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Don’t Be Alarmed

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Mark 13:1-8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 

Really Seeing Each Other

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Mark 12:38-44

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take that into the voting booth with you today.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

As Yourself

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Mark 12:28-34  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Refusing to Be Silenced

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Mark 10:46-52

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Greatness

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Mark 10:35-45

When humorist Dave Barry landed a college internship with a magazine in Washington D.C., he wasn’t prepared for “the great Washington totem pole of status.” Barry writes, “Way up at the top of this pole is the president; way down at the bottom, below mildew, is the public. In between is an extremely complex hierarchy of government officials, journalists, lobbyists, lawyers, and other power players, holding thousands of minutely graduated status rankings differentiated by extremely subtle nuances that only Washingtonians are capable of grasping. For example, Washingtonians know whether a person whose title is ‘Principal Assistant Deputy Undersecretary’ is more or less important than a person whose title is ‘Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary.’” Washington parties, Barry says, were serious affairs at which everybody worked hard to figure out where everybody else fit on the totem pole, and then spent the rest of the evening sucking up to whoever was higher up.

In the Mark passage, the brothers James and John approach Jesus to ask for special treatment. Interpreters disagree about what motivates them. Is this a totem pole way of looking at discipleship? Could they be so clueless about who Jesus is that they’re imagining a triumphant scene with themselves sitting in positions of honor at King Jesus’ right and left? Or is it that Jesus has just told them for the third time what lies ahead in Jerusalem and they’re starting to wonder about their own futures? Either way, their request is grounded in their love for Jesus. Maybe that’s why Jesus doesn’t reprimand them, and instead, tells them they don’t know what they’re asking. He gently brings them back to the hardships that will come first, through the images of the cup of suffering and the baptism of death.

The other disciples aren’t pleased that James and John are jockeying for position. It seems that all the disciples are stuck in a totem pole way of looking at power: who’s on top, who gets the best seat at the table. Meanwhile, Jesus is up-ending the seating arrangement. He says that what the world usually calls greatness is not great at all. He refers to the Gentiles, the Romans who occupy Judea. These Gentiles think tyrants are great. Then Jesus gives the disciples a new recipe for greatness. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”

To be great is to serve. I believe many of us struggle with Jesus’ words as much as the disciples did when they first heard this, even if we’ve heard it many times. Sure, we know serving is good, but if you wish to be great, you must be a servant?

In order to grasp why serving leads to greatness, and not just in some sort of irrational, Jesus-always-loves-a-paradox sort of way, we need to remember that Jesus has been steering his disciples toward transformation – and along with them, us, and the whole world. Jesus knows that what’s behind the totem pole scenario is fear: fear that we won’t have enough, be loved enough; that we are not enough. He knows that what’s behind it is a way of looking at the world that says there are only so many pieces of the pie and so I’d better get my piece; that there are winners and losers in the world, and I’ll do whatever I can to be a winner.

It’s a way of looking at the world that has caused much of the suffering, disconnection, and violence that humanity brings upon itself. It’s this way of looking at the world that Jesus turns on its head when he heals people, forgives sins, touches the untouchable, includes the outcast, and breaks the rules that drag people down and disconnect them from community. From the beginning of Mark’s gospel, he’s insisted that God is near and claims us as God’s beloveds. Jesus has modeled the compassionate life that God wants the whole world to live; this, he says, is what God’s kingdom looks like. Jesus proclaims that this is good news, not just for those at the bottom of the totem pole but for all. Now, Jesus is showing the disciples that serving is the way out of the fear of “not enough,” and even the way out of “not enough” itself. Serving changes us, and changes our world.

Serving helps others, and it helps us. It heals others, and it heals us. It connects us with others, and it connects us with ourselves and with God. Serving is how God transforms the world and transforms us. Jesus’ lesson here is summed up by Richard Rohr this way: “Unless and until you give your life away to others, you do not seem to have it yourself at any deep level.”

“Unless and until you give your life away to others, you do not seem to have it yourself at any deep level.” Good parents always learn this. People in recovery in Twelve Steps groups learn this. The twelfth step is about serving others who need help with recovery, and the universal experience is that it turns out to be life-changing and healing for the person who is doing the serving, as well. A woman in recovery writes, “At first, I didn’t understand when my sponsor said, ‘You’ve got to give it away to keep it’ but after being around the Program for a while, I began to feel a lot of gratitude. I wanted to give back some of what was given to me so freely. I began to be a temporary sponsor for newcomers. It was then that I realized how this helping others business revitalized and strengthened my own personal recovery. I needed to help others as much for my own recovery as for theirs.”

“Unless and until you give your life away to others, you do not seem to have it yourself at any deep level.” The predictable trio of money, power and fame cannot give you yourself or protect you from the fear of “not enough.” The drive to be at the top of the totem pole cannot give you yourself, and in fact it feeds the fear of “not enough.” The greatness promised by the totem pole is illusory, a trap that leads to more fear, and more disconnection from self, others, and God. “Unless and until you give your life away to others, you do not seem to have it yourself at any deep level.” In a very real, non-paradoxical way, that is greatness.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:

“Dave Barry Goes to Washington,” 2002, http://www.thisisawar.com/LaughterDaveWashington.htm. 

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011).

The Eye of the Needle

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Mark 10:17-31

Even people who claim to be Biblical literalists have their limits. You can practically see the skid marks when folks come to a screeching halt in front of this passage in Mark. “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me,” said Jesus. All of a sudden, reading the Bible literally isn’t so appealing. This is probably one of the scariest passages in the Bible.

But what if it isn’t a scary story? What if it’s a healing story? What if the key phrase in this passage is in verse 21: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him…”? Without this phrase, we can read Jesus’ instructions to give everything away either as a test to see if this man was faithful enough, or worse, as a requirement for entrance into the Kingdom of God. When we hear that Jesus says what he says out of love, however, that changes everything. Now Jesus is not setting the bar, he’s responding to need.

“You lack one thing,” Jesus goes on to say. Jesus doesn’t mean “lack” in the sense of “you can’t get into the Kingdom without it.” Rather, it’s more like, “There is one thing keeping you from the full and abundant life that God wants for all of us.”

Jesus was a master at inviting people into transformation in exactly the terms that they needed. His response was always tailored to the individual standing in front of him, the person saying, “What must I do to live?” So, this man came asking what he could do to find the peace that has thus far eluded him, and Jesus has a specific prescription for him. “This is what will set you free. Let go of your wealth.” Now, wealth is essentially morally neutral, but it can be dangerous in these ways: It can make us believe we don’t need each other. It can cause us to believe that we are more deserving than others. We can fool ourselves into believing that we alone are responsible for our wealth, while we ignore all the factors besides our own hard work that contribute to our situation, factors like race, privilege, the GI Bill, parents who were educated or could loan us a down payment, living in safe neighborhoods with good schools, and on and on. Almost invariably, wealth insulates us from other people’s needs. In the Mark passage, this man’s wealth has formed a wall around his life and Jesus is inviting him to something better – something risky, and free, and full of the transforming power of the Spirit.

Jesus tells this man that the one thing that is keeping him from enjoying the abundant life God promises here and now is all his possessions. And this is important: he doesn’t just tell him to give away what he has. He tells him to give it to the poor. According to Jesus, our lives are inextricably bound up with the lives of others.

The man walks away, deeply troubled, because he can’t imagine that what Jesus is offering him is better than all his stuff. Jesus knows it’s hard. That’s why he says it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God. And no, the eye of the needle is not a small door in a larger gate into Jerusalem where the camels would have to be unpacked before entering. That interpretation is based on a fiction invented in the nineteenth century, a fiction that comforted people who liked to think that if it isn’t actually impossible for a camel to get through the eye of a needle, then it isn’t impossible for them to enter the Kingdom. But this gate-in-the-wall fiction misses the point because that interpretation assumed this passage is about going to heaven after we die, and it is not. The Kingdom of God, as Jesus said, is among us, within us, it is “at hand,” because the Kingdom of God is living now, now, as though we are part of God’s Kingdom, as though God is the ruler of our hearts and minds, here and now. What Jesus is saying with his eye of the needle comparison is that it’s very hard for people to let go of the belief, to be healed of the belief that living walled in by your money and possessions is better than what Jesus offers. Jesus invites this man to a life in which he is truly aware of his connectedness with God, God’s creation, and God’s people, aware that his well-being is intimately tied to the well-being of others – and that is what living in the Kingdom of God looks like.

We are left wondering: Would we walk away, too? I like the fact that we don’t really know the end of this story. We don’t know whether the rich man eventually got it. Faith is a journey, and it takes a long time to be a disciple. It is a process of transformation, being changed from the inside out and the outside in over the course of a lifetime. What this actually not-so-scary story in Mark tells us is that whatever Jesus asks of us, he will ask out of love, and in order to heal us. And as someone else once said, “A trip becomes a journey after you’ve lost your luggage.”

© Joanne Whitt 2024

He Took a Little Child and Put It Among Them

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Mark 9:30-37

This chapter in Mark’s gospel begins with a glorious vision, what we call the Transfiguration. Three of the disciples see Jesus on a mountaintop, talking with Moses and Elijah, and they hear a voice coming from a cloud: “This is my Son, the Beloved: listen to him.” The disciples now have a better understanding about who Jesus really is and they must have started thinking in terms of what sort of power and glory was in it for them. Jesus, however, orders them to say nothing to anyone. Then for the second time he tells them that betrayal and death are in his future. They must be in utter denial about this because on the road back home to Capernaum, a few of the disciples begin to dream of being in high places with Jesus.

Back in Capernaum, Jesus asks, “What were you arguing about on the way?” but he already knows. He sits down and tries again to get through to his disciples: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” No wonder they were silent; they had argued about who was greatest of all and Jesus calls them to be last of all. They had heard these opposites before – to save your life, you have to lose your life, to be first you have to be last, to be great you have to be a servant. Jesus was always talking this way, but it was probably nearly as hard for the disciples as it is for us to reject the conventional definitions of what greatness is, what success is, who is important. We don’t really believe the meek inherit the earth, do we? In our culture, success is measured by where you live, what you drive, who you know, how much money you make, where you went to school, the degrees following your name, how many people you influence on TikTok; we live in a very competitive, status-conscious society.

So Jesus takes a little child and puts the child in the midst of the disciples. You might wonder why it just so happened that there was a child handy. In first century Palestine there were almost always children handy. Children were part of the fabric of life, and generally were allowed to roam freely in and out of people’s homes and workplaces. They served as neighborhood communication links. I can imagine a first century child reporting what’s happening over at the neighbor’s house, just like children do today. Maybe something like, “Joshua’s dad got a new camel.” But children had no status. They were little more than their fathers’ property. They didn’t “count,” quite literally. In the stories of the feeding of the crowds with the loaves and fishes, three out of the four gospels tell how many men were present but don’t mention women and children, who were most certainly there. A child was socially invisible.

But Jesus sees the child. And Jesus wants them to see the child. He wants us to see the child, too – and welcome the child, not because the child is innocent or perfect or pure or cute or curious or naturally religious. Jesus wants them to welcome the child because the child was at the bottom of the social heap. Children in Mark are not symbols of holiness or innocence; more often they are the victims of poverty and disease. Jesus brings the child from the margins into the very center. This child is not a symbol but a person, a little person easily overlooked, often unseen and unheard. And at the same time, a stand-in for all people at the bottom of the heap, regardless of age.

In 21st Century North America, we look at children differently, at least for the most part. We all want our kids to be safe, happy, and free from want or worry. We all want our kids to learn how to work hard and make sacrifices. The question is, “For what purpose?” To increase their status, or their parents’ status? Or to make the world a better place? To succeed as the world defines success? Or to serve the world as God calls them? Certainly, we need to value our children, encourage their gifts, and celebrate their successes. But even more, we need celebrate that they and every other child on the planet are beloved children of God regardless of their achievements. We need to treasure and care for not just our own offspring, but everyone, including the least, the last, and the vulnerable, with whom Jesus identifies in verse 37: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

A Rash Promise

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Mark 6:14-29

This is one of many stories in the Bible that make you wonder whether the folks who insist that the Bible be taught to school children have read the Bible.

The passage begins with people wondering who this Jesus is. His fame is spreading. Some speculate that he is John the Baptist returned from the dead. But what happened; why is John dead? Because Herod had John executed, and the story of how that came about is the rest of the passage.

The Herod in this story is Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great and one of eight Herods in the Herodian dynasty. He has married Herodias, the former wife of his younger brother, yet another Herod. Like George Foreman, I guess Herod the Great figured there wasn’t a better name than his own to pass on to both (all?) his sons.

John the Baptist wasn’t the only person to criticize Herod for marrying his sister-in-law. We don’t know if he was the only person punished for it. John was well-known and respected; maybe that made it especially important to muzzle him. But Herod fears John; he knows John is “a righteous and holy man,” so while he sends John to prison, he doesn’t have him killed, not at first.

The story continues with Herod’s stepdaughter Herodias (yes, the same name as her mother, the sister-in-law that Herod scandalously married) dancing for guests at a party. We don’t know how old Herodias is at this point. The Greek calls her a κορασίῳ, korasion, which could be young girl or maiden. Is she a child who has made her stepdad proud? Is she an attractive young woman? We also don’t know anything about the dance. Was it as chaste as Judy Garland tapdancing with Mickey Rooney? Or was it provocative, which would make this story truly creepy? All we know is that it must have been some dance. Herod is in such high spirits that he makes a rash promise, so rash that although the text says nothing about it, I wonder if Herod wasn’t drunk as well as impressed. He promises Herodias anything she wants, even half his kingdom, the kind of fairytale promise that you know is going to backfire. The girl asks her mother, who has no warm feelings for John at all, and the mother tells her to ask for John the Baptist’s head on a platter. The king apparently made an oath to keep his promise and so John is executed in prison, and grizzly paintings ever since remind us how brutal this wish was, and that power really can corrupt.

What is the moral of this story? What’s the lesson? I quote David Lose: “The rich and powerful are used to getting what they want; are willing to do most anything to keep or advance what they have; and those who stand up to them, advocate for the oppressed, or dare to inspire people to imagine that life can be different usually get trampled.”

Is this a lesson we want to teach our children? I doubt that those arguing that the Bible should be taught in schools would think so. But maybe that’s exactly what we should be teaching people in today’s political climate. It’s certainly a good reminder for adults, if we include along with it the lesson that God still stands with the oppressed, and whatever the cost, so should we. Isn’t that what Jesus did?

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2012/06/mark-614-29/

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.

Confrontation

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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.”

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.