The Overturned Tables

The Overturned Tables--August 14, 2018

"Then they came to Jerusalem. And [Jesus] entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, 'Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers.' And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching." [Mark 11:15-18]

You can't talk about all the tables of Jesus without including the ones that Jesus overturns.

Last fall, when I first charted out this year's worth of devotions under the overarching idea of spending a year looking at different angles of Jesus' life, teaching, ministry, death, and resurrection, I knew we would eventually have to talk about this scene.  It was inescapable when I made the choice, nine or ten months ago, eventually to spend a month of 2018 looking at "the Table of Jesus," And that's because for every miraculous feeding or holy supper at a table in an upper room, there is also a table that Jesus knocked over in the temple, in what was certainly his most provocative and symbolic act of prophetic protest in all the gospels.

And mind you, that is precisely what this scene is: it is a symbolic act of protest in the tradition of the old Hebrew prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, who were all compelled by God's Spirit to perform strange enacted parables that riled up the kings and powerful people in their day.  And just like Jeremiah publicly wearing a yoke for oxen as a symbol of the coming exile of Judah, or like Ezekiel laying on his side for over a year, Jesus knew that this intentional, deliberate, and symbolic act to shut down business-as-usual in the Temple would provoke people.  That was part of his intention--let's not patronize Jesus and pretend that he didn't know exactly what he was doing, or that he had no idea his actions would be interpreted as impious, disrespectful, out of place, unpatriotic (the Temple was as much a national symbol as it was a religious one, mind you), and maybe even blasphemous or treasonous.  Jesus knew that all of these would be the kinds of reactions he would face for this deliberate, pre-meditated act of protest.  Jesus knew that as much as the crowds loved him for his miraculous table on the hillside where bread and fish were multiplied, he would be hated and vilified for the choice to overturn the tables in the Temple.

So, just to be clear about it, because this moment seems very important to Jesus, what is really going on here?  What prompts Jesus to overturn the tables in the Temple, which was undeniably the defining national, ethnic, cultural, religious, and spiritual center of Judea in the first century?  And why is it that the scribes and the chief priests in particular are so threatened and insecure by what Jesus does that they redouble their efforts to kill Jesus and get rid of his troublemaking?

It is probably worth stating here some of what is NOT going on in this scene.  For one, when Jesus overturns the tables in the Temple, he is not protesting tables.  When he drives out the moneychangers and dove-sellers, he is protesting neither money nor doves.  And the fact that he stages this dramatic scene in the Temple, rather than, say, at his own house, does not mean that Jesus is anti-God.  No, quite the opposite: Jesus protests the system that the Temple has become entangled in, a system that most people of Jesus' day had simply gotten accustomed to, a system in which the worship of God had been turned into the opposite of everything it was supposed to be.  

Jesus overturns the tables, not because he is anti-table, but because he is calling out the brokenness of the whole sacrificial and temple system, which allowed access to God at a price like a commodity, and which kept the powerful and well-connected running the show at the expense of widows and the like who gave all they had.  Jesus overturns the tables, not because he is trying to attack God, but exactly because he believes God is incensed over this corrupt and co-opted temple-industrial complex.  Jesus overturns the tables, not because he is an overly privileged celebrity who is ungrateful to the priests and scribes for "letting him" teach in "their" Temple, but because Jesus cannot help but call out the ways the Temple became one more way of trying to control God and to manipulate the people.

These things might seem obvious to us, reading the text from the Gospels, but it's funny--you just know that those are the kinds of things the loud voices of the Respectable Religious Crowd were alleging about Jesus.  You just know they were threatened by Jesus, and that they would have looked for any possible excuse not to have to see the truth he forced out into the open.  They were looking for any reason to dismiss Jesus and his criticism of what the Temple had become--so they criticized him for not being adequately respectful to their Temple, and to their God, and to their king and all the generations before who had labored so hard to build that Temple and set up the system of sacrifices and rites and rituals.  They criticized Jesus for being ungrateful for all those who had set up the Temple.  They accused him of being disloyal to his nation and to his nation's God, and they surely all pointed out that Jesus had a pretty comfortable set-up as a rabbi, and that he must be awfully disloyal to his nation, his religion, and his leaders if he was going to criticize the Temple system.  You can hear the accusations on their lips: "If he doesn't like the way we run this Temple, maybe he shouldn't be here--maybe he just shouldn't be allowed to come in to the Temple... or maybe he shouldn't be allowed in Jerusalem... or maybe we should just kill him."

This is, of course, exactly the sort of thing that happens when a prophet is raised up--like Isaiah or Jeremiah or John the Baptizer, too--who is so fiercely committed to the living God that it is impossible to stay silent in the face of systems that corrupt or co-opt people's connection to God.  Jesus was able to see with laser-like focus what the Temple was supposed to be about, and how far it had gone as it became a pay-for-play, controlled-access business scheme that kept the nobodies away from access to God.  And so Jesus chose to protest what had gone wrong in all of Judea that the nation as a whole had become OK with, or at least numb to, that kind of system.  And he did it, knowing full well that he wasn't there to criticize God or protest doves or tables, but also knowing that that was exactly the kind of thing the Respectable Religious Crowd would say about him.... because they didn't want to face the difficult truth to which he was calling their attention.

Jesus did it anyway.  He chose his moment (see Mark 11:11, in which Jesus scopes out the scene at the Temple but chooses to come back the next day during business hours); he planned what he was going to do.  He calibrated his message, and he overturned the tables, clearly stating what his protest was all about... but also knowing full well that others would deliberately misinterpret that message, so that they could make him the villain attacking and disrespecting cherished institutions, rather than seeing him as the truth-telling prophet he was in that moment.

Jesus did it anyway.  That is an important piece of what his courage looks like.  And it is also an important piece of what his love looks like.  Jesus, after all, was motivated in this protest both by his genuine love for his Abba, the God of Israel, but also by his love for the people who were getting stepped on and scammed in the Temple system.  And because of his love for both God and neighbor, Jesus was not only willing to stir up trouble at the Temple, but to be branded as an ungrateful, disloyal, impious, and disrespectful celebrity-rabbi for doing it.  Maybe even we could dare to say it was his love even for the scribes and the priests in the Respectable Religious Crowd that tried to get their attention when they we so clearly missing the point.  After all, like Flannery O'Connor says, "...To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures."  For the leaders of the religious and national institutions of Jesus' day, less dramatic attempts would not get their attention.

You and I, we who are seeking to be followers of this Jesus, we know that Jesus is not attacking God, but rather protesting the abusive of a system that tried to control God.  And you and I can see that it is possible for someone to be critical of something or something that one deeply loves nevertheless.  We can see that, at least, when it is Jesus in the Temple overturning tables.

But the challenge for us today, some twenty centuries give or take later, is to use the same discernment today.  Ours is a day and age that doesn't deal well with subtlety, or nuance, or even with prophetic criticism.  We tend to be more comfortable with short bursts (you know, 280 characters or less seems to be our attention span) that paint everything in black and white.  We tend to think that if someone is overturning tables in the Temple, it must be because he hates God and is rejecting our cherished religious values, when in actuality, he might just be calling our attention back to the living, beating heart of truth.  We tend to look for reasons to vilify the people who call out our hypocrisy, our complacency, and our apathy, because we would rather see them as unrepentant villains than ourselves as complicit and guilty bystanders.

The difficult question for us to ask on a day like today is this: If we had been there at the Temple that day, and if we had seen Jesus take such dramatic action in the Temple, would we have let his symbolic and prophetic message hit home in our hearts, or would we have looked for rocks to kill him on the spot for what appeared to us as disrespect for our institutions and subversion of our religion?

And maybe the hardest question of all for each of us to pose on this day is simply: Where are there tables in my life, my world, my system of getting through the day, that need to be overturned?  And when the living Jesus shows up and does just that, will I recognize what he is up to... or will I start reaching for rocks?

Lord Jesus, come into our hearts and overturn our tables.  Come in to our routines and drive out all that keeps us from you.  Come into the systems of our lives and knock over the idols, the distractions, and the lies that we have bought into.  Come and turn us upside down where we need it.

Naming the Problem Correctly

Naming the Problem Correctly--August 10, 2018

Jesus said: "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.' But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.' He said, 'Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house--for I have five brothers--that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.' Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' He said, 'No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead'." [Luke 16:19-31]

If a stranger shows up on your lawn someday, and then you open your blinds every morning to check and see that he's still there every day, there is a problem.  About this, both the Bible and so many loud voices of our day agree.

But we need to be clear at this point about just what the problem is.

See, many of the loud and powerful voices of our day would take that scene and say, "The problem is that you've got an intruder at your gate, and you have to get rid of them! Who said they're allowed on your property? Get those people off your lawn and send them back to... well, wherever they were before they got to your house!"

Ah, and this is where the loud and powerful voices of our day part company with the less bombastic but more confident voice of Jesus in the Scriptures.  The voice of Jesus, along with the chorus of voices we find in the Law and the Prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, would agree that there is a problem if you keep seeing a stranger on your lawn or at your gate with no change day after day.

But to be clear, the loud voices and powers of the day notwithstanding, the problem is not simply locatable in the stranger. The problem is not correctly named as "an intruder at the gates."  The man at the gate is not really the problem--he has a name, too, by the way.  He is a person, named Lazarus. The problem is you... is me... is all of us peeking out from behind our curtains, watching the stranger and assuming we are not connected, one to another.

The chorus of the Scriptures says it this way, "The problem is that you have a neighbor at your gate, and you have not invited him in!  You have the power and ability to invite him to your table, to share your abundance, and to attend to his needs, and yet you are upset that he is too close to your precious property?  Get him off of your lawn and welcome him to your table!"

See... we get riled up at a situation like Jesus describes here in this absolutely biting parable, but we get riled up for the wrong reasons.  The loud and powerful voices around us have got it all backwards, inside-out, and upside down!  If there's a stranger laying outside your gate and I keep watching him from the comfort of a McMansion in between binged episodes on Netflix and get upset that he's getting germs from his sores all over my nice lawn, then the problem is first and foremost ME.  There is something wrong with me that I am OK with the suffering of a man like Lazarus--a man with a face, a story, and a name as Jesus insists--but that I get upset when he is bringing his suffering too close to my comfortable and insulated life.  I am the problem first in that case.  I am the one who is truly sick. 

Open sores, after all, can have salve put on them, and empty bellies can have food put into them.  But self-centered, privileged, entitled, hardness of heart... well, that is much harder nut to crack.

Look, there's a lot going on in this parable that we will have to unpack at length on another day (or, preview of coming attractions, join me for a fall Bible study on the Gospel according to Luke!).  And there are a lot of ways we can get lost in the weeds in here with this parable by missing the point.  I have heard, for example, all too many sermons on this text trying to treat it like Jesus is giving a literal geographic description of heaven and hell, or trying to prove that this is a historical event just because Jesus gives one of his characters a name, or trying to insist that because we're saved by grace through faith, this story CAN'T be saying anything about how we are supposed to treat each other.  

And to try and deal with those all quickly, Jesus is crafting a story using (and then inverting) stock images and tropes of the Judaism of his day much like we would tell a joke about someone dying and going to the Pearly Gates to meet Ol' Saint Peter, but we don't actually mean to be describing the geography of heaven.  And the fact that Jesus gives a name to Lazarus (but NOT to the rich man, mind you) is important, but not to tell us that this is a historical event being recounted, but because Jesus refuses to treat the sick beggar as a faceless, nameless nobody, even if the world thinks that only the rich man in the house matters. And even though I am still convinced we are saved by grace through faith apart from doing enough good deeds to earn God's favor, I am also still convinced that Jesus intends this story to compel us to see that it is precisely the God of grace who cares about the people who are treated as expendable by the loud and powerful voices around them. And Jesus intends for us to see that if we are going to live in line with the values of the God of grace, we will see we are connected to the people outside our gates and on our lawns, and that we will share the bread God has graciously given to us because of that.

In other words, this is a story that is all about grace, but it will not sound like grace to us at first if we are more interested in hoarding "my stuff" under the illusion that it is mine to do with as I please, rather than first and foremost God's and has been entrusted to me in order that everybody be fed and cared for. This story is all about grace--the grace of abundance that had been lavished on the rich nameless man, grace that he squandered by thinking what was given to him by God was his own accomplishment, and grace that God shows to Lazarus even when his wealthy neighbor refuses to come to his aid.  

And yet, I suspect, this story upsets us rather than comforts us.  And if that is correct, my guess is that is because we have been listening to the loud and powerful voices of our day more closely and more attentively than to the voices of Moses in the Law and the Prophets after him, or even to Jesus himself.  We who talk a good talk about loving Jesus and wanting to practice our faith in Jesus freely... we have a way of not actually listening to him at all, because we know that if we actually listen to what he says about the neighbors at our gate, we will discover we have been seeing things all wrong.

Before we get to complain or whine about the world at large making it harder for us to practice our faith freely (and man, we are really good sometimes at that old saw), we should perhaps first see if the problem is actually... ourselves, and that we are the ones who have been keeping us from actually doing what Jesus says and seeing as Jesus sees.  Nobody else is keeping us from practicing Jesus' kind of neighborliness, which he himself insists has been THE dominant them of the Law and the Prophets all along.  We have been getting in the way of ourselves--we and our complacency, we and our love of stuff and use of people, we and our demonic insistence on putting ourselves first.

Yes, it is a problem if there is a stranger who keeps camping outside my gate or on my lawn, slowly dying of hunger and neglect.  But the real problem to name that situation is me and my damned (and I mean that literally) complacency and self-centeredness that treats him as expendable.  Yes, the stranger should not still be there on my lawn--but not because he should "go back to where he came from" before he came to my yard, but rather because Jesus says I should have been sharing my table, my abundance, and my gifts of grace with him!  Of course he should get off my lawn--I should get my head out of my rear-end and invite him to share my bread as a welcomed guest in my house!  He is, after all, a neighbor... and in the eyes of all the Scripture, Old and New Testaments alike, I should therefore love him as myself.

For too long, we have all been looking at our lives upside-down, inside-out, and backwards, thinking that we were fine and that "those people" were the problem. Well, it is time for our sight to be restored.

Today, may the God of grace, who never stops seeing the people like Lazarus, open our eyes, too, so that we can see beyond our blinds and our blinders, so that the curtains can be pulled wide, and so that we will open our tables to share the grace God has lavished on us with the neighbors God has sent across our path, too.

Jesus, give us your eyesight, your vision, your love, and your clarity to recognize the abundance in our hands as grace meant to be shared, and the people at our gate as neighbors to be welcomed at our table.

Place Settings for Bad Guys

Place Settings for Bad Guys--August 9, 2018

"When [Jesus] entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him and saying, 'Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress.' And he said to him, 'I will come and cure him.' The centurion answered, 'Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, Go, and he goes, and to another, Come, and he comes, and to my slave, Do this, and the slave does it.' When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, 'Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' And to the centurion Jesus said, 'Go; let it be done for you according to your faith.' And the servant was healed in that hour." [Matthew 8:5-13]

Talk about an unexpected dinner invite.

Here in this wonderful story--but a story that is also really surprising and subversive, also, if we are paying attention--nothing goes the way it was "supposed" to.  And it ends with Jesus' declaration out of left field that this officer in the occupying empire's army is the sort of fella who will get to eat at the big family dinner table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in glory one day.  Come on now--this isn't how this sort of scene was "supposed" to go.

For one, and let's be clear here, it was a dangerous thing from the beginning for Jesus to even engage with the Roman centurion. In our day, it is generally assumed that you are supposed to thank those who wear the soldier's or sailor's uniform for their service, at the very least, as a show of respect and appreciation.  But that is because we tend to assume we are talking about an interaction with our own armed forces.  In the first century in Palestine, centurions aren't the great defenders of freedom--they are the occupying force!  They are the invaders, the enemy, the boots used to step on the neck of Judeans who dreamed of independence and freedom. In the eyes of the Empire, Judean lives did not matter--they were expendable, and everybody knew it. It is a dangerous thing for Jesus to even speak to this centurion, and dangerous in just about every direction!  

For one, even though, again, we tend to depict our men and women in uniform as heroic, noble, and virtuous, in the first century, Roman soldiers were known for their ruthless brutality, efficient violence, and cruel oppression of the people they had conquered.  Romans made an example out of the people who crossed them, and Roman soldiers were the constant reminder to conquered people that if they stepped out of line, there would be crosses in their future.  So for Jesus to talk to this centurion is a bold move, even just because the wrong centurion in the wrong mood could have been spoiling for a reason to arrest, beat, and punish any Jewish man who crossed his path.  Plenty of Roman soldiers succumbed to the temptation that befalls anyone with power, position, and a weapon--the temptation to abuse them and take out their pent-up anger on some unsuspecting innocent civilian.  You have to think that lots of Judean mothers and fathers warned their sons to keep their heads down when they saw a centurion coming by--you let them ask for your license and registration, you let them make you step out of the car, and you kept your mouth shut if they smashed your taillight in and then cited you for it, because they could do so much worse to you if you stood up for yourself.  You have to think that Jesus had grown up in a world like that, and had been trained, not to respect Roman soldiers in uniform, but to fear them.  

And yet... Jesus speaks to this centurion without fear, without letting himself be dehumanized or belittled, and without bitterness.  Jesus speaks like someone who is secure in himself, and he treats the centurion with a respect that many centurions would not have extended to Jesus himself.  That is radical, just that by itself.

And then, consider the flip side.  For all the ways that the occupying Romans could and did  get away with abusing Judeans, there were plenty of Judeans who would be upset with anyone who seemed to be too friendly with the Empire and its soldiers.  After all, they were the Enemy.  And you don't fraternize with the enemy or come to their aid.  There were plenty of Judeans who saw any action of assistance, compassion, or even respect for the Roman soldiers as an act of treason against the notion of Judah one day become a free and self-governing nation again.  If you were respectful toward a centurion, they would have said, you were giving their occupation legitimacy!  You were implicitly accepting this violent rule from an oppressive foreign regime!  And you were a traitor, then.   There would have been plenty of people who, if they saw Jesus speaking respectfully with this Roman centurion (not even to mention Jesus offering to go to his house to help his servant!) would have put a target on Jesus' back, too, for aiding and abetting the enemy.

This is a practically impossible moment for Jesus.  He was risking his life by even talking to the centurion, both because the centurion himself could well have been trying to entrap some sucker into giving him an excuse to beat up and harass a Jewish male in the name of "keeping law and order," and because someone hostile to the Romans could have taken Jesus for a traitor if they saw him offering to help the centurion's servant.

And yet... Jesus steps into this encounter with his characteristic courage and compassion.  He cares about the soldier's servant, and he is brave enough to risk whatever consequences will come by being seen helping out "the enemy."  

And then from there, the story just gets weirder.  Even though Jesus' Judean background had surely trained him to be wary and guarded around the occupying forces of "law and order," Jesus discovers that this centurion is not brutish nor demanding. He doesn't want to put Jesus at risk by having him come under his own roof, but trusts that Jesus has the power to heal simply by his own say-so, even if he's not in the same room or building as the sick person.  And that is a faith that most of Jesus' own people do not have.

So this is the point at which Jesus pushes the envelope even further.  When the centurion demonstrates a surprising faith that the man from Nazareth can help him even without being in the same room as the sick servant, Jesus calls out this Roman centurion as an example of what living faith looks like.  And from there Jesus says something that would have sounded downright blasphemous to any Judean paying attention at all.  Jesus goes on to say that at God's great family dinner table, where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will one day gather for God's great unending feast, there will be outsiders welcome... even enemies like this centurion.  "They'll come from east and west and find a place at the table alongside Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," Jesus says, giving a nod toward this centurion.  Jesus dares to say that God's table includes people I have written off as "the enemy."  Jesus dares to say that God's table has place settings for people I absolutely abhor, as surely many Judeans despised the occupying force from Rome.  Jesus dares to say that God's family dinner will include people you would never expect... while meanwhile some of the Respectable Religious Crowd will be standing outside with their arms crossed and their brows furrowed in frustration.  The centurion is the stereotypical "bad guy" for a Judean in the first century, and Jesus has just declared that there will be place settings in glory for such "bad guys," whether the self-proclaimed "good guys" like it or not.

All of this is to say that Jesus doesn't just heal this one centurion's servant as a one-time, fluke sort of event, but Jesus stops and says, "This is what God's table is like--there is room at the great divine family dinner for people you despise, because God has deemed them acceptable.  There is room for people who may well truly be despicable, but whom God has chosen to accept.  There is a space for you, too, when you are the one that others scowl and bristle at and deem unworthy.  And the Respectable Religious Crowd just don't get a say in who is allowed to come to dinner.  

Jesus could have kept this all quiet, or he could have said something like, "I'll help your servant out, but don't think that means God loves you--you're still going to hell for being part of the enemy occupying force!"  He could have said, "I'll help your servant, because he's the one who is sick, but I sure as heaven wouldn't help YOU out directly, Mr. Centurion, if you were the sick one!"  And for that matter, Jesus could have just whimpered in submission out of fear of the centurion, rather than the confident graciousness that Jesus shows.  But instead, Jesus makes this a moment to go on record saying that God's dinner table has places set for no-good, rotten, enemy-occupiers, too, who were the wrong religion and the wrong ethnicity.

So now there is this question for us today, too.  Dare we allow the possibility that Jesus is pointing us toward people we absolutely cannot stand... and telling us that they are welcome at God's great heavenly table, too?  Dare we consider that just because I am bitter or resentful toward someone else doesn't require God to hate that person?  Dare we imagine that someone I see as an enemy, or a threat, or a danger, could also teach me something vital about real, genuine faith?  Dare we consider, too, that there are others surely who are convinced we do not belong, and that our only hope is that God reserves the right to include us in the Kingdom regardless of whether others approve?

We do not have to be overcome with hate or bitterness, and we do not have to be ruled by fear of the centurions whose paths cross with ours today.  We have the freedom and the choice to be gracious even to people we have been taught to be afraid of.  We have the opportunity in this day to let God surprise us with the faith that even your own worst enemy can teach you.  Will we allow such a possibility today, and the possibility of sitting together with them in glory, or will we remove ourselves in self-righteous arm-crossing and gnash our teeth over the grace that enfolds even enemies?

Your call today... but there is someone at the door asking for you.  What will we do?

Lord Jesus, give us your confidence, your compassion, and your courage, and your faithful imagination to see people we least expect drawn to your table in love and faith.

The Yahweh Administration

The Yahweh Administration--August 8, 2018

"In those days when there was again a great crowd without anything to eat, he called his disciples and said to them, 'I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way--and some of them have come from a great distance.' His disciples replied, 'How can one feed these people with bread here in the desert?' He asked them, 'How many loaves do you have?' They said, 'Seven.' Then he ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground; and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they distributed them to the crowd. They also had a few small fish; and after blessing them, he ordered that these too should be distributed. They ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Now there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away." [Mark 8:1-9]

Does it seem like we have heard this story before?  Does it feel like déjà vu all over again?  Don’t worry—it’s safe to admit it.  This story seems awfully familiar—like we are getting miracle re-runs or re-boots, like the way TV executives try and recycle old sitcom ideas from the 1990s because they have no creative new ideas.  And a lot like watching an episode of one of those rebooted shows on television, this story about a miraculous feeding of 4,000 people feels like it has lost some of the punch it had the first time around.  

We all know the story of the feeding of the five thousand--that is the one miracle, other than the resurrection, that all four New Testament gospels include.  Even for people who haven't been in a church in decades and haven't read a Bible since childhood, chances are, the feeding of the five thousand is one of those stories that sticks in your memory.  And yet here we have what feels like a retread of the same basic plot points... but with only 4,000 people, just two chapters after the miracle that got all the headlines.

After all, when Jesus fed a crowd before (two chapters earlier in Mark 6, for starters), there were more people (the count in that first feeding miracle is 5,000) and there was less food to work with (five loaves as opposed to seven here).  Come on, let’s just say it: this feels, at first blush, like a gospel re-run of a story we have already been through before.

And yet our narrator Mark clearly wants us to see these as two different events, to separate miracles, even if they are remarkably similar (see Mark 6:19-20 on that point, where Jesus has a conversation with his disciples and brings up both of events miraculous feedings and counts them as separate events).  Sure, it might feel a little anticlimactic for us to hear about a feeding of four thousand people if we already have heard a story about Jesus feeding five thousand people with even fewer raw materials. But Mark thinks it is important that we hear this story.  And that’s saying something, since Mark has no problems whatsoever just skimming through events when he wants to (after all, Mark just starts gospel with Jesus stepping into the scene already at thirty years old, without a manger, a shepherd, or a hint of a childhood). So if we already know that Jesus can do this kind of a miracle, why give us the whole nine yards all over again?  

Well, there's the fifty-thousand dollar question. What is the point of these miraculous feeding stories, especially when Jesus does this kind of thing twice?  Once might just be a regarded as a show of power--sort of a way of Jesus (or the Gospel-writers) saying like an infomercial host hawking a kitchen gadget, "Look at all Jesus can do! He heals blind people, he casts out demons, he walks on water, and now, would you believe it, he multiplies loaves!  And he makes julienne fries!"  If we just got one miraculous feeding story, we could treat this as a simple resumé-booster, meant to make Jesus look better. But a second miracle that doesn't have the same numbers, well that almost seems anti-climactic. 

Except... maybe the repetition isn't a weakness, but a point of emphasis.  We who live in an age that seeks after novelty for novelty's sake, we whose smart-phones are already obsolete as soon as we get them home from the store, we who are always chasing after the new and unusual, maybe we have been missing the point.  Maybe the way Jesus keeps hosting miraculously abundant dinner parties is meant to actually say something about the way God runs the universe!  

After all, Jesus' one recurring main theme in all of his teachings, parables, and sayings is what we usually translate as something like "the Kingdom of God," or "the Reign of God," or "the kingdom of heaven" (and I'd like to make a case sometime for translating it, "the Yahweh Administration," but that's for another day).  Jesus talks about what it looks like, and how things work, where God runs the show.  That is not only "up" in some heavenly realm, or "off in the future" in some distant afterlife, but anywhere and everywhere now where God's will is done.  Jesus tips his hand regularly at the start of a story by beginning it with, "The Kingdom of God is like..."  We are used to reading those words before Jesus' stories and so we know to expect that his parables are meant to sketch out what it looks like where God's Reign is unfolding.

But what if Jesus never stopped teaching that same lesson, even when he wasn't speaking?  What if every action of Jesus--every untouchable embraced into healing, every invitation to tax collectors in trees, every foot washed, and yes, every miraculous feeding--what if these were all ongoing ways of fleshing out what it looks like where God reigns? What if the recurring abundance, whether with five thousand or four thousand, five loaves or seven, is a picture of the platform of the Yahweh Administration?  And what if Jesus' compassion that leads him to provide for this crowd of strangers is a display of what God's table always looks like?

This, I believe, is what Jesus is up to.  This isn't a disappointing retread of a rerun miracle--this is Jesus showing that the feeding of the hungry is not a fluke but a central plank of the Yahweh Administration.  This is Jesus saying and showing what matters to him--and thus also what matters to God.  The makeshift table there in the middle of nowhere as baskets of broken loaves and sardines are passed around is a picture of divine abundance that frees us from having to be ruled by fear and scarcity.  This is a lived parable. The table in the desert is a statement from Jesus to all the world that we no longer have to view the people around us as enemies or competition, all grabbing and clutching at the same small pile of resources.  Jesus' repeated feedings are his way of saying, "When you live within the freedom and abundance of the Reign of God, you do not have to keep hoarding or pushing other people away out of fear that they are going to take what you need.  There is enough for all. Look what I do with a handful of loaves after all."  

And from there, it is simply a question of whether we will dare to trust Jesus and the promises he makes about the Yahweh Administration... or whether we will not trust him. Like the panicked crowds scrambling into the banks to get back their money at the start of the Great Depression, this is largely a matter of whether we will live in trust or fear--fear that there will not be enough creates the scarcity.  Trust that there will be enough for all allows us to witness provision for all.  Jesus creates a moment here in this lesser-known miracle to show to us all that the first event with the fish and the loaves was not a one-off or a fluke, but the kind of abundance made possible by the Reign of God.  

The only question now is whether we dare trust and live and work alongside the agenda of the Yahweh Administration, this Reign of God, or whether we will keep insisting that we cannot trust God to provide for all.  What will you and I do with this day?  And dare we open up our clenched fists because we can trust that God makes enough for everybody?

Lord Jesus, give us confidence in your provision, and let us be a part of your unfolding reign over all the universe.  Use what we bring today, whatever it is.  Use all that we are.

God's Kind of Party

God's Kind of Party--August 7, 2018

"Jesus also said to the one who had invited him, 'When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for your will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." [Luke 14:12-14]

You reward--you encourage--the kind of behavior that you approve of.  And generally speaking, you approve of the kind of behavior you see in yourself.  That may run the risk of sounding obvious, but preachers are notorious for repeatedly stating the obvious. And it seems pretty straightforward on its face that people typically encourage others to do what they already see as "good" in themselves.

When I try to teach my kids to help out with setting the table before dinner, it is because I want them to learn the importance of everyone in a family pitching in to do what needs to be done.  And while they are learning that, yes, sometimes, there is an offer of a quarter for table-setting helpers who will help without grumbling.  The goal of the reward is not just to get the table set, but to teach a whole way of thinking and acting--a whole mindset--that we all pitch in to help get ready for dinner.  And that is an important lesson I want my kids to learn, one which I hope they can already see in me.

Or, when I catch my kids sharing with each other, or sitting next to the kid who seems left out, and then I go out of my way to praise them for their small acts of compassion, it's because (obviously) that is the kind of behavior I want to promote.  I want my kids to be the kind of people who share what they have, and who look out to include the people who have been left out. And so it makes perfect sense, too, that I try myself to be the kind of person who shares and looks out for people who are feeling left out.  It's all pretty straightforward, right?  The values that I hold at my own core are values I want to pass along to my kids... and because I want to instill those values and practices in my kids, I look for ways to encourage them to do things that fit with my values.  

If we think sharing is important, we will not only model sharing ourselves, but we will encourage it in our kids.  If we think honesty is important, we will not only be honest ourselves but will promote truth-telling in our families.  If we think hard work is important, we will not only work hard ourselves but we will reward hard work in our children so that it can become ingrained in them, and ultimately, so that they will do what we are encouraging them to do even without a quarter or a cookie or a prize.  In other words, the real goal of the rewards and encouragements that come with parenting (or classroom management for teachers) is ultimately to shape the kind of people that our children become; and one hopes that we are encouraging them to follow the examples we set ourselves.

If all of that is obvious, good.  I was hoping so.  Because that connection between what we encourage in others and what sort of people we are ourselves is at the core of Jesus' teaching here about radical hospitality.  When Jesus encourages his listeners to invite the outcast, the powerless, the ones lacking influence or wealth, and the disinherited, it is because Jesus is convinced this is God's character, too.

Let's be clear about this.  Jesus isn't just making a harmless suggestion for how to win etiquette points, and he isn't offering party advice to make us more popular or well-connected.  Jesus is encouraging a particular way of acting because he is convinced that God acts the same way.  We are supposed to welcome and include people who cannot pay us back, regardless of their social standing or status, or even whether we like them or not... because Jesus is convinced that this is how God acts toward all of us... all the time.

In other words, according to Jesus, when God throws a party, it is for everybody.  When God makes out a guest list, it is not about God collecting favors or getting something in return.  When God spreads out a table, there are places set for the people on the margins and people who are against the ropes.  In a world that seems more and more obsessed with getting something back in return for a favor done or an invitation given, God messes all of that thinking up by throwing parties for the anybodies and nobodies who can never pay God back.  

And it is only because that kind of reckless hospitality is at the heart of God's character that Jesus then calls us to practice it as well.  The talk about being "repaid at the resurrection of the righteous" is not to say that only the gracious hosts of the world will go to heaven.  It is to say that God is teaching us and shaping us much the same way we teach and shape our kids.  I want my kids to learn to set the table without being asked and without complaining, and so part of training them is to encourage and reward that behavior now when I see it.  

The bottom line today, then, is that God's kind of party is one that has a place for everybody--including a special focus on including the people who will never be able to pay God back (all of us).  We aren't good at that--maybe that's why we need to listen to Jesus' words again and let them kick us in the pants.  We keep getting sucked into the old quid-pro-quo, deal-making, I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch mine kind of thinking that only asks, "What will I get out of it?" And God continues to try to reshape our hearts to become people who can be generous without wanting something in return, who love without expecting attention or rewards, and who include the least, the last, and the left-behind.  That matters to God because it is how God loves us--recklessly, unconditionally, and without getting something in return.  In a word, it is grace.  And Jesus is set on shaping us to be people of such grace, too.

Lord Jesus, encourage us and shape us to become more and more fully like you--and like the living God whom you have shown us.  Make us to be generous, gracious, and daring in our welcome.

The Copernican Revolution

The Copernican Revolution--August 6, 2018

"When [Jesus] noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. 'When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place.  But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted'." [Luke 14:7-11]

A little over five hundred years ago, an insightful Polish astronomer dared to tell us all that we were not the center of the universe.  Humanity is still reeling from the shock.

You and I learned it in science class once upon a time, I'm sure.  His name was Nicolaus Copernicus, and his mathematical observation that the Earth was not the center of the cosmos, but in fact was one of several planets which orbited the Sun, was a revolution in thinking.  It was not simply a big deal for astronomers or scientists.  It had ripple effects on all of human thought.  After centuries of blindly assuming that we were at the center of everything, it was, well, humbling, to consider the possibility that we were not.  

More than humbling, really--it was threatening.  The idea that our planet wasn't the absolute, unmoving center of all reality seemed to undermine medieval theology (which had gone on record insisting that the earth was the center of the universe, despite a lack of real biblical support), and the religious powers of the day could not bear to consider the possibility that they were wrong. So they dug their heels in, insisted that their theological assumptions were unquestionable, and for a long time banned the teaching of heliocentrism (the sun, rather than the earth, as the center).  Bad news for Copernicus, Galileo, and others.

Now, some five centuries later, this all seems a rather embarrassing chapter in church history.  It reflects organized, institutional religion at its worst: a claim to exclusive possession of the truth when it really had only assumptions about what "the Bible says" on a subject, a refusal to consider new information, the use of power to intimidate and threaten voices of dissent, and an arrogance about our importance that turned out not to sit well with the facts.  Five hundred years later, it is still something we are not great at owning up to.  Embarrassing indeed.

But also instructive for us today as an episode from which we can learn.  For one, we have to deal with the fact that for a long, long time, the official policy of the Institutional Church and the Respectable Religious Crowd assumed they were reading their Bibles correctly and that the biblical writers had been teaching that the Earth was the center of the universe all along.  Funny how we have a way of taking our assumptions and looking for ways to read them back onto sources we deem authoritative in order to give our assumptions extra heft.  It's telling, really, that now with the hindsight of five centuries, Christians can now recognize the truth (one hopes, just about unanimously) that was  once seen as threatening and dangerous once. Even though the long-standing assumed interpretation of the Bible would have been incompatible with Copernicus' teaching, it turns out we had been reading things into the Scriptures based on our own assumptions, rather than on what the Scriptural writers were actually trying to say.  We like to assume still that this was just a mistake of previous eras or older generations, but of course, it is just as likely that we are currently guilty of doing the same but are unable or unwilling to see it.  That insight by itself is worth consideration.

But for a moment, let's take Copernicus' discovery and make it very, very personal.  Because in a sense, what Copernicus uncovered with respect to celestial bodies was already in line with what Jesus had been teaching fifteen centuries before Copernicus published his conclusions.  Jesus has been trying to get us to see that none of us is the center of the universe for two thousand years now, and we are still just as resistant to his teaching as the Church of Copernicus' day was to his  astronomical findings.  We want to put ourselves in the center--to assume that I am the most important figure in my social circles, and that everybody else really revolves around me.  But Jesus dares us at the table to take a good, hard, honest look at things, and to see honestly that none of us is the center of the universe.  And part of how Jesus teaches us to see it is to practice de-centering ourselves.

This is what makes Jesus' words here in Luke 14 so much more than a meager bit of etiquette advice.  When Jesus instructs us not to take the places of honor at a dinner party or wedding banquet, he isn't just offering helpful pointers for improving your social graces.  He is giving hands-on, practical instruction for a radical act of dethroning ourselves from the center of own lives.  And Jesus is making it clear that all of his teaching elsewhere about putting the needs of others first is not merely abstract academic theory or philosophical principle.  Jesus intends that we put others before ourselves quite literally, and he will not let us off the hook with a vague and generic exhortation to be unselfish.  Jesus shows us what it really looks like to recognize that none of us is the center of the universe, no matter what the voice of our own egos wants to say to the contrary.  If we are going to take Jesus seriously at all, it will mean more than just lip service to putting others first--it will mean a change of mindset that percolates down all the way to how we approach social settings, parties, and communal gatherings.  And what Jesus teaches here is no less radical than Copernicus' realization that the Earth was not the center of the universe.  Jesus' table instructions force us to consider--and to act on--the very real possibility that I am not the most important person in the room at any given moment.

It's always easier to deal with things like this in the abstract.  We can all nod our heads and mouth our "Yes" to the idea of not being arrogant, or not being self-centered, as long as Jesus never pokes to closely at our real lives and actual habits.  But Jesus sees through all of our fake attempts at looking humble; he insists that we initiate the act of de-centering ourselves.  When I consciously choose to put others first, I have begun the Copernican revolution in my own heart, too. I discover with clearer eyes what has always been true: I am not the center of everything.  And that turns out actually to be a good thing to see, because it allows me to see my relationship to everyone else--the true Center included--more honestly.  Much in the same way that astronomers realized that Copernicus' model made the math work out more correctly and clearly to explain the movements of the planets, our understanding of how we rightly relate to one another and to God is put into the right perspective when we consciously put others first.

That can happen in real time in moments like dinner parties, wedding receptions, grocery lines, the clawing and fighting over promotions at work, or anywhere.  But Jesus insists that it does need to happen, that dethroning of self, in real moments in our lives, or else we'll be all talk.  The idol that bears my own image needs to be pulled down in my own actual interactions with real people, or else I will still be trapped in the illusion that I am the center of the universe.  

"Me First," and its variation that fools nobody, "Me and My Group First," are the praise choruses for self-worship, which is just as much damned idolatry as the worship of a golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai.  At least the calf-worshippers are honest about what they are doing, anyway. No, Jesus says, not "Me First," nor "Me and My Group First." I am not the center, and I never was.  Thank God.

Today, then, let us practice the Copernican revolution of the heart in the lived moments of this day, and let us allow it to affect the way we see... everything.

Lord Jesus, help us, graciously and lovingly, to see what has always been the truth--that we are not the center of things, not even of our own lives, and to find our place held in orbit around your love and goodness.

The Dinner Party With Enemies

The Dinner Party With Enemies--August 2, 2018

"On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.  Just then, in front of him, there was a man who had dropsy. And Jesus asked the lawyers and Pharisees, 'Is it lawful to cure people on the sabbath, or not?' But they were silent. So Jesus took him and healed him, and sent him away. Then he said to them, 'If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?' And they could not reply to this." [Luke 14:1-6]

Before the miracle, there is an even more telling wonder here in this scene. Jesus deliberately engages with people he disagrees with... and he is able to be both civil and direct at the same time.

This really is a wonder, at least compared with a day and age like ours, in which we are so hesitant even to have a conversation with people with know we disagree with.  Ours is a day in which it can feel like every force around us wants us either to yell at either other or to run away to our own little secluded cloisters of like-mindedness where we will never be challenged by people who think differently.  Fight or flight--they are our most ancient, even animalistic impulses, and they are still the most popular options today in our culture.  Either get into a shouting match, or walk away and find some other people who already agree with you who will simply reinforce what you already think.  

And, of course, never... never... deliberately put yourself in a situation where you might have to share a meal and table fellowship with someone with whom you disagree!

We are being taught more and more to withdraw from honest, good-faith discussion with each other these days... and of course, making it worse, we are being taught to blame "the other side" for being the unreasonable ones.  It's never me and my "side" that is uncomfortable with honest discussion--no, it's them!  And so we are taught to close the vicious circle in on ourselves--we don't talk to others with whom we are likely to disagree, and we don't do it because we are convinced that they are the ones who can't be civil and have a serious discussion.  How perfectly, terribly, circular!  And what a monstrously effective way to inoculate ourselves from ever having to actually engage people who think, believe, or act differently--as long as I don't have to sit at table with them, they will always remain a faceless "them," rather than people with names and possible reasons for why they think and see the world as they do.  The temptation is always to see the worst in "them" and only to see the best in ourselves... to attribute the best possible motivations to our own actions, to grant the most wiggle room or benefit of the doubt for people we already like, and to attribute the worst spin on the actions of the ones we see on the other side of the table.

But notice here, before we even get to the healing that happens in this scene--notice that the setting is Jesus going to a dinner party.  Again.  Except this time, the party isn't with the riff-raff, the outcasts, and the notorious "tax collectors and sinners" like we considered yesterday.  In a sense, that's actually the easier crowd for Jesus to associate with.  At least the people who are treated as outcasts and sinners aren't choking on their own self-righteousness.  The Respectable Religious Crowd--the Pharisees and Sadducees and the like--however, they are a lot harder for Jesus to associate with, because they are so busy convincing themselves they are right that they can't listen to anybody else, and certainly not this nobody of a rabbi from Nazareth who is always going to "bad people's" parties.  By this point in Luke's Gospel, Jesus has had more than a few scrapes already with the Respectable Religious Crowd, and they have already cast themselves as Jesus' enemies.  They don't like what they see as his cavalier attitude toward the Law (including, as you can see from this episode, the law of the sabbath). They don't like his unchecked, unauthorized power to heal and save.  They don't like his reckless table fellowship with the unacceptables. They don't like the fact that he just doesn't seem to be afraid of them or concerned for his own reputation.  And they don't like the way that he seems to be able to see right through their outer shells to get right down to their souls.

The Pharisee party clashed time and time again with Jesus, and Jesus clashed right back with them.  They disagreed on what the law meant, what God's Reign looked like what to expect the Messiah to be like, and what mattered most to God.  And yet, wonder of wonders, here is Jesus, headed to one of their houses for Sunday dinner (well, sabbath dinner), knowing full well that this was heading into a room full of people who didn't like him and disagreed with him.

And yet... Jesus went anyway.

This is critical.  This is vital.  This is the gaping hole in our public discourse in this day and age.  Jesus is able to go right into a situation where he will have to share table fellowship with people who at best are suspicious of him and at worst are looking for ways to corner him into saying something they can use against him, and Jesus goes right into that room with his head held high, able to look everyone in the eye with grace and with truth.  Jesus is the grown-up.  My heavens, we need models of such grown-ups these days.  We need models and examples--or rather, we need to rediscover that Jesus has done this already right here and offers us resources for practicing it ourselves--of how to be a mature adult who can have an honest conversation with people you disagree with, stick to your convictions, but also not resort to childish name-calling or "what-about-ism". Jesus goes to share a table--and remember as we said yesterday about Levi the tax collector, that sharing a table with someone in an ancient Near Easter culture is to offer friendship and social equality to them--with people who think Jesus is all wrong about nearly everything he says.  And yet Jesus doesn't flinch, doesn't run, doesn't dodge, and most certainly doesn't retreat to a friendlier crowd where he can just bad-mouth the Pharisees behind their backs. Jesus doesn't run back to Capernaum or Nazareth to have a rally with his friends and supporters when it becomes clear that this is a potentially hostile room he's walking into.  He is the consummate grown-up. He goes, he is civil, and yet he can also stick to his convictions about the sabbath and insist on healing the man in front of him.

That takes a mixture of courage, grace, humility, and honesty that I know I fail at balancing in my own life.  I know the same fight-or-flight impulse that is running rampant in our culture.  I know the same temptation to want to only talk to people I already know will agree with me. I know the temptation to a sort of tribalistic us-versus-them thinking.  I know the pull of just writing "them" off because they disagree about X, Y, or Z, and from there to just demonize them.  And I know the equally powerful pull of running away or staying silent.  But the more I consider what Jesus does here, the more I find him poking at me to keep going back into those difficult situations with difficult people... and maybe even to examine where I have been difficult, too.

Notice here that at no point does Jesus give up on his convictions--he is certain that the sabbath law was never meant to prevent healing people, and that it is right to heal the man with dropsy just as it would be right to rescue a person or an animal from a well on the sabbath day.  Jesus doesn't have to apologize for that conviction, and he doesn't have to pretend he doesn't think that way.  But neither does he have to be a jerk, a coward, or an agitator. He doesn't have to call names or exaggerate what the Pharisees think or stand for.  He holds his own, but he doesn't have to attack those with whom he disagrees--in fact, he responds to their difference of opinion by bringing life (healing the man with dropsy) rather than lobbing wild accusations or childish insults.

I wish there were more examples of that kind of maturity around that I could point to, for my own sake, for my children's sake, and for the sake of the body of Christ in my neighborhood and community.  There are precious few.  But there is Jesus... there is indeed Jesus.  And today perhaps Jesus is enough to begin a countercultural practice of grown-up conversation.  Perhaps Jesus is enough to show me what it could look like to sit, as the old psalmist put it, at a "table in the presence of my enemies," without running away or getting into a fist fight.  Perhaps Jesus is enough to show us an alternative--a third way, if you will--beyond fight or flight.

Before we even talk about the miracle of a healing, Jesus has done something profound and powerful, just in the act of sitting down at a table to share a meal with people he doesn't agree with.  May such wonders happen among us today.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage, the grace, the humility, and the honesty, to share tables even with people we do not like or with whom we do not agree, and to be grown-ups in conversation together.