Which Story?

December 30, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resources:

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

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

Magnificat

December 16, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Luke 1:39-55

Historically, Mary, the mother of Jesus, has been held up as a role model for women. In order for her to be the role model that suited the purposes of culture, however, she’s been reinvented as meek, mild, and passive. The flowing, modest blue robe, downcast eyes, covered head. That Mary bears very little resemblance to the Mary in Luke.

The angel Gabriel has told Mary that she will bear a child. Gabriel then explains that Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, is also expecting. Elizabeth is “getting on in years,” so this, too, is extraordinary news. “In haste,” Luke says, Mary goes to see her. When Elizabeth greets Mary, her unborn child recognizes Mary’s unborn child, and turns a joyful somersault. In Luke’s gospel, Elizabeth’s unborn son will grow up to be John the Baptist. The message we’re to take from this is that even before they were born, John the Baptist, as well as his mother Elizabeth, heralded the coming of Jesus. Elizabeth exclaims that Mary and her unborn child are blessed, and then Mary begins to sing. We know her song as the Magnificat, named after the first word of the song in Latin. Biblical scholars tell us that these words are not original with Mary. The song is remarkably similar to Hannah’s song in the Old Testament – Hannah was the mother of the prophet Samuel.

And what a song it is! William Willimon tells the story of a college student explaining to him that the virgin birth is just too incredible to believe. Willimon responded, “You think that’s incredible, come back next week. Then, we will tell you that ‘God has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.’ We’ll talk about the hungry having enough to eat and the rich being sent away empty. The virgin birth? If you think you have trouble with the Christian faith now, just wait. The virgin birth is just a little miracle; the really incredible stuff is coming next week.” Martin Luther said that the Magnificat “comforts the lowly and terrifies the rich.” William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury in the late 19th century, warned his missionaries to India never to read the Magnificat in public; the verses are too inflammatory. Several biblical commentaries use the same word to describe the Magnificat. That word is revolutionary.

I wonder, if they really gave it some attention, whether more American Christians, or Christians generally, would have a harder time with the story of the virgin birth, or with this song of Mary’s. Mary’s song blesses God for the victory won over the proud, powerful, and rich for the sake of the lowly and the hungry. This is not a sweet soprano solo. One commentator says it’s more like Janis Joplin. But it’s all about God keeping God’s promises. God moves, and the people at the top who have organized reality for their benefit but at the cost of others come under siege. God keeps the covenant, and a teenager, a nobody from nowhere, testifies to wealth redistribution for the sake of the hungry. The fact that she sings means God does exalt the lowly; that this happened to her means that the overturning of the inhumane order has begun. She is lowly, and she is lifted up.

Now, this is a good news, bad news proposition, isn’t it? Revolution sounds pretty scary to many of us. Cornelius Plantinga writes, “When our own kingdom has had a good year we aren’t necessarily looking for God’s kingdom.” At first blush, Mary’s Magnificat might sound even a bit vengeful. But biblical scholar Sharon Ringe notes that a leveling, rather than reversal, is what Luke intends here, as God’s action moves us to a common middle ground, to a world where winner takes all is transformed into one in which all have a place at the table.

So that is the question for us on the Fourth Sunday in Advent: Can we hear Mary’s song as good news for all people, not just for some, but for all? Can we truly hear that lifting up the lowly and bringing down the powerful is good news, even for us?

If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the little video, “An Unexpected Christmas,” produced in 2012 by St. Paul’s Church in Auckland, New Zealand, a church with a ministry called St. Paul’s Arts and Kids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM1XusYVqNY. This video captures precisely what Luke intended in the first two chapters of his gospel, in the story of Elizabeth and Mary, and in the Christmas story as well. “Brilliant! They won’t be expecting that!” Although, to be fair, Luke’s version is edgier. Luke gives center stage to these two women, ordinary women chosen by God and unhindered by men.

If you go to church, you hear the Magnificat and the Christmas story every year. In the sentimental glow of the season, it’s easy to forget that when the angels sang about good news of great joy for all people, what they meant is this: God wants justice, peace, and well-being – shalom – for everybody, and so God comes to us in a vulnerable baby born to non-white, non-English-speaking, non-Christian, nobody parents in a backwater village in the Middle East, in a stable surrounded by mess and bad smells, with “no crib for a bed,” and the first people to hear about it, those shepherds out on a hillside, are the kind of people you’d never invite to dinner and you’d pray your daughter wouldn’t marry.

Which means that God can reach everyone; anywhere at any level, even when things are messy, or all messed up; even when our best laid plans go awry; even when we find ourselves at the bottom of the heap, whatever heap we’re in. It means it is just like God to be at work in uncelebrated or unexpected ways in other times and places, too.

Even in us. Which, my friends, is truly brilliant. They won’t be expecting that!

Turn Around and Do Something Different

December 10, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Luke 3:7-18

I don’t blame any preacher for choosing the Philippians passage over the Luke passage this week. “Rejoice!” feels so much more Christmas-y than “You brood of vipers!” But it’s Advent; it’s not Christmas yet, and John the Baptizer is all about preparing the way. In spite of his harsh and scolding tone, there are some great Advent messages in what John tells the crowd.

The word “repentance” feels like a reprimand even without John’s brood of vipers indictment. As I wrote last week, to repent just means “turn around.” Go in a different direction. There is good news in recognizing and accepting that what you’ve been doing isn’t working. There is good news in making the decision to turn around and do something different. This good news is the beginning of healing, for ourselves and for our society.

What we’ve been doing isn’t working, or at least, it isn’t working for a large portion of the population of our world, and it certainly isn’t working for our planet. When the people ask John, “Okay, so what do we do?” his blunt and fairly simple instruction is to stop acting as though they live in a world in which their actions don’t impact others. Stop being greedy and dishonest; start sharing the wealth.

John seems to threaten that when the Messiah comes, just as in the song, “Santa Claus is coming to Town,” you’d better watch out. We learn when we encounter Jesus that he doesn’t wield a winnowing fork or threaten anyone with unquenchable fire. But like John, Jesus preaches that a life realigned with God’s purposes is good news. Luke is known for “good news to the poor,” and certainly this realignment is good news for the poor. But Jesus proclaims that it is good news for everyone. Years ago, 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.”

John tells the people who come to be baptized by him, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Those with enough, and particularly those with more than enough, should share with those who do not have enough. As simple as this is, it is countercultural in our society, especially at Christmas. Even with Santas ringing bells on street corners and “Giving Tuesday,” most of our Christmas celebrations are shaped more by our consumption-driven culture than by the nativity story. The forces behind our patterns of consumption are complex and entrenched, and we will not solve anything by scolding people in the pews. The way we consume is a systemic issue, built into our economy and culture. However, systems are created and supported by individuals. We can go along, or we can turn around and try something different. So we might hint that we are challenged, or perhaps even called, to figure out what is “enough.” We might suggest that the reason some people want more and more stuff could be because they don’t think that they, themselves, are enough. We might assure them that our things are not what make us enough, or good, or important, or valuable. Every one of us is precious – just because we are who we are, the way God made us. And we might point out that this planet on which all of us – ALL of us – depend, is suffering from our consumption patterns.

A handful of resources you might use for a gentle but critical delivery of this good news:

1) An excellent 20-minute video entitled, “The Story of Stuff,” a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM
2) A terrific children’s picture book by Kaethe Zemach that isn’t just for kids, entitled, Just Enough and Not Too Much (New York: Scholastic Press, 2003).
3) An oldie but a goodie: Jo Robinson and Jean C Staeheli, Unplug the Christmas Machine: A Complete Guide to Putting Love and Joy Back into the Season (New York: William Morrow Paperbacks, 1991).
4) John De Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas Naylor, Affluenza: How Overconsumption Is Killing Us – and How to Fight Back (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014).

The Word of God Came to a Nobody

December 5, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Luke 3:1-6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Is Truth?

November 19, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

John 18:33-38

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resources:

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

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

Don’t Be Alarmed

November 14, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 13:1-8

It’s the Tuesday before the crucifixion, and Jesus has just watched a destitute widow put all she has in the Temple coffers, while the scribes are living the high life. He leaves the Temple never to return. The wealthy scribes contrasted against the desperate widow convince him the Temple is no longer serving the purpose God intended. So when a disciple admires the large stones of the Temple, Jesus’ first response is that the Temple will be destroyed.

His four closest disciples ask Jesus privately: “Just when is all this going to happen?” And perhaps even more anxiously, they ask, “Will this be a sign of the end of time?” What follows is what’s called Mark’s “Little Apocalypse.” It was written after Christians had been persecuted for a generation, and when the Temple had already been destroyed by the Romans in 71 A.D.

Apocalyptic literature is born out of times when things are so bad that it seems the only possible way out is a cataclysmic intervention. When you’re oppressed or despairing or persecuted, you think to yourself, “Surely God has a plan to even the score.” The early church hoped that God would even the score when Jesus returned, and they expected that to happen any time. Depending on what your life looks like right now, or how you perceive the recent election results, it may or may not be hard to put yourself into their shoes.

The early church had seen the Temple fall. What more could happen? Jesus tells them that events like wars, earthquakes, and famines, while reminding us that things are not the way they are supposed to be in this world, also serve to remind us that everything is very right because everything is happening just as Jesus said it would. We need to be cautious with such claims. This doesn’t mean that when war is declared we merely shrug our shoulders and go back to our crossword puzzles. This doesn’t mean that when a hurricane wipes out Asheville and we see the horrific pictures on CNN, we say “ho-hum” and flip the channel over to “Suits.” Just because Jesus says that such things are going to happen does not mean that we as his followers do not seek to relieve suffering and promote peace and justice. The gospels teach us that.

Whenever we read apocalyptic literature in the Bible, it’s tempting to read into it that God is behind it all; that God will somehow change from the God of love we see in Jesus and start to bully us. Jesus tells the disciples to beware of false prophets, but he doesn’t tell them to beware of God. Our God is the God who says, “Do not be afraid. I am with you. I will help you.” So when the awful things happen, Jesus says that we, as followers of Jesus Christ, are not to be alarmed. This is why when wars and rumors of wars circle the globe, and earthquakes or wildfires or hurricanes flatten parts of the world, or a pandemic changes life as we know it, it is the disciples of Jesus who are the first to push back. We are the ones who protest for peace and justice; we are the ones who volunteer to rebuild. We are not the ones to insist that getting a vaccine means you don’t trust God enough. We are not the ones to pretend that the pain of people half a world away does not matter.

But is it time for Jesus to return? With all that’s going on around us – increasing income disparity, climate change causing storms and fires, inflation, a global rise in fascism – you can see why people wonder. Every generation of believers has asked whether the end is here, or at least near, yet the answer has been “No” over and over and over again. The danger of focusing on the end of the world is that it keeps people from responding to human need and suffering, and it leads to isolated individual survival. People shore up their own “salvation” and forget about community.

Winston Churchill offered this advice in the darkest days of World War II: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Jesus tells us simply, “Don’t be led astray; don’t be alarmed.” And then he says, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” “Birth pangs” point to joy; that wonders have not ceased; that possibilities not yet dreamt of will happen. Hope is an authentic stance.

I recommend a TikTok video by Brian D. McLaren who argues that, globally, something is dying. “A world of white supremacy is dying. A world of dominating, angry, greedy men without empathy is dying. A world without concern for planet earth itself – that world is dying. … A world that measures value by wealth not health – that kind of world is dying. … And like a dying cornered animal, that kind of world bears its teeth and its claws and it will destroy as much as it can before its done. If you only look at what is dying, you’ll feel despair. But something else is trying to be born. … It’s not as loud and angry as what is dying, but it’s far more important. What is being born is beautiful, and you know because you feel it; it’s being born in you. The pain of these moments – they might feel like death pains. But they’re really labor pains.”

For the complete video: https://www.facebook.com/651042029/videos/1079652193679063/

Don’t be alarmed. Possibilities not yet dreamt of will happen. Hope is an authentic stance. These birth pangs will end in joy.

Suggestions for Getting Through Election Day

November 5, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

I’m normally not anxious; it’s just not my natural state of being. But today, I am anxious. The stakes are high. In 2016, it was inconceivable that Donald Trump could be elected as the President of the United States. I can’t help but think of Vizzini, the character played by Wallace Shawn in “The Princess Bride.” But like Vizzini, I learned that what I’d thought was inconceivable could happen, and it actually did. It is no longer inconceivable.

How do we get through the day, when, as the Washington Post puts it, “Whoever wins, half of voters will be surprised”? I’m not staying plugged into nonstop news; I’m not checking social media too often. My husband asked me if I’d watch the returns on TV tonight. I said I can’t not watch the returns.

But until then, I’m doing a handful of things to stay sane, and maybe these suggestions will help you, as well.

I’m walking, with and without my dog. Walking is a spiritual discipline for me, a way of praying. Solvitur ambulando.

I’ve been praying an excellent Prayer for Peace and Justice on Election Day by Teri McDowell Ott, published in the Presbyterian Outlook: https://pres-outlook.org/2024/11/a-prayer-for-peace-and-justice-on-election-day/ This prayer lifts up poll workers and election workers, about whom I have particular concern today.

I’m not on TikTok, but I’m grateful that a pastor colleague shared an extremely hopeful TikTok by author Brian D. McLaren in which he simply and compassionately describes the cultural forces that have brought us to this place in history. As he says, “Something is trying to be born, and something is dying.” https://www.tiktok.com/@brianmclaren/video/7432884450091961642 If you don’t know about Brian D. McLaren, I can’t recommend his books enough. Check out Faith after Doubt, Do I Stay Christian? And The Great Spiritual Migration.

That same pastor colleague shared a video by a man named Neal Foard, entitled “A Postcard from 1969.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaMkOES-y3Y. It turns out Foard has a YouTube channel chock full of encouraging stories about small kindnesses that speak powerfully of the goodness of people. I subscribed! Neal Foard will be a regular resource for me going forward. https://www.youtube.com/user/nealfoard/videos

For lunch today, my husband and I sought out a Mexican restaurant not far from our house. Like many restaurants in my city of Richmond, California, the people who work there clearly don’t speak English very often. It felt like the right place to be. Maybe your town has a similar restaurant where they speak mostly Spanish, or Vietnamese, or Chinese, or Farsi, or …. ?

I wrote and posted a blog that lifts up the values we should be taking into the voting booth if we claim to be followers of Jesus. https://solve-by-walking.com/2024/11/05/really-seeing-each-other/

I will probably make an Election Day playlist before the day is over. It will include, among other songs, “Yes We Can Can” by the Pointer Sisters, “Stand” by Sly and the Family Stone, “Put a Woman in Charge” by Keb Mo, and “Respect” by Aretha Franklin. Your ideas and suggestions are welcome.

How are you staying sane?

Really Seeing Each Other

November 5, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 12:38-44

The first thing we need to know about the Widow’s Mite, as this story in Mark’s gospel is often called, is that it is not one of those, “Wow, I need to be more like that” stories. Certainly, generosity and even sacrifice are praiseworthy, and we’re challenged by God’s abundance to be generous. But Jesus is not pointing to the widow who dropped her last two coins in the treasury so that the disciples can feel appropriately guilty that they didn’t do what she did. The lesson here is not, “God wants everybody to give away everything they have.” So take a deep breath, and relax.

This story is part of a larger set of passages that focus on Jesus’ confrontation with the scribes and Pharisees. It’s in this context that the widow comes forward with her offering. We can’t hear Jesus’ tone of voice as he watches her. Is Jesus saying the widow is an example of great faith and profound stewardship, or is he expressing his remorse that she’s given away the little she has left, and perhaps even feels compelled to do so? Notice that Jesus doesn’t commend the woman. He doesn’t applaud her self-sacrifice or tell us to “go and do likewise.” He just describes what he sees. Combined with his ongoing critique of the religious establishment, this tells us he’s more likely lamenting; maybe even accusing.

This widow has no way to support herself. The men in her life are supposed to be doing that; that’s how it was supposed to work in this ancient Middle Eastern culture. For some reason, the system isn’t working. We don’t know whether her male relatives refused to take her in, or whether they’ve all died. We do know that Torah requires that widows be cared for. Again and again, widows and orphans are lifted up as those who need society’s care because they can’t fend for themselves. And again and again, the Old Testament prophets condemn the rich and powerful for failing to do so. Jesus echoes those prophets with his warning at the beginning of the passage: “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes … They devour widows’ houses” – shorthand for taking pretty much everything they own – “and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.”

Something is broken. Instead of taking care of widows and orphans, the system somehow encourages these preening scribes, swishing about in their long robes. This widow has been encouraged by the tradition to donate as she does, but no one should be expected to give “all she has to live on,” particularly when she isn’t being cared for as the tradition promised her, while the religious elites grow richer. Jesus is condemning the hypocrisy and injustice that allow this woman to be poor and then keep her poor.

Perhaps most remarkable about this exchange, and maybe the heart of the passage, is that Jesus notices the woman in the first place. He sees her. This widow is just one in the crowd, with a small, even paltry offering. Yet Jesus sees her.

Who are we not seeing as we go about our daily lives? Who is it that deserves not only our notice, but our Christ-like compassion?

Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party’s paramilitary forces, Hitler Youth, and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany 86 years ago this coming weekend (November 9th and 10th, 1938). The problem was not that the Nazis didn’t notice the Jews living around them, but rather that they did not see them as genuine human beings deserving compassion and respect, let alone as kindred children of God. Rather, they saw them as opponents to be feared. “Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy,” said Captain G. M. Gilbert after the Nuremberg trials. Gilbert, an American psychologist assigned to German prisoners, became a confidant to several of the Nuremburg defendants, including Hermann Göring.

When I’ve seen photos of neo-Nazis and swastikas in the news lately, I can’t help but wonder whether my father, a World War II veteran, is rolling over in his grave. He would certainly be heartbroken. World War II: Talk about sacrificial giving. Would our nation be where we are now, on Election Day 2024, if more World War II veterans who put their lives on the line, who lost friends and loved ones, were still around? If there were more people still alive today who saw the Holocaust and responded with compassion? I think not. This coming Monday is Veterans Day. Veterans are often used as patriotic tropes in our country, but how often do we see veterans with compassion? Between 2001 and 2021, more than 6,000 veterans committed suicide each year, and the rate of suicide is dramatically higher for younger vets. About a quarter of all homeless people in this country are veterans. Maybe a day off school and excessive flag-waving isn’t the best way to really see, thank, and honor our veterans.

David Lose writes, “… I think God is inviting us to look around and see each other, those in our community we know and those we don’t. And I mean really see each other – the pain of those who are discriminated against because of their ethnicity, the desolation of those who cannot find work and have been abandoned to fend for themselves, the despair of those who have given up on finding work and have lost hope, the anguish of those who have been exploited by sex traffickers. God is inviting us to see them, to care for them, and to advocate for a system that does not leave anyone behind.”

Take that into the voting booth with you today.

As Yourself

October 29, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 12:28-34

The exchanges at the beginning of the twelfth chapter of Mark remind me of the ongoing presidential campaign. The authorities question Jesus, debate him, even try to trap him. Jesus is nimble at avoiding the “gotchas.” Then a scribe steps forward and asks a short, sharp, simple question: What is the greatest commandment? It’s a hard fastball. It will show who Jesus really is. And so it does. Jesus answers, “Love God completely, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Everyone would have expected the first part of his answer, loving God. It is the watchword, the touchstone, the core of the Jewish faith in Deuteronomy Chapter 6. They may not have expected the second part, loving neighbor, but it wasn’t new; it’s in Leviticus 19. What’s new and surprising is the way Jesus connects the second part to the first part in a way that means that these two laws can’t really be separated, that they can’t really be understood apart from each other. You can’t love God, in other words, apart from loving each other.

The scribe says, “You’re right!” Jesus tells him, “You are not far from the kingdom.” The scribe is “not far from the kingdom of God” NOT because he gave the right answer – this isn’t about being the smartest kid in the class – but because the scribe understands this link between the two laws – that the only way truly to love God is to love other people as we love ourselves.

We tend to gloss over that last clause – the “as yourself” part. We might hear this from a contemporary, psychological perspective, a mandate for the kind of self-love that, in 2024, we know is important: the kind of self-esteem or self-respect that protects us from allowing others to bully or abuse us, that allows us to navigate life in a way that reflects that we are worthy of love and belonging. It’s an intriguing question: “Can we love others more than we love ourselves?” Many would argue that we really can’t.

But as interesting as that question is, that isn’t what the biblical writers have in mind. The Greek word Jesus uses is agape. C. S. Lewis defines this kind of love: “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” The biblical writers begin by assuming that people want their own ultimate good and will act accordingly. I believe this is true; even when we think of tragic examples of self-destructive behavior, behind them is a sadly broken idea about what it takes to achieve the ultimate good.

What that phrase, “as yourself” means is that we are to seek the well-being of our neighbor – of others – with the same zeal, the same energy, the same creativity, and the same commitment that we would pursue our own well-being. It means that your neighbor’s well-being is to have the identical priority to your well-being. Are you hungry? So is your neighbor. Feed him. Are you thirsty? Give your thirsty neighbor a drink. Are you lonely? Befriend someone who is lonely. Are you frightened, or sad? Find someone to comfort.

I suspect that when most people hear, “The well-being of your neighbor is to have the identical priority to your own well-being,” it sounds a little scary. Maybe a lot scary. What creeps into our hearts is fear – perhaps fear of scarcity, fear that there won’t be enough for me and mine, for my family, my tribe, my country – enough resources, enough well-being, enough whatever. Perhaps fear for safety, fear of the one we think of as “the other.” Again and again, we see that hatred isn’t the opposite of love; it is fear.

Here’s the thing: God doesn’t look at anyone and see “the other.” God is One, Deuteronomy tells us, and God includes us all in God’s oneness. The scribe in today’s passage gets it that we can’t love God without loving our neighbors, because the life of loving others is the life that creates justice, and freedom, and peace for us all. It is the life that is truly life, the best life, the life that the God wants for every one of us, God’s beloved children.

The best story I’ve heard that explains this is about an anthropologist who proposed a game to children of an African tribe. He put a basket near a tree and told the kids that the first one to reach the basket would win all the fruit. When he said, “Go!” they all took each other’s hands and ran together, and then sat down under the tree together, enjoying the fruit. The anthropologist asked them why they ran like that; one of them could have been the big winner. The children said, “Ubuntu; how can one of us be happy if all the others are sad?” “Ubuntu,” as an old friend explained to me , is a Zulu or perhaps Nguni Bantu word that is best summed up, “I am, because we are.”

We can’t achieve the life that God wants for us is by going it alone. We were never meant to go it alone. That is what is at the core of “love your neighbors as yourself.” That is the reason for the two Great Commandments. We are because our neighbors are. Our American myth of the self-made man is just that: a myth. It is a myth that denies the reality, the truth, of the two Great Commandments, and it is a myth that drives us farther away from the Kingdom of God. Dependence starts when we’re born and lasts until we die. Given enough resources, we can pay for help and create the mirage that we are completely self-sufficient. But the truth is that no amount of money, influence, resources, or determination will change our physical, emotional, and spiritual dependence on others. Not at the beginning of our lives, not in the messy middle, and not at the end. As Bob Dylan sang, “May you always do for others and let others do for you.”

Refusing to Be Silenced

October 26, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 10:46-52

“Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly.”

Bartimaeus is a blind man. He depends on the generosity of his neighbors, but they can’t do more than help him maintain his current situation as a blind beggar. Bartimaeus wants more than that, and this is central to this story, because when the people tell Bartimaeus to keep quiet, the subtext of what they’re saying is, “This is the best you can hope for.” Maybe they’re even saying, “This is just the way it is. This is normal.”

Walter Brueggemann writes that the crowd always has a stake in pretending that something that really is abnormal, in this case, blind begging, is normal. If it’s normal, it means no one needs to change. The folks around him don’t have to ask, “Why are some people forced to beg to survive, while others have more than enough? Why aren’t we taking steps to fix that? How could we fix it if we wanted to? What’s wrong with us that we are allowing this abnormal situation to continue?”

Nevertheless, Bartimaeus cries out. Jesus doesn’t hear him the first time, so Bartimaeus cries out more loudly. Eventually, Jesus does hear him, and does see him, and he heals Bartimaeus.

Silence can refer to something good: to awe before holiness, to peace amidst chaos. But in this story where the people are silencing Bartimaeus, it’s a form of coercion. This is a pattern we see throughout history and even today. Voices of dissent and voices on the margins are silenced. We see them silenced with voter suppression and gerrymandering, with smear campaigns and threats of violence, with gas lighting and mockery, with censorship and blacklisting, and with mass incarceration. It’s football season; a few years a quarterback who took a knee was silenced by teams who refused to hire him.

The Christian Church is and always has been challenged to decide whether to sign on with the silencers, or with the silence breakers. On October 31, 1517, 507 years ago this week, the story goes that Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the Wittenberg church, attacking the corruption of the Christian Church. When the Church attempted to silence him with excommunication, Luther is said to have defended himself, with, “Here I stand. I can do no other, so help me God.”

Luther’s namesake, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to the moderate white mainline Protestant pastors in Birmingham. They had tried to silence King and others in the Civil Rights Movement by labeling them extremists. This label implied that it was King and the civil rights advocates who were somehow dangerous, rather than racism that was dangerous. King wrote, “… though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.’ … Was not Martin Luther an extremist: ‘Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.’ … So, the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?”

In Bartimaeus and in these stories from church history, we see that silencing is a way to maintain the status quo in terms of power, wealth, and inclusion, and in terms of who is heard, who is seen, and whose stories are voiced. Silence breakers, on the other hand, are those who insist that the old patterns must be disrupted where those patterns hurt or oppress, and where those patterns allow or even encourage us to keep thinking something hurtful is just normal. Silence breakers seek transformation, and, yes, reformation.

We have an important election coming up in this country. Our vote is one of the most powerful and peaceful ways for us to speak the truth, to break the silence, to cry out about all the things that we should not accept as normal; things like school shootings, white supremacy, the fact that our very planet is in jeopardy, the fact that people remain unhoused and even the middle class is struggling to afford housing. It doesn’t make any difference what political party you claim: these situations are not normal. Your vote is your voice; your vote is a way to shatter the silence.

Solvitur Ambulando

Putting one foot in front of the other on the path of faith

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