jesus

Don’t Be Afraid

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Luke 12:32-40

There are some things that just don’t go together. Toothpaste and grapefruit juice, for example. Baseball and sushi, even if you can buy sushi at Oracle Park. A “certified organic” label on a pack of cigarettes. And the phrase, “Do not be afraid,” followed shortly by “Sell all your possessions.”

These words are part of the response that Jesus gave to the man who approached him in last week’s Luke passage. The man asked Jesus to mediate an argument he had with his brother over property. Jesus declined and then told the parable of the rich fool who built bigger barns for all his grain. The lectionary skips the verses that come right after that parable, which include Luke’s version of the familiar passage in Matthew about the lilies of the field. In those verses, Jesus says not to worry about what you you’ll eat or what you’ll wear. God knows you need those things, says Jesus. So don’t worry – besides, he adds, can you add a single hour to your life by worrying?

That’s where we pick up with Luke 12:32-40. “Don’t be afraid” might feel like an unreasonable admonition right now, even without the instruction that immediately follows it to sell all our possessions. I receive dozens of texts every day from politicians telling me to be afraid – and give them money. Even if I don’t respond with a contribution, these doomsayers have a good point. Things are scary right now.

“Don’t be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell all your possessions, and give alms.” How do these ideas fit together, and is there any good news here?

First, notice that it’s God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. Like a loving parent, God takes delight in giving God’s children good things. This is what God is like. Not a rule-enforcer, a power player, or an authoritarian tyrant; rather, a parent who delights in giving gifts.

Second, God gives us the kingdom. Use kin-dom, reign, whatever word you choose if “kingdom” sounds too patriarchal. The kingdom of God is the way Jesus described what this life on earth would be like if God were our only king. The point Jesus makes here is that we neither earn the kingdom nor create it. We can participate in it, and as Christ’s followers, we are called to do so. But God’s promise is to give us the kingdom.

Then Jesus tells a parable about being ready. In Scripture, Jesus describes the kingdom of God as “near.” Dorothee Soelle writes that when Jesus spoke of the nearness of the kingdom of God he was never speaking of an event in the future, at some date on the calendar yet to be decided. “Jesus and the Jewish people of his time do not think in linear terms but in relationships, above all relationships to God. In Jesus’ language there is not even a word corresponding to the word ‘future.’ The next day is called ‘what is to come.’ … ‘What is to come’” – the kingdom – “is expected not only by suffering men and women but also by God, with longing and hope.” Soelle writes, “The nearness of God cannot be measured in intervals of time, but must be measured in the strength of the hope which is spreading among people.”

That is what readiness looks like: “The strength of the hope which is spreading among people.” In the verses the lectionary skips, Jesus says, “Strive first for the kingdom …” and you’ll have all you need. This is because in the kingdom of God, everyone has enough. Is this a pie-in-the-sky fantasy? No; God has given the world all that we need for everyone to be clothed and fed. As Mahatma Gandhi put it, “Earth provides enough to satisfy [everyone’s] need, but not [everyone’s] greed.” What might happen if enough people lived as though this is true? How might that strengthen the hope which is spreading among people?

So then, what is a faithful response to “Sell all your possessions”? In many ways, it would be easier to work for the kingdom if we abandoned our lives entirely and started over. But most of us have responsibilities and attachments we’re not going to abandon, and that it wouldn’t be kind, ethical, or faithful to abandon. What Jesus is expressing with these words is urgency. It is a wakeup call. Last week’s parable of the rich man pointed to the folly of attaching to possessions. What is it about our attachment to possessions that is folly, that gets in the way of our participation in the kingdom and needs to be urgently addressed? Is it the way we ignore the toxic impact of mining the rare earth minerals required for our technology? Or the fact that only one-tenth of the world’s greenhouse gases are emitted by the 74 lowest income countries, but those countries will be most affected by climate change? Or the fact that cheap clothing has a hidden cost: the exploitation of vulnerable labor forces, especially children? Is it the fact that a fraction of billionaires’ wealth could end starvation and homelessness? Or is it simply that we measure our worth by the quantity and quality of stuff we own?

By clinging to our possessions, are we helping to create a sense of scarcity? As Parker Palmer writes, “The irony, often tragic, is that by embracing the scarcity assumption, we create the very scarcities we fear. If I hoard material goods, others will have too little and I will never have enough. If I fight my way up the ladder of power, others will be defeated and I will never feel secure. If I get jealous of someone I love, I am likely to drive that person away. …. We create scarcity … by competing with others for resources as if we were stranded on the Sahara at the last oasis.”

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.” Don’t be afraid, says Jesus. Don’t be afraid because God has something better in mind. It’s God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Dorothee Soelle and Luise Schottroff, Jesus of Nazareth (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2002).
Jaya Nayar, “’Not So “Green’ Technology: The Complicated Legacy of Rare Earth Mining,” August 12, 2021, https://hir.harvard.edu/not-so-green-technology-the-complicated-legacy-of-rare-earth-mining/
Ruma Bhargawa and Megha Bhargava, “The Climate Crisis Disproportionately Hits the Poor. How Can We Protect Them?” January 13, 2023, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/01/climate-crisis-poor-davos2023/
Suha Fasih, “The Fast-Fashion Dilemma: Unraveling Forced Labor in Global Supply Chains,” October 21, 2024, https://lawjournalforsocialjustice.com/2024/10/31/the-fast-fashion-dilemma-unraveling-forced-labor-in-global-supply-chains/
Mark G. Miller, “A fraction of billionaires’ wealth could end starvation and homelessness,” March 5, 2025, https://millermarkg.com/2025/03/05/a-fraction-of-billionaires-wealth-could-end-starvation-and-homelessness/

Rich Toward God

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Luke 12:13-21

I was disappointed to learn that the old adage, “Money can’t buy happiness,” isn’t actually true. To tell the truth, it never made intuitive sense to me. I knew from personal experience as a struggling student as well as observing parishioners that if you don’t have enough money to cover basic expenses, it causes unhappiness in the form of anxiety. So money definitely buys relief from anxiety, which perhaps is not the same as happiness. Nevertheless, studies now show that real happiness improves as income increases, and continues to rise alongside one’s bank account with no clear upper limit. Still, I wanted the saying to be true. As a person who has chosen a career guaranteed to keep me free from excessive wealth, I wanted it to be true that once basic needs are met, people are equally happy.

The parable in this passage in Luke doesn’t dispute the new research. However, it does suggest that the happiness that comes with wealth isn’t what really matters in the long run. Responding to a request for financial advice from someone in the crowd, Jesus warns against greed, which ancient philosophers believed to be a form of depravity and a lack of self-control. He explains, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions,” and then tells the parable about a rich, apparently happy man. We hear the rich man’s inner monologue: He wonders how to store his overabundance of crops and belongings, and the obvious solution is to build bigger barns. That’s when God shows up, a rare occurrence in a parable, and tells him he’s a fool. He’s going to die that very night, and, as another old saying goes, you can’t take it with you. “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Jesus doesn’t say the man is wicked. He doesn’t say he’s evil. He says he’s a fool. Given that money can buy happiness, what makes this man a fool? He’s a fool, says Jesus, because he stored up treasures for himself, when he should have been “rich toward God.” But what does “rich toward God” mean?

Maybe the man isn’t “rich toward God” because he only considers his own interests, needs, and desires. The conversation he has with himself is utterly self-focused. Has he grown apathetic to the needs of others because of the insulation that his wealth provides? He seems to have no concern outside his own comfort and contentment. He has no empathy for others; no sense of the needs of his neighbors; no sense of how his blessing could be a blessing to others; no sense of connection to anyone. It is foolish to live locked in your own little world, oblivious to the presence, humanity, and needs of others.

Perhaps he isn’t “rich toward God” because he has made wealth his goal. Has wealth replaced God in his heart? “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:34) A 2003 study describes “the money and happiness paradox”: Even though having more money is associated with happiness, seeking more money impairs our happiness. The study found that people with strong financial success goals reported lower satisfaction with family life, friendships, and jobs. It found that “the greater your goal for financial success, the lower your satisfaction with family life, regardless of household income.” This paradox teaches that money boosts happiness when it is a result, but not when it is a primary goal, or as one researcher noted, “It is generally good for your happiness to have money, but toxic to your happiness to want money too much.” When money becomes our God, it jeopardizes our happiness.

Maybe he is not “rich toward God” in the way he seems to assume he alone can take credit for his wealth; that his wealth belongs to him and him alone. Psalm 24 teaches, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it; the world, and those who live in it.” Our lives and possessions are not our own. They belong to God. We are merely stewards of them for the time God has given us on this earth. Elisabeth Johnson writes, “We rebel against this truth because we want to be in charge of our lives and our stuff.” God’s surprise announcement is a stark reminder that, ultimately, control of our lives is an illusion. Sooner or later we learn that no amount of wealth or property can secure our lives. No amount of wealth can protect us from a genetically inherited disease, for instance, or from a tragic accident. No amount of wealth can keep our relationships healthy and our families from falling apart. In fact, wealth and property can easily drive a wedge between family members, as in the case of the brothers fighting over their inheritance at the beginning of this passage.

Maybe he isn’t “rich toward God” because his focus on his own comfort ignores God’s good Creation. We aren’t told this man achieved his wealth by misusing other people or exploiting the planet, but we know this accounts for much of the extreme wealth in our world today, as well as the historic levels of income inequality we’re witnessing. Jesus follows this parable with Luke’s version of the “lilies of the field,” concluding, “Instead, seek God’s kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well” (Luke 12:31). In God’s kingdom, Jesus’ metaphor for the world governed by God’s love for all of God’s Creation, everyone has enough because people share, people do not hoard, people do not exploit others or the earth so that the earth can sustain all God’s creatures. In other words, people love their neighbors as themselves and it is apparent in the economy.

In our consumer culture, our worthiness is measured by what we own, can afford to buy, and the power that comes from vast sums of money. This makes it a hard sell convincing anyone that the happiness generated by wealth isn’t what really matters. But we only need to look around us to see the tragic consequences of wealth that insulates people from the struggles of the rest of the world and contributes to the destruction of the planet. It is abundantly clear that it is not “rich toward God.” It is, in fact, foolish.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Aimee Picchi, “Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness: the More Wealth You Have, the Happier You Get, Research Finds,” July 26, 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/money-buys-happiness-study-finds-rich-are-happier-research/.
Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, “This is a funny story. We laugh. But we’re laughing at ourselves,” July 17, 2019, https://www.christiancentury.org/lectionary/august-4-ordinary-18c-luke-12-13-21
John Jennings, “Does Money Buy Happiness? Actually, Yes,” February 12, 2024, https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnjennings/2024/02/12/money-buys-happiness-after-all/
Elisabeth Johnson, “Commentary Luke 12:13-21,” August 4, 2019, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-18-3/commentary-on-luke-1213-21-4

Teach Us to Pray

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Luke 11:1-13

Jesus’ disciples ask him to teach them to pray as John the Baptizer taught his disciples. Jesus accepts the challenge, and begins, “When you pray …” Not if you pray, but when. So, the first part of the lesson is that praying is what Jesus’ disciples do.

He then teaches them a model prayer, Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew’s version, imbedded in the Sermon on the Mount, is slightly different (Matthew 6:9-13). Jesus doesn’t say this is the only prayer we should pray, but the Lord’s Prayer does teach us about prayer in general.

We are to begin prayer, says Jesus, by noticing that God is like a loving parent and we, each of us, all of us, are part of God’s family (“Our Father”). Yet God is also a Holy Mystery that can’t be limited to one image and is deserving of our reverence (“hallowed be thy name”).

Then, we are to orient ourselves to what God wills for God’s Creation, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” But just what is God’s will? That question is worth an entire sermon series, but for now, I’ll note that Jesus doesn’t confuse God’s will with fate or destiny. Rather, when Jesus says, “thy will,” he means God’s desires for God’s world. He describes this with the metaphor, “the kingdom of God;” thus, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth …” The simplest way for Christians to determine what “God’s will” means is to look at Jesus himself. If we do this, we’ll see in Jesus’ life and teachings that God’s will is that we love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves. We’ll see that we are to welcome outcasts, forgive others and accept forgiveness, and be reconciled with our enemies. We’ll see that we are to help those in need regardless of who they are, and that all manner of healing is more important than almost anything else we can do. When we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth,” we pray that we will adjust, adapt, and transform our lives, desires, and hopes to these desires of God for all of God’s world.

Next, Jesus teaches that we are to bring our needs to God: our need for survival and sustenance (our “daily bread”), and our need for forgiveness and reconciliation (“forgive us …, as we forgive others …”). On the one hand, every pronoun is in the plural – our daily bread, not my daily bread. We are praying for the welfare of all. On the other hand, being open and honest with God about our personal, individual fears, needs, and vulnerabilities helps us recognize them and put them in the context of God’s love. Praying is how we form and maintain a relationship with God, and honest communication is always better for relationships.

Finally, we are to remember that, in many ways, the world in which we live does not reflect God’s will, and we pray to be spared those temptations, those “trials,” that might throw us off track.

Jesus follows his model prayer with some especially challenging verses: “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” Does Jesus really mean we’ll get whatever we pray for as though God were a giant vending machine in the sky? No. Careful reading shows that Jesus makes only one promise: When we pray, God will give us God’s Spirit.

But what does that mean? When what you really want is for your loved one to survive cancer or for your child to stay off drugs or for people to be treated justly or for the bombs to stop falling, God’s Spirit may not sound like enough of an answer to prayer. I know many people who pray and wonder, “Is anybody listening?”

Søren Kierkegaard said, “The function of prayer is not to influence God but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” That is certainly my own experience. Debie Thomas writes, “…[O]ften … I want God to sweep in and fix everything much more than I want God’s Spirit to fill and accompany me so that I can do my part to heal the world. Resting in God’s yes [to give us the Spirit] requires vulnerability, patience, courage, discipline, and trust — traits I can only cultivate in prayer.”

God’s Spirit is the source of those traits. God’s Spirit is exactly what we need to participate with God in healing the world. Perhaps the precise way prayer changes us is as individual as each one of us, as complex as our complex lives, but the goal is always healing: healing ourselves, healing God’s world.

The old hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” includes these lines:
Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged,
Take it to the Lord in prayer.

I won’t tell anyone that they should never be discouraged. However, I agree with the hymn that we should bring everything to God in prayer. Everything. Not because God will fix everything, but because it means we’re showing up. We’re maintaining the relationship. Nothing we bring to God will surprise God. I realize prayer is in many ways mysterious; how it “works” or changes us is hard to measure or prove but Jesus said “when.” “When you pray…” Not “if.” So we pray, with and without words, on our knees and in real and metaphorical bunkers, in desperation and in gratitude, and we count on the promise that God’s Spirit will change us, heal us, and change and heal the world through us.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Debie Thomas, “When You Pray,” in Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories: Reflections on the Life of Christ (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022).
Brian D. McLaren, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbl6hPBA5rU.

Hospitality

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Luke 10:38-42

In this passage, Martha has welcomed Jesus into her home, which should get her the special blessings that go to those who receive Jesus or his disciples. As Jesus said, “whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” But what does Martha get instead? She gets corrected by Jesus for not doing it right! He’s gentle about it, but still, kind of annoyingly patronizing. “Martha, Martha….” You can just see Jesus shaking his head. And it seems Jesus is setting up a rivalry between Martha and her sister Mary, the one who is doing it right.

It’s hard not to choose sides, especially because Luke wants us to choose sides. Unfortunately, this has felt like a double bind for a lot of people, and for women in particular. If, like Martha, you focus on the details of a meal, the menu, the preparation, the clean-up, you risk being labeled “over-functioning.” If, like Mary, you sit and listens too long, nothing gets done. What many folks I know want Jesus to say is, “You’re absolutely right, Martha. What was I thinking? Why don’t we all come into the kitchen and help with the dishes and talk while we work?”

But this story is about Martha and Mary. Not Martha versus Mary, or even Martha or Mary. Jesus does say that Mary has chosen the “better” part and it won’t be taken from her. This might sound harsh to Martha but it’s radical news for women: he affirms a woman can choose to sit in the circle of men as he teaches. “Sitting at his feet” means being a disciple, and at this point in history women were not allowed to sit at the feet of rabbis; they were not allowed to be disciples. But Jesus won’t send Mary off to the kitchen, even if the other disciples and Martha think she belongs there.

Jesus also says something about hospitality. He doesn’t tell us that acts of hospitality are unimportant, but Mary has chosen the “one thing” that is needed. Here, that one thing is the purpose of hospitality itself, and that is the interchange between the host and the guest. I looked at a handful of websites that offer some version of “10 Tips for Giving the Perfect Dinner Party” and they all include something like, “Get out of the kitchen and enjoy your guests. They came to see you, not just to eat your food.” Jesus sees that Martha is “worried and distracted.” Maybe’s she’s so worried and distracted that she misses the point of welcoming a guest in the first place. The interchange between the host and the guest is what really matters.

This isn’t about doing versus being. It’s about doing what’s called for by the situation, and the situation of welcoming a guest calls for paying attention to the guest because that is one important way we love our neighbor, and it’s one important way we recognize the face of God in our neighbor. I love the way Melissa Weintraub puts it: “For us, revelation does not usually happen in thunder and smoke. Most often it happens in simple face-to-face conversation over coffee and cake.”

The experience of God, the encounter with God – which is what revelation means – the encounter with God does not usually happen in thunder and smoke. Not for most of us. Most often it happens in simple face-to-face conversation over coffee and cake. Or over a latte, or a beer, or a potluck casserole. And like any true encounter with God, genuine hospitality changes us because the encounter with the Other, with any other human being, always changes us.

Hospitality might sound trivial given what’s going on in our current socio-political atmosphere but think about it. Think about how extending hospitality to anyone and everyone, including those with whom we disagree or even those who infuriate us, think how that could change the way we see everything. Imagine if we listened to everyone as though they matter, as though what they have to say really matters. Imagine if we expected that we might very well encounter something of the Divine Presence in a conversation over coffee and cake.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Melissa Weintraub, “Revelations of the Other, Face-to-Face,” February 18, 2006, http://www.encounterprograms.org/sources_sermon.html
Fred B. Craddock, Interpretation: Luke (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990).

Do You Want to Be Made Well?

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John 5:1-9

   A man who has been ill for thirty-eight years lies by a pool that is believed to have healing powers.  He’s been trying to make his way to the healing waters of the pool, but he can’t do it without help, and he has no help.  Jesus asks, “Do you want to be made well?” 

   “Well, duh!” seems to be the obvious answer.  Of course he wants to be made well.  The question seems almost cruel.  Is Jesus implying that the man isn’t well because he doesn’t want it enough?  In Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Bright-sided, she described her battle with breast cancer and the unrelenting message that you won’t recover unless you have a sufficiently positive attitude.  It was made clear to her, she said, that “If I don’t get better, it’s my fault. … It’s a clever blame-the-victim sort of thing.”  Given this message, we might wonder if the man’s response is defensive: “Sir, I have no one to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” 

   Some alternative Greek manuscripts for John’s Gospel explain that it was believed that these waters had healing powers only when they were moving, mysteriously stirred up, and only the first person in the pool when the water begins to move would be healed.  This means every ailing person is competing with every other ailing person for a very limited opportunity.  Not the best system, but it’s the only system the man knows.  Of course he wants to be made well; otherwise he wouldn’t keep making regular trips to the pool.

   Jesus is not telling the man that he just needs a sunnier outlook or that he needs to pray a little harder.  It is cruel to tell people who are sick, or jobless, or unhoused, or refugees that they just aren’t thinking positively enough, they just aren’t trying hard enough, that whatever they are experiencing is their own fault.  And one thing we can say for certain about Jesus is that he wasn’t cruel.  Why, then, does he ask, “Do you want to be made well”? 

   Jesus spoke to people as though they could think, decide, make judgments.  He knows the man wants to be made well, so in essence, he’s asking, “Is this working for you?  Is sitting by this pool getting you what you want and need?”  And if that’s what Jesus is asking, then the man’s answer makes more sense; it sounds less like a bundle of excuses and more like a thoughtful, if exasperated reply.  I’m imagining he’s saying something like, “Does it work?  Just listen to how much it doesn’t work,” and then he describes the tedious process he’s endured for years.

  Jesus asks, “Is this really working for you?  Or are you ready to try something else?”  The closing verse of this passage points to this: “Now that day was a Sabbath.”  The story continues beyond this passage to explain why that’s a problem.  At this point in Christian history, it’s likely that both Jewish Christians and the traditional Jewish community intended to keep the Sabbath.  The struggle was over how to apply this – what did it mean to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy?  So part of Jesus’ question, “Do you want to be made well?” includes, “Is this system working for you?”  Not only the system that’s kept him coming back to this pool for years with no change in his condition, but the system that would prevent Jesus from healing him on the Sabbath, as well as preventing the man from carrying his bed away from the pool once he’s healed.

   Is this really working for you?  Ask anyone who’s been in a twelve-step group and they will tell you that Step 1 is honesty – honesty about your condition, honesty about the fact that what you’ve tried in the past isn’t working.  It is the question that every one of us, every group and every institution needs to answer in the negative before we can begin to change.  “Is this really working?”  If you can’t say, “Well, no, now that you mention it, it isn’t working,” there’s no reason to try something else.

   I believe we are to hear, first and foremost, Jesus asking us the question.  “Do you want to be made well?  Is what you are doing really working?  Is it working to give you health and wholeness?  Or are you ready to try something else?”  Not so we can heal ourselves with the power of positive thinking but so we can let go of whatever system or whatever beliefs or whatever we’ve been doing that is not working.  In our relationships.  In our work.  In our national life, in our economy, in our churches, in our care of creation and the climate, in our care of our fellow human beings.  In our relationships with other nations.  And in our health, and certainly in our health care delivery system, which is not so different from what existed back then in that it lets one person be pushed aside while another receives care.  Maybe this story isn’t so much about one man as it is about a system of healing out of whack. 

   Jesus offers us another way.  Let go of what isn’t working.  Try something else.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Herman C. Waetjen, The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple (New York: T & T Clark International, 2005).
Patricia Cohen, “Author’s Personal Forecast: Not Always Sunny, But Pleasantly Skeptical,” October 10, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/books/10ehrenreich.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print.
Gerard Sloyan, Interpretation: John (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1988).

By This Everyone Will Know

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John 13:31-35 

    A few weeks ago, I spoke at a California State Senate committee hearing in Sacramento, advocating for a bill that would prohibit discrimination in healthcare on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.  I stood in line at the mic after the bill’s author made her introduction, and we were instructed to give only our names and affiliation, and voice our support.  The person who invited me to this hearing asked me to wear my clergy collar, which I rarely do.  I realize the collar announces loud and clear what I am, but I find that when I wear one in public, people tend to avert their eyes.  This was the case that day in Sacramento.  I’m glad I spoke up, I’m glad I claimed the affiliation of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and I’m even glad I wore the collar because it makes me look more official. But on elevators and in corridors, it felt as though people thought I might have something contagious.

   It makes me wonder what they think about clergy, but also, about Christians.  I ran across a short video called, “What Are Christians Known For?” An interviewer asked this very question of random people in random settings.  It wasn’t a scientific poll, but it had the feel of being pretty much where people are about Christians these days.  You may watch the video here:

   About half of the people responded the way I’d hoped: Forgiveness, compassion, loving our neighbors.  The other half responded with what I feared they might: Fanaticism, hypocrisy, killing off non-Christians.  I’m deeply grateful that at least some of the people interviewed mentioned Jesus, and even echoed his words in this passage in John’s Gospel.  These verses take place shortly before Jesus’ arrest. Jesus has just washed the disciples’ feet, a vivid demonstration of servanthood, hospitality, and love.  Then Jesus announces that one among them will betray him.  After Judas leaves, Jesus speaks the words in today’s lesson. 

   Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  He’s asking them to care for each other as he has cared for them.  It doesn’t end there, within the community of disciples, but it does start there and that’s hard enough.  We’ve just seen Judas, a disciple, turn on Jesus and the other disciples, for crying out loud.  John wrote his gospel in the context of the early church, which experienced conflict from without and within.  All of Paul’s letters to the ancient churches were about how to get along, how to treat each other within the community of faith.  Paul’s most famous words, that gorgeous chapter 13 from First Corinthians that practically everyone including me has read at their wedding is not about marriage; it’s about church.  It’s about telling people how to love each other in the church.

   In order to bring the good news of Christ to the rest of the world, the followers of Christ needed to take care of one another.  They need to love each other.  Note what Jesus doesn’t say.  He doesn’t say: “You will know them by their exacting adherence to correct doctrine.”  He doesn’t say, “You will know them by the way they read the Bible literally,” or “You will know them by who it is they condemn as sinners.”  Jesus doesn’t say, “You will know them by their lack of doubts, or by their lack of questions.”

   “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”   

   As the little video shows, people are watching us.  They may not be watching closely enough to know the difference between a Pentecostal, a Presbyterian, and a Roman Catholic. But they’re watching to see how we act.  They’re watching to see if we love each other.  And of course, they’re watching to see if we extend that love beyond the doors of our churches.  But it has to start with the community.  The church’s purpose is love, not condemnation.  The church’s purpose is love, not judgment.  William Barclay writes, “More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all of the theological arguments in the world, and more people have been driven from church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all of the doubts in the world.”

   It has to start with the community, but to end there is to miss the point.  The church does not exist to preserve or maintain itself, but rather, to be Body of Christ in the world, to go into the world to do the work God calls us to do. Amy Allen writes, “For John’s Jesus, this was showing the world the Light, to show what it meant to be a follower of Christ.  For Luke’s Jesus, this was showing the world aid and concern, helping the victims, eating with those different from you, and baptizing whole households, even slaves, women, and children. Being a disciple of Jesus in these circumstances meant loving into community the whole people of God – not simply loving those with whom one was already in communion.”

   “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  David Lose points out that these words “are simultaneously ridiculously easy to understand and ridiculously hard to do.”  And yet, Jesus would not have given us this new commandment if it had not been possible.  We gather in communities, in churches, precisely to figure out how it’s possible. 

 © Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved

Resources:

Amy Allen, http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/the-politics-of-beloved-community-read-through-acts-111-18-and-john-1331-35/

David Lose, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=2542 

Tabitha, Get Up

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Acts 9:36-43

Today’s story in Acts reminds me of a Billy Collins poem. Collins, who teaches poetry as well as writing it, wrote these lines about his students in his poem, “Introduction to Poetry”:
“I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
…
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.” …

“But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.”

The account of the raising of Tabitha is short but enigmatic and challenging. For starters, someone is brought back to life after having died, and not even by Jesus, but rather, by Peter. It’s a tough miracle to swallow, but the biblical writers weren’t worried about science the way we are. They cared about what they remembered, and they cared what God was saying to them. So how do we determine what God is saying through this story, the story the community remembered, without tying it to a chair and beating a confession out of it?

Tabitha is described as a disciple. We’re told she is devoted to good works and acts of charity. It appears that she cared for the needy widows in Joppa, out of her own resources and in a very practical way: she made clothing for them. When Tabitha dies, the community fears that her life-giving work dies with her.

We aren’t told why Peter is called, or what’s expected of him. Tabitha is dead; her friends have already washed her body. When he arrives, he’s ushered to the upstairs room, and he asks everyone to leave. He kneels and prays and then speaks. The text emphasizes that he’s speaking to “the body,” not to an aware, alive person. He says, “Tabitha, get up.” And she does. The news gets around, and we’re told, “many believed in the Lord.” Well, yeah. If Christians today started raising the dead, churches would have no trouble meeting their budgets.

Every bible story is set in the midst of other stories. Behind this story about Tabitha is a story from Mark’s gospel that was retold by Luke, who was also the author of the book of Acts. The story in Mark is about Jairus and his daughter. Jairus, a leader of a Galilee synagogue, asks Jesus to heal his 12-year-old daughter, who is dying. On his way to Jairus’ house, Jesus heals the woman who touches his cloak in a crowd. Moments later, a messenger arrives with the news that Jairus’ daughter has died. But Jesus responds, “Do not fear, only believe.” Jesus continues to the house, where he tells all those present that the girl is not dead but asleep. He then goes upstairs and restores the little girl to life. In Mark’s account, Jesus speaks the Aramaic phrase “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!”

Talitha, get up. Tabitha, get up. The words are meant to sound the same, to be an echo. Tabitha’s upstairs room is meant to be an echo of that earlier upstairs room. And then there’s Peter, who had been called Simon but of whom Jesus said, “You are Peter, and on this rock” – because that’s what “Peter” means – it means “rock” – “on this rock I will build my church.” Peter in this story is meant to be an epitome of the authority, capacity, and mission of the church. He is the embodiment of the church, if you will. He enters the room where there is a smell of death and prays. He says, “Get up,” just the way Jesus did. And life is given, just the way it was when Jesus did it.

This story is a startling and dramatic announcement that Peter – that is, the Church – is to carry on the work of Jesus, and is entrusted with his resurrection power, the power of new life. Paul used the phrase, “the Body of Christ,” to capture this idea. The Church is the Body of Christ, given Christ’s life-giving work to do, and the power to do it.

We can’t really explain what happened in this miraculous story, and we shouldn’t try, but we can say that, at its core, it is subversive. It is subversive because every culture and community, every family, every congregation assumes things have to be a certain way. Who is powerful, who is weak; who thrives, who struggles; who lives, who dies. Tabitha, for example, is supposed to stay home and let the men come up with a way to care for vulnerable widows. Peter is to stay with his fishing nets and leave theology to the scholars and preaching to the charismatic. This story turns that upside down. Death is not the final word, and so reality is not bound to what has been. Flipping over the old assumptions is what the Church is to be about.

The Church tells and retells Tabitha’s story as a reminder that the Church is entrusted with the power to bring new life … bodily, concretely, locally. And not only life, but life for those who are on the bottom rung of the ladder, people who normally have no one to represent or protect them. Tabitha’s story tells us widows will not be abandoned. God will not allow it. That might impact how the Church responds to proposed reductions in Social Security benefits. It might impact what the Church teaches daughters and granddaughters, as well as sons, about choosing a career that will sustain them. It might impact a congregation’s decision to offer sanctuary to refugees in spite of the current war on immigrants.

William Willimon writes about Tabitha’s story: “Every time a couple of little stories like these are faithfully told by the church, the social system is rendered null and void. The church comes out and [says] … ‘Rise!’ and nothing is ever quite the same again.”

Perhaps Tabitha, sewing clothes for widows, also already knew what Mother Teresa said, that none of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love. Anne Lamott writes, “[M]ost of us have figured out that we have to do what’s in front of us and keep doing it. We clean up beaches after oil spills. We rebuild whole towns after hurricanes and tornadoes. We return calls and library books. We get people water. Some of us even pray. Every time we choose the good action or response, the decent, the valuable, it builds, incrementally, to renewal, resurrection, the place of newness, freedom, justice. The equation is: life, death, resurrection, hope. The horror is real, and so you make casseroles for your neighbor, organize an overseas clothing drive, and do your laundry. You can also offer to do other people’s laundry, if they have recently had any random babies or surgeries.”

The Church proclaims, “Tabitha, get up.” Widows and the vulnerable of our world, get up. You, who are surprised to discover that even you have been named as a disciple, get up. Get up, choose the good action, the decent, the valuable, and give witness to the resurrection to new life here and now.

Copyright © 2025 Joanne Whitt all rights reserved.

Resources:
Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry,” from The Apple that Astonished Paris (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2006).
Mitzi Smith, “Commentary on Acts 9:36-43,” http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2814.
William H. Willimon, Interpretation: Acts (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1988).
Walter Brueggemann, “Blogging toward Sunday: Acts 9:36-43,” in The Christian Century, April 24, 2007, http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2007-04/blogging-toward-sunday-0.
Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair (New York: Riverhead Books, 2013).

Blessed Are Those Who Come to Believe

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John 20:19-31

Just as we get the Resurrection every year on Easter, we get Thomas every year on the Sunday after Easter. I couldn’t find anything definitive about exactly when Thomas became known as “Doubting Thomas,” but Merriam Webster says the first known use is about 1883. It’s interesting to me that Thomas’ doubt may have become a cliché after the Scientific Revolution, when people may already be demanding proof of religious claims. Why was Thomas castigated for his doubts, rather than praised or at least respected as an example of healthy and even scientific skepticism? After all, Thomas wasn’t the only disciple who needed eye-witness proof of the Resurrection. According to John, all the other disciples were there when Jesus first appeared; they got to see him. Thomas is singled out merely for asking for the same proof they had.

But the point of the story isn’t Thomas. It’s us. Jesus says, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” That would be us, the readers of John’s gospel a couple of thousand years later, and the Church. John leans heavily on “believing” throughout his gospel, although as I have written here before, John didn’t mean what we usually mean when we say we “believe” in the context of religions. 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. Someone reminded me recently that Civil Rights activist John Lewis said, “If you believe in something, you have to go for it.” That’s what believing means in John’s gospel.

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Our cultural assumptions about Christianity or perhaps our Sunday school indoctrination might tempt us to conclude this means we are blessed if we can recite the Apostles’ Creed without crossing our fingers. In my opinion, that is a very low bar. Rather, “If you believe in something, you have to go for it.”

What does it look like to “go for it” because we believe in Christ? It depends on who you ask. As for me, I’ll quote Melissa Bane Sevier:
“We do what we know is right. We follow Jesus.
We remember that truth is our currency. We speak, share, and write the truth. Once we shrink from telling the truth, what do we have?
We honor those who are most vulnerable: the poor, the sick, the very young and very old, those with disabilities.
We welcome the immigrant, the refugee, and the stranger as if we were welcoming Jesus himself.
We work for fairness and justice. We lift up people of all races, nationalities, religions, people of different genders.
We live in hope.
We are always listening, always aware that we may be wrong, always looking for the best in those with whom we disagree.
We say – not just to those like us, but especially to those different from us – “we have your back.”
This is what Jesus did. This is what Jesus taught.”

“If you believe in something, you have to go for it.”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
https://melissabanesevier.wordpress.com/2017/01/30/be-the-light-2/

Ongoing Easter

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John 20:1-18

Back in 1984, everybody was reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig. A dear friend said I should read it and it would change my life. I did; it didn’t; and I don’t remember much of it, but I appreciated Persig’s explanation of the Buddhist concept of “mu,” which means “un-ask.” If someone asks a question that limits the way you can look at things, or that can only produce an unhelpful answer, you can answer, “mu,” which says there may be a better question.

The celebration of the Resurrection tends to raise the kind of questions that make me want to answer, “Mu.” Did the Resurrection really happen? Do you “believe” in the Resurrection? Do you need to believe in a literal, bodily Resurrection to be a good Christian, or to be any kind of Christian? At the risk of sounding like the Easter cow instead of the Easter bunny, “Mu, mu, mu.”

People have obsessed about these questions for centuries. We want the facts, right? But even the four gospels tell the story four different ways. How many women went to the tomb: one, two or three? How many angels? Did the disciples meet Jesus in Galilee or Jerusalem or both? All of which is glorious affirmation that neither the precise facts about the Resurrection nor the truth it reveals depends on what we believe. Easter isn’t like the musical “Peter Pan,” where the audience is asked to clap if they believe in fairies to save Tinkerbell’s life. We don’t change anything by our belief, our unbelief, or by telling the story with conflicting details.

Besides, as Frederick Buechner pointed out, “…even if somebody had been there with a television camera and taken a picture of Jesus walking out of the tomb, what would that be except, for many people, an interesting historical fact, just as it’s interesting to know that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492? But what difference does that make to me? So what if a Jew in the year 30 A.D. was brought back from the dead? In other words, what’s important is not so much what happened in the half-light of daybreak on that day in 30 A.D., but what happens now. What matters is not what happened on Easter Sunday, but what happens in my life. Is there any sense that, for you and for me, Jesus exists, or the power that was in Jesus, the power that led people to see him as kind of transparency to holiness itself, to the mystery itself? If that is alive, that’s all that matters, and what happened on that day is of little consequence except in a minor historical way.”

We tell this enigmatic story with conflicting details every year not because Easter is the anniversary of something that happened 2,000 years ago. Easter is not over. It is ongoing. We see this in John’s Easter story. It’s Sunday morning and still dark. Mary Magdalene goes to tomb where she knows the body of the crucified Jesus was laid on Friday. She sees the tomb is empty and concludes someone has stolen the body. She runs to tell Peter and the other disciple, and they run to the tomb. The unnamed disciple “believes,” but we aren’t told what he believes. The disciples don’t yet understand; in any event, they turn around and head home.

Mary remains there, weeping. She sees a man she thinks is the gardener. He calls her by name, and something illogical, something impossible happens. The One who was certified dead greets her. Stunned, she can only say, “Rabbouni!” which is something like “Teacher!” She reaches for him, but Jesus says, “Don’t cling to me.” This seems harsh, but rather than a rebuke, try imagining it as a teaching moment. “Mary, you can’t cling to ‘Rabbouni,’ to what I was on Friday. You can’t hold on to what is dead and gone.” Jesus refers to “your father and my father; your God and my God.” He’s describing a new horizontal relationship, a new union with God that means new life. The point of Easter is not to believe something about the past, but to awaken to the gift of new life here. God is making us new, here, and now.

What does “new” look like? To the disciples, it looked like an uprising of hope. Brian D. McLaren imagines their conversation: “Do you realize what this means? Jesus was right after all!” “Not only that, but we never have to fear death again. And if that’s true, we never need to fear Caesar again.” “That means we can stand tall and speak the truth, just like Jesus did.” We see this awakening realization in all the post-resurrection accounts. Everything had changed. It’s not just that Jesus was resurrected. It felt as though they’d arisen, too. They’d been in a tomb of defeat and despair, but they were truly alive again, and a force to be reckoned with. But a force of hope, not hate.

“New” is for us, as well, but like the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don’t actually deserve it. Nadia Bolz-Weber writes, “New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage not to mention I was right. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn’t live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing we never saw coming – never even hoped for – but ends up being what we needed all along.”

The God who is love, who so loved the whole world, as John’s gospel put it, does not limit new life to people who can recite the Apostles’ Creed without crossing their fingers. “Do not cling to me,” said Jesus. God is free, and perhaps “new” includes recognizing the ways we have persuaded ourselves that God can be controlled by our own rules, creeds, and religious practices. John’s first witness to the Resurrection was a woman. It’s hard for us to appreciate how radical that is, but it affirms everything Jesus did in his earthly ministry to cross barriers and include outsiders. So not only can we no longer think of God as Protestant or Catholic, or white, Black or brown; we can no longer think God is more like nice middle-class folks or imagine that God prefers Christians to Muslims or vice versa. “New” means waking up to the fact that God is not on “our” side any more than God is on “their” side.

Easter – new life – is God’s ongoing work. It’s not just once a year and it’s not about church, although the church is the fellowship of Easter people. When Jesus sent Mary to go tell the disciples, in the Greek it says, “Continue to tell them.” Her never-ending mission, and ours, is to share her Easter experience and the things he taught. So while we do not corner the market on new life, we are the people who look for, celebrate and point to signs of Resurrection; signs that, as Desmond Tutu put it, goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, light is stronger than darkness, life is stronger than death. When the Church gathers, it is to rise again, to believe again, to hope again, to live again. It is ongoing. We do not proclaim on Easter morning, “Christ was risen.” We proclaim, “Christ is risen!”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
William Placher, quoting Herman Samuel Reimarus, in Jesus the Savior (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2001).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6IKaLF4Fqc
Frederick Buechner, from an extended interview, by Kim Laughton, April 18, 2003, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2003/04/18/april-18-2003-frederick-buechner-extended-interview/8658/.
Herman C. Waetjen, The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple (New York: T & T Clark International, 2005).
Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking (New York: Jericho Books, 2014).
Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint (New York: Jericho Books, 2013).
John 3:16.
Ruth Burgess and Chris Pohill, Eggs and Ashes (Glasgow, Scotland: Wild Goose Publications, 2004).

Nonviolent Protest

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Luke 19:28-40

This past Saturday, demonstrators gathered in cities and towns across the United States energized by different concerns but united in opposition to many of the measures taken by the current administration since taking office in January. The message was, “Hands Off!” those rights, values, institutions, and services that Americans agree are essential to a fair and thriving economy and a compassionate and equitable society. Hands off Social Security, hands off veterans’ services, hands off climate initiatives. Hands off Medicare, the Department of Education, universities, women’s healthcare, USAID, DEI initiatives, our personal data, and ultimately, hands off our democracy. Organizers reported that more than 1,400 nonpartisan rallies took place, in all 50 states, all of them nonviolent, ranging in size from over 100,000 people in Washington, D.C., to perhaps 250 people at the event I attended in El Sobrante, California, a small Bay Area town. London, Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere around the globe supported these protests with rallies of their own. Estimates of the total participants vary, some projecting as many as 5.2 million people.

So, on Saturday night, everyone was talking about the research of Harvard political scientist Erica Chenowith. After learning about the benefits of nonviolent protest, Dr. Chenoweth conducted a study of violent protests and nonviolent protests, comparing their success rate. After looking at hundreds of protests across the world, Chenoweth found that protests are twice as likely to succeed if they are nonviolent and that around 3.5% of the population must participate to create serious change. Chenoweth said, “There weren’t any campaigns that had failed after they had achieved 3.5% participation during a peak event.” Successful revolutions that were nonviolent and reached the 3.5% threshold include those in Estonia, Georgia, the Philippines and dozens more. What will it take, people asked last Saturday, to get 3.5% of Americans on the streets?

Which made me wonder: Did 3.5% of the population of Jerusalem turn out to watch Jesus enter the city in the procession we celebrate on Palm Sunday?

No doubt about it: Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was a nonviolent protest. Luke reports that the people spread their cloaks on the road before Jesus, shouting, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” Yikes! Blessed is the king?! These are people who already have a king. They have King Herod, Herod Antipas, the puppet of the Roman Emperor Caesar. Which means these ancient Judeans have both a king (puppet or not) and an emperor. “Blessed is the king”? Throwing cloaks on the road, as one does for a king? This is a call for regime change.

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” This helps explain why Jesus was arrested and crucified. He entered Jerusalem just before the Passover celebration, and even without his kingly procession, Passover was tricky for the Romans. The Passover festival is all about deliverance from slavery and freedom from oppression. Passover wasn’t good for the Empire. And so Jesus didn’t merely offend the religious authorities. He proclaimed another kingdom – the kingdom not of Herod or Caesar but of God – and called people to give their allegiance to God’s kingdom first. In other words, he was a real threat. He was a threat to the way the Romans and their puppet king led, ruled, and lived.

For that matter, he is still a threat. He threatens systems that dominate with intimidation, violence, coercion, and manipulation. He threatens our obsession with defining ourselves over and against others. He threatens the way in which we seek to secure our future by hording wealth and power. He threatens our habit of drawing lines and making rules about who is acceptable and who is not. He threatens all these things and more.

The authorities think they can eliminate this threat by violence. They are wrong. As Dr. King put it, “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. … Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

It reminds me of a short poem by Michael Leunig:
There are only two feelings,
Love and fear.
There are only two languages,
Love and fear.
There are only two activities,
Love and fear.
There are only two motives, two procedures,
two frameworks, two results,
Love and fear,
Love and fear.

All tyrants fear those they tyrannize. Otherwise, they would not resort to tyranny.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord: in the name of compassion, in the name of mercy, in the name of truth and freedom, in the name of love. It could change the world.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/organizers-say-millions-turn-out-for-anti-trump-hands-off-rallies-nationwide/ar-AA1Cm7u2
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/05/nx-s1-5353388/hands-off-protests-washington-dc
https://www.karunanews.org/story/1596/3-5-rule-how-a-small-minority-can-change-the-world
https://www.leunig.com.au/works/prayers
David Lose, “Dear Partner: Palm/Passion Sunday A,” April 5, 2017, http://www.davidlose.net/2017/04/palmpassion-sunday-a/.
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Loving Your Enemies,” in Strength to Love (Harper and Row, 1963; reprinted as a gift edition by Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010).