The Work of the Day

John 9:1-5

It is interesting, first of all, that Jesus should say that neither the blind man nor his parents sinned. I am assuming that implied is "that he was born blind," because the liklihood of three people living sinlessly is pretty low - even lower that Jesus wouldn't find such examples worth commenting further on. But there is hope here, too, that we might be genuinely capable of living without sin in certain contexts - on our best behavior, if you will. Or, even if we can't live without sin, one aspect of the Grace of God is God's willingness to overlook or forgive sin - particularly sin in spite of our best intentions or actions.

Notice, though, that Jesus does not dwell on the issue of sin. A short, dismissive answer to the disciples saying in other words that sin isn't the concern here, and Jesus zeroes in on the real issue: "As long as it is day, we must to the work of him who sent me." (NIV) All this talk of sin and deserving is a distraction - the real issue is for us to be at God's work while we are able.

For Jesus, the work of God is healing those blind without fault - in other words, healing injustice and relieving suffering. It isn't so much that Jesus is a miracle-worker - there were plenty of miracle-workers across the Roman Empire. Even for the Gospel writer John the miraculous plays second-fiddle to the purpose and commentary of Jesus surrounding his works, what we are supposed to learn from the story or walk away from this reading believing.

We must do the work of that which sends us. The nature of our God is revealed by our actions. Even if we Christians sing devotedly one hour a week but live the rest of our lives as if that one hour meant nothing, then we reveal our personal god to be shallow, untransformative, soothing for us but insensitive to the cruelties of the world, and unable to move us to action and sacrifice on others' behalf.

We must do the work of that which sends us. If our God is one that has the power to move mountains or redeem sinners or make us want to do things that do not serve our own interests or pleasures, then where are we in relation to that power? If we believe that God can - and have every expectation that God will - be active in the world, in the hearts and minds of people; or that God can and does work in our world to end injustice, transform people, redeem individuals and societies, use every opportunity to transform what is to what should be, then why are we not just as actively engaged?

Night is coming! When no one can work! We have only so much time, people! We do not live forever. Our work for good or ill will not survive forever. The structures and mechanisms - governments, laws, cultures, economic systems, personal relationships - they will not last forever. We have to get to work in them now, before we have lost our chance. (Even then, though, we'll have the chance to work in our new situation - there is Grace even in our failure to act.)

Night is coming - the sun will set on opportunities before long. You will pass someone on the street needing to be reached out to. You will pass the opportunity to give your money to places where it is being put to the work of God. You will not stop from being angry, when gentleness and patience would be better called for. You will lose a friendship to time or distance. You will spend your money on silly things. You will move homes, change neighbors, change jobs and co-workers. Night is coming! Things will change - and you will have lost the opportunity to do the work of that which drives us.

Where are you in your day? What opportunities are at hand for you?

God cares deeply for us and for our world. Where Marxism and Capitalism fail - believing that people are merely products of their environment on the one hand, and that people's environment is a commodity to be purchased or crafted without regard to their spiritual condition - Jesus succeeds: the world is transformed and redeemed by the transformation and redemption of individuals, who then build a new world within the old, seed communities of Zion.

While it is yet day, what seeds are we planting?

A Lovesong

Isaiah 5:1-7

Anyone who walks away from reading the Bible with less than a conviction for social justice, peace and mercy, hasn't read enough.

That's how I feel coming off this week's lectionary scripture from Isaiah.

Isaiah paints us a picture - an object lesson, if you will - in the voice of God. God has great hopes and plants a vineyard on a hill of fertile soil. The vintner removes all the stones, plants the finest vines, and is so confident of the glorious harvest to come the gardener builds ("hews") a wine press. This is truly a love song.

But the love turns sour.

The vines do not yield choice grapes, but wild grapes - unsuitable for cultivation and useless for good wine-making. At any rate, they aren't what the Vintner was hoping and working for. Something has gone terribly wrong.

Isaiah expresses God's disappointment as the destruction of wrathful vengeance, as a clearing-away of the garden, as the Gardener's abandonment of the garden to the threats of the wild.

But the threat of imminent doom stands only to emphasize the source of God's disappointment: God expects fairness among the people, and finds only injustice (NRSV: "bloodshed"); expects righteousness, but finds only cries of distress. The people's failure to live a zionic lifestyle, to live in right relationship with each other, to treat each other and foreigners with compassion and fairness. Injustice is the real plague of the vineyard! And it is already bearing its fruit - useless to God.

From a rhetorical point of view, this poem is amazing. It was likely written at the time of the annual wine harvest, when such songs were common entertainment and praise in the streets. Isaiah plays on this. Typically, women would be primarily responsible for singing during the wine harvest, singing love-songs where they themselves are the vineyard and their lover is the vintner, their fruit children. Hearing a grizzled man singing this must have been a sight. (Perhaps the crowd might have listened to hear the story an old man's tryst in younger days, or the sexual imagination of a supposed man of God.)

The song's replay of working the fertile soil, clearing and planting the vineyard, would all have been heard as references to love-making. But at the end of verse two, Isaiah turns the tables, and declares the fruit unsuitable. The term "wild grapes" is literally "noxious fruit."

Even the wordplay in the final stanza would have impressed listeners: Isaiah poetically juxtaposes justice (Heb: mishpat) with bloodshed (mishpakh), righteousness (tsedaqah) with a cry of distress (tse'aqah).

Beautifully composed, the wine-harvest festival poem shows a genius of marketing - taking the occasion of the day, even a successful harvest (presumably a sign of God's favor and pleasure), and artistically turning it on its head to highlight the shortfall of the people in their (true) worship of God: social justice.

This is a love song that we need to sing again.

Outgrowing the Disciplinarian

Galatians 3:23-29 (esp. v24)

The Law was a disciplinarian, a pedagagos: an educated, trusted and benevolent slave whose sole task it was was to watch the little children of the house and make sure they didn't get into trouble, and provide some basic moral guidance. This slave was still ultimately a servant of the children, even though she commanded them in their infancy and childhood.

Paul is being literary here (he takes the analogy and runs with it in following verses), but it serves his point well. The Law (or religious laws) was (were) set up to guide us, to serve us, not us to serve it. The holiness of the Law was not holy in itself, but in the moral guidance it provided and the devotion it nurtured within us. It was an instrument of God, not God godself. And in Christ we have seen a glimpse of God-godself. Once we have outgrown the pedagagos, we have no use for such a disciplinarian - we can continue to honor her service and advice, but we will never go back under her charge. And sometimes, we may see fit to violate her once-helpful commands and rules. Part of becoming an adult, after all, is recognizing the complexity of moral choices, and the multiplicity of possible actions and consequences - far beyond the face-value simplicity of children's stories, and more layered and contradictory than children's strategies for resistance, justice, fairness and so on. (Even though those principles and lessons are still valuable, and continue to inform our choices and ideals.)

I wonder if most Christians realize what Paul is saying here - that the Law is superceded by Christ. We can no longer use the Levitical or Deuteronomical laws to exclude people or beat people up inside themselves. Christ is the rule; Christ is the law. And Jesus said precious little about "homosexuality" or cohabitation or premarital sex. If anything, Jesus' ethic of radical love and inclusion of the marginalized (by us?) should command our embrace of these troublesome (to us) populations. The Law no longer commands Christians - but some Christians haven't gotten the memo yet. Some Christians believe the Law still serves to further exclude people already on the margins. At the same time, these Christians ignore the commands of Jesus for economic and social equity and justice, protection of the widow and orphan, hospitality to the poor and the foreigner. It is as if they take the worst - most petulant - of the Law and abandon the best - the grace and mercy - of Jesus. (While at the same time singing hymns that repeat "grace and mercy" - but what they mean is grace and mercy for me, continued aspersion to them.)

Paul here is breaking all that away. In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no heterosexual or homosexual, no black or white, no rich or poor, and so on. ... Or is there? To the extent that these divisions still exist, our community does not reflect that of Christ.

But it isn't too late.

Share with the aliens among you

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Lectio Divina is an interesting exercise for me. If I do it regularly, I find a pattern: I start with something that catches my eye - either something I really disagree with or, more often, something that fits well within my prepossessed convictions. But, through the exercise (and through the grace of God), I end up with a broader perspective than when I started, even broader than the selected scripture I seized upon. So I start again.

In this passage, we have one of the earliest articulations of the Hebrew faith - the crystallization of the central narrative core and its most important interpretation: a wandering alien became a great nation, this great nation became slaves, these slaves were freed by God and led to Palestine. Whatever you have belongs firstly to God, and whatever you have left should be shared with the aliens and lowly among you.

Sharing with God and extending hospitality to the strangers among us is part of the identity of those who would incorporate this story into their lives. Social and economic justice is built into the faith declarations of the Hebrews. God showed concern for them when they were a foreigner, when they were slaves, when they were few and poor and oppressed. God looks after these kinds of people. If we would remember that, then we too have to look after these kinds of people - especially when these kinds of people live among us. To forget them is a sin, a transgression of God's law, love and relationship with humanity. And this sharing among all people is an act that renews the people's solidarity with God.

God gives the land as an inheritance - that means it was previously "owned" (by God) and is the perennial inheritance of all. The point is not that it was given, but that it was an inheritance. If we forget the source of our bounty, then we dishonor the inheritance.

I have to think about this some more.

Citizens of Heaven: Living the Way of the Cross of Christ

Philippians 3:17-4:1

I am distracted this morning by an article I read yesterday evening in Christianity Today. The article was about an "arch-conservative" Christian radio host that claimed that living out Christianity makes one conservative. Of course, I couldn't disagree more (and I question the wisdom of subscribing to this magazine). And along comes this morning's scripture to rouse these feelings all over again - or perhaps to flush them out, to daylight them.

"Brothers and Sisters, become co-imitators with me of Christ," Paul says. "For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ."

There is little agreement among scholars who Paul is referring to here, living as enemies of the cross. But it seems reasonable to me to assume that these are individuals within their faith community - other Christians... otherwise, what would be the point of saying they live outside of and in opposition to the example of Christ, they don't know or care about the way of Jesus. The critique only has teeth if it describes individuals who ought to know better.

Paul describes them a little: their end is destruction, their god is the belly, their glory is in their shame, their minds are set on earthly things.

Their end is destruction - this might not be an eschatalogical claim, that is, it might not be describing their fate or future consequence. It might be describing their goal, their intention, their modus operandi. Enemies of the way of the cross seek destruction in the world, not creation. They seek to destroy - with bombs, with words, with laws, with torture chambers, with executions.... A contrast to the way of the cross of Christ is destruction. Those who seek it are living as enemies of the cross of Christ.

This is one place where we see the clear significance of the cross - an instrument of brutal oppression, fear, torture, execution, condemnation, revenge... destruction. Through Jesus, this symbol of everything Jesus stood against becomes redeemed, and represents Jesus' resistance and victory over the forces of destruction. The way "of the cross" in Jesus reverses expectations, inverts worldviews, goes against the "normal" way of the world. There is the cross of the Empire - brutal, vengeful, destructive; and there is the cross of Christ - forgiving, loving, suffering, creative.

Their god is the belly - their ultimate concern is their own satisfaction, their own sustenance, their own appetite. Paul is contrasting this with Jesus in the wilderness, when tempted by bread Jesus responds that humanity cannot live by bread alone. Living as an enemy of the cross of Christ is living for bread alone - with no thought to the greater issues at stake. Shopping at Wal-Mart with no thought to the working conditions of those employed by that company; "supporting the troops" with no thought to the vast mechanism of militarism, consumption, exploitation, waste, violence and misallocation of resources necessary for American militarism; and so on. Thinking primarily of oneself, of one's own satisfaction or comfort (even, perhaps especially, under the guise of "helping" someone else) is living as an enemy of the cross - living life as an enemy to the idea of self-sacrifice for others, of equitable distribution of wealth and resources, of equal stake in life and prosperity of all people, especially the lowly, weak, disenfranchised, poor and the enemy.

Their glory is in their shame - when we parade our vices and weaknesses as if they were our virtues and strengths. We cannot embrace Jesus' vision of creative nonviolent resistance, and so we parade tanks and boots in front of adoring crowds and fanfare. We cannot embrace Jesus' vision of the abolition of poverty, and so we parade the super-rich along red carpets in front of crowds and flashbulbs, and even in grocery check-out lines. We cannot embrace Jesus' vision of homeless itinerant preaching, and so we build bigger and more expansive houses for smaller families and fewer people. The World and the Cross are inversions of each other. What is glorious in one is shameful in the other. What is essential in one is impossible in the other. What we called upon to do and be in one is forbidden and disgraced in the other. This is the stark dichotomy presented to us in Paul's distinction here.

Their minds are set on earthly things - surely Paul is not condemning "earthly" things like food, shelter and remunerative work for the poor, hungry and homeless; things like liberation to the captive, freedom to the oppressed. Paul here is speaking of the values of the World: wealth, prestige, influence, power, strength, comfort at the expense of others, and so on. When people's minds are set on earthly things, they are subjects of earthly powers, adherents to Worldly ideas, victims and citizens of earthly principalities. This, Paul contrasts with discipleship.

The true Christian citizenship (alternatively translated "commonwealth") is in heaven, and it is there we look for salvation. The word Paul uses is "Savior" (in Greek, Soter), which is a word also used to describe the Roman emperor and Roman gods. Paul is making a clear distinction here - you owe your allegiance to God through the person of Jesus, or you owe your allegiance to the state. You can't have it both ways. One or the other. One allegiance is inimical to the cross of Christ, the other is subject to it. The rule of Jesus in oneself is a political as well as spiritual condition. Disciples of Jesus do not look to the President for hope or truth or security - because the President can only offer the ways of the World (violence, greed, destruction). Disciples of Jesus look to the example of Jesus for hope, truth and security.

But the example of Jesus is one of abject humiliation, poverty, death, and even failure. Jesus was executed as a convicted criminal, his life and movement and ministry snuffed out after only a couple years. This is the cross of Christ! To stand up to the Powers of this world and risk being cut down for it. Who would choose that?!

No wonder conservatives see the only way to solve problems in the world as to out-brutalize the enemy, to kill more of them than they kill of us, to see "freedom" as the power to exploit as many people as possible with as little inconvenience to oneself as possible. But that is not the way of the cross of Christ. That is the way of the cross of the Empire. And it is to live as an enemy to the cross of Jesus.

We are convicted, however, that Jesus was not snuffed out that day. We are certain that his life and ministry and movement continued. We agree that he was killed - tortured and executed as an example to those who would follow him. But we further hold that he didn't stop there. The reign of God was not defeated. We were shown the way to victory over earthly powers. Creative, nonviolent, intent, persistent resistance, and the willingness to sacrifice oneself (rather than someone else).

I think we often misunderstand what happened at the cross. Jesus didn't end sacrifice by dying on the cross. He ended the practice of sacrificing others. He brought a new law - a vision of a new world (grounded in the prophetic tradition of the old), and a new sacrifice (grounded in the tradition of sacrifice, but transformed in the way Jesus transforms so much). We worry about our humiliation and troubles, but Paul reminds us of our conviction that our humiliation will be transformed to glory. Our way of thinking about ourselves and our actions (enmeshed as we are in the ideas and priorities and understandings of this World) will be transformed (to conform with the ideas and priorities and understandings of God as revealed in the example of Jesus). By declaring ourselves loyal to the example and rule of Jesus, we are already being remade and transformed - we are becoming citizens of that Greater Kingdom. If we would but stand firm.

I have never been so moved by Paul's writing.

The Healing Faithless

Luke 9:37-43a

Why is Jesus calling the crowd a "faithless and perverse generation" here? They had come to him in hope and faith. The man who ran forward describing his son's demonic posession came to Jesus in the purest of motives - the healing of an only child. Surely they didn't deserve such blanket condemnation. What is Luke trying to convey to the reader with Jesus saying this so soon after the transfiguration on the mountain?

The father of the sick child also says that he brought his son to Jesus' disciples, but that the disciples could not heal him. Are the disciples the target of Jesus' venom here? Because they could not heal the boy, Jesus sees this as evidence of perversity and faithlessness? This all seems very harsh and unforgiving.

And when Jesus utters sentiments like "how much longer must I bear with you?" it gives the impression that Jesus feels he has already given the fullness of the gospel, already offered all that is needed for faith and purity, already provided (in the Sermon on the Plain and the few parables and miracles already narrated) sufficient teaching for discipleship.

Is Luke contrasting the transfiguration on the mountain with the disciples' lack of similar power down below? Is Jesus already expecting his disciples to exhibit the same wonder-working power and ministry that he has? Obviously, one lesson the disciples should be learning is that a follower of Jesus doesn't just tell about what Jesus did, but is to do what Jesus did. (Some will focus on the miraculous healing of the epileptic, others will focus on the barrier-breaking between separated peoples, others on the creative non-violent subversion of political and cultural mechanisms that perpetuate inequality and oppression.)

Another lesson for discipleship is that sometimes healing comes from a word of rebuke against evil possession. Jesus was asked to look at the boy, as so we must be willing to look at our world and see the demons at work in it. Jesus drove the evil spirit out with a word of rebuke. We should also be so challenged, to speak truth to power and honestly rebuke the Powers that possess people, that control people, that seize people and dash them to the ground.

And yet another lesson for disciples is that they will fall short of the best hopes of the Kingdom, but that the command to continue working does not disappear for all that.

Shrub-mentality versus Tree-by-the-Water-thinking

Jeremiah 17:5-10

Here are contrasted two ways of being - two worldviews, two life-patterns, two paradigms, two approaches to life and the world. One is grounded in the trust of motrals and flesh, the other in the trust of God. One is rooted in a mindset and economy of scarcity, where there are never enough resources and one must get all one can when one can; and the other rooted in an economy of abundance, where one need not worry about resources or hoarding, and where sharing is the order of the day.

The scarcity model, or "shrub mentality", is grounded in the trust of "mortals" and "flesh." Don't mistake me here - our lives are embodied ones, and fleshy-experience is part of who we are (and therefore also a partial revelation of the divine, in whose image we are). When Jeremiah talks about trust in mortals and flesh, he isn't saying embodied experience is bad - he's saying trust in mortal things is misguided, trust in things that perish, that are transitory: things like wealth, popularity, strength, military might, prestige or position. When (a) people trust in these things supremely, they will see the world as one of scarce resources, and that their wealth or position or might or popularity are always under threat of being lost or supplanted or defeated. Shrub thinkers will see the world as a salted desert or wilderness where you have to fight to survive - and they won't even see when relief comes, because the rains threaten desert shrubs just as much as the sun does (washes away plants and dirt, exposes roots, causes plants to blossom and then leaves them parched in the heat). Even bounty and relief is a threat to them. And we can see this in those who put their trust in riches or strength - our nation has been extraordinarily fortunate in the past 200 years, but now we see our bounty as precisely what makes us a target, we see our bounty as something we have to defend - and go to great lengths to defend it. We're thinking in a shrub mentality! Take, take, take - consume, consume, consume - hoard, hoard, hoard - defend, defend, defend! We are the richest people on the planet, and yet we feel one of the least secure in what we have. We see ourselves as living in a salted desert, and can't even see what relief is.

In contrast to Luke, in the other lectionary scripture for this Sunday (6:17-26), Jeremiah describes the "cursed" first and the "blessed" second - the two texts ask us: you want the good news first or the bad news?

Opposed to the "scarcity model" of shrub-thinking, there is the "abundance model" described as tree-by-the-water thinking. Jeremiah says those who trust in the Lord are blessed. In contrast with those above who trust in temporary, transitory, perishable things, Jeremiah lifts up confidence in imperishable things: eternal, undying values such as love, fellowship, the long view, the eventual victory of justice (hope), peace, joy. People who don't put their trust in things like money or power over others to give them security or happiness are like trees planted by the water - no matter what droughts may come they feel watered, no matter what heat waves come their leaves stay green. And note what Jeremiah says: they're not anxious. (You want to know if our country is a tree by the water, ask if we're anxious.) My wife and I try to live by the motto: if everyone keeps sharing, there will always be enough. It's not a kind of mathematical equation you can work out or clear-cut trade-off you can point to. It's a way of looking at the world. (And some times it's easier than others.)

For Jeremiah, people who trust in the Lord - in the eternal - are like trees by the water: ever nourished and watered, and ever-bearing fruit. (Contrast that with desert shrubs who quickly blossom and seed in the short rainfalls - like some of us who, when fortune smiles on us we quickly burst out with a little gift or kindness and then just as quickly close up again, waiting for the next rain.) (Which is our tithing model? Which is our stewardship model?)

But then Jeremiah changes tact - and says: the heart is devious above all else, who can understand it? He answers himself: the Lord searches the heart - these eternal values, our endurance and dedication, our faith, search our heart. Jeremiah says God will give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings. Now, this might seem in contrast to the doctrine of Grace - that any gift of God is because of God's grace, not because of anything particularly good we've done (because, frankly, we could hardly ever deserve the kind of love God shows). But I don't think Jeremiah was commenting on grace here. He is laying this alongside his statement about the deviousness of the human heart. We can never escape mixed motives, but we shouldn't have to worry about our own purity before setting to the work of bringing about the Kingdom of God in the world.

There are two ways of looking at the world - one in which the world is a place of danger and villainy that is always threatening us and against which we must defend ourselves and our fortunes; the other in which the world is a place of abundance and grace that has the tremendous and perennial potential to feed us all despite the droughts and heat-waves that come.

Right now I know what you're thinking - you're thinking there's a little truth in each of them, that we need to be "realistic" and see some scarcity out there as well as some abundance. I know you're thinking that, because I'm thinking that too. I can feel the World telling me to not believe this gospel story too much, not to take this abundance view too seriously. I can feel the World's voice(s) inside me, saying that this tree-by-the-water thing is great and all, but that reality is more complicated than that, that the "real world" is a place of scarcity, no matter what we say here at church.

In the end, we have to decide which voice we're going to listen to. We're human - we live in a world of mortals and flesh, as well as a world of God - so we're mixed and confused and we'll probably go back and forth. But let's be careful in our desire to listen to one voice over the other that we not identify them as the same thing. One is the voice of the World, the other is the voice of God. We can choose which to listen to, but let's not do God (or the World) the disservice of confusing their sentiments. As Jeremiah puts it: there is the desert shrub and then there's the tree by the water. Who can understand the heart? One thing we can rest assured of: God is still searching us.

Give it all up - Count it all joy

Luke 5:1-11

What strikes me first is that Jesus is fleeing the crowd - he is willing to teach, but wary of crowds... crowds seems dangerous, they can take things wrongly, crowds don't seems to think as well as the individuals who make them up, the anonymity of crowds often breeds irresponsibility or dreams of grandeur. Jesus is wary of this, but recognizes that for most people learning in a crowd will be their only (poor) exposure to his teaching.

Simon, the fisherman, first had to respond to Jesus' call (to set out in his boat) before he could ever reap the benefits (nets full of fish). He first had to act without thinking of his own benefits. And as he called his partners out to help him drag in the laden nets, you can almost hear in his voice the glee of the piety-prosperity principle - material prosperity indicates a piety and love of God. You can hear the excitement - how wealthy this one catch will make him, how respected he will be with the town leaders, how well dressed his wife and children will be, he might be able to hire another boat and hands to begin building a real business and then he could really take advantage of God's favor!

But, you see, Simon is a self-aware man, and hears his own thoughts and recoils at them. "Master," he says to Jesus, "I am a sinner" - I don't deserve this bounty, I am not as pious as you think, and God knows the truth. Don't bless me like this when I am so undeserving! Jesus answers tellingly - you will become a fisher of people - your bounty is not with these things, fish and position in town - your bounty is in people and their coming to know creative transformation in the Spirit.

And note what happens next: Simon, and his partners James and John, up and left it all - all that material blessing, all those fish and the prosperity and easier life it meant for them, up and left. Their livelihoods, families, homes and furniture and mortgages and cars and internet service and stocked refrigerators - they left it all. For Luke's readers, the possibility that God would bless the faithful isn't out of the ballpark - God had a history of blessing the faithful, even the Temple Priests and local rabbis said so. What would have been surprising and disturbing would have been that Simon and the others just left it all right there on the beach, abandoned wealth and prosperity and the so-called "blessings" of God. (After all, if God did bless them, what poor stewardship it was to leave it on the beach to be taken by thieves and beggars!) But that was Luke's strategy - his readers should be surprised and a little horrified at the audacity, the foolishness, the lack of wisdom! Luke is impressing on his readers that Jesus is turning the tables, inverting priorities... and in fact, getting them straight as they should be.

Now, later on in Luke they will return to Simon's house, so some connection is maintained there, but Luke is very clear what it means to be a disciple of Jesus: giving up attachment to any and all possessions. Here we have the first disciples - blessed beyond their imaginations with the possibility of wealth and comfort (tempted, like Jesus in the wilderness?) and giving it up to follow him.

Is this what it means to be a disciple in the community of Christ? How much can we ask from our parishoners, ourselves?

Interpreting Scripture so That They Understand

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

This passage this the definitive scripture for preaching - this is the first recorded act of preaching in the Bible, and lays out the process that remains basically the same to this day. The people gathered, scripture was read, and then selected leaders among the people interpreted the passage so that the people understood. They made the book relevant to the lives and experience of those listening, so that the lessons and insight from so long ago would breathe new life amid the people

The story has specifically to do with the book of Deuteronomy, which was "discovered" buried beneath a wall in Jerusalem when the Temple was being rebuilt. It was brought to the king and read - and as the story goes, the king ordered it read to all the people, so that they might know the laws of God.

And the people, upon hearing the word of God, cried - but the priests told them not to cry: this is a joyous time, you have been given understanding, celebrate!

Oh, if only my preaching made people cry. If only hearing the word of God caused people to tremble inside themselves today - imagine if people were this moved by the word today: America would stop waging wars of aggression across the world, we would end homelessness and poverty and hunger, our justice system would become one of restorative justice rather than punitive or remunerative justice, everyone would work a little and enjoy life more. It doesn't have to be as hard as it is, people! If only the vision of what-could-be could move people to tears today. What-could-be could be.

We could say - go your way, celebrate, and send provisions for celebration to those who have nothing to celebrate with. (Look at that - social and economic justice right there, immediately following the preaching and response by the people! Social and economic justice ought to be part of our worship - do you hear this, people?!).

No wonder utopian communities have been so attractive to people over the centuries - this is a beautiful vision that captures the heart. It is something worth making real. It might be tough to bring about... but the passage ends reminding us that God is our strength... God will do all the heavy-lifting. We just need to get things squared away.

Isaiah 62:1-5

In the context of "Racial Justice Sunday" and so near the celebrations of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, this scripture takes on forceful meaning. "For Zion's sake, I will not keep silent" - about injustice, about prejudice, about militarism, about nationalism. All of these themes King lived and spoke about. Our particular debt to King rests in his having put plainly before us the undeniable economic dynamics of our moral malaise. Racism is an economic proposition, too, designed and perpetuated in part to maintain economic relations in place. Injustice is an economic issue as well. Militarism and nationalism are racism writ large, and serve the same economic ends - to further enrich the wealthy, at the expense of maintaining the grinding poverty of the poor.

For the sake of Jerusalem I will not rest until her vindication shines out like the dawn. A declaration of commitment for justice activists today, and a pledge in Isaiah's day as well. Isaiah, we must remember, defined the true worship of God as defending the poor, the widow and the orphan, the stranger and foreigner. (And remember that he was speaking in the context of Israel being invaded by a brutal enemy, marching on Jerusalem itself.) For him, Jerusalem and the Temple were meant to be the center-place of worship of God - the epicenter of justice and right-treatment of others.

Isaiah was facing the imminent siege of Jerusalem. The invading Babylonians were laying waste to the countryside in their march to the holy city. And Isaiah steps back from this horrific scene of doom to say that Jerusalem will be a jewel, neither forsaken nor desolate, and that quite contrary to everyone's expectations Jerusalem will be rejoiced over by God because of her faithfulness - her treatment of the poor and lowly!

The actual fate of Jerusalem, we know from history, was more mixed - spared this time but later to fall to Babylon. But spoken on our lips, in our country, the pledge is no less poignant: we will not keep silent! We will stand up and protest and speak truth to power. We will set ourselves against the unjust actions of our nation and churches. We will rise up like lions after slumber, always before us the vision of the reign of God. We are not as naive as Isaiah was, believing that the king or president will obey God's Will in true worship, rather than serve the nationalistic, tribalistic, greedy and racist values that increase his wealth and power. The king and president serve Power. We serve God. And in God's reign there is no place for race or borders; no flags are flying in that kingdom. God serves all; so must we.

The nations will see our vindication, and we shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. There is yet no name to describe the citizens of this new kingdom, the kingdom of God, of Zion. We are yet indescribable, indefinite, beyond any label or category. We will be given a new name.

Let's work to be worthy of the new name, the new kingdom, the new world. Keep salvation burning like a torch, setting fire to pyres of injustice and inequality. And, of course, that means that something will have to burn before the day is done.

In Remembrance of Mercy

Mary's Song of Praise (Luke 1:46-55)
part four (v 54)

"God has helped God's servant Israel, in remembrance of God's mercy..."

I am tempted to talk about loving one's enemies - but that comes too quickly to my heart.

This comes in the context of describing the salvic acts of God, three "revolutions" being ushered in through the birth of Jesus: a moral one (v 51) where arrogance and pride are overturned, a social one (v 52) where class and station are erased, and an economic on (v 53) where the dispossessed are lifted up and the rich are taken away from. This is a lot of upsetting happening here! This is the context of God's mercy, this is God's mercy?

It certainly won't be "merciful" toward the rich and powerful - unless we stretch the meaning of "mercy" to include "liberating" the rich and powerful of the chains of their riches and power. (This is a legitimate reading, of course, but something in it seems stretched thin to me.)

Perhaps God's mercy is the setting-right of social relations. God's mercy are those forces and acts that put us in right relation to other people (and, more broadly, to all life). "Sin" and "evil" thus would be those forces and acts that put us in wrong relation to others: economic inequality, arrogance, nationalism, capitalism, property, style and fashion, and so on, ad infinitum. Or perhaps God's mercy is God's will or wish that we should live in right relations with each other - and our acts are our remembrance of that mercy. (Is there a difference between God's will and God's acts?)

God's mercy, it seems to me now, is God's will for us to be in right relations with each other and the confidence that right relations are both possible and certain in the future. We speak of these things with such confidence that we speak of them as if they've already happened, even though they clearly have not (have only begun?). This has been the ongoing story of the children of Abraham - to which the verse makes reference - and is the story we take up in our discipleship of Jesus.

Social and economic justice are the hallmarks of God's Rule and Mercy. God does not forget this, and neither should we - especially on this very special occasion.

John's Advice: Behavior Change

Luke 3:7-17 (part two)
(esp. vv. 12-14)

When asked what they need to do in the face of judgment, John tells the crowd they must do acts of justice. His two examples are of equal distribution of resources: coats and food - the one with two coats must give to her who has none, the one with food must give to him who has none. And then specific kinds of people come up to him, asking for advice: tax collectors and soldiers.

(Surely, Luke is at least partly interested in setting the literary stage here: tax collectors and soldiers as populations reviled in an occupied Palestine, one group within the religious community and the other entirely outside Abrahamic culture. They approach John, as later they will encounter Jesus. So this vignette with John may serve partly as foreshadowing for the rest of the Gospel. But my interest right now isn't the literary role of these two classes of people.)

What grabs and unsettles me this morning is verses 12-14, John's answer to the tax collector and soldier. The tax collector asks, and in reply John says merely "collect no more than the amount proscribed to you." And to the soldier he says: "do not extort money from anyone by threats... and be satisfied by your wages." A verse earlier John is saying we should redistribute resources and wealth equally among all, which would seriously upset the social/political/economic structures of his time, and then he gives permission for people to continue to participate in those same unequal structures but not use them for their own unfair gain.

I'm certain that my labor background is making me balk at the idea of advice to a soldier being "be satisfied with your wages." That is, honestly, the last thing I'd tell a soldier. There are so many other things I'd rather them do, including dissatisfaction with their wages (who can pay one enough to kill?), not to mention the larger implication of telling workers anywhere to be satisfied with their wages (setting them up for perpetual and abhorrent exploitation at the hands of their employers!).

There is the obvious context to those sentences: John is telling them they should deal more fairly with the people they meet - don't take advantage of them despite your ability to do so, your station is not to be lorded over people. This is a good message in itself, but is hardly comprehensive.

Perhaps this is where Luke plans on having Jesus pick up the baptist's message and bring it closer to fulfillment. Luke might be wanting Jesus to take John's message of "not abusing your unequal station" a step further, to one of "abandon your unequal stations because their very existence treats people unfairly." Jesus' ministry is preluded by John's message.

John says he baptizes with water, while another will baptize with the Spirit. John begins people with a physical act, calling them to mere behavioral changes in the face of abject inequity. Jesus will be calling them to change the way they think about the world and themselves, calling them to more than behavioral changes, calling them to spiritual transformation.

So often we substitute fundamental spiritual change with superficial behavioral changes. We spend a holiday serving at the soup kitchen and somehow manage to come out unchanged but thinking well of ourselves. We give a set amount of our money to church or charity, but give no thought to how we earned that money (was it a Christ-like activity?) or that the very existence of monied interests represents unequal distribution of resources and power. It seems we'd all rather be disciples of John the Baptist - just needing to change our behavior a little bit, still being able to go about our lives participating in all kinds of structures and activities that in themselves perpetuate inequality, but as long as it is the structure's fault and not our own, then we have no problem facing judgment! We'd rather not really listen to Jesus' message that participation in these unequal mechanisms is itself unholy. We must be changed through and through, to give us the vision and resolve necessary for discipleship.

"Be satisfied with your wages..." is half-assed advice, which is why it falls on the lips of John and not Jesus.