he went to a deserted place to pray. He reconnected with God, and likely with himself. There are many ways to pray that are considered contemplative, but they always have a foundation of silence, stillness, and solitude. For some, this means a commitment to practices like centering prayer, the Daily Examen, or meditation. Others choose physical practices like yoga, breathing exercises, or dancing.

Activist, or a contemplative? Yes!

Confrontation

January 24, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Lesson: Mark 1:21-28

Things happen in a rush in Mark’s Gospel. We’re barely halfway through Chapter 1, and Jesus has already been baptized, called a handful of disciples, spent forty days in the wilderness, and John the Baptist has been arrested. Now it’s the Sabbath, and Jesus is teaching in the synagogue. Mark says the people “were astounded” because Jesus taught “with authority.” What does “with authority” mean? That he was confident, persuasive, or charismatic? We don’t know for sure, but I bet there was something authentic about him.

No sooner do they get a whiff of this authority when there’s a disturbance. A man is suffering from possession by an “unclean spirit.” Some commentators guess the man was mentally ill, but we don’t really know. It’s probably more fruitful to imagine the impact of this condition on the man’s life. He’s probably a danger to himself and others. He’s probably excluded from social interactions with “normal” people. His family is probably afraid and ashamed.

Jesus confronts the unclean spirit and restores the man to himself, his loved ones, and his community. In Mark, it’s the very first major event in Jesus’ ministry. Matthew, Luke, and John began with different stories. This tells us what Mark thinks is most important, perhaps even what he believes is the heart of Jesus’ ministry and mission. Jesus confronts and opposes this unclean spirit, this whatever-it-is that robs the man, his family, and his community of life. Jesus has just been teaching that the kingdom of God is at hand, and he shows us what that means. First and foremost, it means that God in Jesus will oppose anything that stands against God’s desire that all of God’s children enjoy health and life in the love and safety of community.

A few years ago, North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz wrote a blog for the Huffington Post called, “If I Have Gay Children: Four Promises from a Christian Pastor/Parent.” It was picked up by CNN and major newspapers. He described the blog as a “preemptive love letter” to his two young kids in the event that, one day, he finds out they are LGBTQ+. After two decades in ministry to students and seeing firsthand the incredible damage being done to so many young gay people and their families in the name of God, he felt he needed to speak directly to the faith community; to confront it, if you will. Here are a couple of excerpts:

“If I have gay children, you’ll all know it. My children won’t be our family’s best-kept secret. … Childhood is difficult enough. … I’m not going to put mine through any more unnecessary discomfort, just to make Thanksgiving dinner a little easier for a third cousin with misplaced anger issues.”

“If I have gay children, I’ll pray for them. I won’t pray for them to be made ‘normal.’ I’ve lived long enough to know that if my children are gay, that is their normal. I won’t pray that God will heal or change or fix them. I will pray for God to protect them from the ignorance and hatred and violence that the world will throw at them, simply because of who they are.”

Pavlovitz was inundated with responses. There was vile profanity and utter contempt from people who called themselves Christians. There were affirmations as well, but what moved Pavlovitz most were the responses from “the trenches.” “Sometimes,” he writes, “you read words and they aren’t words; they are more like wounds.”

As a result, Pavlovitz felt called to take up a ministry committed to a more healing, more inclusive church. He writes, “You may need to speak first, so that others who may not have the strength or the opportunity to speak can find their voices. You and I have no idea of the goodness out there until we seek and speak our truest truth. Once we do, God lets you see things you’d never see any other way.”

We may need to speak first. As Jesus’ followers, we are called to confront anything that stands against God’s desire that all of God’s children enjoy health and life. How and where we do this is a matter of opportunity and calling, but it certainly includes confronting the larger Church’s ongoing obsession with what’s “clean” or “unclean.” We need to speak so that others who may not have the strength or the opportunity to speak can find their voices. That is what Jesus did in these verses. The very first thing, on the Sabbath, in the synagogue. “You and I have no idea of the goodness out there until we seek and speak our truest truth. Once we do, God lets you see things you’d never see any other way.”

Come and See

January 11, 2024 / cjwhitt / 1 Comment

Lesson: John 1:43-52

“Come and see.” If you heard those words in an everyday context, I’m guessing you’d be curious. You’d probably stop what you’re doing and go see.

“Come and see” is a theme throughout John’s Gospel. From the early disciples to the Pharisee named Nicodemus, to the Samaritan women at the well, to the man born blind, to Pilate and Thomas, characters in John’s Gospel see Jesus. Seeing in John’s gospel, truly seeing, is followed by believing. John’s point is that the faith of the disciples was not naïve gullibility. It was a response to what they saw and experienced. Just before this passage, Jesus speaks these words to Andrew. “Come and see.” Andrew and his brother Simon Peter do see, and they decide to follow Jesus. Jesus then comes to Galilee and bids Philip, “Follow me.” Philip not only follows, but he seeks out Nathaniel to invite him to do the same.

Nathaniel’s first response is skeptical, even insulting. Scholars think maybe his comment, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” reflects a small town rivalry between Nathaniel’s town, Cana, and Nazareth. But Philip invites him, “Come and see,” and Nathaniel’s skepticism is overcome by the actual encounter with Jesus. He goes from skeptical and sarcastic to utterly convinced. He is transformed. Jesus seems to have that effect on people.

Come and see. Many progressive Christians, and I count myself among them, shy away from evangelism, both the word and the deed. But this passage shows we’re not called to cram our faith down anyone’s throat or question their eternal destiny or threaten them with hellfire, but instead, simply to offer an invitation to come and see. Come and see what God is still doing in and through Jesus and the community of disciples who have chosen to follow him.

Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber writes about the team that put together the website for the church she served in Denver. Most churches have a “What we believe” tab on their websites, and they debated what theirs would say. They toyed with having a tab that, when you clicked on it, went straight to the Nicene Creed. Quite wisely, in my opinion, they rejected that idea. Finally, one person said, “Why don’t we just have it say, ‘If you want to know what we believe, come and see what we do.’”

“‘If you want to know what we believe, come and see what we do.’”

The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is January 15. As Dr. King reminded us, “…love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. … By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.”

What might happen if congregations were able to say, “Come and see how love is transforming us. Come and see love at work, creating, building up, turning enemies into friends”?