jesus

A Prayer for Those Sent

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John 17:6-19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved. 

Vines and Branches

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John 15:1-8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And in our world, today, it clearly is.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

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

I Shall Not Want

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Psalm 23

“I shall not want,” says the psalmist. My first thought is that everybody wants something. Some things we want are good: I want children to grow up feeling valued and loved; I want the unemployed to find work, and the unhoused to find homes. I want the planet Earth to continue to support human life. I want school children to be safe from gun violence. I want quite a lot, really.

But the psalmist in Psalm 23 isn’t saying he’ll never desire anything. What he means is he is free from want – he has what he needs. A better translation of verse 1 is, “I lack nothing,” “I have everything I need to live a healthy, peaceful life.”

We know this doesn’t apply to everyone, locally or globally. In Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond’s book, Poverty By America, he explains that the United States is the richest nation in the world and yet we have more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Almost 1 in 9 Americans lives in poverty, including 1 in 8 children. There are more than 38 million people living in the United States who can’t afford the basic necessities. At the same time, we see billionaires hoarding money they couldn’t spend in a lifetime while their workers struggle to get by on two jobs. So, you have to wonder: Is there a way that this verse – “I have everything I need” – can be true for everyone? Because if there isn’t, this psalm could feel like a cruel joke, a gloating paean to privilege.

The beginning of the verse gives us a clue to what the psalmist means. “The Lord is my shepherd.” We’ve heard this psalm so often that the power of those words may be lost on us. The Lord is my shepherd, says the psalm, and then it lists all the basic necessities a shepherd provides for the sheep: food, water, and protection. In the second part of the psalm, the gracious host also provides for these needs.

Psalm 23 affirms that life is essentially a gift, a gift from the shepherd. And even though the psalm is spoken in the first-person singular, we know that the shepherd cares for the entire flock. It’s fine for one individual, this psalmist, to sing a song of gratitude and trust for what the shepherd provides. It’s not okay for any one sheep – or for any one person – to assume God has singled out just one individual or even just one group of individuals for the abundance of God’s gifts.

What if we lived as though, “The Lord is our shepherd”? When we say, “The Lord is my shepherd” we reject the claims of anyone else who seeks that status. It’s like saying, “The Lord is my shepherd – you’re not.” Who is the “you” in “you’re not”? It depends on who or what is oppressing us. In some countries, tyrannical regimes try to take the place of trust in God. In our culture, we’re bombarded with ads telling us we need a new car every few years, we need to wear the latest fashions, we need the newest iPhone even if our current phone works fine. Wealth is status, security, and the measure of a person’s worth. It’s not surprising that our society is characterized by what Alan Greenspan once called “infectious greed.”

But consumer culture is not our shepherd. Greed is not our shepherd. The Lord is our shepherd. A few years ago, a world hunger summit in Rome concluded that there’s enough food in the world today to feed everybody. Hunger isn’t caused by a lack of food but by the fact that some people don’t have the money to buy food. The problem isn’t supply. It is distribution. The Shepherd has provided enough for the basic sustenance of life. That is how “I shall not want” can apply to everybody. What this means is that the Lord is not the problem. We are. As Mahatma Gandhi put it, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every [one’s] need, but not every [one’s] greed.” Or as Matthew Desmond puts it, “America’s poverty isn’t for lack of resources. We lack something else.”

In order to address poverty in our nation and world, I agree with Desmond that the most important step is acquiring that “something else” that we lack: We need the will, the desire; we need to become “poverty abolitionists,” as Desmond puts it. That is our calling as those who trust that the Lord is our shepherd. The psalm doesn’t tell us we won’t face challenges, enemies, even death, but God has given us all we need to meet them. And: we have God. The focal point of the psalm is, “Thou art with me.” The whole Gospel tells us God is with us. Jesus was called “Emmanuel,” and that means “God with us.”

God is with us. Author Barbara Ehrenreich was asked in an interview what she would give up to live in a more human world. She answered, “I think we shouldn’t think of what we would give up to have a more human world; we should think of what we would gain.”

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Have You Anything to Eat?

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  Luke 24:36b-48

Luke offers the most detailed account of the news of Jesus’ resurrection and his encounters with the disciples on the first Easter.  In Luke’s story, the women at the empty tomb hear from not one but two men in “dazzling” clothing that Jesus has risen.  I’m picturing Steve Martin’s mirrored jacket in “Leap of Faith,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_of_Faith_%28film%29.  Jesus himself catches up to two more disciples on the road to Emmaus, and they don’t recognize him at first.  Which is puzzling, right?  They realize who he is when he takes bread, blesses it, and breaks it, as he did the night before his arrest.  In this Sunday’s lectionary passage, he meets the rest of the disciples back in Jerusalem.  Luke’s gospel was written some 50 or 60 years after the events it describes, and Luke, it appears, is striving mightily to explain how Jesus’ death and resurrection fulfill the promises of the Old Testament; it also seems he’s trying very hard to convince his readers, including us, that it really, truly happened.  That’s a tough job.  And yet, Jesus says his disciples – and that includes his present-day followers – his disciples are to be witnesses of this good news.  This is not information to be tucked away like a fond memory.  A witness is someone who testifies to the truth, but in our post-modern, skeptical, you’re-gonna-have-to-prove-it-to-me world, what on earth does that mean?  How do we make the Easter story real?

   Tom Long tells a story about scanning his car radio dial and landing on a Christian radio station.  The talk show host was taking calls from listeners, and a woman named Barbara had called with a long list of problems at work, at home, and with depression.  The talk show host interrupted her.  “Barbara,” he said, “Are you a believer?  You know, you’ll never solve any of these problems unless you’re a believer.”  Barbara hesitated.  “I don’t know,” she said.  The host told her either she was a believer or she wasn’t, and Barbara said she would like to be, but at the moment she felt a bit agnostic.  The talk show host said he’d written a book that he was going to send her that proved Jesus was who he said he was and that he was raised from the dead.  He pressed her to say she’d be a believer after reading this irrefutable proof, and Barbara grew frustrated, saying trusting people was a challenge for her at the moment.  Finally she said she’d read the book; I suspect she just wanted to end this creepy conversation. 

   Tom Long points out that the talk show host had it all wrong about being a witness.  First, he doesn’t have irrefutable proof of the resurrection.  There isn’t any.  There are no videos on YouTube or anywhere else of Jesus vacating the tomb.  Second, what the talk show host gave Barbara was a sales pitch, not witness.  Christian witness is about telling the truth of our experience the best we can, in such a way that both we and the people who hear us grow in the love of God and neighbor.  The purpose is not to get people to believe something in their heads, but to transform their lives – to transform our real lives and our real world. 

   This is why I love the fact that Jesus says he’s hungry and eats that piece of broiled fish.  It’s kind of goofy and maybe a little desperate on Luke’s part; I picture Luke saying, “See?  He even eats!”  But it’s so real, so human.  It reminds us that real, human bodies matter to God.  God makes them, sustains them, and resurrects them.  Our real lives matter.  What happens to us everyday matters.  It matters to God that people are killed by guns way too often in our country.  It matters to God that more than one in six children in our wealthy nation lives in a home facing food insecurity.  It matters to God when people grieve, get sick, struggle with addictions, can’t find work, or can’t find shelter.  Frederick Buechner put it this way: “…the Christian faith always has to do with flesh and blood, time and space, more specifically with your flesh and blood and mine, with the time and space that day by day we are all involved with, stub our toes on, flounder around in trying to look as if we have good sense.  In other words, the Truth that Christianity claims to be true is ultimately to be found, if it’s to be found at all, not in the Bible, or the Church, or Theology – the best they can do is point to the Truth – but in our own stories.”   

   The truth is to be found in our own stories.  If this is so, then what does a real life- and real body-affirming Christian witness to the resurrection look like?  If we follow Jesus’ example in the Luke passage, first we show; then we tell.  We show our own wounds: our vulnerabilities, our hurts, our hard-learned lessons.  We share table fellowship.  We extend exceptional compassion.   We live as though all bodies matter.  We listen to other people’s stories and we pay attention to our own, because they matter; because God is present in those stories. 

   Charles Hoffacker writes, “Jesus wants us as witnesses.  Not airy spirits or pious ghosts, but bodies like his own with wounds to show, bodies that witness to resurrection, threatening the world with life.  For the only Easter some people may ever see is the Easter they see in us.”

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.  

Resources:

Thomas G. Long, Testimony (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004).

Charles Hoffacker, “A Guy with a Body,” 2003, http://www.lectionary.org/Sermons/Hoff/Luke/Luke%2024.36b-48,%20GuyBody.htm.

David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2021/04/easter-3-b-a-flesh-and-bone-resurrection/

Doubting Thomas

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John 20:19-31

In John’s gospel, all the disciples except Thomas were there the first Easter night when Jesus appeared mysteriously, somehow passing through the locked doors and solid walls of the room where they cowered in fear after the crucifixion. Jesus showed them the wounds on his hands and side. We don’t know where Thomas was, but when he finally shows up at disciple headquarters, he says he’s not buying their crazy story about Jesus’ rising from the dead until he sees it for himself. Just like they did, by the way. Once he’s seen Jesus, he makes the chief confession in John’s gospel, calling Jesus not only “My Lord,” but also “my God.” Jesus takes the opportunity to bless all the disciples who believe without seeing. This is a blessing for future disciples, for the ones who will read this passage – for us.

You might be thinking, “Huh. Maybe I don’t deserve this blessing because I’m not sure what I believe.” “Believing” is a major theme in John’s gospel, but this is important: John didn’t mean what we usually mean when we say we “believe” something. The Greek word for “believe” might better be translated as “trust,” or “to give one’s heart to.” Again and again in John’s gospel, when Jesus says, “believe,” he means rely on, trust in, live as though your life depends on it. Frederick Buechner captured the difference by distinguishing between “believing IN” and “believing.” “Believing in God,” wrote Buechner, “is an intellectual position. It need have no more effect on your life than believing in Freud’s method of interpreting dreams or the theory that Sir Francis Bacon wrote Romeo and Juliet. … Believing God is something else again. It is less a position than a journey, less a realization than a relationship. It doesn’t leave you cold like believing the world is round. It stirs your blood like believing the world is a miracle. It affects who you are and what you do with your life like believing your house is on fire or somebody loves you.”

Believing is less a position than a journey. It affects who you are and what you do with your life like believing your house is on fire or somebody loves you.

So when Jesus says, “Believe in me,” he’s not asking whether you can recite the Apostle’s Creed without crossing your fingers. He’s asking whether you will trust that God so loves the whole world that more than anything God wants us to love each other the way God loves us. He’s asking whether it affects who you are and what you do with your life. In her book, A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L’Engle writes, “A winter ago I had an after-school seminar for high-school students and in one of the early sessions Una, a brilliant fifteen-year-old, a born writer … asked me, …‘Mrs. Franklin, do you really and truly believe in God with no doubts at all?’ ‘Oh, Una,’” she answered. “’I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts. But I base my life on this belief.’”

Jesus isn’t condemning Thomas for his doubts. He’s inviting the rest of us on the journey of trusting, of basing our lives on our belief with all our doubts. So, please: Can we let Thomas off the hook, and all of the rest of us, as well? Maybe give him a new nickname?

Joanna Adams tells a story I could have told. She writes, “There was a time in my early 20s when I was a full card-carrying member in the circle of Doubting Thomases. My doubt simply got the best of my faith, and I left the church completely, thinking it was for good. I had such a difficult time making sense of it all. I stayed away until my longing for God became too much for me. I sought the council of a minister at a Presbyterian church near our home. I walked into his office and sat down, saying, ‘I’m not exactly sure why I’m here. I don’t know what I believe about the virgin birth, the resurrection, the lordship of Christ.’

“The minister answered, ‘I accept that. I wonder if you would like to try to figure these things out with people who are on a similar journey.’

“’O yes,’ I said, ‘I would like that very much.’

“And he answered, ‘Well then, you are welcome here.’

Adams writes, “Those words, ‘Well then, you are welcome here,’ have been the pivot on which my entire life has turned. I was welcomed in love and invited to grow in my knowledge and understanding of the revelation of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’”

That sounds like Resurrection to me.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Go Ahead into Galilee

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Mark 16:1-8

The women who came to the tomb early Sunday morning had been at the cross on Friday, watching from a distance. They knew Jesus was dead. Two of them followed Joseph of Arimathea and saw where his lifeless body was laid. They would have prepared the body for burial on Friday, but they were interrupted by the Sabbath. At first light on Sunday, they go to the tomb, preoccupied with how they’ll roll the stone away by themselves.

When the women arrive at the tomb, they encounter something they aren’t expecting. In fact, in Mark’s version of the story, we all encounter something we’re not expecting on Easter morning. We expect the stone to be rolled away; we expect to find someone who announces the astonishing news of the resurrection. We don’t expect the story to end right there. The other gospels, Matthew, Luke, and John, tell a much longer story, with Jesus appearing to the women and later to the disciples, showing his wounds and breaking bread with them. Mark leaves us hanging. The original Greek is, “The women went out from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; they said nothing to anyone, they were afraid for…” The English translation solves this awkward sentence by moving the preposition, but it doesn’t solve the problem of the gospel. The early church was so uncomfortable with Mark’s non-ending that later writers tacked on three separate, carefully packaged, churchy-sounding endings. Two of them appear in most Bibles; all of them take away the ambiguity of the resurrection story by adding accounts of post-resurrection appearances of the risen Christ. The oldest manuscripts of Mark’s gospel don’t include them, so most scholars conclude that the original account in Mark ends right here, with the women running scared.

It’s not like the Easter story isn’t already difficult enough, right? Apparently, the great 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr always turned down invitations to preach on Easter. Instead, he chose to sit in the pews of one of the more liturgical churches because there, the worship would focus on stirring music and festive sacraments, with not much in the way of a sermon. After all, Niebuhr said, he didn’t want “to be subjected to some preacher making a fool of himself trying to explain the resurrection.”

Like the women at the tomb in Mark’s gospel, we get the news of the resurrection second hand. We don’t have Jesus standing right in front of us, showing us his scars. Instead, we read about it in Scripture. We hear it proclaimed, sing it in hymns, and recite it in creeds. Then the mysterious young man goes on to tell the women, “But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” Just before his arrest, Jesus predicted that the disciples would scatter in the confusion and anguish that awaited them all. Then he said, “But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.”

Where will the women find Jesus? In Galilee. Galilee, where these women and the disciples lived and worked and led their ordinary lives. “Galilee of the nations,” or “Galilee of the Gentiles,” the prophet Isaiah called it, meaning someplace less than perfectly holy, less than perfectly anything, someplace where we’ll meet people different from us, but then again, the same as us; people struggling, trying to get by. Galilee means out in the world, the ordinary world of which every tiny crevice and corner needs to know God’s love expressed in human compassion and forgiveness.

And “Go ahead to Galilee” is what we are told, as well.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that our news of the resurrection starts off as second hand. Because the more you “practice resurrection,” as the poet Wendell Berry puts it, the more it becomes a firsthand experience. We find our own Galilees in different places. In the kitchen and the classroom, in the boardroom, the court room, the sidewalk, the city, the farm, in our own country and across the border and across the sea. Galilee is where ordinary people do extraordinary things with their lives. We may not always see it right away; we may not always understand it; the saving action of God in the world is often hidden, usually ambiguous, and never easily explained. It probably won’t look like success the way the world defines success; but it will make love more possible rather than less possible and it will most certainly involve community. Resurrection is the Christian equivalent of revolution, a life that says there is hope where others see only despair, there is life where others see only death.

Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him. Where charity and love prevail over injustice and violence, there is the risen Christ. Where compassion and hope replace cynicism and despair, there is the risen Christ. Where peace and love take root in lives that are empty and lost, there is the risen Christ. Where human beings know joy and justice, dignity and delight, there is the risen Christ, beckoning us into Galilee.

The story didn’t end 2000 years ago. It doesn’t end on Easter morning. Now it is our story. He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Palm, or Passion?

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I grew up with Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday “Hosannas” were followed a week later by Easter morning “Alleluias,” with nothing in between. If my childhood Presbyterian churches held Holy Week services, I didn’t know about them. Sometime after I quit going to church in college, Presbyterians switched to Palm/Passion Sunday. The “passion” comes from “the Passion of Christ,” the phrase used to describe Jesus’ arrest, trial, conviction, and execution. One theory I’ve heard is that churches started telling the Passion story on Palm Sunday because so few people show up to hear it on Good Friday.

So, Palm or Passion? The lectionary for this coming Sunday offers two sets of texts. The Palm Sunday gospel lesson, Mark 11:1-11, describes the spontaneous parade that erupted when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey. This was powerful street theater. A donkey sounds like a humble steed but it’s meant to echo Hebrew Scripture passages describing returning kings: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” [1 Kings 1:32-40; 2 Kings 9:13; Zechariah 9:9].

The crowds greeted Jesus as the Messiah; “hosanna” means “save now.” These crowds expect Jesus to overthrow the Romans, and the Romans take note. This was just before the Passover celebration in Jerusalem, and Passover was a tricky problem for the Romans. The Passover festival is all about deliverance from slavery and freedom from oppression. Passover wasn’t good for the Empire.

These events help explain why Jesus was arrested and crucified. Jesus didn’t merely offend the religious authorities of the day. He proclaimed another kingdom – the kingdom not of Caesar but of God – and called people to give their allegiance to God’s kingdom first. He was, in other words, a real threat.

The people are half right. He did come as God’s Messiah, but they misunderstood what that meant. It didn’t mean “regime change” by violence, but rather the love of God poured out upon the world in a way that dissolved all the things we use to differentiate ourselves. But that means the religious and political authorities are also half right. Jesus was a threat to the way they led and lived. For that matter, he still is. He threatens our obsession with defining ourselves over and against others. He threatens the way in which we seek to secure our future by hoarding 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. But the authorities are wrong in thinking that they can eliminate this threat by violence. The words of Dr. King come to mind: “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.”

The Passion gospel lesson is Mark 14:1-15:47, and it includes the anointing of Jesus with costly ointment by an unnamed woman, the last supper, the betrayal by Judas Iscariot, the arrest in Gethsemane, Peter’s denial, the trial before Pilate, and Jesus’ conviction, torture, crucifixion, and death. We know the story. Why hear it again, either on Palm/Passion Sunday or during Holy Week?

I know people who grew up in traditions in which they were taught that we should listen to the Passion story because we, ourselves, are somehow guilty of Jesus’ crucifixion, and once a year we should be reminded and feel horrible about that. I do not fall into that camp. I don’t buy that those who shouted “Hosanna” are necessarily the same people who shouted, “Crucify him!” And I don’t believe listening to the gory details of Jesus’ death every year somehow makes us better disciples. Sensationalizing the brutality of crucifixion feels as though it has more to do with morbid curiosity than with the point of the story.

The point of the story is why I believe, nevertheless, that there is a good reason to hear the whole Passion narrative, whether on Palm/Passion Sunday or during Holy Week: As Jesus’ followers, we need to remember the consequences of challenging the powers that be. And we need to remember the consequences to all of us, to the whole world, of continuing to live by the politics of Rome. Whether we are Republicans or Democrats; American, Russian, or Ukrainian; Israeli, Palestinian, or Haitian; whether we are corporations or governments, parents or siblings, husbands or wives, whenever we seek to influence others through coercion and violence, we are following the politics of Rome. It is so easy to fall into thinking that violence is normal, that coercion is justified, that it’s just the way the world is. And it’s especially easy to turn our backs on drones, secret prisons, terrorism, counterterrorism, occupations, politically caused famine, mass incarceration, and all the other heartbreaking costs of the politics of Rome when we are relatively insulated from them by one form of privilege or another.

Brian D. McLaren imagines an alternative Palm Sunday in which a heavily armed Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a white war horse. “’Hosanna!” the people shout. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord to execute vengeance on our enemies! … Crush the Romans! Kill the collaborators!’” Jesus calls the people to fight to the death to avenge the blood of their ancestors. He shouts, “’Those who live by restraint will die by restraint. Now is the time. Now is the day of annihilation for our enemies.’ And so, the battle for Jerusalem begins.”

Then McLaren concludes, “No. That is not what happened. And the differences are at the heart of the story of Holy Week.”

So, Palm, or Passion? Either: if the Palm Sunday texts are read in a way that celebrates all that makes for peace; if the Passion narrative is read in a way that deeply laments the politics of coercion and violence; if, in either case, we are invited to remember that the end is always Easter, the peaceful power of death-defying love.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
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).
Brian D. McLaren, http://brianmclaren.net/palm-sunday-2011-end-of-violence/
Brian D. McLaren, http://brianmclaren.net/palm-sunday/

Sir, We Wish to See Jesus

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John 12:20-33

By the twelfth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus has become something of a celebrity, and so some Greeks approach his disciples and ask to see him. They approach Philip, who, although he’s Galilean, has a Greek name. Maybe he’s more accustomed to Gentiles. The Greeks say to Philip, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” When Philip relays their request, Jesus answers with a response that seems unrelated to what they asked, typical in John’s Gospel. If the Greeks are actually right there, eavesdropping, and if they do hear Jesus’ answer, I’ll bet they’re confused.

The Greeks said they wanted to “see” Jesus, and in John “seeing” is code for understanding. They want to see Jesus, and perhaps, to follow him. This seems to be a sign for Jesus: the fact that people outside Judaism are looking for him means his hour has come. He says a grain of wheat will remain just that, a single grain, unless it falls into the earth and dies, and then it produces much fruit. And then he teaches that those who love their lives, who maintain the status quo, protect and conserve their lives, will lose them. But those who reject their lives – elsewhere he says, “lose their lives for my sake” – will find them, will have real life, a full life, a wholehearted life. I wonder if the Greeks were looking for that.

What does Jesus mean? Barbara Brown Taylor offers this possibility: “[T]he hardest spiritual work in the world is to love your neighbor as yourself – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it. All you have to do,” she says, “is recognize another you ‘out there’ – your other self in the world – for whom you may care as instinctively as you care for yourself. To become that person, even for a moment, is to understand what it means to die to your self.”

Loving others, really loving others, is to understand what it means to die to self. Don’t we experience the truth of this in our lives; don’t we see for ourselves that sacrificing for love, letting our hearts break open for love like a seed that breaks open, leads to more life? We see it in families where parents give up time, money, old dreams, and personal ambition so that their children might flourish. We see it where spouses set aside their own wants or needs to help their partner become who they are meant to be. We see it when someone cares for a frail parent, or a spouse with dementia; we see it when people show up for each other in a crisis. We see it when people stand up to injustice that doesn’t impact them personally. In a thousand places and ways we know this to be true. These may not sound like big deaths. They are the small deaths we experience throughout our lives when we love in big ways. But through them we live out the truth of Jesus’ words over and over again. Our “dying” multiplies, grows, spreads, and results in life.

If you want to see Jesus, it helps to know what you’re looking for. We see Jesus when we see profound love, love for another or for many others that is powerful enough that some part of the self must die, the part that gets in the way of love. We see Jesus when we recognize that this kind of death leads to more life. And so based on what Jesus taught, we see Jesus …
• … when someone dies to refusing to forgive.
• … when someone dies to arrogance and self-righteousness.
• … when someone dies to greed.
• … when someone dies to revenge.
• … when someone dies to violence as a solution.
• … when someone dies to the need to control or manipulate.
• … when someone dies to the need for power, privilege, and prestige.
• … when someone dies to hate.

“Sir, we would see Jesus.” In many older church sanctuaries, this Bible verse is carved into the interior of the pulpit, where only the preacher can see it. Of course, this reflects a time when the person reading the verse, the person standing in the pulpit, was invariably addressed as “Sir,” never “Miss” or “Madam.” Still, the idea is to remind the person who occupies the pulpit that this is the desire of everyone sitting in the pews: to see Jesus; to encounter Jesus, the one in whom we best encounter the love of God. But here’s the thing: This is great advice, but not just for preachers. It is also our calling as the church, as those who call ourselves the body of Christ in the world: to let the world see Jesus, in us.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World (New York, HarperCollins: 2009).
Janet H. Hunt, “When Dying Means Living,” March 18, 2012, http://words.dancingwiththeword.com/2012/03/when-dying-means-living.html

The Whole World

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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?

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

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

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John 2:13-22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

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