The Whole World

March 4, 2024 / cjwhitt / 1 Comment

John 3:14-21

Some of us are old enough to remember the man known as “Rainbow Man,” who held up signs that said, “John 3:16” at sporting events during the 1970’s and ‘80’s. You can find the verse on bumper stickers and neckties, and there’s even a John 3:16 Nascar, a bright yellow racing car emblazoned with “John 3:16” on the doors and the phrase “Victory in Jesus” on the hood. Obviously, John 3:16 is a big deal. But what does it mean? There is a traditional interpretation of this verse that most people believe is a literal interpretation: if you believe that Jesus is the Son of God and our Savior, you will go to heaven and not to hell when you die. This is a source of great comfort to many people, but a source of anguish to many others.

The problem with a so-called literal translation of these verses is that it really can’t be done. What does “condemned” mean? Condemned to what? By whom? What does “perish” mean? What does “eternal life” mean? Is it something that happens now, or after we die? Does “eternal” refer to time or quality? What does “believe” mean? Is it intellectual assent, or is it more like “trust” or “follow”? You can’t read this passage without answering these and many other questions and as soon as you attempt to answer them you’ve quit being literal and started to interpret. You’ve started to put a spin on it. The typical spin answers all these questions as though Jesus is referring to life after death, as though “believing” means what you think about something, and as though Jesus is intending by his words to create a small circle of insiders who are “saved” while the rest of the world can go to hell, literally. That interpretation works only if you define those crucial words in a way that plays fast and loose with the original Greek, the context of these verses, and much of what we know about Jesus and God from the rest of Scripture.

The context is a conversation between Jesus and the Pharisee Nicodemus. Nicodemus visits Jesus in the middle of the night, plagued with questions about who Jesus is. Nicodemus is so concrete that he’s confused by Jesus’ metaphors. When Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be “born again,” Nicodemus says, “Can one enter a second time the mother’s womb?” And so Jesus pushes him gently: This is about newness, Nicodemus. This is about letting go of old truths, old definitions, old traditions, old theological certainties, and allowing God to lead you into a new and open-ended, hope-filled future.

And then Jesus says the most remarkable thing. John 3:16: “For God so loved the world…”. The single most important thing to notice about this verse is that God loved the world. God deeply loved the world that God created, and God longs for this creation to live; this whole world, this whole creation. And this is the way God loved the world: God loved by giving the son that the world might be saved. God wants to save the world; not individuals, not souls, this entire world.

All of John’s gospel has an urgency that often comes across in either/or terms. John draws sharp divisions between believers and non-believers, saved and condemned, those who do evil and those who do good. This either/or approach made sense for John’s minority community, which was trying to define itself not only against non-Christians but against other Christians. It doesn’t make sense for us today, when Christianity has been the dominant religion in the Western world for centuries, and we have the power to marginalize, exclude, and persecute. If we ignore this part of the context, then, in our hands, the gospel of John, and John 3:16 in particular, could do serious harm. And they have.

We don’t throw out this passage, however, because life can feel black and white at times. You take that drink or not, put the needle in your arm or not, walk out on the abuse or not, despair or hope, lie or speak the truth. No shades of gray. Some people come to faith because of a crisis, and John 3:16 feels like a lifeline. I once was lost. Now I’m found. I was blind. Now I see.

We also don’t throw out this passage because even those who have never felt driven to their knees before God are included in the rescue God intends for the whole world. What we know is that “God so loved the world . . .” The whole world. These familiar words are at odds with any interpretation of this verse that would exclude, demean, or minimize any part of the world, or any person in it, regardless of what they believe.

Frederick Buechner wrote, “The greatest miracle that Christianity has to proclaim is that the love that suffered agonies on that hill outside the city walls was the love of God himself, the love of God for his creation, which is a love that has no limit, not even the limit of death.”

The love of God for God’s world has no limits. No limits. How else are we to respond, but to cherish the world and every creature in it? And to live that love by throwing out a lifeline, to rescue, in very real, literal ways, whatever and whomever God so loves – which is everyone, and everything?

Resources:
John Stendahl, “The Beginner’s Gospel,” in The Christian Century, March 19, 2009, http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2009-03/beginners-gospel.
Marilyn Salmon, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=3/18/2012

The Disruptive Jesus

February 28, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

John 2:13-22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Losing to Find

February 19, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 8:31-38

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resources:

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

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

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

You Have Something on Your Forehead

February 6, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

Listen

February 6, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Mark 9:2-9

The event in the life of Christ that we call the Transfiguration is one of those stories drenched with meaning and truth, and we aren’t supposed to get distracted by whether it’s a factual account of an historical moment. If you get stuck on that question, you’ll miss the good stuff.

We hear the story every Transfiguration Sunday. Jesus leads Peter, John, and James up on a mountain by themselves. There, he is “transfigured,” but Mark doesn’t tell us what that looks like except that his clothes become dazzling white. Two other figures appear – Moses the lawgiver and the prophet Elijah. Peter’s response is, “Let’s build houses! Let’s stay here!” That’s often our inclination when we’ve had a spiritual high, a mountaintop experience. But we see Jesus leave the mountain to pick up his everyday life and his ministry of healing.

There are, indeed, mountaintop experiences that change us forever. Besides those momentary spiritual highs, however, there is the long and sometimes difficult climb of the life of faith. Most people realize marriage is work; experts describe it as a daily commitment, not just a one-time decision. As one writer says, “Every day you wake up you must decide to commit to your spouse for better or for worse.” It’s the same with the daily decision to follow Jesus, the decision to put one foot in front of the other on the path of faith.

There’s a reason Transfiguration Sunday is the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. I’ve often thought of Lent as a reset button. You lose focus, you lose your way on the path, you find yourself more distant from God than you want to be. Time for a reset. For centuries, Lent has been the season when we focus with new energy on the process of transfiguration that happens over the lifetime of a person of faith; it’s a season of practice, of training. Maybe “training” doesn’t have the sparkle of a mountaintop moment but as Cornelius Plantinga writes, “Spiritual exercise is like jogging. You often do it gladly. But you are no hypocrite if you jog even when you don’t feel like it.”

Just before Jesus heads down the hill, we hear the voice of God. God says, “Listen to him.” Listen to Jesus. I like the fact that God doesn’t say, “Become exactly like Jesus,” or “Take up your cross.” Just, “Listen to him.” That’s probably something I can do. Listening to Jesus in Scripture seems like an obvious place to start. When we listen to Jesus in Scripture, we’ll hear, “Peace be with you.” “I will give you rest.” “Take heart … do not be afraid.” We’ll hear that we will keep our heart only by giving our heart away, that we will find ourselves only by losing ourselves in love, and that we will be saved together, not in separation. We’ll hear that loving our neighbors as ourselves is the most important way we can love God.

And if we strive to love our neighbors as Jesus tells us, we will listen to our neighbors, as well. The 14th century Persian poet Hafiz wrote:
Everyone
Is God speaking
Why not be polite and
Listen to
Him?

God speaks to us again and again through the stories of other people, through our loved ones, through the person whose life is utterly different from yours or mine, and through people whose stories and experiences we might prefer not to hear. Some say that listening is the first duty of love; others say that listening is love. Listening tells someone that he or she matters, and that we are willing to risk being changed by what they say. One definition of communication is “opening yourself to change,” because if you really hear the other person, it means that you are allowing what the person says to impact you, to touch you, to change the way you think and feel and act. In other words, listening transfigures us.

The possibility of transformation is the essence of hope. We aren’t stuck with the way things are. You aren’t stuck with the way things are. Things can change, the world can change, we can change. This is the very purpose of the life of faith.

I think I just chose my focus, my training and practice for Lent this year: listen.

Contemplative Activism

January 31, 2024 / cjwhitt / 1 Comment

Mark 1:29-39

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Activist, or a contemplative? Yes!

Confrontation

January 24, 2024 / cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Lesson: Mark 1:21-28

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Come and See

January 11, 2024 / cjwhitt / 1 Comment

Lesson: John 1:43-52

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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