faith

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.

Faith in the Face of Fear

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Mark 4:35-41

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vines and Branches

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John 15:1-8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And in our world, today, it clearly is.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

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

I Shall Not Want

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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.”

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Doubting Thomas

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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.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Sir, We Wish to See Jesus

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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.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

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

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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.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

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

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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. 

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.            

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

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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!

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Contemplative Activism

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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!

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.