An Unexpected Light

An Unexpected Light—March 1, 2018

“The woman said to [Jesus], ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth’.” [John 4:19-24] 

Our brains, as wonderful and amazing creations as they are, need boxes to put things in… even when the items in front of us won’t fit into a box of any size.  And when we come across something we cannot quite make sense of, these brains of ours start forcing them in and try to convince us that nothing is spilling over or getting bent.

Take an instance you and I have all lived through before: you are driving along the road on a gloriously sunny day under a blue sky, and as you look at the road stretch up ahead of you, you see a shimmer that appears to lay across the asphalt in the distance.  We all know by now that what we are seeing is a mirage, but for a split second our brains are still fooled and tell us we are seeing water, standing in large pools, across the road.  The first time you see a mirage, you might actually be convinced that the road is flooded up ahead… and that starts your brain worrying about questions like, “How will we get across this water?  How deep is it?  Is it flowing or standing?  Will my car be able to get through?”

What’s actually happening, of course, is that our eyes are seeing refracted light because the temperature of the air right above the road is bending the light rays (because of a difference in temperature in the air there), and we are seeing the blue of the sky down on the ground.  But here’s the trouble: your and my brains don’t like to leave that data unprocessed—we don’t just say, “Blue light down on the ground…” but our brains jump to the next question, “What IS that?”  And that’s when the boxes come out.  Our brains look for anything to explain the unexpected light on the road up ahead, and they start trotting out boxes from past experience.  Since the only thing that looks at all like what your eyes are telling you they are seeing is a pool of clear water reflecting the sunlight, your brain files a report that says, “You are seeing water up ahead.”  But really, of course, there’s never any water there, and your eyes don’t really see a pond. They just see an unexpected light, and then our brains try to make sense of it the only way they can—by forcing it into a mental box. 

We have learned to tell our brains not to jump to that conclusion when we are driving along the road, but we don’t realize that we have the same trouble when it comes to the way of Jesus.  We know now not to think there is deep standing water covering the road ahead on a sunny day, but we still try and force Jesus into a box to make sense of him.

And so often, the box we try and cram Jesus and his way into is… religion.

We assume, hearing Jesus talk about God, show us the presence of the divine, and bring an unexpected light into our world.  And because the usual category for “God-stuff” is religion, we figure that Jesus also will fit into that box.  Jesus, we assume, must have come to teach us the “right” religion, or to give us the correct “religious rules,” or to give us the proper technique to correctly “practice” our religion.  We go searching his words for the “right” way to pray, the list of ten correct Things You Have to Believe in order to get into heaven, and a list of proper good behaviors by which we are supposed to earn our way into God’s good graces.  It’s the mirage on the highway all over again—we take the light in front of us and try and put it into some kind of category that already fits with our experience.  And, well, religion, we know.  A way of life staked on grace… that is foreign and strange and unfamiliar territory, and our brains can’t process the raw data of it.  So we take the way of Jesus, and we try and put it in a religion box.

And when that happens, something vital is lost in translation.  Not only that, but we end up missing the point of what Jesus is really about, and we end up starting to ask questions that Jesus never intends to pose.  When you glimpse a mirage on the road, you would \ start asking yourself what you are going to have to do to get through the standing water on the road if you really believed that’s what you were seeing.  And when we think that Jesus is selling us on a religion, rather than on his way of living in the audacious grace of God, we start asking all sorts of well-intentioned, but totally-misguided questions, and they often start with, “What do I have to do…? 

In his book, The Astonished Heart, Robert Farrar Capon puts the trouble this way:

“To begin with, Christianity is not a religion; it’s the proclamation of the end of religion. Religion is a human activity dedicated to the job of reconciling God to humanity and humanity to itself. The Gospel, however—the Good News of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—is the astonishing announcement that God has done the whole work of reconciliation without a scrap of human assistance.  It is the bizarre proclamation that religion is over, period. All the efforts of the human race to straighten up the mess of history by plausible religious devices—all the chicken sacrifices, all the fasts, all the mysticism, all the moral exhortations, all the threats—have been cancelled by God for lack of saving interest. More astonishingly still, their purpose has been fulfilled, once and for all and free for nothings, by the totally non-religious death and resurrection of a Galilean nobody.”

That’s it, isn’t it?  It’s like Jesus brings this unexpected light before our very eyes, and our brains want to explain it in terms of “religion,” when Jesus himself refuses that box in his own words.  Christianity-as-religion is the way we try and box the light in, rather than seeing Jesus on his own terms, leading us into a whole way of life, lived free of all questions that begin, “What do I have to do to get God’s love… to be saved… to get into heaven… to earn acceptance?”

In the conversation Jesus has with a random stranger at Jacob’s well, Jesus says as much.  This stranger, a Samaritan woman, tries to steer the conversation toward anything away from herself and her own actual life and heart, and so she opens up the can of worms of talking religion in polite company.  She gives Jesus the chance to make his religious sales-pitch—and Jesus balks, because he isn’t selling anything in the first place, only giving things away for free.  “All right,” she says, “since you’re a Jew, and Jews have their Temple in Jerusalem, make your case for why we should worship there, when our parents and grandparents told us to worship here at our own mountain.”  She is asking a religion question—a question of which “box” to look in for “proper worship location.”  If Jesus had an answer, this would have been his chance to give it.  This would have been his moment to say, “If you want access to the true God, you must make an appointment at a properly licensed franchise, and the only location in your area is indeed the Jerusalem Office.  Go there.”  But Jesus doesn’t answer that way.  There are no boxes to his answer at all, in fact—only light.

You’ll also notice that Jesus doesn’t respond by saying, “If you want access to God, you must first pray this prayer to invite God into your heart, since God isn’t allowed to begin service without a signed contract.”  Nor does he say, “If you want to meet God, you have to get your life together properly first—I notice a lot of bad behaviors on your resume, and I’d suggest doing these five things as acts to show your sorrow.”  You won’t hear Jesus insist on a club membership, distribute a prerequisite list of requirements to be considered for a spot in heaven, or solicit a donation.  There is only his unexpected light.  “The hour has now come when we don’t fuss anymore about which location to worship God—it never mattered to God, but finally you all are ready to hear it.  It’s not about location, or music style, or brand-name, or denominational government-style, or adherence to Robert’s Rules of Order… it’s about God’s way of putting things right from God’s side and our way of daring (even half-heartedly) to believe the voice of the Spirit whispering in our ears that it is true.  Spirit and truth and unexpected light.

That’s what it is to walk the way of Jesus. For all the ways we try and box him into the category of religion, with all the lists of disqualifying behaviors, charts of preferred “family values,” catalogs of required rituals, magical thinking, and pious deal-making that come along with religion, Jesus has always been simply a reflection of unexpected divine light right here at ground level with us, and his death and resurrection have done, by themselves, what none of us thought we were trying to do with all of that junk we pulled out of the religion box.

What if today, we saw our faith in Jesus less as a matter of practicing the right religion and then rounding up new club members, and more as a matter of walking the way ahead of us in freedom, right on ahead to where the light is?

What if we let go of the mirage we thought we saw flowing across the road, and instead allowed Jesus’ surprising grace to meet our eyes and our hearts on his own terms, without a box to cram him into?

Lord Jesus, come to us on your own terms, and lead us on your way, beyond the religious boxes we want to put you into.

Bigger Than Our Grasp

Bigger Than Our Grasp--February 28, 2018

He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.  The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.  But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” [Mark 4:26-29]

You absolutely do not have to understand interplanetary physics or astronomy in order to stand in awe at the beauty of a sunrise.  Nor do you have to understand the chemical composition of water as hydrogen and oxygen to take utter delight in the smell after the rain.

Sure, it might deepen your wonder or your appreciation for the sun and the rain if you understood the astrophysics or chemistry of those two events, but you do not need a degree to realize what beautiful and precious things these are.  You simply get to witness and celebrate with joy the extravagant show creation puts on every day, even just in the sunrise or an afternoon shower. 

In fact, really the only way you can “mess up” a sunrise or the sweet scent of the rain, other than missing out on them altogether because you are too busy at work or online shopping to notice them, is to delude yourself into thinking that you made the sunrise or the rainstorm happen.  If you think you have earned a sunrise, or that humankind can master creation into duplicating the self-giving power of the rain, you’re going to miss the awesome beauty on display out your window every morning.  It was the same with our ancient ancestors:  primitive tribes were convinced they could only guarantee the return of the sun with the right blood sacrifice, or ensure a plentiful rain for the harvest by building temples to the right gods and goddesses. And with that, they lost the beauty of these gifts of sun and rain.  And instead, these things became burdens, things to worry about, things to learn the right techniques in order to secure. 

In other words, you can either stand in awe of the morning’s sunrise, realizing you are witnessing something beyond yourself that you are blessed and graced to get to be a part of… or you can foolishly make yourself belief that it is up to you to do your part to make the sunrise happen, and in the process, you will work yourself up into a frightful fuss worrying over whether you have done enough to earn a sunrise.  You can either be blessedly clueless, fully aware that you are being given a moment beyond your grasp and control to share in something of utter beauty and divine artistry, or you can be a damn fool, convinced you are doing something to make the sun come up again.

Jesus recommends the first:  being blessedly clueless.  In fact, he says, that is the only posture you can take if are to receive the Kingdom of God.  You’re going to have to be like a farmer, who tosses seed on the ground without knowing how, precisely, dead-looking grains become living plants.  You’re going to have to be like a farmer, Jesus says, because at least the farmer is wise enough to know what he doesn’t know, and wise enough to acknowledge he doesn’t have to understand the science of it in order for the plants to grow.  He just scatters the seed and lets the earth do what the earth is made to do, and he gets to witness the miracle.  The earth does not ask his permission, nor consult him for guidance, nor check to see if he has offered the right sacrifices, in order to produce a harvest. The whole process, from sprouting of seeds to harvesting the crop, is a gift. The farmer is wise enough to know it, to receive it without insisting he can master it, and to realize he is blessed and graced simply to be a part of the harvest.

This is what it’s like to participate in the Reign of God:  it begins by paying attention, of course, rather than burying ourselves in the pursuit of more money or missing the miracles outside the window while shopping for more stuff. But beyond that, living the Kingdom life calls for us to be blessedly clueless and to quit pretending that we are making God’s Kingdom come by our efforts.  Plenty of people—politicians, tv preachers, and the like—are convinced that they know what God is up to at every moment, and that God’s Kingdom will come only if they can get the right bill passed or petition signed or number of their books sold.  They are living under the illusion that they can make the Kingdom come by their own achievements, like some ancient pagan convinced he has made the sun rise again because he offered his required goat to the sun god.  Jesus strips us of that illusion—the illusion of damn fools—and instead lets us see that we don’t know all of the inner workings of God’s design. We know signs of it when we see them—justice and mercy and grace and peace—but we cannot predict how God is making them happen, and we are wise enough to know that the Kingdom will come without our knowing how it works. 

Following the way of Jesus allows us to do our part without having to know how everything else is connected to the larger whole. My job isn't to fix the whole world--my job is to follow the way of Jesus, in all of its enemy-loving, sinner-welcoming, truth-telling, hypocrisy-naming, table-sharing, self-giving weirdness... and then to let God be the one to figure out how your and my lives will be woven into the fabric that mends all of creation.  Not to get all nerdy, but like they say in the most recent Star Wars movie, maybe our job is simply to be "the spark that lights the fire" that brings the change of God's coming Kingdom, rather than thinking we have to be the whole bonfire alone. But we can leave it to God to know how my actions, your words, and our witness will be gathered up into something bigger than we dared imagine, and used for the sake of goodness in ways we could not conceive.

The way of Jesus, then, includes the ability to let God's grace be bigger... bigger than we can understand, bigger than we can grasp or master, bigger than we can put in a diagram or a chart or a sermon.  The way of Jesus dares us to see our choices and actions are always set within the wider and more wonderful  vision of the Reign of God, which we cannot control or predict, and around which we cannot build a wall or dig a moat.  The way of Jesus calls us, from the get-go to concede that God's ways are always pushing wider than we would permit, more gracious than our stingy hearts would allow, and more beautiful than we have the capacity to understand... and to let God's ways be as big as God pleases, rather than requiring the divine to shrink within the boundaries of what we can handle or hold.

Jesus would have us be wise enough to be blessedly clueless:  wise enough to see that the opportunities you and I have to live in God’s reign are God’s gifts to us.  The chances you will have in this day to do right by someone when no one else is looking, to speak up for those who need a voice, to practice mercy for someone who can never pay you back, to receive your daily bread without your earning it, and to forgive as you have been forgiven, these chances are all gifts of grace that we have not earned.  We don’t make the Kingdom come by doing these various good deeds.  God’s Kingdom comes and we get to witness it in those kinds of actions.  It’s like watching the sun come up and knowing it is a gracious gift of God that you were given the moment to see it.  It’s like smelling the air after the rain and knowing it didn’t have to be this way, but you were blessed with a world where the rain smells sweet and you get to share in that beauty.  If that is our posture with God’s Reign in our lives, too, everything is different—we will be able to recognize the sheer miracles we get to witness today, and we will have our hands and eyes ready to participate in what God has given us.

Lord God, open our eyes to the privilege we have of witnessing how your Kingdom is coming already.

The Unsummoned Fire

The Unsummoned Fire--February 26, 2018

"John answered, 'Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not follow with us.' But Jesus said to him, 'Do not stop him; for whoever is not against you is for you.'  When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, 'Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?' But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village." [Luke 9:49-56]

The greatest show of strength in this scene is revealed in six short words.  The greatest demonstration of authority is seen in what does not happen.

The real power here is Jesus' choice not to call down blazing retribution from heaven because someone has rejected him.  It is the decision Jesus makes--and compels his followers to abide by--not to react to hostility with more hostility.  The truly awesome thing in this scene is not the implicit assumption that Jesus could theoretically call down flames of vengeance on people who had slighted him (or his disciples), but the fact that the fire remains unsummoned.  Jesus just moves on.

"But he turned and rebuked them," Luke says--and amazingly, the "them" whom Jesus rebukes is not the town full of inhospitable Samaritans who reject Jesus out of their religious and ethnic prejudices (he is, after all, "set toward Jerusalem").  Jesus is rebuking his own followers for even suggesting an idea like calling down fire to destroy them!  Think about that for a moment--Jesus' frustration is not aimed at the people who have rejected, slighted, and insulted him, but at his followers for wanting to respond with violence in the name of God because of the perceived insult!  It's rather like Jesus is saying to his disciples, "Look, guys, you should at least know better!  How long have you been with me, listening to me, seeing how I live, how I respond to hostility, and how I deal with opponents--and you still don't get it?"  Jesus doesn't do or say a thing against the village of Samaritans; but he does have strong words for his closest friends for having suggested they respond to insult with injury.

And yet, even more compelling to me, once Jesus has said what must be said, he moves on.  He just moves on.

That is another beautiful dimension about the maturity of Jesus. Jesus' way of living and engaging with people lets him be secure enough in who he is not to get worked up when he feels threatened, or insulted, or rejected.  Jesus is the consummate grown-up, and he teaches his followers the same kind of maturity.  And part of how he does it is in seeing what he does--and does not--give more ammunition to by making a big fuss.  Jesus shows us what things are worth getting worked up over, and what things are decidedly not.  

And to be clear, there are surely plenty of times when Jesus does make a big deal of things that could have gone unnoticed or overlooked.  When he enters the synagogue and sees a man whose hand is crippled and then listens to the religious so-and-sos start attacking the man for having come to the synagogue for healing on the Sabbath, the Gospel writers say that Jesus is upset at their indifference, "grieved at their hardness of heart" (Mark 3:5), and makes a bigger scene because their lack of compassion is despicable.  When Jesus sees the commerce in the Temple, he brings everything to a grinding halt by knocking over tables, driving out the animals, and effectively shutting down the proceedings for the day.  When a woman is brought to Jesus after having been caught cheating on her husband, Jesus turns the attention back on the accusers with the famous line, "Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone."  Even down to the intentionally provocative upside-down parade Jesus orchestrates that we call Palm Sunday, which was intended at least in part as an alternative to the intimidating military parade that Pilate ordered as a pompous show of Roman power and spirit every year to flex a little imperial muscle before the Passover, Jesus shows again and again that he is perfectly capable of creating a confrontation when he wants to.  But it is always a question of what is worth making a fuss over.

The thing that gets me about this scene from Luke is not simply that Jesus doesn't get riled up--it's knowing that he does get riled up at other times, and that the difference is that here, he just doesn't need to defend his ego.  Defend someone else who is being attacked or maligned?  You bet Jesus speaks up.  Taking the arrogant, saber-rattling Romans down a few pegs with a weaponless parade of palm branches?  He will do that.  But calling down fire because someone else has potentially hurt his feelings?  No--Jesus is a grown-up.  He does not need to respond to insult with heavenly fire.   Not even name-calling back.  He simply will not sink that low.

Jesus just moves on.  That is his way.

And the fact that he just moves on and heads to the next town tells his disciples that this is not a big deal.  That, too, is another sign of Jesus' maturity.  We don't get any other stories where Jesus says, "Hey fellas... remember that town that rejected me?  What a bunch of losers they were!"  There is not a single time that Jesus finds a friendlier audience and goes railing against "those Samaritans in that one village who hurt my feelings!"  And there is never conversation later on where Jesus brings the subject back up again and tells his disciples, "You know... I coulda called down fire on those no-good villagers!  I had the power, ya know... I coulda!  I coulda!  Maybe I'll do it after all--they still have it coming, after all!"  No.  None of that.  Jesus just moves on.

Look, I know that it is unlikely that you or I will be provoked to start calling down fire or lightning bolts of divine judgment against people in the new day... but I also know that each of us knows what it is like to be slighted.  I know that we have had the experience of being rejected, of feeling insulted, or overlooked, or made fun of at some point.  Sometimes it will be on the lips of people who know exactly what they are doing and are well aware of precisely how hurtful their words will land, and sometimes it will be from people who are clueless as to how thoughtless, or ignorant, or bigoted, or hateful their words and actions really are.  I can offer you no strategy for preventing others from being idiots nor spiteful.  But what you and I do have control over is how we will respond to such slights, or insults, or rejection.

And basically, there are two options: one (of which there are plenty of notable examples floating around us in this cultural moment) is to be petty and spiteful back.  We can call names back.  We can threaten.  We can insult.  We can wait until we are surrounded by an echo chamber of people who think like us already and go whining about how unfair and upset we were because so-and-so said something mean.  We can keep bringing up the insults of the past, and stoking the fires of resentment.  We can even delude ourselves into thinking that God is on "my" side (and only "my side") and maybe even convince ourselves that God would send down fire for us on the people who declined our invitations or snubbed our offers, if we asked nicely.  We might tell ourselves that any of those actions will make us look "tough" or "strong" or "great"... but really, they make us look pathetic.

The other option is the way of Jesus.  It's not that we say that the insults, the slights, or the rejections are "ok."  It's not that we pretend they don't hurt or don't mean anything.  But we don't respond by sinking to the same level.  We don't call names or lob insults.  We don't threaten with either human or heavenly means of retribution.  We don't let the insulters have ongoing power over us by getting in our heads.  Rather, we make the choice not to return evil for evil... and we move on.  

That's what real power looks like: the power of unsummoned fire.

Any idiot in this life can get hot under the collar and lash out in unchecked petty anger.  Don't confuse vindictive insults or insecure attempts at getting even with true power.

Jesus shows us what the real deal is like: his maturity, his authority, his power--they are all on full display in the way he breaks the cycle of tit-for-tat, evil-for-evil, insult-for-insult, and just moves on.  That is his way.  And ours, if we dare.

Lord Jesus, make us mature like you and able to respond to hostility with your kind of grounded, mature gracefulness, rather than losing control, lashing out in anger, and thinking it makes us seem tough.

The Cohort of Impious Galileans

The Cohort of Impious Galileans--February 26, 2018

[Jesus said:] "Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you." [Matthew 5:42]

I know.  I know.  I can hear it already.

Scarcely have the words come out of Jesus' mouth and we are looking for exceptions, hedges, and qualifiers.  Scarcely have we read Jesus' words here from the Sermon on the Mount and we are already protesting, "What about giving money to addicts--won't they just buy more drugs and booze with it?  What about the people who could be working and just lack the motivation to, you know, go get a job?  What about the people who should be spending their time providing for their kids instead of playing video games?  What about the people who will take advantage of people's generosity, or game the system?"

I know those questions arise like a reflex to Jesus' words here, because I have heard them plenty of times... and I have asked them, too.  They are not wrong questions, necessarily, to be asking. And certainly Jesus' point here isn't to just help us manage our middle-class guilt by instructing us to throw a few dollars at a panhandler once in a while so that we can sleep at night and tell ourselves we are "good, nice, respectable" people for having done so.  So, yeah, it's fair to raise the question, "How does Jesus' teaching here apply to situations where my willingness to give could be enabling someone in a pattern of addiction or feeding someone's habit?"  

But I guess here's my question about all of those gut-impulse response to Jesus' words:  are we really concerned about not enabling the opioid addicts and alcoholics... or are we really just looking for something to shield ourselves from having to listen to Jesus?  If my first impulse when I hear Jesus instruct his followers to "give to everyone who asks," is to put up defenses about why Jesus is being unreasonable or why Jesus "surely doesn't mean me" or why Jesus must only be referring to "nice, clean-cut, well-behaved people... like me" as recipients of my giving, well, then I suppose, in the words of the Bard, methinks we doth protest too much.  If our gut instinct upon hearing Jesus' words is to run from them or water them down, it may be more of a sign that we don't really want to listen to Jesus--only to wear his name and cross-logo as a badge of honor. 

And even though I know that I am prone, too, not to want to listen to Jesus when it pinches me, or when he says something that unsettles and disturbs me, if I am honest, there is yet deeper still a piece of me that knows I need to hear what Jesus says both when I like it and when I don't.  Like the old prayer of Teresa of Avila put it so beautifully and honestly, "Lord, I don't love you.  I don't even want to love you.  But I want to want to love you."  There are times, just saying, when we are afraid of actually taking Jesus' words seriously, because we know that if we take him at full strength, we will have our routines and values and priorities upended... and we will no longer be allowed to be so damned selfish (and yes, I mean damned literally--it is our own damnable bent-in-on-self-ness that is at the root of what we call sin).  To take Jesus at his word will mean following Jesus in his way of being in the world, and that will mean, among other things, abandoning the Me-and-My-Group-First thinking with which we are all so innately comfortable.

So let me dare to offer a next step in this conversation.  Having heard and seen Jesus' rather direct teaching for his followers to "give to everyone who begs from you," and to lend without expectation, let's assume we have all taken a moment now to voice our own inner hang-ups about it. Let's all take a second to say out loud all the things we say, almost by default, to deflect the impact of Jesus' words--let's grant that there are wise ways and foolish ways to give, that there are indeed plenty of scammers and schemers out there, that no one is advocating blindly enabling anybody's drug addiction or alcoholism, and that Jesus is not advocating laziness on anybody's part as a lifestyle. 

Ok, have we gotten that out of our system long enough to actually listen to Jesus?  Because maybe, instead of trying to overrule Jesus by raising tough cases (like giving to someone when you can't be sure how they will use what you give them) or complicated situations (like whether or not throwing money at a situation will actually make things better) or extenuating circumstances (like whether or not I am getting by with resources enough to feed my family before we get around to giving to a panhandler), maybe we could let Jesus' words become for us a sort of home-base--a new "default position" or "posture of readiness" for us, like a Tae Kwan Do student standing with hands ready to receive whatever punches or kicks the opponent will throw next.  Rather than hearing Jesus as giving ironclad absolute rules, which we could then overturn if we found a case where it didn't make sense or didn't apply, what if instead we heard Jesus as sketching out a way of life for us, giving us a course to keep on.  When you listen to your GPS or your smart phone giving you directions somewhere, and it says "Turn at Exit 13," but all of a sudden a traffic accident has blocked Exit 13 and that information hasn't been uploaded to the network that tells your phone how to navigate, you don't say that the directions are wrong--after all, Exit 13 is in fact the correct way to get to your destination.  But you say, "In this moment, Exit 13 is not possible, so what do I do that is still consistent with the direction that Exit 13 was going to take me, and how then will I get back to being on course for arriving where I'm supposed to go."  What if we allowed Jesus to be the voice that orients us and shows us the way go, rather than looking for loopholes or asterisks or fine print in his words to let ourselves off the hook in terms of doing what he says?

In that case, then, our calling on this day is to look for how we can practice Jesus' kind of radical generosity. Instead of immediately insisting that Jesus is being unreasonable or that he is daring to assail my unquestionable right to my own stuff, what if we started with, "Maybe Jesus knows what he is talking about... how could I dare to practice Jesus' kind of generosity and be ready to meet the needs, the faces, and the situations that will come my way on this day, in such a way that people will see Jesus' own kind of audacious graciousness in me?"

I don't mean at all to suggest that this is a brand-new kind of experiment--in fact, from the earliest centuries of Christian history, followers of Jesus got a reputation for being notably generous, and not just to their own people, but to all.  One of my favorite examples comes from an unlikely source--not a Christian tooting his or her own horn, but actually a pagan Roman emperor who wanted to restore the former "greatness" of the Empire by restoring its old worship of the pagan gods and goddesses.  The emperor was Julian (called by Christians "Julian the Apostate" because he turned the empire back toward the worship of Zeus, Jupiter, Mars, and the lot, as opposed to the growing grass-roots spread of Christianity).  And in a lot of senses, Julian was classic Rome--he wanted to bring back what he saw as Rome's old "greatness", which he claimed had been lost by the rise of these riff-raff Christians.  Julian liked to refer to Christians as "atheists," not because we believed in no God, but because we didn't believe in HIS gods--and he wanted to wipe out the movement of Christianity and to get back to the good ol' days when Rome's military might, political prestige, cultural achievements, and religious heritage were all seen as the "greatest" in the world.  Julian wanted to bring victory, glory, and the old Roman "values" back to Rome--even though arguably, Rome was still the lone superpower in the world at the time and was still the most powerful force to be reckoned with... but Julian was insecure and wanted to make Rome great so that he could be seen as great, too. 

Anyhow, the emperor also had to grudgingly admit that the followers of Jesus of Nazareth (he sometimes called us "the Galilean sect") were generous, more so even than the keepers of his own beloved "Roman values." He wrote to another official in the year 362 that "and the impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us."

That's what we were known for in those first centuries--generosity.  Not just generosity to "our own," to fellow Christians or other church members, or to people from our own local tribes, clans, and nationalities... but even to the Roman citizenry who were the occupying force and invading culture across the empire.  Christians were known--in fact, even when they didn't call us Christians!--for the kind of generosity that Jesus had been teaching all along.  And what amazes me is that the Christians didn't have to advertise or tell the world about how generous they were being:  the Emperor himself, a declared enemy of the church no less, said it out loud and called attention to it!

That's the thing about Jesus' way of generous living--I don't have to announce it to the world or wear a cross around my neck for it to be noticeable.  When the followers of Jesus quit deflecting Jesus' words while still proudly wearing the cross as a logo with Jesus as their malleable mascot--that is to say, when we actually practice the kind of generosity Jesus himself called us too--the watching world takes notice, even grudgingly.

So I'm going to try an experiment today--and if you like I'll invite you to come along on it.  What if, before we tried to show off to the world with public signs of our religious affiliation, we simply practiced the kind of generosity--of willingness to give our time, our resources, our labor, our tears, our energy--that Jesus has so clearly taught us?  What if we were less fussy about whether we are, or are not, allowed to be seen praying in public or treating the cross like a bit of flair among our accessories, and instead were simply willing to be known--like Julian called us all those centuries ago as an insult--as "impious Galileans"? What if people didn't first see a cross on our lapels and say, "Oh, more of those Christians...I have met them before, and they are stingy jerks who have a persecution complex!" but they first saw generosity--reckless, grace-filled generosity--and then approached us to find out what makes us able to give ourselves away?  What if we took back the title "impious Galileans" as our own--as a way of saying, "This is what it looks like when even the most hostile pompous blowhards of the Empire have to grudgingly admit that we are daring to cross lines with generosity, not just to "Me and My Group First," but to all?

I don't know what would come of that... but I feel like I want to try and find out.  Here's to belonging among the cohort of impious Galileans.

Lord Jesus, give us the insight, the courage, the love, and the grace to give ourselves away as recklessly and wonderfully as you... the original Impious Galilean....

Practiced Vulnerability

Practiced Vulnerability--February 23, 2018

"Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. He said to them, 'Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money--not even an extra tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there, and leave from there. Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.' They departed and went through the villages, bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere." [Luke 9:1-6]

It's not just what Jesus does--it's the way he does what he does that makes him so compelling.  And it's not just what we do--it's the way we are called to follow in the pattern and path of Jesus that will (or won't) make the watching world stand up and take notice.

So... for example, it's not just that Jesus healed people (there were plenty of celebrity quasi-magical traveling healers who roamed the countryside like snake-oil salesmen, after all) that makes him stand out.  It's that Jesus had this... way... of touching the lepers to heal them when he didn't have to (or, some would have said, when he shouldn't have touched them!), and that he regularly didn't make a big deal or toot his own horn when he restored the sight of the blind or raised the dead.  It wasn't just that he brought the little girl back to life--but also that he doesn't then go on a public tour showing her off like a carnival act to make everyone see how great his power is.

Or, as another case in point, it's not just that Jesus spoke the Good News of God's Kingdom, God's Reign, to people--but the way in which he did it.  You won't find a single instance of Jesus intimidating people into faith, or promising worldly wealth and a happy marriage as a perk of believing in him, and you won't find Jesus using the Scriptures as a weapon to bludgeon people with.  He evangelized--but he didn't act like a jerk or an infomercial host to do it.  And instead, he met people where they were, as they were, sometimes inviting himself over to their houses or striking up a conversation with a stranger at the well.  And as he did it, he was genuine, and he deliberately did not treat his interactions with people like a sales pitch in which he was supposed to be always "closing" the deal.  The way he spoke to people was as important as what he said--because the way he shared Good News was as much a part of what made it Good News as the words themselves.

Even the way Jesus came into town on Palm Sunday--Jesus was deliberately choosing a set of images that contrasted with the powerful military parades of Rome, when Pontius Pilate would march his armies into town, with their swords and shields gleaming in the light, the air thundering with the sounds of soldiers marching in formation, and the Roman banners declaring that Rome saw itself as the Ruler of the World and Guarantor of Peace.  And when Jesus marches into town, he deliberately turned all of that ridiculous pomposity and turned it on its head by riding in on a borrowed donkey alone, without a single bodyguard or flag in his procession.  It wasn't just the action of coming into Jerusalem--it was the way he did it that sent his message, too.  Jesus wasn't going to be one more in a long line of self-absorbed emperors, consumed with puffing up his own ego or intimidating people with a show of force. He had come to offer an alternative to that whole way of doing business--his way, the way of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And so again and again in the Gospels, we find scenes like this one from Luke's gospel where Jesus teaches his followers, not just to do something, but to do it in a certain way.  He sends out his disciples to do the same things he has been doing--announcing the arrival of God's Reign, healing the sick, walking from town to town, casting out evil.  And more to the point, Jesus sends his followers to do what he does in the way he does it. 

Just like Jesus doesn't go out as a huckster hawking health and wealth, he has his followers go out empty-handed, as if to make it clear that they are not offering a mystical secret path to riches and glory. 

Just like Jesus himself doesn't use threats or rage or anger to spread the news of the Kingdom, he teaches his followers not to hold onto grudges or make angry threats or even shake their fists when someone doesn't receive them.  He says it's enough just to shake the dust off their feet and walk away--the disciples are not supposed to sink to the level of yelling back, or using childish insults, or calling down fire from the sky to zap their enemies.  Their willingness face rejection without becoming petulant jerks in response is part of their witness, after all--it is part of the way they will draw people to their message (because, after all, people will see them rising above it and want to be a part of a community that is mature and kind rather than childish and self-absorbed).

And like Jesus himself, marching into Jerusalem without even a hint of a security detail surrounding him in the parade, Jesus sends his followers deliberately to go into the world--friendly places and hostile places alike--with nothing in their hands, and nothing to attack with.  Not a purse or wallet, not a change of clothes... and not even a staff--the most basic weapon in history.  Jesus intentionally and explicitly sends his followers to go out into the world vulnerably, because the message they bring is about the God who enters into our vulnerability as one of us, the God who shows up nailed to a Roman cross rather than protected by a Roman cohort.  

I know Teddy Roosevelt famously suggested that foreign policy should be conducted with quiet strength rather than angry bluster with his famous dictum, "Speak softly, and carry a big stick."  But here Jesus doesn't even allow for the stick.  He sends out his followers without a staff--not because Jesus wants to make their hiking harder, but because he sends them out to embody his way of being in the world, which is always, always, always, the way of vulnerability.  

You have to imagine that some of his disciples said back to him, "But Jesus, didn't you know it's a dangerous world out there?"  "But Jesus, don't we have to be realistic about the possibility that some of those dirty, no-good Samaritans might be lurking on the road?  I've heard reports that they sometimes walk that road between Jerusalem and Jericho, after all..."  "But Jesus, what if we run into a group of people who don't like us, or who want to run us out of town?  Shouldn't we be able to protect ourselves if they try and chase us out of a town while we are doing your work and bringing your message?"  These things had to have been on the disciples' minds, and even if they couldn't dare bring themselves to say them out loud, Jesus is not stupid--he knows these are realities in a dangerous world.  Jesus has neither rose-colored glasses about the world being a safe and nice place, nor the bad theology that says God doesn't let bad things happen to faithful servants.  And yet... Jesus still sends his followers out, vulnerably, with no resources to buy anything, no change of clothes or shoes, and no means of defending themselves.  That is not an oversight nor an omission on Jesus part. Neither is it a lack of foresight about the possibility of trouble in a hostile world.  It is part of the way Jesus himself enters that same hostility. 

Sometimes we don't give Jesus credit--we act like Jesus was either unaware of the trouble in the world, blissfully ignorant of it, or naively optimistic about life.  We forget that Jesus preached sermons, not just with words, but with his own life--his way of being in the world.  Jesus encounters us with intentional vulnerability--deliberately leaving the security detail behind, because his power and presence in the world are all about the cross-born vulnerability of an Almighty God whose kingdom is seen among the lepers, the left-out, and the losers.  And so it should not surprise us that Jesus would send his followers out as living parables of the Kingdom, too, which is to say that he sends us out to practice vulnerability, because the Gospel itself is about the power of God revealed in vulnerability.

It's not just what Jesus does--it's the way he does it that drew me, I will confess.

And for someone else who watches us today, and tomorrow, and on the third day, it will be the same--the power of our witness is not just in saying things about Jesus, but in doing what we do in the way Jesus has taught us to... which is to say, with practiced vulnerability.  

Walk softly, Jesus says, without even a stick, as if you really believe that the living God will go with us and will be all we need for the journey.  Walk softly so no noisy bragging or stomping feet will overpower our witness to a God who shows up in intentional vulnerability.

Lord Jesus, send us out with enough courage to go empty-handed, as you have taught us--but then be enough for us along the way.

Jesus' Kind of Good

Jesus' Kind of Good--February 22, 2018

"Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit..." [1 Peter 3:18]

My son has been pretending to be the superhero Black Panther a lot lately, and over all, it makes me smile a deep Dad kind of smile.  He hasn't seen the movie yet (he is six, after all, and as great as the movie is, there are certainly things in it that are not for six year olds), but he wears his Black Panther mask and claws, and his sister can play along, too, as the brilliant younger sister/inventor/princess/fellow hero Shuri, and, at least for a few minutes, everyone in my house can be playing the same thing at the same time, which is a rarity.  And like I say, it makes me smile to see him picturing himself as the king-and-super-suited-defender-of-his-people Black Panther (also known, when not wearing his cat-suit, as T'Challa, like Superman is Clark Kent or Iron Man is Tony Stark--spoiler alert!). 

It makes me smile, just for one because my own inner nerd can play along, too, in these superhero adventures.  And I am glad, too, because I have heard my son say, "My favorite hero is Black Panther--he looks like me."  And in all honesty, that means something powerful, since so many of the handful of other superheroes out there who do share my son's brown skin are either relegated to the role of sidekicks (I'm looking at you, War Machine, Falcon, or Batman's new addition, the Signal), or are wrongfully-accused escaped convicts-turned-profiteers (Luke Cage), or are vampires (Blade).  And, as I know many others have noted themselves in the last few weeks since the new Black Panther movie comes out, there is something good and honorable about a hero who isn't on the run form the law, looking for a paycheck, or stuck playing second fiddle, but who understands the role of being a protector for his people, and the importance of his character as a leader as much as the power in his muscles.  The stories we tell our children may in some sense be "just stories," but they also shape the direction of their imaginations, of what kind of world they will inhabit, and of who they dream of becoming, and so just on that count, I am glad to have a hero who doesn't need to carry a gun to be strong, and who can also be a good leader, even of a fictional country like Black Panther's Wakanda, for my son to aspire to, alongside the other heroes, mentors, and examples he takes up in his life.

But I'll also tell you a funny routine we go through at our house, any time we are playing as new superhero characters.  Every time my son learns about a new character, whether from a cartoon show, a commercial on TV, a friend at school, or in the pages of a comic book, he'll ask me two questions: first, "Is that a good guy?" and second, "Who are the bad guys he fights?"

He has learned the usual order of things in a comic-book world: there are "good guys" and there are "bad guys," and the basic verb connecting them is "fight."  That sums up the basic logic of any comic book/superhero movie, doesn't it?  The title tells you who the "good guy" or team of "good guys" will be, and then you'll have a climactic showdown between the hero and the "bad guy," where they fight.  That's just what they do, isn't it?  Cows give milk, ducks and chicks lay eggs, baseball players hit home runs, and good guys fight bad guys.  In my son's six-year-old mind, that's almost the way you know they are good guys--they are the ones fighting the people labeled "bad guys."

And I have to tell you, when we play superheroes at our house, even if I get stuck being a second- or third- tier villain while he gets to be Black Panther, there is something refreshingly simple about seeing the world that way.  I get it why that is so appealing--everything is so perfectly clear.  If you're not a good guy, you're a bad guy, and vice versa, and the way you know who you are is to look at who you're fighting.  In the real world things are messier, as the best of us still have selfish intentions a lot of the time, and the worst of us have streaks of beauty within us.  The times with simple good-guy-versus-bad-guy battles in our living room need no shade of gray like that, because there is just one repeating storyline: good guys fight bad guys.  End of story.

The way of Jesus, however, tells a different story.  An entirely different kind of story, to be truth.  Oh, there are still heroes and villains, "good" characters and "bad" characters, in the story we call Gospel.  But the verb connecting them is not "fight."  As the early Christian witness that we call First Peter puts it, the story of Jesus is the story of the Good One laying down his life for a whole world full of "the Bad Guys."

"Christ also suffered for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous," he writes.  The "righteous" one dies for the "unrighteous."  That's scandalous.  That totally blows up our usual expectation of how you know who the good guy is--conventional wisdom says that the hero is just "whoever-is-fighting-the villain."  Our usual way of seeing things is that justice has to attack whatever is unjust... that good has to destroy evildoers... that good guys reveal their "goodness" precisely by fighting the bad guys.  And then here, ol' Pete says that Jesus' way of being righteous is to lay down his life for the unrighteous--the justice of Jesus is in suffering for the unjust.  That redefines what it means to be a "good guy" for us Christians, then.

This is what makes the way of Jesus so scandalous--and probably far more radical than we give it credit for.  The earliest Christians saw it, and then we have been trying to remold and remake Jesus to fit into the mold of superhero rather than the cruciform savior he insists on being.  It's rather like Robert Farrar Capon says in Hunting the Divine Fox--we would rather have a Superman messiah than the actual Suffering Servant we got.   Capon writes:

“We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: He claimed to be God then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It’s not that we weren’t looking for the Messiah; it’s just that he wasn’t what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket. He wouldn’t do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.”

Our usual way of defining "good guys" is that they are the ones who punch the bad guys--you know, in order to make them stop being bad, I guess.  Our world understands that kind of power, and we tend to assume that it must be God's way of doing business as well.  We don't know what to do with a Good Guy--a genuine Good Human--whose way of being utterly and wholly good is to give up his life in suffering love for the "bad guys," the unrighteous... us. But that is the only Christ the New Testament is willing to give us: the righteous Jesus whose way of doling out justice is to lay down his life in love for the unjust, the unrighteous, and the wicked.

And maybe that's because we don't want to face the other truth that First Peter has to say to us:  that we are all villains.  We--not just people far away, in another country, or another continent--we are the bad guys.  We are, to use Pete's word for it, "the unjust," the "unrighteous."  You know... people who do bad stuff.  Bad guys.  Like the old Pogo cartoon put it, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

We have a way of making the Gospel into a Western--there's black hats and white hats, and those are the only choices.  And since I figure I'm not as bad as "those people" (insert your favorite stock character evildoer), I must be a good guy, right?  And what do good guys do to bad guys?  We fight 'em! 

But the New Testament doesn't allow for that illusion. It insists that every mother's son and every father's daughter is among the "unrighteous"--the stinkers, the sinners, the mess-ups, the people who do not practice justice and righteousness.  Because all of us are in that category.  We're the bad guys--the unjust.  The good news we call the Gospel is not that Jesus has come to recruit us to join his Justice League and to help him punch and zap "bad guys," but rather that Jesus' way of being just and good and righteous is to lay down his life... for the likes of us.

We can only stay in that childishly oversimplified world of "good guys are the ones who fight the bad guys" while it is play time.  Once we are ready to face the truth about ourselves, we'll have to acknowledge that we are not the heroes we like to think we are; we are the ones shouting "Crucify!"... and yet Jesus laid his life down precisely for us.

If we are going to dare to follow the way of Jesus, then, it will mean an overhaul of how we picture "good guys" and "bad guys" then.  And instead of assuming that I am in the category of "good guys," it will mean seeing ourselves as the ones for whom Jesus died, not as the ones doling out punches to the "bad guys."  For that matter, it will mean seeing that the way Jesus is good comes through suffering love--and love that is shown precisely who don't deserve it.

I will still smile when my son asks me to play superheroes with him, and I will be glad, too, when the heroes who inspire him, fictional or real, are people of character and courage as well as strength and speed.  But like another New Testament voice puts it, I know there will come a time for both of us to put away childish things as we follow the way of Jesus, and to learn that being "good," "righteous," and "just" like Jesus looks like laying our lives down for others, regardless of whether they are well-behaved or not.  That's the way Jesus is teaching us to be his kind of good.

Lord Jesus, as you gave your life away for us in all of our unrighteousness, lead us to love others and lay down our lives for others without regard for whether we think they deserve it or not.

In Remembrance of Her

In Remembrance of Her--February 21, 2018

"While [Jesus] was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. But some were there who said to one another in anger, ‘Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.’ And they scolded her. But Jesus said, ‘Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her'." [Mark 14:3-9]

Even in a moment that is clearly all about him, Jesus has a way of making this scene not all about himself.

That is amazing.

In a bit of spiritual sleight of hand, Jesus slips out of the limelight and calls attention--good attention, mind you, in this case--to a beautiful act of compassion and kindness that the woman with the alabaster jar did.  And not only to the act itself, as though it were done by a robot or a mannequin, but to her... to the woman herself.  Jesus takes the time, especially when she is being belittled and demeaned by the Respectable Religious Folks at the table, to honor her, her generosity, and her insight into the moment.  In a moment that is wholly unique in all the Gospels, actually, Jesus himself says that her action will be remembered, and "what she has done will be told in remembrance of her."

Those words have an almost haunting power for Christians, because they echo so closely what Jesus says about himself at the table of Jesus' Last Supper, words which are part of our weekly worship life now as Holy Communion.  Week by week, Sunday by Sunday, we retell the story--on Jesus' own say-so, mind you--that we take the bread and the cup "in remembrance of me" (see Luke 22:19, for example). For whatever else is happening there at the Lord's Table, at least part of what Jesus intends is for us to remember, to retell, what he has done.  And those words, "Do this in remembrance of me," are found all over churches, inscribed on altars, embroidered on banners, all over the world, and throughout Christian history.  Interesting, to say the least, that Jesus uses the same kind of language for this woman's act of tender, insightful, humble compassion when he says that her action will be retold "in remembrance of her."

I say that here because this is perhaps an element of the Way of Jesus that can be missed or go unrecognized.  Jesus is undoubtedly the center of attention at this gathering--and yet, Jesus chooses deliberately to lift up the graciousness of the woman with the perfume.  And notice here, Jesus doesn't do it because he is too shy, or timid, or afraid of being at the center of people's attention: he is not afraid.  Neither does Jesus simply pity this woman or "save" her from others, but he praises here.  He's not there to use her as a prop so he can come off as an even more winsome, charming, charismatic sort of fella.  He actually wants people to see what she has done, and to see that she has had an insight about what he is about to go through that even Jesus' own closest disciples don't get yet.  Jesus sees that she understands Jesus is heading toward a final showdown with the powerful political and religious leaders, and she seems to understand what even Peter, James, and John don't yet understand: that Jesus will go to a cross over this.  And so Jesus doesn't just say, patronizingly, "Oh well, she tried.  At least she tried.  But yeah, she should have taken the money from selling this and given it to the poor." He doesn't that act parents do when their kids make breakfast in bed for their mommies and daddies with garlic powder in the cinnamon toast and eggshells in the omelet, where they smile and say thank you but are really being gracious themselves by eating what is set before them. Jesus appreciates this woman--not just her "good intentions," as a sort of patronizing response to her, but he genuinely appreciates that at least someone around him understood what he had been saying about a cross, and that she was saying back to him in this gesture, "I get what you are doing... and I want to honor that."  So Jesus honors her as well.

And maybe that is enough for us to consider on this day.  Part of the way of Jesus is not simply to make ourselves the galactic center and turn all eyes on ourselves, even as martyrs.  You know that habit we have some times, where we make as big a ruckus for ourselves as possible about how much we are doing, how much we are going through, and how tiring it all is... and we end up using serving as a way of stroking our own egos.  "Nobody else understands how much I have to go through.... nobody else knows all that I do around here..." and that sort of thing.  Jesus doesn't do that here.  He is able to call attention to the good that someone else has done without turning it into a secret, back-channel way of bolstering some martyr complex.  He really does appreciate this woman, and he simply enough calls attention to her, on her own terms.

We live in an era where it is a rare bird to find this precious ability to genuinely appreciate and honor others... without making it still stealthily about me, without making ourselves martyrs, and without tooting our own horns.  We are living with a lack of examples these days, of people who can use their position not to puff themselves up, nor to make themselves out to be overlooked and persecuted, but who can genuinely honor others whose gifts, whose actions, and whose character are otherwise going unseen.  And even rarer to find someone who, like Jesus here, can lift up someone else and honor her, without it really being a way of patronizing them or pitying them.  

Part of the way of Jesus then, for us, is to learn how to see--to notice things--that others around may either not be recognizing, or may be deliberately ignoring or putting a bad spin on.  Despite the peanut gallery's way of trying to make this woman into a fool or a wasteful prodigal, Jesus sees her action in the beauty of her intentions and the courage of her carrying it out, and he lifts it up for all to see, like turning a jewel in the light to make it sparkle.  And then, as we let Jesus train our eyes to see what we had not noticed before (or did not have the courage to recognize before), then the way of Jesus leads us to speak--to say, to tell the stories, to honor, those who, like this woman, are worthy of being remembered.  I know I have shared these words before, but this line from Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead has become something of a touchstone for me on this subject.  Robison writes:  "I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing."

Precious things, indeed, have been put into our hands... and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.  Jesus gets that.  He sees what others either cannot or will not see.  And rather than stroke his own ego or make himself the focus, Jesus honors the good and brave and loving act of a good and brave and loving woman.  And in contrast to the unrepentant public narcissism of our own time, Jesus calls our attention not to himself, but to honor a woman worth remembering.  "When you tell my story," Jesus says, knowing his story will be told already, "now hers will be told, too... in remembrance of her."

Who are the people around you whose good, thoughtful, kind, loving actions are simply worthy of being lifted up and appreciated?  What will we do or say today to honor the precious things that have been put in our hands?

Lord Jesus, give us the insight to see the gifts of others that have gone unrecognized, and give us the courage and freedom from ego to speak up and honor them.