Good Barbecue and a Good God

Good Barbecue and a Good God--February 12, 2019

"Praise the Lord!

 Praise the Lord, O my soul!

 I will praise the LORD as long as I live; 

     I will sing praises to my God all my life long.

 Do not put your trust in princes,

     in mortals, in whom there is no help.

 When their breath departs, they return to the earth;

     on that very day their plans perish.

 Happy are those whose help is in the God of Jacob,

    whose hope is in the LORD their God,

 who made heaven and earth,

     the sea, and all that is in them;

 who keeps faith forever;

     who executes justice for the oppressed,

     who gives food to the hungry.

 The LORD sets the prisoners free;

    the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.

 The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;

    the LORD loves the righteous.

 The LORD watches over the strangers;

    he upholds the orphan and the widow,

    but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

 The LORD will reign forever,

     your God, O Zion, for all generations.

 Praise the LORD!" [Psalm 146]

Let's talk about barbecue for a minute.

There are all sorts of variations on doing barbecue the "right" way, both around the world and even just within the United States.  You can have Carolina style pulled pork, or Kansas City style with beef.  You can have Caribbean infused jerk-style, or Memphis-style ribs.  Barbecue can mean a dry rub of spices, or a gooey sauce that drips onto your plate (and shirt).  It can skew spicy with heat, sweet with honey or molasses, smoky with hickory wood in the fire, or tangy with a heavier vinegar taste.  And if you are passionate about such things, you will likely consider one way to be the most authentic, most definitive style of barbecue.  If you bring me a plate at a picnic and say to me as you offer me a bite of your sandwich, "Mmmm, this  sure is some GOOD barbecue!" I'll learn quickly what counts as good barbecue to you.  I'll learn, by the examples you put in front of me, what you believe makes "good barbecue" good.  Even for something as familiar to Americans as summer grilling season is, we can each have rather different pictures, different competing definitions, of what "good" looks like, even if they all require a stack of paper napkins at the end.

All right, are we OK so far?  Can we all nod our heads in agreement that there are different (sometimes very different) pictures we carry in our heads when we talk about what makes good barbecue good?  And can we grant that one person may have a rather different working definition of why this plate of barbecue over here is good, and why that plate over there doesn't fit the same definition?  Good--because now we have to talk about what makes God "good," too.

I'm willing to bet this is a less easily asked question.  We tend to just assume we all know what "good" looks like when it comes to God.  You know... good.  But, we don't often stop and listen to the way the Scriptures themselves actually sketch out what God's kind of goodness looks like.  And because we don't actually listen to the Scriptures, we will instead substitute our own working definition of "goodness" and assume that God's kind must be the same as ours.  And this, it turns out, is more dangerous than assuming a Carolina-style BBQ restaurant will be the same as a Tex-Mex food truck's menu.

I have this sneaking suspicion that we all, to some degree or another at some time or another, just assumed that God's kind of goodness is reducible to "pleasant things happening to me" or "becoming prosperous" or "God doling out gold stars for good behavior to promote better morals." Plenty of religious-sounding voices out there can make it sound like God's "goodness" is when you get the promotion at work (as though the other people, who didn't get the promotion, don't also want to be able to provide more for their families), or that God's goodness is on display when your football team wins, when you get a good parking space, or when the Dow closes at an all-time high.  God's "goodness," according to popular piety, is when "our side wins," and of course also when "their side loses," and when things favorable to me happen.

But that ain't God's flavor of barbecue.  And it sure as heaven ain't God's kind of goodness.

See the Scriptures themselves, like the powerful words of Psalm 146, have a particular angle, a certain flavor, if you will.  And when the psalmist starts holding up examples of what makes Yahweh ("the LORD," the particular name for the God of Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam) so good, the poet talks especially about how God cares for people on the margins. Not "people just like me." Not "mainstream, everyday folk," and not at all the "great, powerful, successful ones."  When the Bible talks about what God's goodness looks like, what it tastes like, it holds up the ways God takes care of the people labeled "the losers" rather than the prosperity of the "winners."  The Scriptures celebrate how God cares for "the Other," not "me and the people just like me."  What makes God worthy of praise, in other words, is not the days when the stock market closes at a new record high, but the way God provides for foreigners, the elderly, and the children with no families.  It is the way God is kind and does right by the so-called "nobodies" that makes for God's flavor of goodness.

I am convinced more and more that a great many of the ways we are divided from one another in this day and age is that we live with competing (and often with only a small amount of overlap between one another) visions of what "good" looks like.  There are voices that can only imagine God's "goodness" in terms of what is good "for me" or "for people like me."  There are folks who imagine that God's "goodness" is reducible to an increase in my take-home pay, or a higher GDP, or having bigger and bigger piles of money.  And then there are these minority-report voices, like the psalmist here, who says, "No, that may be someone else's definition of what 'good' looks like, but it isn't the way the God of the freed Hebrew slaves defines 'goodness'." It is tempting--damnably tempting--to see goodness only in terms of what will help me acquire more, what will protect me-and-my-group, what will keep "our" resources for "us" and win compared to "those people" and "their side."

And I suppose you are free to operate with such a definition of "goodness" if you are determined to do so.  But let's be clear--that isn't how the God of the Bible defines goodness.  What makes the living God good is the way God tends to the needs of the folks "with their backs against the wall," to borrow a phrasing of Howard Thurman's.  What makes the God of the Scriptures worthy of praise is the way divine care is provided for the ones on the margins, the ones we overlook as "other," the foreigner, the widow, the orphan, the prisoner, and the bowed-down.

Over against the self-centered saccharine sweetness of the "Me-and-My-Group-First" mindset which is so popular these days, God's flavor of goodness may well be an acquired taste.

But... it is a taste worth acquiring.  

"Taste and see," says another poet, "that the LORD is good."  The LORD, the God who cares for migrants, for retirees on fixed income, and for children whose parents cannot hold them in arms tonight, this God is good indeed.

Good Lord, be your own good self and pour out provision and protection on those who are most vulnerable.  And as you do, give us your own definition of goodness to see the world by.

The Company Jesus Keeps

The Company Jesus Keeps--February 11, 2019

“And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him.” [Mark 2:15]

One of my favorite song lyrics is a line by Jon Foreman of the band Switchfoot, who sings, “We are a beautiful letdown, painfully uncool—the church of the dropouts, the losers, the sinners, the failures, and the fools.”  I think he’s got it right about what it looks like when Jesus chooses his own company: we get a motley crew that he makes into something blessed. 

This is the thing that throws a monkey-wrench into any and all attempts to pretend that Jesus was or is a respectable teacher of religion.  He was and is neither, and by his own choosing, at that.  We all know the common-sense rule that “bad company corrupts good morals” (Paul even quotes that old chestnut in 1 Corinthians 15:33). And yet there is Jesus, deliberately choosing to surround himself with the sinners and sell-outs.  And not just to be in physical proximity with them (after all, I probably have no association at all with the people I am standing behind in line at the grocery store, and I’m right next to them.), but actually to eat with these “tax collectors and sinners” by his own choosing.  That’s a big deal in a first-century Mediterranean culture, where table fellowship was a sign of acceptance and of friendship. 

In other words, Jesus has no “plausible deniability” with this crowd. He can’t say, “Well, I’m near these people, but I didn’t know about their unacceptable lifestyle.”  He can’t issue a press-release declaring, “I’m acquainted with these people, but I don’t want to be associated with them.”  And he can’t pretend that he’s holding his nose while he sits at table with them. Jesus consciously and deliberately opens the messianic banquet table, the royal table of the Kingdom of God, to people who are unquestionably unworthy. He realizes he’s breaking not only the common-sense rule about “bad company” and “good morals,” but also all the tenets of basic religion that say you’re not supposed to hang around sinners or reward them with attention. But that’s Jesus for you—much less interested in doing what the rules and rule-givers would tell him to do, and much more interested in bringing the Reign of God to all the places is isn’t fully happening yet.

That’s bound to make a motley crew of a community—a church of, well, “dropouts, losers, sinners, failures, and fools.” Jesus knows it and is willing to live with it. In fact, these are the people he chooses to surround himself with. He doesn’t settle for sinners—he seeks us out. And yep, I said us, not them.

We are going to have to get that straight before we go any further, because it lets us see ourselves truthfully. We are the sinners and sell-outs that Jesus chose and keeps choosing to have over for dinner.  No, more than that—he comes to our houses, invites himself over, invades our space, and sets up shop in our dining rooms. He is not only willing to be seen with the likes of you and me, in all our brokenness, and not only willing to be counted as our friends by sharing a table with us, but beyond that Jesus is willing to put himself in the place of guest at Levi’s house, receiving what this shameless sell-out puts out for dinner. It’s so much more respectable, so much more a position of power, when you get to be the host, the one providing for your needy the one patronizing and putting up with them. But Jesus even lets go of that kind of position—he lets himself be the guest of these unacceptable people, making them acceptable as he does it. And, we must admit, he does the same with us.  For all of our Respectable Religious attempts to keep out "those people" (the ones we deem unacceptable and "other"), we are among the messes, stinkers, and sell-outs Jesus keeps choosing to join for supper.

That, to be utterly honest, is a better picture of what goes on every Sunday morning than most of our mental images. We often talk about going to church as a gathering of good, moral, religious people being reminded to stay good and moral and religious or else God will get a bad reputation by association.  But much more truthfully, every Sunday, Jesus bears with us all and shows up in the house of sinners and sell-outs once more, willing to be present at the Table we set despite the fact that we have broken the rules and missed the mark yet again.  Every service of worship, every celebration of Holy Communion, every gathering of Christians is the story of Levi’s house all over again, with Jesus choosing to show up at table with "those people" and surround himself with this “beautiful letdown” of a community.

Once we get over the strangeness of that and realize that our picture of church as “our-good-show-for-God” is all wrong, that turns out to be wonderful, beautiful news. It means that Jesus, our Savior and Lord, is not just willing to tolerate us “in theory”… at a distance… with his finger pinching his nose, but comes close to us--and all the people we thought were too sinful or too unacceptable or too different--in all of our messiness, with all our baggage, and despite what the rules of common-sense say. And thanks be to God for a savior like that.

Lord, help us to admit that we are "those people" you choose to surround yourself with—and praise you for it.

Walking the Talk

Walking the Talk--February 8, 2019

"From there [Jesus] set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, 'Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.' But she answered him, 'Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.' Then he said to her, 'For saying that, you may go--the demon has left your daughter.' So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone." [Mark 7:24-30]

Let's start with what I think is a reasonable presupposition: Jesus was not stupid.

That might seem like an obvious assertion, maybe even something so self-evident we don't bother to say it, but in a story like this, I think it is really, vitally important to start with a common agreement that Jesus was not stupid.  Let's give him at least the benefit of the doubt that he was, and is, at least (!) of average intelligence, and that this level of intelligence informed his choices, actions, and words.

Fair enough?

I want to start there because without that presumption in the background, I think we are left stumbling through this story wondering whether Jesus was either surprised that he ran across this Gentile woman while he was out on personal retreat in Gentile territory, or whether he was deliberately, cruelly trying to withhold help because it came from an outsider pagan--a Gentile.  

I know I have struggled with this story for nearly four decades, and I have heard plenty of sermons from plenty of other preachers, too, over the years, floundering with a story that doesn't seem to paint Jesus in a very compassionate light at first blush.  I have heard folks say that Jesus knew all along what he was going to do for this woman and just strings her along for a while with the rather racist-sounding exchange about "dogs" and "crumbs" and the "children's food."  I know others who suggest almost the opposite--that Jesus  was planning on not helping the woman, changed his mind, decided he had been wrong before, and then had to be corrected by this woman's faith.  That take seems to present other complicating problems of its own.

But both of those approaches seem to forget what I believe is a vital starting point: let's grant that Jesus was not stupid.  In particular, let's take it as a given that Jesus would have known that heading into Gentile territory would certainly mean running into Gentile people.  That seems obvious, doesn't it?

Well, if that's so, then it seems obvious, too, that Jesus has intentionally set himself up for this kind of encounter.  In other words, Jesus has deliberately crossed a line--the border between Jewish territory and Gentile territory--knowing that he is bringing the very presence of God to whatever and whomever waits on the other side of that line.  Jesus chose to make this trip into the territory of foreigners, of the "other," and he leaves himself open and vulnerable to however he is received there.  You don't deliberately take a trip from your home town to New York City without also expecting to run into some New Yorkers.  You may not have in mind whether they will be kind or rude, whether they will take your wallet or take your picture for you in Times Square, but you would certainly know in advance and expect that you will meet some New Yorkers.  Can we seriously not presume that Jesus knew, too, that if he went into a Gentile city he would cross paths with Gentiles?

If that was part of Jesus' awareness all along, then it reframes this whole scene, I believe.  Instead of picturing Jesus like he got stuck with an unexpected layover for his flight and is stuck in Chicago while he was planning a direct flight home, we have to see that Jesus chose this destination, knowing who would surround him there.  Jesus isn't being short-tempered because he's stuck in an unknown airport and upset when some local person recognizes him in waiting in line at Cinnabon.  Jesus has deliberately headed into the unknown for him--he chooses to go where outsiders, foreigners, and all sorts of "those people" will be at home, and where he will now be the outsider, the foreigner, and the one on the margins.  Jesus, in other words, doesn't just reach out from the safety of his own yard to pat marginalized foreigners on the head as they walk past his back porch.  Jesus himself becomes one of those people on the margins, a foreigner himself, traveling without permission or papers outside of his own land and into Gentile territory.

In other words, if Jesus was smart enough (and I am convinced he was and is) to know that there would be Gentiles waiting for him when he got into Gentile territory, I think it means Jesus made this trip knowing he would be put into a situation where he would have to choose whether to extend the grace and power of God to "those people" or not, and that he chose to put his money where he mouth was when it came to the width and depth and breadth of God's love.  Sort of like you may think you know what you would do if a friend called you in the middle of the night to help them get to the hospital, or you may think you know what you believe about helping homeless people, you really find out what you actually would do and believe when the phone call comes or someone without a place to stay comes across your path. Jesus has been saying that God's love is big and wide and includes anybody and everybody... but until those anybodies have real faces, it's awfully easy to say that without really living it.  Jesus, however, intentionally has painted himself into a corner, or set himself on a collision course with having to live into the Gospel he has been preaching.  Jesus sets himself up for a situation where he will have to walk his own talk. He might not have been picturing this particular woman's need, or this particular setting, but Jesus had to have known that at some point, he was going to have to make the choice about whether he would share God's love and power and deliverance with someone who was "other." And that's what Jesus does: he extends grace to this Gentile woman as a Gentile, without making her convert or pray a prayer or renounce whatever Syrophoenician gods she grew up worshipping.  That's because grace, like any genuine gift, never depends on the supposed worthiness of the recipient--it is always grounded in the goodness of the Giver.

So here's the take-home for all of us today, kids:  it is really easy in this life to say that God's love is for everybody.  That makes for a swell slogan and a delightful marketing campaign for our churches, doesn't it?  But all too often we say those words without ever thinking we will have to mean them for someone who we regard as "other," and it's so easy as to be practically meaningless for me to say them only for people who are basically identical to me.  But if we really believe that God's power, God's love, and God's grace are poured out recklessly and generously for everybody, then we will deliberately let God send us into situations that take us out of our comfort zones to share God's goodness with people whose stories, appearance, language, love, culture, politics, or passions are vastly different than our own.  And when God sends our paths to cross with theirs, we will find out in that moment, whether we really do believe that God's love is for everybody, or whether we were fooling ourselves with a nice slogan all along.

Jesus gives us an example, I believe, of just that kind of courageous experiment that pushes us to live into what we say.  He had to have known what he was getting himself into.  

Do we?

Lord Jesus, send us where you will, to live out your love and to walk the talk of your Gospel.

At the Enemy's House

At The Enemy's House--February 7, 2019

"When he 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 does, 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]

I grew up in a household, neighborhood, and community being taught that local law enforcement was there to help.  From the police officer who lived down the block from my childhood house, to Officer Clemmons dipping his feet in the wading pool with a barefoot Mr. Rogers on public television, to the elementary school lessons about whom to call for help in an emergency, I was raised simply to regard the presence of police uniforms as a good thing.  They were there to help, to calm things down, to protect and serve, just like the motto on the side of their cars said.

I grew up, in other words, with the default assumption that the police were friends rather than enemies, help rather than harm, because they were members of my own community.  So I wasn't afraid as a kid if I heard police sirens going down another street, and I didn't have any fear that I was in danger of harm when the police were around.  It was, in many ways, much like watching Mr. Rogers on television talking about "the helpers."

Not everyone grows up with that luxury--Jesus, for example.  

That's why it's such a big deal when Jesus graciously offers help for a Roman centurion who asks him... and also recognizes the deep faith in this intimidating outsider.

For Jesus, there was no friendly Officer Clemmons on TV.  For Jesus, and all of his people living under the rule of the Empire, "law enforcement" meant the presence of Roman soldiers, who had imperial permission to force Jewish subjects to carry their loads for them, to extort wealth from people, and to use brutal force in the name of maintaining order.  Jesus would have grown up living in a land occupied by a foreign army that also served as the local police, so that when somebody was accused of making a ruckus down the block, it was the Roman army who showed up to restore peace and quiet.  And the Romans had no qualms about using their weapons first and asking questions afterward... or just not at all.

All of this is to say that in the household, neighborhood, and community where Jesus grew up, it was not automatically safe to call to the men in uniform for help--because they were the uniforms, not of local police from their own neighborhood, but of paid Roman soldiers who had a reputation for brutal efficiency rather than community protection. Where Jesus grew up, it was clear that the "law enforcement" you got from the Romans was not there to "protect and serve" the people of Galilee or Judea, but the interests of Rome.  And to far too many Roman officers, Jesus would have been just one more expendable brown-skinned face undistinguishable from any others (they all looked the same to the Romans).  Jesus had learned that by the time he grew to be a young man.  He had seen it before when other fellow Jews were rounded up as "troublemakers" by the Empire, and then crucified, or flogged, or simply disappeared.  Jesus knew, as any Palestinian Jew in the first century would have, that the closest thing they had to police were not on their side, but were more like an imperially sanctioned enemy with the power to do whatever they wanted in the name of preserving order.

We need to keep that in mind if we are going to understand just how radical it is that when one seemingly decent Roman centurion approaches Jesus with a seemingly sincere concern for his servant, Jesus neither runs away in fear nor refuses in anger.  Jesus doesn't lash out and deny help because he has seen too many Roman soldiers beat or harass his neighbors, and he doesn't go off and hide in order to avoid the centurion, either. He listens and offers help--even being willing to go to the centurion's own home, despite the fact it would have made Jesus ceremonially unclean by coming into contact with Gentiles and their household wares.  Jesus is not ruled by bitterness or fear of this "other," even though everything about the situation meant that the centurion was really "bad guy with a sword" than "good guy with a sword," more "enemy" than "enforcer of law."  It is not a matter of worthiness or of "liking," but rather a willingness to do good even for people across boundaries of power, ethnicity, and animosity. This, boys and girls, is what enemy-love looks like in action.

And then when the centurion displays a deep faith in Jesus' ability and authority to heal, Jesus does something else amazing: he acknowledges the faith of this "other," this outsider and enemy sent by the occupying empire.  Jesus says the centurion's faith is more authentic that the typical half-hearted hypocrisy of the Respectable Religious crowd he usually runs across. And he holds up this foreigner--this enemy with power to harm Jesus and his people!--as an example of how God's love reaches beyond the lines we draw to contain it.  Jesus says that this encounter is evidence that outsiders, foreigners, and strangers will be invited to the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the great eternal banquet.  Jesus sees something good in this erstwhile "bad guy" and holds it up to the light.  Instead of making this simply an encounter based on pity, or Jesus condescendingly throwing a bone to one of "those dirty Gentiles," Jesus names the good and unique gifts this outsider has to offer, which the rest of God's people sorely need.  

If we are going to take this story seriously today, we'll have to come face to face with two truths that will make us squirm.  First, following Jesus will send us across the path even of those we have been taught to fear, to hate, or to have nothing to do with, much as Jesus had surely grown up learning to avoid Roman soldiers in order to survive.  If we are going to be Jesus' disciples, he will take us along to do good and act with kindness toward people we regard as "enemies," as "bad guys," and even as "threats" to us.  Maybe you didn't grow up with a fear of law enforcement officers like the Jewish population of Galilee and Judea would have, but we all know people we have been taught, whether implicitly or explicitly, to keep away from for our own safety.  Jesus is going to send us to do good for their sakes, too, just as he does for the centurion.  Jesus will send us out to engage with "the Other," even the hostile Other.

And then second, following Jesus means we will have to leave ourselves open to surprise when someone we thought for sure fit into the "bad guy" category ends up having something good to teach us, to offer, to embody.  That means the risk of reaching out to people, not simply to puff ourselves up for doing a bit of charity work for "those people," but realizing that God may have it in mind to teach us something through the people don't think we can learn from.

Both of those are going to be challenges for us, to be honest.  We don't like Jesus messing with our categories of friends (who we think are worthy of love) and enemies (whom we don't want to love), of black-hat-wearing "bad guys" and white-hat-wearing "good guys".  But Jesus is bound and determined to take our neat categories and mix up all of our hand-printed labels.  

He has been doing it for the last two thousand years, after all.  Be ready for Jesus to do it again with us and the people he sends across our path today.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to go to the people you send us to, regardless of our hang-ups, and give us the humility to see what you are trying to teach us through them, too.

The Far Side

The Far Side--February 6, 2019

“They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes.” [Mark 5:1]

This is not just a footnote about geography, by the way—it is a foretaste of grace.

In what might otherwise seem like a throwaway line from Mark, just a sentence to connect one story to the next, there is really a lot going on.  Jesus has led his disciples by boat across the Sea of Galilee to the other side of the sea… that is, to the Gentile side of the sea.  Jesus has gone out of his way to enter into the territory of outsiders, or foreigners, of people excluded from the nation of Israel.

Jesus takes his followers to the far side of the sea intentionally, letting his movement spread beyond the confines of his home country.  The geography is important here, then.  The Sea of Galilee wasn’t a little pond or resort lake surrounded on all sides by good, upstanding Jewish communities full of good, upstanding Jewish people.  Part of the surrounding country was Jewish, but the far side was foreigner territory, you know, full of them people.  Galilee always had a reputation for being a sort of border-crossing area—Isaiah calls it “Galilee of the Gentiles,” in fact.  And by definition, “the Gentiles” were anybody who wasn’t Jewish, anybody who didn’t observe the covenant and keep the commandments and worship the right God in the right Temple with the right sacrifices. “Gentiles” is a nice way of saying “heathen,” “pagans,” or “the Other.”  The Gentiles are the ones who worship all those false gods and live corrupt lives and eat unclean food and all that.  In fact, if you went out where Jesus went and started associating with those Gentiles out there on the far side of the sea, you yourself would be made unclean. 

And, yet that is precisely what Jesus did.  That is precisely what Jesus risked.  That is precisely what Jesus still does.  Like I say, this sentence is not merely a footnote of geography, but a foretaste of grace.  This action is a tip-off of what Jesus’ whole life and ministry is all about:  going out beyond where it is “safe” to the outsiders, to the foreigner, the stranger, the "other" in order to draw in close those who were far away. And he is willing to risk being made unclean—even to be nailed to a Gentile cross—in order to bring us into the presence of the living God.

That is deeply good news for us, if we can recognize ourselves as “outsiders” to whom Jesus has come.  Jesus, apparently, is not afraid of the rumors that will be whispered when he crosses boundaries to go out to those people.  Jesus, apparently, is more interested in coming close to us than keeping his reputation as a respectable religious figure intact. Jesus, apparently, is just plain more concerned with us than the costs and risks and penalties of being made unclean to be with us. For us, who in all honesty are a grubby bunch of mess-ups—even on our good days!—it is Gospel good news to know that Jesus is always crossing over out of the safe and comfortable shores to the far side of the sea… for us. No matter the lengths it takes to get to us, or the cost he pays once he has put his foot on “this guilty sod” (as one song puts it), Jesus is always coming over to the other side, our side, to be with us, strangers, outsiders, sinners, and general messes that we are.

Now, that is also deeply troubling news, too, if we also have the insight to recognize ourselves in the place of the disciples on the boat.  They got brought along for the ride, and they might not have realized what they were all getting themselves into when they pushed off the pier.  They started in safe territory. They started their voyage at a pier they knew, with people who were already like them, and in a place that was officially approved by their religion.  And now Jesus has taken them to… the other side of the sea.  Now they are going to be made unclean by going where Jesus goes.  Now they are going to be taking risks into places that respectable religious folk “just don’t go…” because they have been brought along for the ride with Jesus.  I’ll bet they didn’t know just what the cost would be when they shoved off and stepped into the boat earlier that day.

You know, it’s funny—for centuries, Christians have used the symbol of a boat as a metaphor for the church.  Like the ark from Noah’s day, you wanted to be “on the boat” (in the church) rather than “lost at sea.”  It was always used as a cozy image, as if being on the boat—in the Church—was a way of staying out of danger. Makes it seem like it’s a pretty tame, easy, and comfortable thing to be a follower of Jesus. But in the actual stories from the Gospels where Jesus and his followers actually get in a real boat, he’s always whisking them off into some new, strange, even risky place.  He takes them along for the ride to the far side of the sea, beyond comfort zones, beyond their circles of social respectability, and beyond their prejudices, even though they have barely traveled twenty miles.  You can stay within county lines and still be taken by Jesus to the far side of the sea.  You can stay within view of your familiar homestead and still be led by Jesus to cross boundaries and into the lives of people you never expected. What an adventure we are in for, we followers of Jesus… who have also found ourselves as outsiders who have been welcomed in by Jesus, too.

O good Lord, come to us in all our messiness, and yet lead us further where you will, for wherever you are is the best possible place for us to be.

The Undesirable Hero

The Undesirable Hero

But wanting to justify himself, [the expert in the law] asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”  [Luke 10:25-37]

Before it was the name of hospital chains or a shorthand for do-gooders who happen to be in the right place at the right time, the phrase "Good Samaritan" was a scandalous suggestion.

Sometimes, I think we forget how upsetting Jesus' story would have been to hearers in first century Judea--to people who had traveled the road from Jerusalem to Jericho themselves on their regular commute.  And we forget that Jesus, who never wastes a detail when he invents a story, deliberately told the story the way he did in order to provoke his listeners, past and present, to see the face of God in the face of those we label "other."

I'll bet you have heard the story that we now unthinkingly call "The Good Samaritan" plenty of times--it's an old flannel-board classic from Sunday School.  Once the traveler gets left for dead by the robbers on the roadside, the structure almost perfectly follows the classic "rule of three" of good storytelling and jokes, where a pattern is set up in a first instance (the priest who walks by after crossing to the other side of the road), then the pattern is reinforced with the second (the Levite who comes along second, and does the same), and then the pattern is blown apart by the third character, who comes in like the punch line of a joke to subvert the established pattern (the Samaritan).

And maybe the phrase "punch line" is the right way to describe it, because this ending would have landed like a punch to the gut for the man who had asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" as well as for everybody else who was listening in on Jesus' reply.  See, the trouble isn't that someone at long last comes along and does the right thing and helps the man lying at the roadside: the trouble is the face of the one who does the helping.

Jesus casts one of "them"--the foreigner, the stranger, the non-citizen of Judea--as the sole character who actually does what God's commandments would have instructed you to do if you found someone laying at the side of the road.  The Samaritan actually does the will of God; the foreigner from the neighboring country (the hated neighboring country, mind you) is the one who rightly carries out what God's law said, by actually showing love for the neighbor.  That's the scandal--not that Jesus has the crazy idea that you should help people in need, but that it was possible for someone you thought you hated and distrusted (the Samaritan) actually to understand the commandment to love the neighbor best of all... and to actually do it.  The Samaritan is the hero of the story, but he's not the hero Jesus' hearers want.  He is, to borrow a line from a Batman movie, the hero we need.

The question, you'll recall, that sets this whole scene from Luke's Gospel, is that an expert in the Jewish law (not simply an attorney like we would think of today, but think of a pastor or religious scholar along with it, because "the Law" was "the Law of Moses" and not simply a secular or civil law) asks Jesus the question, "Who is my neighbor?" because he knows that the central commandments in all the Law are to love God and to love neighbor.  So he asks the question of Jesus as a way of putting limits on whom he has to care about.  He asks, "Who is my neighbor?" because he wants to find out what the boundaries are for showing compassion--is it the people who live in the same town as he does?  The same region?  Surely it only applies to fellow Jews, right, Jesus?  And Jesus has just turned that question upside down by offering up a story where "the Other"--a hated non-citizen from across the border into Samaria--shows love for the man at the roadside.

Why was the Samaritan in that area, along the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, that day?  What was his business there, and was he allowed to be there?  After all, neither Jerusalem nor Jericho were within the boundaries of the region of Samaria--so this Samaritan traveler is outside of his country!  He is a foreigner--and the worst kind of foreigner, at that!  (After all, the foreigners from the countries nearby are the easiest to hate, because they seem close and are easily pictured as threats--people from far away lands somehow can seem exotic and mysterious to us, not dangerous.  And Samaria was just on the other side of an open border with Judea.)  

Jesus turns the original question, "Who is my neighbor?" inside out, because he doesn't answer by saying, "You should help even a poor, needy Samaritan by the side of the road, because he's your neighbor too," but rather, even more radically, Jesus says, "The Samaritan you want to revile as a dangerous, shifty, threatening foreigner encroaching on your territory is actually the one who may be sent to help YOU when you are the one at the side of the road. The one you have been told to fear as the Other may yet recognize YOU as their neighbor, and still show love to you, even if you have been a hateful and fearful jerk to them."  See what Jesus has done?  He won't even let the lawyer view Samaritans as objects of pity for the lawyer to condescend to--Jesus forces all of us listening to see the ones we have learned to fear and turn away as the very ones who might well save us.  Jesus compels us to see good--the very mercy of God--in the face of the despised "other," no matter how "other" they may be.

Let's be honest here: so often, the questions that formulate in our minds are ones of fearful defensiveness.  We would have been asking why the Samaritan was traveling outside of his home country, and whether he was "allowed" to be traveling on this Judean road.  We would have been eyeing this foreign character with suspicion, clutching our purses and checking our pockets for our wallets at the mere mention of the third traveler on the road.  We still act that way when we are confronted by "the other"--fearful of the bad neighborhoods in the city where "those people" are, suspicious of who is in our town and what their business is, afraid of (or pitying of) the folks we have been taught to regard as "not our kind."  We get upset at the idea of helping out "those people" when there are so many of "our people" who need help, too.  But of course, that's exactly what the Samaritan could have said, too.  He could have said, "It's just not right to help out this Judean in front of me when there are so many Samaritans back home who need help.  I'll leave this man to die and go back to my home town to take care of my own first."  The Samaritan could well have said, "Samaritans First!" and trotted past the man laying at the roadside, confident that he was doing the right thing.  The fact that he does not is a sign that Jesus intends to blow up our age-old insistence on putting Me-and-My-Group-First.

Jesus compels us to undertake nothing less than a radical revision of what a "neighbor" is. A "neighbor," in Jesus' view, is not some subset of people I am legally responsible to "have to help" or pity in order to stay in God's good graces and stay out of hell.  A neighbor is someone, no matter how much difference of even animosity there is between us, who may yet help me when I am the one in need... even when I may not want to have to receive such help from someone I was predisposed to fear, or suspect, or hate.

Jesus dares us to see his own face--the very face of God--in the face of the foreigner who has clearly crossed out of his own country and into "our" territory on the Jerusalem-Jericho road, and to see that the ones we were most taught to be afraid or suspicious of may well be the ones who save us.  Jesus dares us to see not only a neighbor, but Christ himself, in "the Other."

That, and nothing less, is what it will take if we really want to see Jesus.

Lord Jesus, help us, not simply to pity or fear those who cross our path, but to see your presence in the face of the other.

The Demise of 'Nazareth First'

The Demise of 'Nazareth First'--February 4, 2019

"And Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.' All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, 'Is not this Joseph's son?' He said to them, 'Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, Doctor, cure yourself! And you will say, Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.' And he said, 'Truly I tell you no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of the was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.' When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way." [Luke 4:21-30]

Jesus could have stayed safe if he just would have kept his mouth shut.  The fact that he doesn't says that Jesus is more committed to declaring the scandalously big love of God than he is to looking out for his own interests.  But then again, that shouldn't surprise us: Jesus was never really one for the "Me-and-My-Group-First" routine.

That, it turns out, is exactly what gets him into trouble, and what provokes so much anger from his listeners here in the wake of his first sermon at his hometown in Nazareth.  Jesus insists that God's love always reaches beyond the boundaries we set up to contain it, and that God even reserves the right to attend to the needs of the outsiders before the wants of the insiders.

Everything had been going fine, of course, when Jesus began.  He was the hometown-boy-done-good who had come home as an up-and-coming rabbi.  And at first, the message Jesus brings sounds like God is going to do something special just for the people in Jesus' hometown in Nazareth.  When Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah a vision of God setting captive people free, bringing good news to the poor, and announcing God's favor, the folks from Jesus' hometown heard it as their special prize possession. They heard it as Jesus saying he was going to bring back the good ol' days of Israel's glory, and that it was just for them, just for the people in Nazareth, who all looked alike, talked alike, believed alike, and thought alike.  Jesus' hearers first thought he was saying that he was going to bring back Israel's old greatness once again (even if no one was quite sure what that "greatness" looked like, or when exactly it was), and they thought Jesus was launching a campaign to put Nazareth First.  After all, he was their own hometown boy...surely, Jesus meant for his divine power and favor to be just for their own kind, right?  Or that once everybody who fit into the "one of us" category, the "insiders," had their fill, maybe they could give the scraps and the leftovers to other people outside the boundaries, right?  The folks in Nazareth would have been fine with sharing with "outsiders," as long as they got to the end of the line and waited until all the "insiders" had had their fill.

And then Jesus just up-ends all of that thinking when he keeps on talking.

Jesus tells these religious neighbors in the pews, who have all heard what they wanted to hear from Jesus's words, that he has not come just for them, and that he has not come to launch a Nazareth First campaign.  In fact, Jesus says, the way God has always operated has been to reach out beyond barriers and boundaries of insiders and outsiders, and to be good to the outsiders, the foreigners, the strangers, and even the enemies, sometimes before the "insiders"!  Jesus takes the old conventional wisdom of "You have to look out for your own first" and turns it inside out.

And to make his case, Jesus references two well-known stories from the days of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, each of whom had been sent in difficult times, not to the "insiders" of Israel, not to the halls of power, and not to the people who were "like" them, but deliberately across borders to the nobodies and outsiders and even enemies who were on the margins and beyond the borders.  Elijah had been sent to help out a poor widow in Zarephath (not an Israelite town, but a Gentile/non-Jewish/pagan town in Sidon) to provide flour and oil for her and her son during the famine, and even to raise the woman's son from the dead when he fell ill and died.  And Elisha had given a free healing to the commander of the enemy army when Naaman the Syrian contracted leprosy.  Of all the stories Jesus could have taken for inspiration for his own mission, Jesus highlights these two: times when God had deliberately stepped over the boundaries and to include outsiders, to show love to foreigners (yes, even prioritizing them before the Israelites), and to care for even those who had declared themselves to be enemies of the Israelites and their God.  Jesus says, with his hometown listening, that God's way is decidedly NOT to put Nazareth First, or Me-and-My-Group First, but in fact, God deliberately reaches beyond those boundaries to embrace strangers, foreigners, and even enemies, as well.

And at that, at the mere suggestion that God's power and love are not the sole possession of "people like us," the crowd who had just been praising Jesus wants to lynch him.  They run him out of town and are prepared to throw him off the cliff because they don't like the idea that God is not at their beck and call, to the exclusion of all others.  They do not like the idea of a God who doesn't say, "Make all those outsiders stand and wait in line until after we have all had our fill," and they sure don't like the idea of a God who dares to put "the other" first.  It is downright scandalous to them, and Jesus has poured salt on the wound by showing them from their own Scriptures that this is how God operates.  

That seals it. Sometimes we (because come on, we are not really different from the people of Nazareth in the story) would rather kick Jesus out than let him in if he is going to insist on bringing everybody else along with him.  Sometimes, our need for control about who does and does not get access to God's power and love are so strong that we will silence the voices who suggest that God's reach is bigger than we dared imagine.  Sometimes we are so afraid of being wrong about who is or isn't acceptable to God that we would rather raise angry fists at those (even if it's Jesus!) who compel us to look back in our own Scriptures to see that God has always surprised us with a reach and a love that crosses the lines we thought were uncrossable.

But now here is good news on this day--at least good news for Jesus and for the people who want to be about his work: even when the angry crowd does its worst and wants to throw Jesus off a cliff, he simply "passes through their midst" and goes on his way.  Like the old Andrew Greeley line says, "Jesus and his troublemaking go merrily on," and that is exactly what happens here.  Jesus not only declares his intention to cross the boundaries that the Respectable Religious people have set up, but when they try to stop him, he simply goes right through them like a hot knife through butter, and passes on his way to keep making trouble, to keep reaching out to the "other" and the "outsider," and to keep on bringing good to people who were strangers, foreigners, and even enemies.

That's what Jesus will be up to today, too--what will you and I do about it?

Lord Jesus, break down whatever boundaries we set up to keep people away from your reach and your love, and send us out as your servants on your way to bring news of your love to strangers and outsiders, foreigners and enemies, too.