A Speculative, Imaginary, and Anachronistic Exchange with Paul the Apostle in Troas

What would Paul the Apostle say about this?

“So, what I am trying to help you understand is that there is no longer Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female. For all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

All who were gathered in the upstairs room had been quiet when Paul was speaking, but the silence became brittle and tense at the hearing of those words. A young man sitting against the back wall raised his hand, disturbing his brother, who was asleep and leaning against him. He whispered into his brother’s ear as he rose.

“Go sit on the window sill if you can’t stay awake. Get some air.” The young man rose to his feet as his brother grumbled and made his way to the open window.

“Paul, I don’t understand what that means.”

“And you are . . .”?

“My name’s Xander. Anyway, you say that we are one, but when I look around, even just here in this room, I see all kinds of different people. My friend Simon is Jewish, and I’m Greek. I’m also male, and my girlfriend, Junia, is female.” The young woman seated on the floor next to him looked up and smiled.

The young man continued. “Jason over there is a slave—it’s okay, Jase. Everyone knows, and we all love you.” Several in the crowd chuckled and nodded their heads. “And his owner, who isn’t here tonight, is a Christian too, but let’s face it, Paul, he’s the owner and Jason’s the slave. How does Christ Jesus make all that just go away?” He sat down. His girlfriend slipped her hand into his and leaned her head on his shoulder.

A man standing by the door at Paul’s right scratched his beard. “Is it like each of us is a different kind of ore, but Christ Jesus is the smelter who turns us into one new thing?”

Paul looked up at the ceiling and thought for several seconds. “Well, I might put it a different way. When the ores are removed from the smelting pot, there is indeed just one thing, yes? No matter how you look at it, you can’t see the various ores any longer that were combined to make what is new. Maybe this metaphor works better: Imagine we have all the components for making a fine stew.”

Young Simon looked at his father. “I wish he didn’t say ‘stew.’ I’m starving, Dad. When are we going to eat? It’s almost midnight.”

His father frowned. “Pay attention, Simon. Paul’s leaving tomorrow. We may not see him again. You can eat when we get home.”

Paul cleared his throat. “We have potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, onions, herbs and spices, even a bit of meat.”

“But not the kind that’s been sacrificed to idols, right?” The old man sitting in the middle of the room scowled at Paul.

“Different topic, Jonas. Stay with me here.” Paul spread his arms out in front of him as he imagined a table where all the ingredients lay. “Each of these things is unique in itself. A carrot is a carrot, an onion is an onion, and so on. But when we put them in a pot and let them simmer in broth, over time, something changes. Each ingredient is still observable and unique, but having simmered in a common broth, they have joined together to be a new thing, and the flavor of each one has influenced the whole without eliminating each ingredient’s distinctiveness.”

The apostle scanned the room and took note of a number of puzzled faces. “Look, let’s go back to what my young friend was saying. Sure, when you look around this room you see all the diversity and distinctiveness that is real and true. But you who are Jews, before you came to faith in Jesus, would you have counted any gentiles as your friends? And would a slave ever consider calling the owner ‘brother,’ except out of the love that God’s Spirit has put into our hearts? You see, ‘in Christ Jesus’ means something in real life, friends. It means that we don’t look at other people strictly from a human viewpoint any longer. We now see people as ones made in the image of God and beloved by him.”

The young woman sitting with Xander at the back of the room spoke softly. “But I still wish that God would break all the walls that keep us apart.”

“What do you mean?”

She stood and looked around tentatively. “I’m Junia, Mr. Paul. Well, there’s a big difference between the status of a man and the status of a woman. And even though Mr. Aristarchus—that’s Jason’s owner—is a kind man, he still has all the rights and Jason has none, at least not until Jason's debt is paid. Even when we’re together like this, those differences still exist.”

Paul smiled. “You have spoken well, my friend. Yes, all that you’ve said is true. But being one ‘in Christ Jesus’ isn’t magic. All of the things you described don’t just disappear as if God has erased them. But there is something very unique that happens ‘in Christ Jesus’ that reframes all of those statuses and relationships.”

He looked over at the young slave. “Let me use Jason’s situation as an example. What if his owner was not a brother in Christ? And what if Jason ran away but was caught and sent back? What would happen to him?”

Jason raised his hand. “I know, because it happened to my father. When he was captured and returned to his owner, he was whipped, tortured, and then branded. He only lived a few days after that. I was sold to cover my father’s debt. Thanks be to God that Mr. Aristarchus bought me.”

Paul shook his head and sighed. “I’m very sorry about your father, Jason. But you have spoken well.”

Jason wiped tears from his eyes. “Paul, what if I ran away from Mr. Aristarchus (not that I would), and came to you for help? How would being ‘in Christ Jesus’ make a difference?” He sat down. Some sitting near him patted him on the shoulders.

Paul looked around the room at the expectant faces. “This is a very important question, Jason. In that scenario, if you were to be captured by slave-hunters, they would take you back just to receive their reward. They would not care what happened to you. But because we are all ‘in Christ Jesus’ I would appeal to Mr. Aristarchus to see the situation, not as a slave and owner relationship, but as one that involves children of the living God, ones who stand on level ground at the foot of Jesus’ cross, a cross where there is room for all hands to be laid. I would counsel forgiveness and reconciliation, because . . .” He looked at the young woman who had spoken earlier. “Because, Junia, that is how God removes the walls of status and privilege and ethnicity that separate us in the world. He calls us into the reconciling work that he is doing in the world.”

Jason spoke again. “It’s amazing to think that somehow, in Christ Jesus, that my life is important. In this world, I have no rights at all, even though I am blessed to be with Mr. Aristarchus. But sitting here tonight with all of you—all of you who call me ‘brother’—I feel like my life is just as important as anyone else’s.”

Paul smiled again. “Yes, but let’s go back to the distinctiveness that remains even though we are one. Imagine once again that Mr. Aristarchus is not your owner, and we all learn that you are being mistreated and beaten by your master. We wouldn’t turn away because we’re all the same and we’re all important. We would start by recognizing that in the image of God that we share and in the love that God has poured out by his Spirit, that we all have value. But your suffering would bring all of our attention to you. It would be as if we have come together as one actual body—even the body of Christ!” He turned to a man sitting not too far from him, scribbling on a piece of scroll. “Tertius, make a note of that, would you?”

Tertius looked up from his work. “Which part?”

“The ‘body of Christ’ part. I want to remember that.” He turned back to the people in front of him. “If one part of that body were injured, the rest of the body would turn its attention to that part, and marshall all of its energy in order to bring about healing. The rest of the body wouldn’t say that it didn’t mean anything because all body parts have value, right?”

Heads nodded and people began to talk among themselves. The door opened and a woman stepped into the room.

“It’s late, and you are all welcome to stay here with our brother Paul as long as you like. But there’s no reason to die of hunger in the process. Take a break and come share food together. My daughters and I have it all prepared. Even some stew!”

“Thank you, Susanna, my dear sister.” Paul raised his hands in the air. “Come back after you’ve had your fill. I have more to say to you!”

The people made their way into the next room. Xander stood and helped Junia to her feet. “Paul never seems to run out of words. We’ll probably be here until dawn.” He surveyed the room, looking for his brother. His eyes fell on the empty window sill.

“Where’s Eutychus?”

I Belong

One of the first non-Jewish persons to become a follower of Jesus was a black man.

He had come from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel, even though he would have understood that there were certain realities about his life that would keep him from ever truly belonging to the people called by God to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. You can read his story in Acts chapter 8 in the Bible.

True, he was a foreigner and one whose dark skin color would make him stand out in a Jewish crowd in that time and place. Those realities, however, would not keep him from going through particular purity rites that would allow him to become a proselyte to Judaism. But there was one other unchangeable reality that would always keep him from belonging to this family of God.

He was a eunuch. And because of this “blemish” (see Leviticus 21), he would always be an outsider.

Most likely he was made that way as a child because his imposed destiny was to be a servant in the court of the Queen of Ethiopia. He would never know the joy of family and would have to accept the fact that he would always be an outsider to the religious life for which he longed.

But on his way home he met Philip, one of Jesus’ friends. The man had been reading from his own personal scroll of Isaiah, and the section he was curious about would be, in a modern Bible, Isaiah chapter 53. He and Philip talked about it, and the result was that the man put his faith in Jesus and was baptized. Then Philip took off and the Ethiopian man disappeared from the story of the Bible.

I’ve thought about this man a lot. Did he really see himself differently after this encounter? What did he do when he got back home? There are legends about him, but we really don’t know any more about him than what the story in Acts offers to us.

But we can speculate about what he did on his way home. It was a long trip back to Ethiopia, and it probably would have taken a month or so by chariot to complete the trip. What would he have done to occupy himself?

He would have kept on reading.

He would move through Isaiah chapter 53, then chapter 54, chapter 55, and then to 56. In my mind I imagine that he suddenly calls out for his entourage to stop so that he can read the text more carefully, maybe away from the road where he can sit by himself.

The words would jump off the surface of the scroll as he read:

Do not let the son of the foreigner
Who has joined himself to the Lord
Speak, saying,
“The Lord has utterly separated me from His people”;
Nor let the eunuch say,
“Here I am, a dry tree.”

For thus says the Lord:
“To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths,
And choose what pleases Me,
And hold fast My covenant,

Even to them I will give in My house
And within My walls a place and a name
Better than that of sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
That shall not be cut off.

I see the man rolling the scroll up and gazing off toward the far horizon. And he would say to himself,

“I belong to God. My life matters.”

Racism

I originally posted this almost three years ago. Perhaps it may speak to us today as well.

* * *

I frequently speak at a variety of churches, but I'm not scheduled to do that this weekend. However, if I were, I would want to preach something like this:


Some of the earliest followers of Jesus were guilty of racism.

It wasn’t the ugly, violent, hate-filled, demonic brand that was demonstrated this week in Charlottesville. But it was still racism. It was the kind that said that some folks were in with God and others were out based on their ethnicity. The folks who were in were the people of Israel—faithful Jewish people. The folks who were out were the pagans of the world, commonly referred to as Gentiles or Greeks.

There was a kind of logic to this form of racism. Jesus was Jewish and so were his disciples. All of the drama surrounding Jesus took place in Israel, including the unleashing of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, impacting thousands of Jewish pilgrims.

Jesus even once said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

So, it was easy for the earliest Christians to embrace a form of racism that was grounded in their understanding of the ethnic nature of their faith.

It wasn’t that they didn’t care about the Gentiles in the world. After all, Jesus had commanded them to make disciples of all nations—an echo of God’s call to Israel’s first ancestor, Abram, a call for the people to bring blessing to all the families of the earth. But in order for those Gentiles to become Christians—the thinking went—they would have to conform to Jewish law and the ordinances related to dietary requirements, circumcision, and so on. Once that was properly done, they could join this new, emerging family of faith. They had to do this because Gentiles were considered to be unclean because they were not Jews but were instead part of the pagan world that stood far away from God. It was a categorical form of racism.

But then, one day, Peter—a chief leader in the Christian movement—had a bizarre vision of animals being lowered from the sky in a gigantic sheet. These weren’t just any kind of animals; they were the “unclean” kind that were not to be eaten by faithful Jews. And, yet, a voice from heaven ordered Peter to rise up, kill, and eat those animals. Peter was horrified and protested that he had never done such an awful thing in his life. The voice responded by telling him not to call profane what God had made clean. This happened three times and then disappeared.

Almost immediately afterward, some Gentile men knocked on Peter’s door and told him that their leader, a Roman centurion named Cornelius, had experienced a vision of his own and Peter had been in it. Cornelius sent his friends to find Peter and ask him to visit. Peter consented, still puzzling over this strange situation, and traveled with the men to Cornelius’s home.

When they arrived, the house was filled with Cornelius’s friends and family. It was a house full of Gentiles. It was a house full of unclean Gentiles. As Peter stood on the threshold of the house, he had to make a decision to either run for the hills or dive into a pool of uncleanness. He took the risk and stepped into the house.

Peter began to reflect out loud about how he was starting to realize that God’s acceptance of people was more broad and generous than he had ever imagined. And in short order the people were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to praise God. It was a phenomenon that had also happed to Peter and the other disciples. But it happened on this day to people who had never satisfied the requirement of conforming to the Jewish law.

When the other disciples heard what had happened, they challenged Peter’s actions, but then embraced his conclusion that this great gift of the Holy Spirit was not restricted to Jewish people.

This was, of course, a very positive change for these early leaders. But the change didn’t always translate to the everyday folks who were gathering in the Christian gatherings that were popping up in various places. There were still some who were saying that conformity to the Jewish law was a prerequisite for Gentiles to enter into the Christian faith; that Gentile ethnicity was a blockage to a life of following Jesus.

The apostle Paul had to address this issue in at least a couple of places. In the letter to the church in Rome, he showed that Jews and Gentiles both stood before God on equal ground. Ethnicity or religious legalism had nothing to do with faith in the God and Father of Jesus Christ. All people had the same problem when it came to sin. He summed up his argument quite succinctly when he said,

“For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

People, being human, find it easy to drop people into categories that too often are negative, resulting in suspicion, exclusion, and, as we’ve seen again recently, hatred and violence. Paul had to help the earliest Christians come to grips with an emerging reality called the church, a church that was often made up of a diverse population of faithful people. In that reality, they struggled to learn what it meant to be a people of oneness—oneness with God and with one another. So, Paul offered them this amazing statement:

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Now the people first hearing these words would probably have looked around the room and noticed that, indeed, there were still Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female. The unique identities of the people were not swallowed up into a cosmic melting pot. They remained who they were, but in Christ Jesus they were one. This oneness would not flatten out their differences, even minimizing the problems faced by some of them (after all, the life of the slave, for example, would be markedly different in its quality than for one who was free). There would still be cultural, economic, legal, and gender advantages and disadvantages that they would experience, but in Christ they would live in a new reality of oneness. There were no categories of in or out, clean or unclean. They were all in, made clean by God in and through Jesus Christ.

There are too many stories in our world that are like what we heard about in Charlottesville. Governmental leaders are either unwilling or unable to deal with things like this in a nation that is as fractured, divided, and angry as ours. Suspicion permeates our society as neighbors fear neighbors and acts of violence become the staple of the daily news.

In the second century after Jesus, two plagues ravaged the Roman Empire. A third of the population died from disease, which could have been small pox, measles, or any number of highly contagious diseases. Many who were not sick fled the cities. Sick people were sometimes cast into the street to die alone. But there was one group of people who stayed behind to care for the sick.

It was the Christians.

Their love of life and lack of the fear of death allowed them to stay and care for those who were suffering. Because of their work, some of the sick recovered. But in the process, some of the Christians contracted disease and died. Nevertheless, they stayed.

We are living in a society that is suffering and sick. Will we fail to call out what is real about this disease and just hope it will all go away? Or will we come together and seek God, asking for a fresh empowering by his Spirit, that we might demonstrate within our own shared life the oneness of Christ that is not limited by race or ethnicity or economics or political preferences? And might we be the ones to step into the midst of this disease that surrounds us, speaking and showing the wisdom and love of God that does not allow racism or self-proclaimed superiority to build idols that will crush the most vulnerable among us?

It is important to recognize that, in the experience of Peter and Cornelius, racism was not broken by a strategic plan. It was broken by the work of God’s Spirit as people refused to let their differences become barriers to the work of God in their lives.

As I pointed out earlier, Jesus once said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This was not a statement of exclusion, but rather one of mission. The people of Israel had lost their sense of vocation, that they would be God’s people, not for their own sake, but for the sake and blessing of all the families of the earth. Jesus came to those lost sheep so that they might recover their identity and destiny.

Are we ever lost in that way? Is there a way in which God’s Spirit must renew our lives so that we might recover our sense of mission in the world? In the midst of the tragedies we hear about every day, is God summoning us to proclaim and demonstrate a new reality, a reality that Jesus called the kingdom of God? Or, in our forgetfulness, have we become lost? In our lostness, could it be that our voices forgot to declare that racism, in any form is wrong in general, and absolutely anti-Christ in particular when found in the life of the church?

It’s not the worst thing to be lost, especially if you know that you’re lost and someone is looking for you. The worst thing is to be lost and not know it. Or to be lost and not care.

And the greatest thing is to be found by Jesus, and to follow him into the broken world that he loves, finding the courage to stand for justice because Jesus has already gone before us into that tragic place.

May it be so with us today.

Sign, Wonder, and the Art of Deflection

One day, Jesus entered a synagogue where he was offered an opportunity to teach (Luke 6:6-11). But this wasn’t just any day; it was the Sabbath. And there were specific regulations about what one could and could not do on the Sabbath.

So, when Jesus encountered a man in the synagogue whose right hand was withered, the religious leaders took notice and watched what Jesus would do. Their shared sense of outrage was ignited when Jesus reached out and healed the man, claiming that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath. But the leaders saw it differently. For them, this act was nothing more than a flagrant violation of Sabbath law.

For Jesus, the healing was a sign of God’s kingdom. For the leaders, it was a sign of religious disregard. They saw the sign, but they lacked wonder. There would be no reflection on what was really happening in front of their eyes. And their interpretation of the sign was actually an act of deflection. If they could turn people’s attention to the violation, then the value of the healing might fade into insignificance.

That’s how deflection works. If people’s focus can be moved away from an act or an event to something consequential or tangential to it, then the thing itself is diminished in its value.

A man’s hand is restored, but the value of the healing is disregarded because of Sabbath violation.

There are protests about police brutality and racism, but the value of the reason for the protests is diminished when attention is diverted to the resulting violence and looting.

People cry out, “Black lives matter!” But the outcry is muffled when it is subsumed by the counter-cry, “All lives matter!”

We see signs of injustice, and such signs should also produce the kind of wonder that opens our eyes and hearts to the pain and suffering of others. But deflection diverts our attention in such a way that the sign is reinterpreted, diminished, or subsumed, and wonder becomes irrelevant.

Deflection is an art form. It can be helpful at a Thanksgiving dinner when weird Uncle Harold wants to start a political argument. Deflecting the conversation toward his interest in collecting rare coins or brewing beer might help save the family gathering from disruption and anguish.

But deflection can also be strategically employed in order to turn people’s attention from very real and important issues. The most effective aspect of such deflection is the legitimacy of the claims made by the deflectors. Yes, it was true that Jesus’ work of healing took place on the Sabbath. Yes, it is true that violence and looting are destructive acts. Yes, it is true that all human lives are of value.

But the art of deflection starts a new conversation that produces a fog that hides the real issues from view and makes them irrelevant. The restored hand is irrelevant because it was restored on the Sabbath. Police brutality and racism is irrelevant because violence and looting took place during some protests. The value of black lives is irrelevant because the value of everyone else’s lives swallows the violation of black lives into an abyss of disinterest.

People of faith, in particular, should not allow deflection to take priority over reflection. When we see the signs of injustice, we must allow wonder to emerge so that we see with open eyes and hear with open ears. Deflection closes us to the possibilities that the cries for justice that we hear may actually be invitations to enter the work of God’s kingdom. It should be the people of God who are among the first to respond to those signs and who do not allow the masters of deflection to have their way.

As Jesus said to his detractors: “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times” (Matt. 16:2-3).

May it not be so among us.

I frequently speak at a variety of churches, but I'm not scheduled to do that this weekend. However, if I were, I would want to preach something like this.

* * *

Some of the earliest followers of Jesus were guilty of racism.

It wasn’t the ugly, violent, hate-filled, demonic brand that was demonstrated this week in Charlottesville. But it was still racism. It was the kind that said that some folks were in with God and others were out based on their ethnicity. The folks who were in were the people of Israel—faithful Jewish people. The folks who were out were the pagans of the world, commonly referred to as Gentiles or Greeks.

There was a kind of logic to this form of racism. Jesus was Jewish and so were his disciples. All of the drama surrounding Jesus took place in Israel, including the unleashing of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, impacting thousands of Jewish pilgrims.

Jesus even once said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

So, it was easy for the earliest Christians to embrace a form of racism that was grounded in their understanding of the ethnic nature of their faith.

It wasn’t that they didn’t care about the Gentiles in the world. After all, Jesus had commanded them to make disciples of all nations—an echo of God’s call to Israel’s first ancestor, Abram, a call for the people to bring blessing to all the families of the earth. But in order for those Gentiles to become Christians—the thinking went—they would have to conform to Jewish law and the ordinances related to dietary requirements, circumcision, and so on. Once that was properly done, they could join this new, emerging family of faith. They had to do this because Gentiles were considered to be unclean because they were not Jews but were instead part of the pagan world that stood far away from God. It was a categorical form of racism.

But then, one day, Peter—a chief leader in the Christian movement—had a bizarre vision of animals being lowered from the sky in a gigantic sheet. These weren’t just any kind of animals; they were the “unclean” kind that were not to be eaten by faithful Jews. And, yet, a voice from heaven ordered Peter to rise up, kill, and eat those animals. Peter was horrified and protested that he had never done such an awful thing in his life. The voice responded by telling him not to call profane what God had made clean. This happened three times and then disappeared.

Almost immediately afterward, some Gentile men knocked on Peter’s door and told him that their leader, a Roman centurion named Cornelius, had experienced a vision of his own and Peter had been in it. Cornelius sent his friends to find Peter and ask him to visit. Peter consented, still puzzling over this strange situation, and traveled with the men to Cornelius’s home.

When they arrived, the house was filled with Cornelius’s friends and family. It was a house full of Gentiles. It was a house full of unclean Gentiles. As Peter stood on the threshold of the house, he had to make a decision to either run for the hills or dive into a pool of uncleanness. He took the risk and stepped into the house.

Peter began to reflect out loud about how he was starting to realize that God’s acceptance of people was more broad and generous than he had ever imagined. And in short order the people were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to praise God. It was a phenomenon that had also happed to Peter and the other disciples. But it happened on this day to people who had never satisfied the requirement of conforming to the Jewish law.

When the other disciples heard what had happened, they challenged Peter’s actions, but then embraced his conclusion that this great gift of the Holy Spirit was not restricted to Jewish people.

This was, of course, a very positive change for these early leaders. But the change didn’t always translate to the everyday folks who were gathering in the Christian gatherings that were popping up in various places. There were still some who were saying that conformity to the Jewish law was a prerequisite for Gentiles to enter into the Christian faith; that Gentile ethnicity was a blockage to a life of following Jesus.

The apostle Paul had to address this issue in at least a couple of places. In the letter to the church in Rome, he showed that Jews and Gentiles both stood before God on equal ground. Ethnicity or religious legalism had nothing to do with faith in the God and Father of Jesus Christ. All people had the same problem when it came to sin. He summed up his argument quite succinctly when he said,

“For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

People, being human, find it easy to drop people into categories that too often are negative, resulting in suspicion, exclusion, and, as we’ve seen again recently, hatred and violence. Paul had to help the earliest Christians come to grips with an emerging reality called the church, a church that was often made up of a diverse population of faithful people. In that reality, they struggled to learn what it meant to be a people of oneness—oneness with God and with one another. So, Paul offered them this amazing statement:

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Now the people first hearing these words would probably have looked around the room and noticed that, indeed, there were still Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female. The unique identities of the people were not swallowed up into a cosmic melting pot. They remained who they were, but in Christ Jesus they were one. This oneness would not flatten out their differences, even minimizing the problems faced by some of them (after all, the life of the slave, for example, would be markedly different in its quality than for one who was free). There would still be cultural, economic, legal, and gender advantages and disadvantages that they would experience, but in Christ they would live in a new reality of oneness. There were no categories of in or out, clean or unclean. They were all in, made clean by God in and through Jesus Christ.

There are too many stories in our world that are like what we heard about in Charlottesville. Governmental leaders are either unwilling or unable to deal with things like this in a nation that is as fractured, divided, and angry as ours. Suspicion permeates our society as neighbors fear neighbors and acts of violence become the staple of the daily news.

In the second century after Jesus, two plagues ravaged the Roman Empire. A third of the population died from disease, which could have been small pox, measles, or any number of highly contagious diseases. Many who were not sick fled the cities. Sick people were sometimes cast into the street to die alone. But there was one group of people who stayed behind to care for the sick.

It was the Christians.

Their love of life and lack of the fear of death allowed them to stay and care for those who were suffering. Because of their work, some of the sick recovered. But in the process, some of the Christians contracted disease and died. Nevertheless, they stayed.

We are living in a society that is suffering and sick. Will we fail to call out what is real about this disease and just hope it will all go away? Or will we come together and seek God, asking for a fresh empowering by his Spirit, that we might demonstrate within our own shared life the oneness of Christ that is not limited by race or ethnicity or economics or political preferences? And might we be the ones to step into the midst of this disease that surrounds us, speaking and showing the wisdom and love of God that does not allow racism or self-proclaimed superiority to build idols that will crush the most vulnerable among us?

It is important to recognize that, in the experience of Peter and Cornelius, racism was not broken by a strategic plan. It was broken by the work of God’s Spirit as people refused to let their differences become barriers to the work of God in their lives.

As I pointed out earlier, Jesus once said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This was not a statement of exclusion, but rather one of mission. The people of Israel had lost their sense of vocation, that they would be God’s people, not for their own sake, but for the sake and blessing of all the families of the earth. Jesus came to those lost sheep so that they might recover their identity and destiny.

Are we ever lost in that way? Is there a way in which God’s Spirit must renew our lives so that we might recover our sense of mission in the world? In the midst of the tragedies we hear about every day, is God summoning us to proclaim and demonstrate a new reality, a reality that Jesus called the kingdom of God? Or, in our forgetfulness, have we become lost? In our lostness, could it be that our voices forgot to declare that racism, in any form is wrong in general, and absolutely anti-Christ in particular when found in the life of the church?

It’s not the worst thing to be lost, especially if you know that you’re lost and someone is looking for you. The worst thing is to be lost and not know it. Or to be lost and not care.

And the greatest thing is to be found by Jesus, and to follow him into the broken world that he loves, finding the courage to stand for justice because Jesus has already gone before us into that tragic place.

May it be so with us today.

There is No Safety

The site of yesterday’s shootings in San Bernardino is forty-five miles from my home. Many years ago I had an office just up the street from the Inland Regional Center. My niece receives services there. My brother and sister-in-law have been at that center several times, but they weren’t there yesterday.

The mass shootings that have taken place in the US this year (355, according to a recent report) are always near where someone lives. It’s when the slaughter takes place in familiar territory that you start looking over your shoulder, wondering if your own neighborhood or workplace is safe, planning on what you might do if a shooter showed up at your office.

Whether the killers are fueled by religious radicalism, by anger at a world that is perceived as unjust, or by plain old insanity, the message we are being given seems clear:

There is no place that is safe.

No place. Not your kid’s school, not your church, not your office, not your favorite café. That’s the message.

And we can claim our Second Amendment rights all day long and put a legal firearm in everyone’s hands and the killers will still outshoot us. Before you can fumble in a purse or reach into a briefcase or a shoulder holster, the ones who are armed to the teeth and carrying out a predetermined plan will still slaughter the innocent before they can be taken down.

Maybe we are actually in the midst of World War Three without having the will to name it as such. There don’t seem to be any rules to this war, no identifiable uniforms and no specific profiles. Civilians are not longer collateral damage but instead are the targets. It’s happening all over the world. It sure feels like a World War.

But we in the US are also are war with ourselves. Our level of vitriol and hatred toward those with whom we simply disagree is marking us as a people who increasingly have lost a sense of civility and reason. We are only not being killed by foreign terrorists; we are walking out of the homes where we were born and annihilating school children and worshippers and workers at family planning clinics. We don’t need foreign invaders to convince us that there is no place that is safe. We’re fully capable of crafting our own internal narrative of fear and violence.

I am worried about how our national response to these horrors will shape us as a culture. I am concerned that we will become a people who fear our neighbor, who hate the foreigner, who beat our plowshares into swords and embrace violence as the only proper response to violence. Ours is a powerful nation and we can certainly become that kind of people if we desire.

If that becomes our national character—if it hasn’t already—then the killers will have done their job. Fear and hatred will have ruled the day and our violent responses will invite more violence and more fear and more hatred.

I wish I had an answer to all of this, but I don’t. I can feel the fear creeping into my own life and I fight to push it away. I wonder how I would feel today if my family members had been killed yesterday in San Bernardino. I wonder if fear and anger would have their way with me.

Today, I can only find a lament:

How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? (Psalm 13:2)

God, help us.

American Evangelicals: Strategic Withdrawal?

I appreciated Laura Ortberg Turner’s recent article in The Atlantic (“What Happens When the ‘Moral Majority’ Becomes a Minority?”). She identifies a suggestion by some American evangelical leaders that Christians withdraw from the political scene, emulate the Benedictines by engaging for a season in the contemplative life, and then prepare to reemerge in order to change the culture.

It is interesting to me that, after thirty-five years of presence in American culture—a culture that identifies itself as 70% Christian and 25% evangelical—those who are associated with the Moral Majority would think that withdrawal and reengagement would result in changing the people of the United States. I wonder what they might think would be different once evangelical Christians returned to the political scene after a time of isolation. Would God allow the rest of the USA to suffer consequences in the meantime that might parallel the disasters that befell ancient Israel?

A time of rest and contemplation might actually be good for American evangelicals, if that time of contemplation is less of a strategic withdrawal in preparation for a new attack on culture, and more of a humble time of reflection about what it means to follow Jesus into the world that God loves. We could all probably use a time out in order to give thought to our identity.

I am also interested in the way that the term “American evangelical” often suggests a unified body of religious people. There are a number of prominent voices that do not speak for all evangelicals. There are seminaries that consider themselves to be evangelical, and yet differ with one another about certain areas of theology, ethics, and social justice. There is probably a lot less uniformity among evangelicals than many people think.

Roman Catholics are sometimes described as though they are similarly uniform. In reality, the Roman Catholic Church is made up of a number of orders that are expanded by many sub-orders. There are orders that focus on attending to the inward life (like the Benedictines), and those that attend to the active life (like the Franciscans). They would all say that they are Roman Catholics and share a common life of prayer, but that they also express their vocations in a variety of ways.

I once heard Dr. Richard Mouw, former president of Fuller Theological Seminary, wish out loud that we Protestants could see our various denominations in the way that Roman Catholics see their orders. I wish that for evangelicals. I wish that some would, indeed, withdraw from the divisive drama of American political life and seek a fresh identity as the people of God. I wish that others would see their evangelical vocation as humble service to the poor and suffering of the world. I’d like to see others give themselves over to the enrichment of the church, calling people prophetically to live their lives in the way of Jesus.

Maybe that’s already going on. If so, then it might be good for some of the more dominant evangelical voices to withdraw for awhile so that the caricatures attributed to evangelicals would wither and die and people might see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven. Just maybe.

And maybe we could, indeed, redefine “evangelical” so that the term, rather than attributed to a particular block of American voters, would describe a people who continuously proclaim and demonstrate the present reality of the kingdom of God, a kingdom that Jesus said is now upon us. As such, we could become comfortable with that identification being expressed in ways as diverse as the orders of the Roman Catholic Church.

I wonder if that’s what Jesus meant when used the metaphors of “salt” and “light.”

Manners at the Table

I wrote this chapter (from my book, Shadow Meal: Reflections on Eucharist) in 2009. I thought it might be good to revisit, since we are approaching another election season in the USA.


Manners at the Table

We were fairly informal at the dinner table when I was a kid, yet there were basic manners that were expected when we gathered to eat. My grandmother, however, was of the ancient school that believed a certain level of decorum was mandatory and certain violations were punishable by death or worse.

My grandparents were not rich people. My grandfather had been a poor preacher and then a struggling businessman his entire life. When he died, they were living in a nice, tidy but small mobile home in southern California. While my grandmother had to learn to make do with very little, she saw to it that the little she had was clean, set out properly, and not taken lightly. Maybe the family would have to eat porridge for dinner, but at least the bowls would sit on a lace tablecloth.

My grandmother and her sisters, my aunts, could cook a glorious dinner out of tree branches and moon beams if pressed to the task. On holidays they would join together in someone’s kitchen, gabbing and arguing, flour and baking soda floating through the air, aromas unspeak¬ably rich and savory finding their ways to sniffing noses and hungry bel¬lies. They were the food wizards of a bygone era and I love the memory of those kitchen extravaganzas, although I was always kicked out when caught on one of my early raiding attempts.

When Grandma made a pie, all of time stopped, the moon and stars gaped in wonder and the earth went silent. I should have gone silent, on that summer afternoon in 1962, when I said too much and received too little for my trouble.
My numerous and rambunctious cousins were up from San Diego, and we played in Grandma’s front yard while she prepared her amazing cherry pie, my eternal favorite. When it was time to dish out the portions, I catapulted myself inside the house, leaving my unworthy cousins in my wake. As Grandma dished out the pieces, I recklessly and foolishly uttered words that I have wished for years that I could take back:

“I want the BIGGEST piece.”

Grandma, who I knew loved me dearly, would not put up for a moment with any such selfish demands. There was not a weak bone in her body and her principles were shored up with rebar and steel beams. She did not waver nor did I consider for a moment the possibility of a tantrum or efforts at renegotiation when she replied,

“Then you get the SMALLEST piece.”

And so I did. I wanted to cut my throat and then slaughter my cousins (especially the girl cousins) who would surely mock me when they discovered the insidious consequences of my crime. Violating man-ners anywhere near the table was, for Grandma, an offense not to go unpunished.

Are there manners at the table of Jesus? I suspect that Jesus is fine with a little sloppiness and an occasional belch. I wonder, however, how he feels about our bad mouths when we pull up our chairs and hold out our hands for more? What is his response when we trash talk people down the row or speak against those who are absent altogether? Do our portions change? Do we even notice?

I have this image in my mind of we who return often to the table of Jesus pulling up our chairs, smiling sweetly, and asking for things to be passed our way. Our conversation is normally civil, but suddenly things become different. It is election season, and new permissions seem to be given to the ones calling themselves followers of Jesus. We might be citi¬zens of the kingdom of God, but we’re also Americans, and as Americans we embrace our right to hate and bear false witness as long as it is during an election year and our venom is reserved for the candidates and party we do not prefer.

This is actually more than an image for me, because election years come around often enough for this to be a recurring theme. With the invention of the Internet, I receive scores of messages from my Christian brothers and sisters who tell me why I must fear and hate the candidate they don’t like, a candidate who is very likely the Anti-Christ and/or Satan (depending on what bent eschatology you want to embrace) or just plain evil and stupid. With transmittable videos, I can now receive obviously doctored films of candidates seeming to say things that they aren’t really saying, providing apparent evidence of their dark, evil hearts.

In the last election, I received so many of these kinds of things that I finally snapped, wrote a response to the propaganda I had received, and hit REPLY TOALL. I never heard back from even one of the forty million recipients, but at least the emails quit coming for a while.

It isn’t that I object to their preference for a particular candidate. I object to speaking, writing and forwarding things that foster hatred, slan¬der and the bearing of false witness. While I support the debates about important issues, I am hurt when I see and hear remarks (and video clips) that show how we Christians don’t mind playing by the rules of negative ad-speak when it suits us.

I wonder why, during these election years, I never receive any mes¬sages encouraging us to pray for our future leaders. Never got one. Not a one.

I seem to recall that Israel got in some pretty deep trouble by playing politics by the rules of the world. Everyone else in the neighborhood had a king, so the Israelites wanted a king. Other nations had big armies, so Israel built an army. The surrounding culture had more interesting and sexually active gods, so Israel co-opted a few just for good measure. In the end, they lost at that game because that wasn’t what they were made for. They were made to be God’s people and, as such, to bring blessing to all the families of the earth through their worship, devotion, and unique way of living under the shadow of Yahweh’s wings.

What are we Christians made for? Is it to hate, slander and bear false witness in the name of Jesus? Election year or not, I sure hope we’re made for something better than that. In fact, I’m pretty confident that we are.

I know that this kind of bad behavior comes at other times also, but election years are like Mardi Gras: Normally sane and sober people take advantage of the opportunity to run around like drunken, crazy people (actually, many of them are drunk and crazy) and then pretend to return to business as usual the next day. I just wonder why we Christians don’t question our own behavior during these times. It is interesting that in the United States, our presidential election season ends just prior to Advent. We should think about the irony of that. Welcoming Jesus into the world right after we spew election year sewage should bother us just a bit.

Could the worst manners at the table of Jesus be despising someone that Jesus loves rather than putting our elbows on the table?

Social Media, Perception, and Lack of Critical Analysis

In a social media-saturated culture we are offered any number of stories and photos insisting that certain events or images are indisputably true. Take, for example, the following pair of photographs:

The captions suggest that there is something lacking in the 2015 photo. Is it simply the lack of American flags? Or is it something deeper, something more sinister—like a lack of patriotism in the current US president and the people who rally around him? Hmmmm . . .

There is clearly a lack of American flags in the lower photograph. That photo, however, has been cropped. When you search around and find a more expansive shot of the same scene, you get this:

There are, indeed, flags present. Instead of being waved in victory in the crowd, they are proudly displayed at the front of the buildings along the street. The first photograph is a celebration; the second is a memorial. Both have flags.

Only two things would keep people from making this discovery:

1. A desire that the dark, sinister version of the story would be true; and/or
2. A lack of critical analysis.

We see this kind of thing all the time on social media. I’ve recently seen social media threads expressing dismay over the dismissal of employees at Christian organizations in three different states. The comments that follow the stories are overwhelmingly supportive of the seemingly wronged employees and offer harsh criticisms of the offending organizations.

From what I can tell, the comments come from people who are bright and well-educated. But the streams of comments appear to lack two important elements:

1. A voice at the conversation table by someone who expresses an alternative view.
2. Any sense of critical analysis

Consequently, the story ends up offering only one side, and that side may or not be accurate. We could be looking at a cropped picture, but it’s difficult for us to tell.

Which is why the lack of critical analysis is so alarming to me.

I’m struggling to understand how these intelligent people would read an account of conflict on the Internet and offer unbridled support without making some attempt to understand the larger picture. As I’ve looked over these threads of discussion, I have not been able to find anyone speaking who suggests that there might be a more to consider before making a judgment on the situation. I’m troubled by that. I’m troubled at the absence of healthy, well-intended critical analysis.

I’d hate to be arrested for a crime, and then sent to trial, only to discover that the judge and jury have decided to only allow the prosecutor to speak, giving the defender no opportunity to make a case on my behalf. But in our social media world, we get to do that all the time.

And the whole world listens in.

What Emanuel AME Church has to teach us about the way forward

Now that same-sex marriage is woven into the national legal fabric of the US, Christians and their communities of faith are considering how to respond. Some are angry, decrying the imminent demise of the nation; others are celebrating this progressive move.

This isn’t the first time that churches in the US have had to deal with changes in legal requirements that relate to marriage. Up until the 1970’s there had to be some provable violation of the bonds of marriage for a divorce to be granted. Since the creation of no-fault divorce, however, the process has been streamlined and made easier for everyone (except, of course, the children).

This was a challenge for people of faith, who trusted the authority of that part of the wedding ceremony that proclaimed,

“What God has joined together, let no one separate.” (A quote from Jesus, to be clear)

The State made a ruling on divorce, and churches had to live with it. How did many churches respond? Many realized that marginalizing or excluding divorced people from their fellowships was not the way of Jesus. Divorce recovery ministries sprang up. There was even a growing acceptance of those who divorced and remarried. Most didn’t do a particularly good job of exploring the theology of it all, but there was still a response that resulted in acts of ministry.

Now the State has made a ruling on marriage, and churches have to live with that as well.

So, now what?

I think that the good people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, have helped us with the way forward.

After nine worshippers were gunned down in their church, the members of Emanuel probably recognized that the rest of the world would sympathize with them if they called for retributive justice—the death of the perpetrator that might somehow set things rights. They might have called for a violent response from their community.

Instead, they sent the world a message. They said, in effect,

“In times of pain, sorrow, and grief, we begin with worship, and then we forgive. That’s how we do it.” And the world, including the media, marveled.

And now, the Supreme Court has laid claim to a time-honored tradition for religious folks of all kinds: Marriage. And, as a majority, the citizens of our nation are on board with that change. The times, indeed, are a-changin’.

So, my Christian brothers and sisters, how do we do it?

Do we spew vitriol on the Internet, drawing lines and investing ourselves in the polarized screaming matches that have too long characterized people in our society? Do we simply embrace the decision of the court and cheer for what we’ve thought was right all along?

Or, do we stop, take a breath, and consider who we are. We who follow Jesus are not called to be ideologues that live or die based on the rulings of the Court or the preferences of our culture. We are called to be God’s people for the sake and blessing of the world.

The most appropriate response to the drama of this week is, I believe, to come together in worship. I think the noble people at Emanuel AME have shown us the power of such a response. Regardless of our views about the Court’s decision, we should intentionally and vulnerably place ourselves in a posture that demonstrates the lordship of Jesus Christ and recognizes that the church in America is a church in exile.

And then we open our eyes and ears and ask ourselves: What does the ministry of Jesus look like in this time and place? In challenging times, how is the love of God made known? I’m pretty sure it won’t be made known in political posturing and venomous denunciations.

So, how will we do it? The world is watching.

The Supreme Court and Same-Sex Marriage

The Facebook posts regarding the Supreme Court’s decision to declare the legality of same-sex marriage across the US have been predictably interesting. Like many others, I’ve been thinking about this topic for quite some time, and I am going to weigh in with my own observation and recommendations, at least for those who operate in the realm of the Christian community.

For a very long time, clergy have officiated at weddings in a dual representative capacity. On the one hand, they represent the Christian church; on the other hand they represent the State (as in , The Government). We often provide evidence of this dual representation by closing the ceremony with words like these:

“By the power invested in me by the church of Jesus Christ and the State of XXX, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

Whether those words are spoken exactly that way or not, the dual agency is real.

I’ve officiated at quite a few weddings, all in the state of California. It is humbling to me that when I say the words that declare the marriage of the two people standing before me, it has the power of law. Upon my word, at that moment in time, those people are married to each other. The Church and State both back me on this.

This is a powerful reality because I sign the marriage license sometime later in the day, mail it off a few days later, and the County Recorder enters it into some computer within the following weeks. Nevertheless, those folks were married the second I said they were married. The Church and State both grant me that authority.

Church and State in the US have had this complicit relationship for many years and everyone’s been pretty much okay about it.

Until now.

We religious folks have long believed that marriage is our business. That is, we see marriage as a sacred bond and, therefore, part of our turf. Up until recently, Church and State have been in agreement about what constitutes a marriage (we have had some conflict with the State about what constitutes a divorce, but we somehow got comfortable with that one).

As of this morning, the Federal government has sent all religious people—regardless of their views on same-sex marriage—this message:

“We own marriage. You do not.”

And, apparently, they are right.

So maybe this is an opportunity for Christian leaders to reflect in some new ways about our relationship with the State and with the culture at large. Perhaps we’ve been complicit with the State when it suits us, but have expressed outrage when the State reveals its true character as the dominant power structure in the US.

So here’s what I’m thinking. Consider these words of Jesus:

“ . . . if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.” (Matthew 5:40)

I know this text is addressing the issue of retaliation, but perhaps we can allow it to inform our thinking on the issue of marriage. The State has taken our coat—the definition of marriage—as its own. Maybe its time for us to hand the State our cloak as well—that is, our role as agents of the State in the performance of marriages.

In other words, maybe we need to get out of the marriage business.

The State already owns that business. People have long been able to go the courthouse, pay for a license, and have a court deputy perform a brief ceremony, resulting in a legal marriage. It’s quicker, easier, and a lot less expensive than a big, fancy church wedding with a reception.

Maybe it’s time for us to look at what a train wreck marriage has been over the years in this country, and rethink what we do to solemnify and bless this union that we have traditionally referred to as “marriage.” Maybe we need to revisit the concepts of covenant and faithfulness and reframe them under the lordship of Jesus Christ, and let the State do its job of deciding who gets married and who doesn’t.

We can be for or against this Supreme Court decision, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. Religious groups in general and Christians in particular don’t own marriage. That coat has been taken.

It might be time for us to weave a new cloak.

The Opening Chapter of The Haunts of Violence

Chapter Zero

When he heard the sound of raindrops tapping against the living room window he knew it wasn’t rain but rather the clicking and scraping of fingernails, torn and bloody, arching from fingers that should have seen the grave long ago. He rolled off the couch where he had been sleeping and stumbled into his tiny kitchen, careful to keep his throbbing eyes trained to the floor. The clicking against the window ceased.

He picked up a tumbler from the cluttered sink and rinsed it out with tap water, then filled it half way. The water tasted flat and lifeless and he spit it into the sink, the steel wool feeling in his mouth unabated. He opened a cupboard and cracked the seal on a fresh bottle of Scotch. The amber liquid splashed into the tumbler and paused at one finger, then settled at two. He held the drink under his nose, inhaling from habit into olfactory senses deadened long ago by alcohol. The Scotch burned his tongue with familiar fire.

The weight of the bottle felt promising in his hand as he carried it toward his perch on the couch. He stopped abruptly when he saw the figure sitting there, first appearing as his ex-wife, then becoming a former colleague and, finally, transforming into an ape of comic proportions before disappearing. The space remained empty. He made his way to the other side of the couch and sat down heavily, drops of Scotch fleeing the glass and spattering unnoticed across the front of his soiled t-shirt.

He was not dead yet, and he wondered why not. He had been alone for a year and his drunken slide toward death remained at bay. He thought he had shut himself off from all that had come before, all that had been lost, the disasters that had driven him to this place, but the memories returned, rehearsing and re-enacting the comic nightmare that was the story of his life. He drained his glass and poured again.

Something shifted in the bedroom. He listened as a body fell from the bed and crumpled to the floor. It crawled—no, lurched—toward the door but he refused to look. He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth, raggedly whispering stop, stop, stop. The thing reached the doorway and then made no more sounds. He opened his eyes and turned to see nothing.

The drink burned again, his stomach tightening at the fresh introduction of alcohol. He wished again for dreamless sleep, but instead the video began its replay in his head. He closed his eyes, sat back, and let the story roll.

Where Will God Go?

Years ago a woman approached me after our weekly church service. Since I was her pastor, she wanted to tell me something she had experienced in order to hear my perspective.

She said that, as a young teenager, she had experienced various forms of abuse, both within her family and at church. One day she made a firm decision about her life, a decision she carefully explained to God.

“God,” she said, “I want you to know that I am going to start drinking and partying and doing all kinds of things that I don’t think you’re going to like.”

She told me that she heard words in her head—tender words that she believed were from God—saying, “All right. I’ll go with you.”

During her years of self-destructive behavior—right up through her time in rehab—she never doubted that God had been with her all the time. She had no illusions about God’s approval or endorsement of her behavior. She believed that she had broken God’s heart, but that he still remained quietly with her.

I had to really think about this one. It was an important question: In our worst circumstances, when we have chosen paths of pain and dehumanization, does God abandon us or wait patiently alongside us, grieving over our self-inflicted choices?

I think that the biblical history of Israel has something to say about this. What do you think?

[My most recent novel, The Haunts of Violence, was inspired by the conversation I had with that woman]

Advent Reflection 2015: Week Three

[John] said,
“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’”
as the prophet Isaiah said.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”

“ I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’” (John 1:23-27, 33)


John the Baptizer committed the ultimate heresy: Telling the power brokers of the dominant culture something that they didn’t already believe.

This kind of behavior is what got both John and Jesus in trouble with the local religious leaders. John’s call to repentance seemed to bother them, not necessarily because they didn’t appreciate the idea, but because John lacked adequate credentials. If he wasn’t the Messiah or Elijah or “the prophet,” then what was he doing in his ragged garments and crazy hair telling people to turn their lives back to God before it was too late?

But John knew who he was and who had authorized him to do what he was doing. More importantly, he knew who he wasn’t. He wasn’t the Messiah. He wasn’t the one long awaited by Israel to renew their destiny as the people of God. In the meantime, John served as sign and wonder, pointing through his actions toward a new and better thing that was to come. He drenched people with common river water in the act of baptism; someone was coming, he claimed, who would drench people’s lives with the very spirit of God.

In this Advent season, as we consider and reconsider the coming of Jesus, it might be good to reflect on how our lives are also intended to be sign and wonder for the sake of the world. In all that we do as followers of Jesus—gather together for worship, care for the poor, pray for the sick and hurting, work for justice in the world—we give evidence to Jesus’ claim that the kingdom of God is near (Mark 1:15).

Forty or so years after John’s death, the Roman army wiped out Jerusalem, destroying the city and its center of worship. John’s ministry pointed to something better that was to come, and still the world carried on in its self-destructive cycles. John was not about altering that inevitability.

Perhaps, in a similar way, followers of Jesus may not be able to divert the disastrous course of the world, but our lives—both individually and corporately—should serve as sign and wonder, pointing to God’s intentions for a new heaven and a new earth, one in which his justice, healing, and peace will be established.

Advent Reflection 2015: Week Two

Sacrifice and offering you do not desire,
but you have given me an open ear.
Burnt offering and sin offering
you have not required.
Then I said, “Here I am;
in the scroll of the book it is written of me.
I delight to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart.” (Isaiah 40:6-8)

“I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” (And all the people who heard this, including the tax collectors, acknowledged the justice of God, because they had been baptized with John’s baptism. But by refusing to be baptized by him, the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God’s purpose for themselves.)” (Luke 7:28-30)


John the Baptizer offended people with his message. Calling people a “brood of vipers” (Luke 3:7) doesn’t seem like the best way to build a following of happy customers. But the imagery was apt: If the ongoing sin of the people of Israel was going to bring God’s wrath to bear on the nation, then they would flee like snakes trying to escape a fire. People were apparently concerned about the situation, and came to John to seek a remedy.

Rather than demand that people become more rigorously religious, John called them to ethical behavior. He told them that their ethnic identity as children of Abraham was insufficient; how they lived out their calling from God was what really mattered.

When Jesus affirms John, he also makes it clear that the Baptizer doesn’t enjoy a place of hierarchical dominance in the kingdom of God. The economy of God’s kingdom values “the least” in ways that flies in the face of conventional thinking about human significance.

Luke’s parenthetical addition to Jesus’ words is worth our consideration. He says that when the Pharisees—significant religious leaders in that time—refused John’s baptism, they were actually rejecting “God’s purpose for themselves.” God’s purpose, it seems, was to realign the people according to his desires as reflected in Isaiah 40: To do God’s will and to have his law written on their hearts. Too many of the religious leaders thought they had God’s desires all figured out, and had reframed them according to their own preferences. Luke says that they missed out on a gift that God was presenting to them and (since we know the end of the story) they ended up trying to protect their preferred convictions by seeing to the deaths of both John and Jesus (yes, Herod imprisoned John and had him executed. But we don’t hear about any Pharisees coming to John’s defense).

In this Advent season, as we consider again how the coming of Jesus challenged the conventions of both government and religion, it might be good for us to reflect on how our convictions are often formed by culture, politics, family traditions, and even church experiences. Do we express those convictions in ways that reflect the heart of God? Could some of our convictions be misplaced? Would it be heretical to challenge some of our most cherished beliefs (heresy shouldn’t be defined as telling me something I didn’t already know)?

Every so often we might stop and reflect on these things. Perhaps God is always presenting us with the gift of repentance—to turn from one way of ordering our lives in order to embrace another way that is in touch with God’s purposes and desires.

Advent Reflection 2015: Week One

If the LORD of hosts
had not left us a few survivors,
we would have been like Sodom,
and become like Gomorrah. (Isaiah 1:9)

“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which means, “God is with us.” (Matthew 1:23)

The story of the coming of Jesus opens with reminders of the tentativeness of ancient Israel’s existence. In the extensive genealogy listed by Matthew in the beginning of his account of Jesus, he separates the generations between King David and Jesus by indicating those who lived before being deported to Babylon and those who lived after that time of exile.

The Old Testament has numerous references to the time of exile, usually expressed in laments and cries for God’s rescue of his people. Isaiah recognizes that, had there not been a remnant that was allowed to remain in Jerusalem, the city would likely have not survived. Regardless of the responsibility the people felt about why this had happened to them, the sense of abandonment is not difficult to find in the Bible.

By the time of Jesus’ birth, the Jewish people were, for the most part, living in their home country again, but were now under the rule of foreign oppressors. There would surely have been many who would continue to wonder when God would rescue his people, forgive them for generations of rebellion and idol worship, and restore Israel to its rightful place in the world. It would seem to many that God continued to have his back turned and was still demanding that the people measure up to his demands through strict adherence to the laws of Moses.

Into this time of isolation, Matthew has the audacity to quote the prophet Isaiah and use his words to frame the birth of Jesus: He will be called Emmanuel—a Hebrew name which means God is with us. The message is startling: God is not absent, his back is not turned. God is not waiting for adequate religious performance before he will act. He is present, he is with his people, and he is with them in the birth of the baby who is named Jesus.

We revisit and rehearse the season of Advent every year because it is there that our own stories find meaning. We live in a world so violent and threatening that news of death and destruction become commonplace to us. There is enough information available that reminds us that we live on planet earth tentatively, and the health of our world depends, it seems, on human intervention to heal its wounds—wounds that we have largely inflicted by our own power. It seems that we must intervene, since we have come to believe that we are alone in the universe.

Into this precariousness, this tentativeness, the words once again echo in our minds as we rehearse our story anew: "They shall name him Emmanuel, which means, 'God is with us.'"

We are not alone.

"The Whore." A Short Story

THE WHORE

By Mike McNichols

He stared at her arm as she poured the coffee. The colors were vibrant and fresh, cascading from shoulder to fingertip in a swirl of manic design. He half expected the rainbow of ink to leak through to his cup, but the coffee retained its dark brown identity, just as he believed that God intended.

She moved away from his table and he watched her, not lasciviously, but rather with fascination. Her entire body—at least what he could see in arms, legs, and midriff—appeared to be an artist’s palette, ending at ankles and neck, saving face, feet and palms for some future burst of creativity.

She waltzed gracefully from table to table, pouring coffee and asking about orders and satisfaction with the food. The occupants of each booth watched her just as he did, smiling and wincing as she moved away, whispering their evaluations of her skin and the character beneath it. Much of the conversation in the room seemed to focus on the woman’s painted body.
Having no one with whom to speak, he sat alone and watched her. She was young—maybe mid-twenties—with dark blond hair that was bundled and pinned at the back of her head with a carelessness that suggested detachment from the world of respectable fashion. Her body was slim and appreciable to the eye, her face pretty in a natural way; it was likely that little of her waitress’s income was spent on makeup. He was glad that her body art did not extend to her face. He liked her face and hoped it would continue to be ink free.

•

“That girl is a whore.” The woman hissed her accusation to her friend as soon as the waitress was out of earshot. “Just look at the tattoo on her back—look right now, Audrey! She’s pouring coffee for that man over there! I’ll bet the tattoo artist got an eyeful when he put that monstrosity on her. Another inch and you can see . . .”
Audrey looked back at her friend and widened her eyes, signaling her to stop talking. “She’s coming back this way. Shhhh!”
The waitress passed by their table, smiling as she observed their full coffee cups. “Your food should be right up, ladies,” she smiled.

Thank you,” the two women purred in unison. They were silent until the waitress disappeared into the kitchen.

“I read the other day that you can get AIDS from tattoo needles,” said Audrey. “Do you think she has AIDS, Joanie?”

Joanie sniffed. “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. She’s so young and it’s just a shame what these people are doing these days. They think they look so sexy with those tattoos and it’s all about that, you know. They’d put tattoo spiders on their faces if they thought they could get some slimy boy to have sex with them.”

“They’re just sluts,” said Audrey.

“Sluts,” agreed Joanie, sipping at her coffee. “Where’s our food? It’ll be lunchtime before we get breakfast.”

“Joanie—do you think we should eat it? What if she’s—infected?”

Joanie considered the possibility, and then shook her head. “No, she’s not the cook. If she were the cook, we’d never come here again. You can’t get AIDS from someone carrying a plate.”

“What if she spits in our food?”

“Just don’t make eye contact with her, Audrey. Don’t make her mad at us. People with tattoos are really angry people.”

•

He left a tip on the table and walked up to the register to pay his bill. The waitress passed by him, her purse over her shoulder, and exited out the front door of the café. Apparently her shift was over. As the door closed, two young men followed after her, having left their payment for their meals on the table. The café manager emerged from the kitchen and approached the register.

“Was everything okay, Father?” The manager offered up a half smile.

“Hmm? Oh, yes. Everything was fine.”

“The collar’s a dead giveaway. No disrespect intended.”

The priest smiled. “None taken. It comes with the uniform.”

He paid the bill and stepped outside. In the parking lot, the waitress was attempting to unlock her car door as her short skirt revealed an ample amount of leg. The two young men who had followed her out were now flanking her, and their smiles did not appear to be friendly. The waitress did not appear to be flattered by their inquiries.
The priest walked casually to the trio and stopped just a few feet away.

“Hello, friends. Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

The leering smiles left the faces of the men and they glared at the priest. The waitress turned, her face expressing relief.

The priest turned his attention to the waitress. “Can I help you with anything?”

“No, I’m okay. I just need to get going.”

“Hey,” said one of the men, “don’t be in such a hurry. We just want to talk.”

“Just leave me alone,” said the waitress. “I really don’t want to talk to you.”

“Sure you do,” said the other man. “You’ll love us once you get to know us.”

The priest took a step closer. “I think you heard what she said, gentlemen. She wants you to leave her alone. I would advise you to respect her wishes.”

“Piss off, priest,” said the first man. “This is none of your business.”

“Actually,” said the priest, “this is a big part of my business.”

The second man stepped up and leaned into the priest’s face. “Maybe you’re in over your head here. Don’t think your dog collar will protect you.”

“Are you threatening me, young man?” The priest smiled innocently.

“I’m not afraid to kick your ass, pal.”

The priest took on a pensive look. “I wonder what would be more embarrassing for you: To have to tell your friends that the two of you beat the crap out of a priest who is twice your age, or that a middle-aged priest beat both of you senseless.”

The second man laughed. “Right. Like you could take us.”

The priest straightened his posture, his thick chest expanding against his black coat. “I wasn’t born a priest, my friends. That came later for me, after my days as a Navy Seal.”

“Bullshit,” said the first man. “You weren’t no Seal.”

“We could find out,” said the priest. “Maybe I’ll even show you my Seal tattoo.”

“You’re lying,” said the second man.

“Maybe,” said the priest. “And maybe not. Why don’t we find out?” The priest’s calm, soft demeanor changed suddenly, his blue eyes turning to ice and his face losing all expression. He unfolded his hands and let them drop to his side. He widened his stance by a few inches.

The first man stepped back, his expression now conveying uncertainty. He looked at his friend, and then at the waitress.

“Come on, Billy. She’s not worth it.” He turned and started walking away. The second man hesitated, glaring at the priest and then at the waitress.

“You can have her, man. Look at her—she’ll go with anybody.” He spit on the ground and wiped his chin on his sleeve. Both climbed into a pickup truck and pulled out of the parking space. The priest watched as they drove away.

“I’m sorry about this,” he said.

“That’s okay,” said the waitress. “Thanks for stepping in. I’ve seen those guys before. They’re real creeps.”

“Keep an eye open. They might come back.”

“I will,” she said. “They think because I have all this . . .” She held up one multicolored arm. “That I’m easy. I hate that.”

“I understand,” said the priest. “People make assumptions about me all the time because of this.” He pointed to his clerical collar.

“Yeah,” she said, “I guess so.” She looked quizzically at him. “So were you really a Navy Seal?”

“Yes, I was.”

“And you really have a tattoo?”

“I do,” he said, pointing to his right shoulder. “Here.”

“So you really could beat the crap out of those guys.”

“Well, probably not.” He smiled sheepishly. “It’s true I was a Seal, and I did, in my youthful enthusiasm and in a less-than-sober state, get tattooed. But I blew out both my knees in a training exercise before I ever saw any action. I’m better with books now than I am with fighting. They probably would have thrashed me.”

“Wow,” she said. “Good bluff. Thanks for taking the risk.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “By the way, my name’s Jeff.” He extended his hand, and she took it.

“Hi . . . Jeff. I’m Annie.”

“Nice to meet you, Annie. Be careful now. I’ll see you some other time.” He turned to walk to his car, but stopped when she called after him.

“I’m not that way, you know.”

He looked back and returned, walking closer to her. “What way?”

“The way those guys think. And the way a lot of people think. I’m not a whore.”

“I believe you, Annie.”

“That’s not why I have tattoos.”

Her tank top and short skirt revealed limbs that sported all manner of figures and words, colors and shapes. The priest shifted uncomfortably, trying not to look at her legs too closely.

“Can you tell me why you have them?”

She leaned against the car and set her purse on the roof. “My skin is the only story I have.”

“What do you mean?”

She took a deep breath. “My dad was killed in a car wreck when I was really little. I don’t even remember him. It was only my mom and me growing up—no other kids, no grandparents, no relatives at all. We were alone, but we had each other.”

“It sounds like she was a good mother.”

Annie shrugged. “She did what she could, I guess. She died of cancer when I was thirteen. After that, it was a whole series of foster homes.”

“I’m sorry, Annie. That must have been very difficult.”

“I got used to it. No one ever hurt me or anything, but I never felt like I belonged anywhere to or anybody. I didn’t know my own family history and I didn’t have any relatives in the whole world who could tell me what story I belonged to. When I moved out on my own, I realized that if I died, I would just disappear like I never existed in the first place. It freaked me out, the loneliness was so bad.”

The priest looked at her arms and shoulders, the drawings of ocean waves, faces, and names cascading across her skin. “So your skin is telling your story.”

She looked down at her feet, moving a piece of gravel with the toe of her sandal. “Yes. I am my story. I’m the only record of my dad and mom and what little life we had together. My skin reminds me that I’m living a real life and that I’m a real person. When you’re completely alone, you start to lose a sense of yourself if you don’t have a way to remember who you are and where you came from.”

They stood quietly for a moment. The priest spoke softly.

“Thank you for telling me this, Annie. I’m honored that you would include me in . . . your story.”

She smiled. “It’s the least I could do, after you almost got the crap beat out of you.” They both laughed. “Maybe I’ll include you in my permanent record.”

The priest chuckled at the thought, wondering where his image might find a place on her already-crowded body.

“I hope we can talk again sometime, Annie. I hope that in sharing this with me that you don’t feel as alone as you did before.”

“Yeah, maybe I don’t. We’ll see.” She retrieved her purse and opened the car door. “Bye, Jeff.”

“Goodbye, Annie.” He walked to his car, climbed in, and started the engine. He watched in the rearview mirror as Annie drove away. He reached over and rubbed his right shoulder as though it ached.

He suddenly felt very glad that he had his tattoo.

Same-sex couples and Honey Graham Crackers

I discovered some interesting hoo-haw on Facebook this morning about a graham cracker advertisement created by Nabisco. It features a variety of families—same-sex, tatted and pierced, interracial—and makes the following promise:

“No matter how things change, what makes us wholesome never will. Honeymaid: Everyday, wholesome snacks for every wholesome family.”

Nabisco claims that, while they received a great deal of positive response to the ad, there were also a significant number of outraged responses, especially to the depiction of the same-sex couple.

So, rather than attack their critics, Nabisco did something that I found astounding. They brought in a couple of artists who printed off all the responses, rolled them into little tubes, and formed the word “Love” out of the negative responses, and created a background out of the positive ones.

In all the recent controversies about marriage (and other major issues as well, such as immigration, economic reform, and so on), I’ve been troubled at the harsh reactions from some of my Christian brothers and sisters. I realize that it’s difficult when things we hold dear are challenged and even taken down, and I understand the emotion that results when we become ideological enemies with other people.

But we have already been given our response to this situation. Jesus said,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:43-45)

Jesus spoke into a cultural and historic reality that allowed for all kinds of enemies, not the least of which were the Romans. He didn’t, for example, endorse the Romans’ occupational oppression of Israel, but instead recognized it as something real and unavoidable. And into that reality he called for his followers to love and pray.

I didn’t hear Nabisco endorsing any particular brand of family. I did hear them recognizing, as they said, that things change. And indeed they have. For them, such change hasn’t altered the mission of their Honey Graham’s department (or whatever it’s called). They still make graham crackers for kids to eat, regardless of their family environment.

We Christians also live in a changing environment. Like it or not, things we have held dear have changed, but our place and mission in the world has not. We are still called to join the apostle Paul in proclaiming that

“. . . in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them . . .” (2 Corinthians 5:10)

And we are to do that as ones who love and pray for our so-called enemies.

Why is it that we have trouble with this, but Nabisco seems to get it?

Nabisco. They make and sell cookies and graham crackers and the like.

Some might say that we have nothing to learn from popular culture. I would suggest that we have a great deal to learn, even if it comes from a cookie company.

If we have ears, let us hear.