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The Eye of the Needle

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Mark 10:17-31

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024

No Bouncers

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Mark 9:38-50

   Just before this exchange with his disciples, Jesus catches them arguing over which one of them will be the greatest.  In this passage, the disciple named John has learned of somebody who is healing in Jesus’ name, imitating the work of Jesus.  John has problems with this healer’s credentials.  He’s not following us, John says.  How do we know he has it right?  The disciples seem to think that it’s important for those who follow Jesus to do so in one prescribed way, their way.  This healer is not following the rules.  It’s not surprising that the disciples would conclude their way is the right way; they’ve given up a great deal to follow Jesus. They’ve left their homes, families, and livelihoods.  But it looks as though they’ve also become attached to being the special ones, the insiders. 

  Jesus gives a two-part response: First, he answers the specific question.  Don’t stop him.  If he’s doing it in my name, he’s on the right track.  If he’s not against us, he’s for us.  Look at what he’s doing, not at his credentials. 

   It’s the second part of his response that’s harder to read.  These verses are often interpreted as a dire warning about temptations to sin.  But what’s interesting here is that the warning is aimed at his disciples directly in response to their challenge to the credentials of an outsider.  Jesus knows the damage that can arise from “I’m right, you’re wrong” relationships.  His ongoing conflict with the Pharisees is over their insistence that anyone who doesn’t follow their rules is a spiritual outsider.  Maybe he even had some insight into the evils that would be done in his name in the millennia to follow, when Christians encounter others, both other Christians and non-Christians, who aren’t doing things or believing things in exactly “the right way.”

   Jesus is clearly exasperated.  “Don’t get in the way of those who believe in me,” says Jesus.  Don’t put obstacles, stumbling blocks, in the path of those who are not yet strong in faith.  If you do, says Jesus, then you, the disciples, have stumbled; you’ve messed up big time.  His harsh tone tells us how important it is that the disciples understand it’s their job to take the wide view of faith, not the narrow one.  The followers of Jesus aren’t supposed to be a little clique off in the corner.  One writer put it like this: “If, to use one of Jesus’ own analogies, the coming of the kingdom is like the start of a grand dinner party, then Jesus wants his followers to be like gracious hosts welcoming the guests…. Jesus neither needs nor wants bouncers guarding the door to the grand feast he is initiating.”

   We are to welcome, wherever we find them, the allies of the Christian faith.  When we see people doing those things that Jesus taught and in which Jesus rejoiced in others – mercy, justice, integrity, reverence, faith, love – welcome them.  Make room for them.    

   Then Jesus says, “Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”  In the ancient world, salt was used to cleanse and preserve as well as to season.  Jesus seems to be referring to both uses.  The cleansing/preserving aspect is that the disciples are to be harder on themselves than they are on others; they are to hold themselves to high standards of service and compassion while at the same time making room for others on the journey of faith.  If they do this, they will bring good flavor – saltiness – to their ministry, and to the world.  They will be at peace with each other because they won’t be competing to be the greatest or scrambling to maintain discipleship as an exclusive, private club.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources: “A Season of Discernment: The Final Report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church,” approved by the 217th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) (2006).

He Took a Little Child and Put It Among Them

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Mark 9:30-37

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Does Power Corrupt?

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2 Samuel 11:1-15

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

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

   This story is about abuse of power. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:

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

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

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

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

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

Luke 12:48 (NIV)

Rest a While

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Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Did Mark include this vignette just for pastors?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

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/.

Why I Bother with the Trinity

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John 3:1-17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

A Prayer for Those Sent

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John 17:6-19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved. 

Astounded

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Acts 10:44-48

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

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

Vines and Branches

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John 15:1-8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And in our world, today, it clearly is.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

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