lectionary

Interpreting the Present

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Luke 12:49-56

   With what’s going on in our world, it seems the last thing we need is a gospel text that encourages more division.  This is not a reading that offers comfort.  But hang with me here.  Jesus did not have an evil twin or suddenly get a personality transplant.  This is the same Jesus who reminded us that the two greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.

   Jesus is frustrated, and he says as much, and if nothing else, this passage shows Jesus responding to stress in a very human way.  He says he has work to do and he’s under incredible stress to complete it in the time he has left.  Does that mean Jesus knew for sure he was going to be arrested and crucified?  Maybe, or maybe it just means he knew the risks of putting love of God and love of neighbor first.

   Which is Jesus’ point, here.  Relentlessly loving God and neighbor is risky.  In his words and actions, Jesus shows us that when he says love your neighbor, he means not just the neighbor who’s easy to love, but the neighbor who’s very hard to love.  The one you’d rather not sit next to on the bus, or in the classroom.  The one you don’t want for a colleague.  The one you avoid at the family reunion.  The one you hope won’t go to the polls in a presidential election.  The one who sees the world entirely differently from the way you do, who believes different truths than you do.  Love that neighbor, which includes working toward his well-being, even if it looks to you as though he’s doing everything he can to work against your well-being.  Jesus shows us that loving your neighbor means questioning the religious, social, and economic status quo that undermines your neighbor’s safety and security.  It means speaking the truth in love to that neighbor and doing the hard work of forgiveness and reconciliation with that neighbor.  When Jesus talked about love and modeled it in his actions, that’s what love looks like. 

   That kind of love is risky.  It doesn’t make people popular.  We all can rattle off a long list of peacemakers and justice-lovers who loved their neighbors just this way and were killed or jailed for their efforts: Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Bobby Kennedy, Oscar Romero, Anwar al Sadat, Nelson Mandela, Harvey Milk, Yitzhak Rabin, Rachel Corrie, environmentalist Tim DeChristopher; and others whose names we’ll never know who resisted the Holocaust, fought for civil rights and thought women ought to have the vote.

   Jesus wasn’t saying that he wants people to turn against each other.  He’s saying that if people follow him, really follow him, they can count on offending someone, even someone close, even someone they love.  This was certainly true for Jesus’ original audience.  I wonder: Is it any less true for us?  How would our family and friends and co-workers react if we really acted like Jesus did?  How would our government act; how would ICE agents or the National Guard act?  What Jesus is concerned with here is the persecution, if you will, not of people who choose one faith over another but of people who strive to love God and neighbor. 

   Sometimes when people see someone committed to doing what’s right, they feel critiqued, even if that’s not the point at all.  What concerns Jesus is this: When anyone has the nerve to look at the way things are and say, “This isn’t right,” it divides people.  “This isn’t right” challenges the status quo.  Those who benefit from the status quo will fight tooth and nail to oppose anyone who tries to change things.  Jesus sums up his frustration by noting that people can look at the clouds and predict the weather, but they can’t see the way things are here and now.  They can’t look at what’s going on around them and “interpret the present.”  Why?  Because they are satisfied with the way things are right now and don’t want to change. 

   What are we to do, then, in order to interpret the present faithfully? 

   It is hard to look at the broken and hurting world around us and see in the hurt and the brokenness a call that something has to change – that we might just have to change.  It can seem overwhelming but maybe we just start by mending a little corner of the world, our tiny corner.  Anne Lamott uses the metaphor of stitching: “You start wherever you can. You see a great need, so you thread a needle, you tie a knot in your thread. You find one place in the cloth through which to take one stitch, one simple stitch, nothing fancy, just one that’s strong and true.”

   We mend what we can.  If households are not to be divided, mother against daughter, father against son, it will be because, through the grace of God, we reach across those divides instead of accepting them as insurmountable, and take small steps, make small stitches. 

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:

Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair (New York: Riverhead Books, 2013).

Couraging

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Luke 13:31-35

I saw an article announcing 14 new superhero movies to be released this year. I get the attraction. So much feels beyond our control: our government seemingly collapsing before our eyes; old alliances broken and frightening ones forged; the economy at the mercy of capricious tariffs; immigrants and refugees in danger; global poverty and climate change. Why wouldn’t folks want to sit back with a $15 bag of popcorn and feel safe, knowing that the bad guys will lose? Maybe we can’t control what’s going on in the world, but the Avengers can, and they will.

What a contrast to this story in Luke in which Jesus displays a very different kind of heroism, a different kind of courage. The Pharisees warn Jesus to go into hiding because Herod kills the people he finds inconvenient. Jesus refuses to run. He’s very direct: Go and tell that fox I’m going to keep right on healing people until I finish on the third day. Luke’s readers would understand this as a reference to resurrection; his work won’t be done until then. In the meantime, Jesus is heading into Jerusalem, knowing that spells danger.

This kind of courage, meeting a daunting or risky challenge head on without superhuman strength but just because it is the next right thing, is sometimes called “moral courage.” It isn’t that movie superheroes necessarily lack moral courage; they just don’t have the real vulnerability that goes along with it. The real human risk, the risk we non-superheroes take when we stand up to a bully or go against the majority. Think of the teen who calls his parents for a ride home from a party where there are drugs or alcohol. Think of the person who points out a remark is racist or sexist. Think of the employee who speaks up about his company’s shady business practices. Think of the judge who rules against the current administration, the rector who asks for mercy for the marginalized with the newly elected President sitting in the front pew, or the New Mexico congresswoman who holds up a sign saying, “This is not normal” at a presidential speech. Courage is vulnerability. There is the risk of ridicule, punishment, retribution, maybe even loss of job, security, or social status when you stand up for what you know is right.

Jesus has an interesting way of illustrating this in today’s passage. Under the threat of Herod the fox, you’d think he’d choose to imagine himself as a lion or some other powerful beast, or maybe something that could fly away. Instead, Jesus chooses the image of a mother hen. Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “Jesus won’t be king of the jungle in this or any other story. What he will be is a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm. She has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles. All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body. If the fox wants them, he will have to kill her first.” If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand Jesus’ lament. Jesus shows us that it is in fact the vulnerability of love that gives us courage and strength to do the next right thing. We can and will do things for those we love that we simply would not or could not do for ourselves.

As theologian Mary Daly reminds us, “Courage is … a habit, a virtue: You get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.” Someone else said, “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” It takes courage to make tough decisions about parenting when you’re faced with “everybody’s doing it.” It takes courage to resist our “whatever you can get away with” culture. It takes courage to stay committed when commitments aren’t valued, and it takes courage to listen to people who see the world very differently. It takes courage to look around and say, “This isn’t normal,” and then take whatever small steps you can to move toward healing, reconciliation, compassion, empathy, peace – toward what the Scriptures call shalom. Shalom is God’s “normal.”

Jesus keeps on doing what he’s doing, fox or no fox, because no matter how dire circumstances seem, how impossible the odds, how inevitable an outcome appears, nothing we or anyone else can do will thwart the love of God that gathers us like a hen gathering a brood of chicks. Nothing. Jesus invites us to stay focused on his heart full of love even for those who reject him. Focus on love, and then keep on keeping on. That’s what “couraging” looks like.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:

Barbara Brown Taylor, “As a Hen Gathers Her Brood,” in The Christian Century, February 25, 1986.

Mary Anne Radmacher, Courage Doesn’t Always Roar (Newburyport, MA: Conari Press, 2009).

Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are (Center City, MN: Hazeldon, 2010).

https://www.movieinsider.com/lists/upcoming-superhero-movies-with-official-release-dates#google_vignette

“Mom, Why Shouldn’t I Hit Back?”

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Luke 6:27-38

A mom in a congregation I served told me that she’d stopped one of her preteen kids from hitting her sister back. She was pretty sure that’s what Jesus would want. The girl’s response was frank disbelief, something along the lines of, “What, are you nuts? Why wouldn’t I hit back? If you don’t hit back, you’re a wimp.”

Is this our culture’s approach to problem-solving and violence in a nutshell? The mom was stumped because what the kid said kind of made sense. Hitting back, and hitting in the first place, just feel reflexive. Yet in the face of that reflex, we have Jesus’ words in this Luke passage: “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.” Most of us remember the translation, “Turn the other cheek.” These are perhaps some of Jesus’ most quoted but also most misunderstood words. Generally they have been understood as teaching non-resistance. In other words, be a wimp. If they hit you on one cheek, turn the other and let them batter you there too, which has been bad advice for battered women and oppressed people generally, and good news for bullies.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says, “But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Biblical scholars explain that the reference to the right cheek means Jesus is saying that turning your face deprives your attacker of a second opportunity to hit you with a backhanded slap with his right hand. One reason we know this is that no ancient Middle Eastern person would strike a person with his left hand, which was used only for “unclean” activities. The backhanded slap was a sign of the hitter’s superiority and intended to humiliate the victim. As Gandhi said, “The first principle of nonviolent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.”

These cultural specifics aren’t as obvious in Luke’s version, which doesn’t mention a right cheek, only a cheek. But regardless, as Walter Wink writes, “Jesus resisted evil with every fiber of his being.” What Jesus means here is “don’t turn into the very thing you hate. Don’t become what you oppose.” As Paul put it, “Do not return evil for evil.”

It is Black History Month. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and ‘60’s was successful not because of a lack of resistance, not because the people in the movement were wimps, but because their resistance was nonviolent. It is seldom lifted up that Martin Luther King Jr. based his nonviolence on his Christian faith and Scripture, on Jesus. King said, “Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. 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.”

Those of us who remember the Civil Rights Movement can testify that nonviolent resistance is not the way of wimps. It requires enormous dedication, courage, and hard work, all of which may culminate in failure, including injury to or even the death of resistors.

In the 1986 movie, “The Mission,” the new Portuguese rulers of eighteenth-century South America order an attack on a local tribe and the Jesuits protecting them. It becomes a massacre. The pope’s messenger confronts a government official, saying, “You have the effrontery to tell me this slaughter was necessary?” The governor says he had no alternative. He did what he had to do. He says, “We must work in the world. The world is thus.” The papal envoy replies, “No, Señor Hontar. Thus we have made the world. Thus I have made it.”

“Mom, why shouldn’t I hit back?” Maybe the way to answer is with another question: “What kind of world do you want to live in? What kind of world do you want to make?”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Blessed Are the Ubuntu

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Luke 6:17-26

   A great crowd comes to Jesus to be healed of their diseases and “unclean spirits,” both of which would make these people outcasts to one degree or another.  Then Jesus turns to his disciples and describes people who are “blessed” in Luke’s version of Matthew’s Beatitudes.  Malina and Rohrbaugh explain that the underlying Greek words that are translated as “blessed” and “woe” are better understood as “How honorable …” and “How shameless ….”  To say someone was “blessed” or “honorable” in Jesus’ time was to say, “Pay attention to these people, because these are the people you should try to be like.  This is the group you want to belong to.”  This is the opposite of saying, “Woe to these people,” which means, “Pay attention: You definitely do not want to be like these people, or part of this group.” 

   Luke’s beatitudes are statements consoling and supporting the socially disadvantaged.  They’re also a reversal of who was considered honorable and shameless at the time of Jesus, and in most circles, in our time as well.  Jesus proclaims that our heroes should be the poor, the hungry, the sad and grieving, and those who stand up for what is right even if people threaten them, mock them, or exclude them.  Our heroes should not be the aggressive, the rich, those who toughen themselves against feelings of loss, those who strike back when others strike them or guard their images so they’re always popular.

   How can this make any sense to us in 2025?  In our culture right now, the poor, those working for justice and equity, those trying to exercise compassion, and those insisting that mercy is more important than wealth or power appear anything but “blessed.”

   Jesus knew a couple of things.  First, he knew that the people he described as blessed are the people who understand that we need each other.  They understand this because they have no choice but to rely on others.  God designed us to need each other; God made us to live and thrive in community.  We are blessed when we know that and live it.

   Jesus also knew that the times when we’re truly the happiest are when we help or heal people.  True happiness comes from things that don’t make people rich and famous.  For example:

Loving and raising your children.

Taking care of your aging parents.

Standing up for someone who is being bullied.

Including someone who is being left out.

Hugging someone who needs a hug.

Serving a meal to someone who is hungry.

Building homes with Habitat for Humanity.

Sitting next to someone who is lonely.

Telling the truth when other people think that lying is acceptable.

Sharing what you have with people who don’t have enough.

   An anthropologist had been studying the habits and customs of an African tribe.  When he’d concluded his research, he waited for transportation to take him to the airport for the return trip home.  To help pass the time as he waited, he proposed a game for the children who constantly followed him around during his stay with the tribe.  He filled a basket with candy and placed it under a tree, and then called the kids together.  He drew a starting line on the ground and told them that when he said “Go!” they should run to the basket.  The first to arrive there would win all the candy.

   But when he said “Go!” they all held each other’s hands and ran to the tree as a group.  When they reached the basket, they shared it.  Every child enjoyed the candy.  The anthropologist was surprised.  One of them could have won all the candy.  A little girl explained it to him: “How can one of us be happy if all the others are sad?”

   The child’s wisdom reflects the African notion of “ubuntu.”  In the Xhosa culture, ubuntu means, “I am because we are.”   Archbishop Desmond Tutu described it this way: “Africans have a thing called ubuntu.  It is about the essence of being human; it is part of the gift that Africa will give the world.  It embraces hospitality, caring about others, being willing to go the extra mile for the sake of another.  We believe that a person is a person through other persons, that my humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with yours.  When I dehumanize you, I inexorably dehumanize myself.  The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms.  Therefore, you seek to work for the common good because your humanity comes into its own in community, in belonging.”

   Ubuntu is what Jesus is talking about in this passage.  What really makes us truly happy is helping other people be happy.  What really makes us successful is helping all people to live happy, safe, healthy lives, because “I am because we are.”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:

Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).

Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking (New York: Jericho Books, 2014).