Dust on the Bible

October 31, 2021 / reverendjoannwhite / Leave a comment

Sabbath Day Thoughts

My church has a tradition of sharing testimonies on Reformation Sunday. It’s always a memorable and inspiring service. I don’t have a sermon to share with you today, but it seems only fitting on this day to ponder the privilege of reading scripture and invite us to a new way of engaging the Word.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

– Psalm 119:105

Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

– Matthew 4:4

“Taste (V & VI)”

– Christopher Smart, 1770

“O take the book from off the shelf,

And con it meekly on thy knees;

Best panegyric on itself,

And self-avouch’d to teach and please.

Respect, adore it heart and mind,

How greatly sweet, how sweetly grand,

Who reads the most, is most refin’d,

And polish’d by the Master’s hand.”

When was the last time you read your Bible? As Presbyterians, we believe the Bible is an important part of knowing God, but few of us have a regular practice of scripture reading.

We probably have some reasons for that. We may remember the antiquated language of the old King James translation, so we have a hard time finding meaning in all the Thees and Thous. We may feel that we don’t have time. Bible reading is on our “To Do” list, but it seems to always get bumped to the next day. For many of us, the cultural world of the Ancient Near East, as depicted in scripture, seems alien and confusing. We feel we need a Bible scholar to unravel the meaning for us. A few of us just want a Bible buddy, a fellow reader to keep us motivated. Does any of this ring true for you?

A great irony of our reluctance to engage scripture is that it is vital to our faith tradition. Churches born in the Protestant Reformation of the 16^th century fought for the ability to translate the Bible into the common language of the people. Armies waged war to read and interpret scripture in worship. People gave their lives so that we might even have home Bibles for family reading. Some of you, who were raised in Reformed or Presbyterian homes, may have childhood memories of family Bible reading on the Sabbath day. Many of us have inherited family Bibles that are well worn because they were well read. So how, in the words of the Hank Williams, Sr. country music standard, do we “get the dust off the Bible”?

I’d like to get us started by introducing a simple, reflective approach to Bible reading that taps into our natural gifts for imagination. Begin with a Psalm or Bible story. You could use one of the weekly lections that we print in the bulletin. A good starter reading could be the parable of the “Lost Sheep,” Luke 15:3-7:

“3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”

Allow about twenty minutes for your reflection. Take a moment to quiet your mind and set aside distractions.

Begin by reading the scripture slowly to yourself. Notice the cast of characters (the shepherd, the sheep, the flock, and the neighbors). Which character calls for your attention?

Read the passage again slowly. Now, imagine yourself as that character; put yourself in the story. What do you see (smell, taste, hear, touch)? How do you feel? How do you relate to the other characters? Allow the story to unfold in your imagination.

Next, slowly read the passage a third time. Consider, “How does this reading speak to me? What does it tell me about myself and about God?” You may want to capture your new awareness by keeping a journal to record your thoughts. You could even get creative and draw a picture or write a poem.

To complete your Bible reading, take a moment to thank God in prayer for your new awareness.

Like most things, developing a habit of scripture reading takes commitment, practice, and support. Make a daily date with your Bible and put it on your calendar. Try setting a goal of reading each day for a month. You’ll soon find that you are looking forward to those quiet moments with the “Holy Word.” And just in case you need some moral support, reach out to your resident Bible scholar – that’s me!

“Dust on the Bible”

— Written by Johnny and Walter Bailes

I went into a home one day just to see some friends of mine
Of all their books and magazines, not a Bible could I find
I asked them for the Bible when they brought it, what a shame
For the dust was covered o’er it, not a fingerprint was plain

Dust on the Bible, dust on the Holy Word
The words of all the prophets and the sayings of our Lord
Of all the other books you’ll find, there’s none salvation holds
Get the dust off the Bible and redeem your poor soul

Oh, you can read your magazines of love and tragic things
But not one word of Bible verse, not a scripture do you know
When it is the very truth and it’s contents good for you
But it’s dust is covered o’er it
And it’s sure to doom your poor soul

Oh, if you have a friend you’d like to help along life’s way
Just tell him that the Good Book shows a mortal how to pray
The best advice to give him that will make his burdens light
Is to dust the family bible, trade the wrong way for the right

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

“Chicken”

October 27, 2021 / reverendjoannwhite / Leave a comment

Poem for a Tuesday — “Chicken” by Kim Addonizio

Why did she cross the road?
She should have stayed in her little cage,
shat upon by her sisters above her,
shitting on her sisters below her.

God knows how she got out.
God sees everything. God has his eye
on the chicken, making her break
like the convict headed for the river,

sloshing his way through the water
to throw off the dogs, raising
his arms to starlight to praise
whatever isn’t locked in a cell.

He’ll make it to a farmhouse
where kind people will feed him.
They’ll bring green beans and bread,
home-brewed hops. They’ll bring

the chicken the farmer found
by the side of the road, dazed
from being clipped by a pickup,
whose delicate brain stem

he snapped with a twist,
whose asshole his wife stuffed
with rosemary and a lemon wedge.
Everything has its fate,

but only God knows what that is.
The spirit of the chicken will enter the convict.
Sometimes, in his boxy apartment,
listening to his neighbors above him,

annoying his neighbors below him,
he’ll feel a terrible hunger
and an overwhelming urge
to jab his head at the television over and over.

In 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, ed. Billy Collins. New York: Random House, 2005.

Blind

October 24, 2021 / reverendjoannwhite / 1 Comment

Sabbath Day Thoughts – Mark 10:46-52

The girl was so wild that they kept her in a cage. She bit and scratched, screamed and spit. They didn’t know what was wrong with her, but the Tewksbury State Poorhouse was the end of the line for the orphaned and the indigent. There was no place else to send her. She was eight-years-old. Her mother had died of tuberculosis. Her father, overwhelmed and unable to cope, had surrendered her and younger brother Jimmie to the state. Jimmie had died within months of their arrival at Tewksbury.

If it hadn’t been for the kindness of an elderly maid, Annie might have stayed in the cage. Seeing the little girl so cruelly confined, the older woman felt compassion. It didn’t seem right that a child should live like that, even if she was disturbed. The maid baked a little cake. She left it outside the cage, just within Annie’s reach. The suspicious child devoured the cake and a bond was forged between the little girl and the old woman.

With the calming influence of the maid, doctors examined Annie. They learned that she suffered from trachoma, an eye disease that had left her almost totally blind. All at once, Annie’s behavior made sense. She was a terrified, grieving eight-year-old, unable to cope with the death of her mother, the abandonment of her father, and the loss of her brother. The doctors treated Annie’s trachoma and operated on her eyes, restoring some of her vision.

We don’t know how Bartimaeus lost his vision. Perhaps it was gradual, the world dissolving bit by bit into shadows and darkness. Perhaps it was all at once – a blow to the head or a workplace accident that robbed him instantly of his sight. We don’t know how long Bartimaeus had sat roadside, earning his living in the only way left to a first century blind man: wrapped in his cloak and begging, depending upon the kindness of neighbors who might share a few alms.

We do know that Bartimaeus had heard of Jesus. Maybe, one day a leper had come through the Jericho gates, boasting of the healing he had known at the hands of the Lord. Perhaps disciples, who had once followed John the Baptist, had hurried past Bartimaeus on their way to Galilee, whispering that the Messiah had come at last. One day, news had come to Bartimaeus that Jesus had healed a blind man in Bethsaida. Jesus had spat into his hands, rubbed the blind man’s eyes, prayed powerfully, and the man had then seen everything clearly.

As the Passover drew near, a rumor came to Bartimaeus from pilgrims traveling down the Jordan Valley. Jesus was coming to Jericho. Jesus and his followers were going up to Jerusalem for the Passover. From his seat on the Jericho Road, Bartimaeus, who had long ago given up hope, began to imagine that his life could change if only Jesus would pass by.

We tend not to see them until they trouble us. Dressed all in black with big boots and a leather jacket, she shouts obscenities into her phone non-stop while her dog poops on our front lawn.

In Kinney Drug—or was that Stewarts, he stands in front of us in his grimy jeans with a mask pulled down below his nose. We look at our watch while he buys about a billion lottery tickets and some smokes.

She hasn’t left her house in years. Her son brings her the essentials and Meals-on-Wheels makes weekday deliveries. I hear she has cats—lots. Sometimes you see her scowling from the porch, turning away when you say, “Hi.”

He squats in a doorway with unkempt hair and a wild beard. He’s always having an argument in a garbled voice with someone who isn’t there. They’re everywhere.

She might have been legally blind, but Annie could see that the Tewksbury State Poorhouse was a one-way ticket to a life of poverty and misery. Occasionally, children left. Those who showed promising intelligence were sent away to school, but Annie was legally blind. Where was the promise in that? When the State Board of Charities sent a commission to investigate the awful conditions of the poorhouse, Annie saw her chance. She told the commission that she wanted to go to school.

As an illiterate fourteen-year-old, Annie was sent to the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston. There Annie found that her struggles would be greater than her visual impairment. Institutionalized from the age of eight, Annie lacked social skills, table manners, and appropriate hygiene. She alienated her fellow students, and her quick temper put her at odds with her teachers. Despite her difficulties, Annie was tremendously bright and hard working. She put her prodigious gifts to work and excelled. Six years later in 1887, Annie took top honors as valedictorian upon graduation from the Perkins Institute.

When Jesus and his friends passed Bartimaeus on the Jericho Road, the blind man knew that this was his big shot. Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, and odds were good that he wasn’t coming back. If healing was going to happen, it had to be now. So, Bartimaeus began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! Hey, you! Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Bartimaeus made the biggest scene imaginable. It was embarrassing. The neighbors told him to pipe down, but the more they told him to stop, the more he yelled. Folks began to look away. They turned to one another and shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders as if to say, “Can you believe this, guy?” If the neighbors had had their way, Jesus wouldn’t have stopped. Instead, the good people of Jericho would have cheered Jesus on and sent him up to the Holy City where meaningful and important things were surely waiting.

We don’t know if it was the “Hey, you!” or the “Son of David” or the “Have mercy on me,” but I’m sure everyone was surprised when Jesus stopped. As Jesus called Bartimaeus over, the neighbors, who had been so anxious to silence Bartimaeus, had a change of heart. Suddenly, they were all help and smiles. “He’s calling you! ‘Atta boy! Get up there!” For his part, the blind man was so confident of his impending healing that he leapt up and left behind the tools of his trade. His cloak and begging bowl were forgotten on the roadside.

One day, we suddenly knew we were blind. We were volunteering at the Food Pantry when she came in with her dog in a stroller. We cried when we heard that her folks had put her out and her dog was sick and she couldn’t afford the vet bills.

One day, we had a flat tire and he pulled over to help us. He got out of his rusted-out pick-up, followed by the miasma of cigarette smoke and unwashed hair. While he helped change the tire, he told us how his grandparents raised him after his Dad ran out, and he never really learned to read, and he does odd jobs to make ends meet, and that’s ok.

One day, we saw the police and paramedics go in after the ambulance arrived without any siren. Later, we saw the stretcher come out with its quiet, shrouded contents. The EMTs talked to the cops while the cats cried piteously. Last spring, the house sold, but they say it was a nightmare to clean out.

One day, we read an article in the paper about mental illness. and we realized how impossible it is to find decent care for big-time disorders in the North Country. Folks just flail until they become a danger to themselves and others and the police get involved, which may get them off the streets for a couple of weeks, but healing never happens.

One day, we opened our eyes. One day, we knew that we had been blind to the hidden world of need all around us.

The head of the Perkins School helped Annie find a job after graduation. The Keller family of Tuscumbia, Alabama had written, looking for a governess who could help with their daughter Helen. A high fever at the age of eighteen months had robbed Helen of both vision and hearing. Helen was every bit as wild as Annie herself had once been. No one knew how reach the child, how to help her communicate with the outside world. Annie Sullivan went to Tuscumbia. With patience and persistence, she taught Helen Keller. Most of us may remember the powerful scene in the award-winning play and film The Miracle Worker when Annie signed “water” into Helen’s left hand while holding Helen’s right hand beneath the bright, wet flow gushing from a hand pump. Suddenly, a light turned on and Helen Keller, who would never see, finally saw what Annie was doing, and the world opened up for her.

We don’t know how Bartimaeus’ eyesight returned. It could have taken a few minutes, like a darkened theatre that slowly brightens as the audience rises to leave. It could have come back all at once—a bright, mind-blowing flash of sun and sky, landscape and people. It could have started with a bright point of light that grew until the whole world was illuminated like a kaleidoscope shining all about. Afterward, Bartimaeus, who was no longer blind, saw everything clearly. So clearly in fact, that when Jesus told him to “go,” he knew he had to come. He knew he had to follow Jesus, even if suffering and death awaited them in Jerusalem.

Maybe someday we’ll see what Jesus saw all those years ago on the Jericho Road. Maybe someday we’ll know what Annie Sullivan knew when she walked into the Keller home in Tuscumbia, Alabama. A hidden world of need is all around us—all the time. We can be blind, or we can choose to make a healing difference. Can we see? Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us. Amen.

Resources

Jarvis, Cynthia. “Pastoral Perspective on Mark 10:46-52” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Galloway, Lincoln E. “Homiletical Perspective on Mark 10:46-52” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

–. “The Story of Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan” in The Helen Keller Society. Accessed online at http://helenkeller.org.za/HK1/index.php/about-us/the-miracle-and-miracle-worker

Biography.com editors. “Anne Sullivan Biography” in Biography, April 2, 2014. Accessed online at https://www.biography.com/activist/anne-sullivan

See the source image — Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke in *The Miracle Worker* (1962) from Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Image accessed online at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056241/mediaviewer/rm4062820864/

Poem for a Tuesday

October 19, 2021 / reverendjoannwhite / 1 Comment

“Prayer in My Boot” by Naomi Shihab Nye

For the wind no one expected

For the boy who does not know the answer

For the graceful handle I found in a field
attached to nothing
pray it is universally applicable

For our tracks which disappear
the moment we leave them

For the face peering through the cafe window
as we sip our soup

For cheerful American classrooms sparkling
with crisp colored alphabets
happy cat posters
the cage of the guinea pig
the dog with division flying out of his tail
and the classrooms of our cousins
on the other side of the earth
how solemn they are
how gray or green or plain
how there is nothing dangling
nothing striped or polka-dotted or cheery
no self-portraits or visions of cupids
and in these rooms the students raise their hands
and learn the stories of the world

For library books in alphabetical order
and family businesses that failed
and the house with the boarded windows
and the gap in the middle of a sentence
and the envelope we keep mailing ourselves

For every hopeful morning given and given
and every future rough edge
and every afternoon
turning over in its sleep

Published in 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, ed. Billy Collins. New York: Random House, 2005.

“Servant Leaders”

October 17, 2021 / reverendjoannwhite / 1 Comment

Sabbath Day Thoughts – Mark 10:35-45

When the economy cratered in 2008, the St. Louis-based manufacturing and consulting company Barry-Wehmiller took a big financial hit. For CEO Bob Chapman it was clear that employee cuts were inevitable, but instead of sending out pink slips, Chapman made a surprising announcement. He implemented alternating furloughs of four-weeks unpaid leave for all. Chapman told his workers, “We must all suffer a little instead of letting people go.” Chapman participated in the rolling furloughs, foregoing wages alongside his employees until the crisis was averted.

When Cheryl Bachelder became CEO of Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen in 2007, the fast-food franchise was struggling. Popeye’s, which had started 45 years before as a grab-and-go fried chicken joint in the suburbs of New Orleans, had dwindling franchises and falling revenues. Instead of cutting the bottom line, Bachelder implemented a new leadership model. Bacheleder cast the vision for what Popeye’s could do: serve excellent chicken to families on the go for a reasonable price in more locations. Then she set out to help her workers succeed with better pay, benefits, and training. Bachelder transformed Popeye’s from just another fast-food mill to a business culture where everybody won.

In March 2020 as the world ground to a halt amid the exploding COVID-19 pandemic, the airline industry was in big trouble. Governments issued lock-down orders, travel plans were cancelled, and we all sheltered in place. The CEO of Delta Airlines Ed Bastian took drastic steps. Bastian led his company through the crisis by announcing that he would take a 100% pay cut, going without his $900,000 salary for the next six months.

Bob Chapman, Cheryl Bachelder, and Ed Bastian are advocates of servant leadership, a model for business management first theorized by Robert Greenleaf in 1970. Greenleaf cast the vision for management that shares power and puts the needs of workers first, so that they can reach their greatest potential. According to Greenleaf, servant leadership creates businesses where employees are growing as people. They feel healthier, wiser, freer, and more autonomous. Those workers are also more likely to become servant leaders themselves. Beyond the walls of the corporation, these companies make a difference for good, benefitting the least privileged and most at-risk people of the community. Greenleaf dreamed of a world where servant leaders would create businesses that showed the way for others to follow while making a helping, healing difference for communities.

Our gospel lesson reminds us that, long before Robert Greenleaf cast his vision, Jesus was a servant leader. He hoped that his disciples would follow him on that path. Jesus’s words, “whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all,” were spoken as he neared the end of his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem for that final Passover. Just before today’s reading begins, Jesus had warned his friends. For the third time, he told them that he would soon be betrayed, arrested, condemned, and executed.

Even though they had heard this message three times, the disciples didn’t understand. James and John had figured out that glory would not await them in the holy city, so they hatched a new plan. They would convince Jesus to honor them in the Kingdom to come with places of greatest honor at his left and right. The fact that the other disciples got so angry at the Sons of Zebedee tells us that they probably had their own visions of grandeur. How dare James and John assert their right to be elevated above the rest of them!

In stark contrast to those visions of glory, Jesus called his friends to be servants and slaves. A servant, diakonos, waited on others, whether serving food or completing helpful tasks. A slave, doulos, simply did whatever he or she was told, acting at the direction of their master. This was not what the disciples wanted to hear.

Jesus’s model of servant leadership was an extraordinary departure from business-as-usual in the Ancient Near East. Think about it. Caesar was a self-proclaimed God. Petty rulers like King Herod lived in luxury at the expense of the people whom they were appointed to rule. In stark contrast to Caesar and Herod, Jesus was the prime example of servant leadership. Jesus allowed his core value of agape, self-giving love, to guide him. That love called him to a life of service—helping, healing, caring, speaking truth to power, and ultimately giving his life for the salvation of us all. Long before Robert Greenleaf tried to sell the business world on servant leadership, Jesus was blazing the trail and hoping that his followers would go and do likewise.

Back in 1970 when Greenleaf published his first essay on his new model of leadership, he had plenty of critics. Those naysayers insisted that leaders would only be respected if they were firmly authoritative—that often translated to white men with graduate degrees from prestigious schools and years of experience at the helm of Fortune 500 companies. Greenleaf’s critics also said that if you make your workers your priority, then they will walk over you. They would indulge themselves with those opportunities, perks, and benefits, but they wouldn’t put their shoulder to the wheel. The skeptics proclaimed that companies who embraced this radical theory of leader-as-servant would never make money.

Yet time has told a different story. When Bob Chapman became CEO of Barry-Wehmiller in 1975 at the age of thirty, the ninety-year-old company had $20 million in revenue. Their technology was outdated. Their financial position was weak. Today Barry-Wehmiller has survived that 2008 recession and continued to grow. They now have 12,000 employees and a net worth of $3 billion. Beyond that impressive bottom line, the company sees its unique measure of success as the way they touch the lives of others. In addition to his work as CEO, Bob Chapman and his wife operate a foundation which teaches the principles of servant leadership for free to communities in need.

At Popeye’s, Cheryl Bachelder found that when she began to focus on changing the company’s culture to a servant-based model, things began to change for the better. As franchise owners and employees benefitted, the chain began to grow. Sales increased by 45%. Stock price climbed from $13-a-share to $61-a-share. Better yet, when surveyed, franchise owners, employees, and customers all said that they were happier. In 2017 when Tim Horton’s acquired Popeye’s, that grab-and-go chicken joint had grown to 2,600 locations worth $1.8 billion.

Although COVID-19 remains an ongoing concern, thanks to the delta-variant, things are looking up at Delta Airlines. Unlike their competitors, Delta has weathered the COVID crisis without resorting to furloughs. In an interview last month, CEO Ed Bastian said that flights are full and Delta is hopeful and optimistic. After losing $9 billion in 2020, Delta turned a profit last quarter and is on track to do the same this quarter. Delta was the first airline to volunteer to help with the evacuation of Afghanistan. With more than two dozen flights out of Kabul, they airlifted 3,000 refugees from the crumbling nation. When praised for his leadership, Bastian brushes aside the compliments, saying, “It’s all about the people.”

Of course, after Jesus, the best example of the power of servant leadership is found in the disciples, the ones who really didn’t get it when Jesus told them three times that whoever wishes to be greatest of all must be servant of all. Ten of the disciples would follow Jesus in losing their lives for the sake of the gospel. As they reached out to the world with the good news of God’s amazing love, the disciples died untimely deaths in pursuit of Jesus’ mission and in service to God’s Kingdom. They were crucified, put to the sword, stabbed, clubbed, stoned, and burned. Even John, the only disciple to live to old age, suffered—driven out of Israel and forced to live in exile on the other side of the Mediterranean. Despite the high cost of servanthood, by the time John died, the gospel had spread exponentially. House churches spanned the Roman Empire, from North Africa to Syria to Spain. Everywhere people were affirming that God is love and Jesus is Lord.

Those servant churches would grow. Within four centuries, Christianity, which began as a persecuted sect of Judaism, was granted status as an official religion on the Roman Empire. Today there are 2.5 billion Christians worldwide, about a third of the world’s population. Nowadays, the fastest growing churches in the world are in places like Iran, China, and North Korea, where servants of the gospel take great risks to share the good news that Jesus, who was slave of all, loved us so much that he died for our sins.

I suspect that there would be more thriving churches if we worried less about number of members and the size of endowments and we thought more about servant leadership. It is in putting love into action, it is in choosing to serve others, it is in saying “yes” to Jesus’s humble purpose, that greatness is found and growth comes. May it be just as true for us as it is for those titans of industry. May it be just as true for us as it was for Jesus and the early church. Amen.

Resources:

Thompson, James J. “Theological Perspective on Mark 10:35-45” in Feasting on the Word, year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Black, C. Clifton. “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 10:35-45” in Feasting on the Word, year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Tait, Brian. “Traditional Leadership vs. Servant Leadership” in Forbes Magazine, March 11, 2020. Accessed online at forbes.com.

Liden, Wayne, Menser, and Hu. “Servant Leadership: Validation of a Short Form of the SL-28,” in The Leadership Quarterly, 26(2), January 2015. Accessed online at researchgate.net.

Greenelaf, Robert K. “What Is Servant Leadership?” in The Center for Servant Leadership. Accessed online at Greenleaf.org.

–. “Leaders Eat Last” an interview with Simon Sinek on CBS Mornings, January 7, 2014. Accessed online at cbsnews,org.

Gibbons, Mike. “Servant Leadership Examples & Characteristics” in People Managing People Magazine, 2020. Accessed online at peoplemanagingpeople.com.

Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet 1852-6 Ford Madox Brown 1821-1893 Presented by subscribers 1893 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N01394

“Risk”

October 12, 2021October 10, 2021 / reverendjoannwhite / Leave a comment

Poem for a Tuesday — “Risk” by Lisa Colt

“My teacher says,

You’ve got to stink first.

I tell her, I don’t have time to stink–

at 64 years old

I go directly to perfection

or I go nowhere.

Perfection is nowhere,

she says, So stink.

Stink like a beginner,

stink like decaying flesh,

old blood,

cold sweat,

she says,

I know a woman who’s eighty-six,

last year she learned to dive.“

Published in Claiming the Spirit Within: A Sourcebook of Women’s Poetry, ed. Marilyn Sewell. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.

Possessed

October 10, 2021 / reverendjoannwhite / Leave a comment

Sabbath Day Thoughts: “Possessed” Mark 10:17-31

Americans don’t like to talk about money. In May, Business Insider Magazine conducted a poll of 2,130 people to determine the topics they were most likely to discuss with friends. Last on the list was money, outranked by current events, family, health, sex, relationships, and politics.

Rachel Sherman, a sociologist with the New School, reports that how we feel about discussing money may be determined by how much we have. Affluent Americans say they are circumspect about money because they don’t want their lower-wage-earning friends to feel bad. Middle income Americans tend to shy away from the topic of money because they may be economically fragile—the cost of their kid’s college education, a surge in healthcare expenses, or an unexpected big-ticket home repair can leave them reeling with more month than money. Working class Americans are much more transparent about money. They freely discuss the challenges or even impossibilities of supporting a family on minimum wage work. They swap ideas about how they stretch their dollars and cut corners.

Kimberly Chong, an anthropology lecturer at University College, London, teaches that at the heart of the taboo on money talk is a cultural belief that money is associated with personal worth. Social status, power, and respect are tied to our paychecks and our bank accounts. It’s like that bumper sticker, “The boy, who dies with the most toys, wins.” That sort of thinking is uncomfortable in a democracy where we affirm the equality of all citizens, even as we acknowledge the reality of income inequality and the concentration of wealth.

We don’t like to talk about money, if we can help it. We really don’t like talking about it in church. Perhaps my calling our attention to the topic has got you feeling uncomfortable—or wishing that I would change the subject.

Jesus didn’t have any trouble talking about money. He talked about it a lot. Indeed, the only topic that Jesus talked about more than money was the Kingdom of God. If you counted, you would see that eleven of Jesus’ thirty-nine parables are about money. Today’s reading from Mark’s gospel speaks frankly about the tension that can exist between our understanding of earthly riches and Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God.

As Jesus and his friends were departing on a missionary journey, a rich man stopped them and asked the Lord an urgent question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” In Jesus’ day, eternal life was just another way of saying the Kingdom of God. Jesus sounded impatient as he counted off the requirements of the Torah: no murder, no adultery, no stealing, no lying, no fraud, be sure to honor your parents. Perhaps feeling relieved, the man was quick to share that he was all about that sort of righteous living.

Mark gives us a window into Jesus’ feelings. The Lord, seeing the rich man and hearing of his obedience, loved the man. Jesus saw that it was this man’s heartfelt desire to love God and love his neighbor as himself. This man had disciple written all over him. And so, Jesus extended to him the same invitation he had made to Levi the tax collector and Peter, Andrew, James, and John, the fishermen: “Follow me.”

When the rich man heard the cost of discipleship, he balked. The thought of selling his property, and parting with the proceeds made his heart skip a beat, tied his stomach in knots, and sent his mind scampering down rabbit trails of worry and fear. The rich man went away grieving. The Greek word that describes how the man felt is stugnasas. It means shocked, surprised, and in sorrow. The man had a crisis of character. He turned away from Jesus, unable to accept what the Lord asked of him.

It’s a story that is hard to hear and perhaps harder to understand. Even the disciples struggled with what Jesus had to say about the rich man and camels passing through needles’ eyes. In the ancient near east, wealth was seen as a blessing from God. From the point of view of the disciples, this rich man was one of God’s beloved ones. How else could he have amassed that land, those homes, those belongings, those slaves? It didn’t make sense to the twelve. If the rich man wasn’t first in line at the pearly gates, then who could be saved?

Over the centuries, Bible scholars and preachers have grappled with how best to interpret this tough story, a story that questions our relationship with God and money. The monastic tradition has long looked to this passage as a proof text for vows of voluntary poverty. Postulants of the Franciscan, Claretians, and other religious orders take vows of poverty upon entrance, renouncing their worldly possessions. What they own becomes the community’s and is used or disposed of for the benefit of all.

In the Reformation of the sixteenth century, our spiritual ancestor John Calvin taught that the rich man’s problem was more than money. The rich man wanted to know what he must “do” to inherit eternal life. For Calvin, that smacked of works’ righteousness, as if we earn our way into God’s Kingdom by accruing God’s particular favor with good deeds. Eternal life, Calvin taught, is God’s freely given gift for all who place their trust in Jesus. We cannot earn our way into heaven, but God’s grace makes the impossible possible for us.

During stewardship season, generations of preachers have used this story to invite us to be generous givers. The rich man makes us question what we truly value. Is it Jesus and a life spent in his company, or is it our money and the things that we possess? In our love for Jesus, we are inspired, maybe not to sell all that we have, but to hold our possessions loosely. We prayerfully consider how our abundance may be used in Jesus’ purpose. We live generously as a blessing to church and community.

I think those are all valid and responsible ways of preaching about the rich man. Some are called to a life of voluntary poverty and radical sharing. Heaven is ours only by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are, indeed, blessed to be a blessing to our church and others. Ultimately, all we have and all we are belongs to God, whether we are rich men and women, or middle-class families, or the working poor who live so creatively on so little.

But the story of the rich man goes deeper than all that. Jesus calls us to question the core assumptions and the cultural beliefs about money that possess our society. Jesus contradicts the premise that our personal worth is tied to our net worth. That assumption prompts us to value some people over others. It’s a short leap from there to what the disciples presumed: that the rich man’s wealth was a sign of God’s special favor.

But that wasn’t how Jesus saw the world. Jesus loved the rich man. Yet, Jesus also loved those low-status, vulnerable children whom he hugged and blessed. Jesus loved those disciples, who struggled to understand his teaching. That abundant and overflowing love of Jesus was a reflection of God’s love. After all, God so loved the world that God sent the beloved son to die for us.

At the close of today’s reading, Jesus told his friends that those core cultural beliefs that we hold about personal worth and net worth don’t apply in the Kingdom of God. There, many who are first will be last and the last will be first. Jesus invited his friends—Jesus invites us—to let go of our false assumptions. We are called to envision a world where the penniless Haitian migrant at the southern border is as loved by God as the billionaire businessman. It’s a world where the illiterate day laborer is of equal value to the university professor. It’s a world where the residents of Edgewood House, and others who are reliant upon the social safety net, are every bit as valued and beloved as those who are enjoying a leaf-peeping getaway at The Point this weekend. That’s some radical stuff, Jesus.

If we accept what Jesus has to say, it will change how we see not only our neighbors but also our possessions. If our personal worth isn’t incumbent upon the size of our paychecks or our 401Ks or our brokerage accounts, then it gets easier to live generously and share freely. Our abundance becomes a way to shape a world where all may know that they are the beloved by our limitlessly loving God. That’s an invitation to discipleship that can make us feel stugnasas—shocked, surprised, or in sorrow. Or, Jesus’s invitation just might grant us a foretaste of the Kingdom to come and the life eternal. Jesus says, “Follow me.” How will we respond?

Resources

Black, C. Clifton. “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 10:17-31” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

Loudenback, Tanza. “A Survey of 2,000 Americans Found . . .” in Insider: Business Magazine. Accessed online at businessinsider.com.

Menendez-Atun͂a,Luis. “Commentary on Mark 10:17-31” in Preaching This Week, Oct. 10, 2021. Accessed online at workingpreacher.org.

Pinsker, Joe. “Why So Many Americans Don’t Talk about Money” in The Atlantic, March 2, 2020. Accessed online at theatlantic.com.

Thompson, James J. “Theological Perspective on Mark 10:17-31” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

When Dreams Die

October 3, 2021 / reverendjoannwhite / 1 Comment

Sabbath Day Thoughts — Mark 10:2-16 “When Dreams Die”

The COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on our health—and hard on our marriages. As employers furloughed workers or businesses went virtual, couples found themselves spending more time together and lots of it. That round-the-clock intimacy has been complicated by other factors. Lay offs and job loss have meant less income and greater economic pressure. Social distance has stretched the limits of our family and friend support network. If you have kids, closed schools and quarantined daycares created impossible challenges of childcare, homeschooling, and distance learning.

Studies show that during the first seven to eight months of the pandemic, the divorce rate surged. That spring, a survey of 1,277 couples found that 29.9% of them said they were in serious trouble and headed for divorce. Ken Jewell, a New Yok City divorce lawyer, related that when his office reopened after the shut-down in June 2020, he saw a 48% jump in requests for counsel. A further dark consequence of the COVID crisis has been an increase in domestic violence and substance abuse. Apostles’ House in Newark, a shelter for women and children, reports that their beds have been full throughout the pandemic.

Beyond the social science and the statistics, we all know couples whose marriages have become fraught, embattled, or failed over the past year and a half. Young couples with children, middle-aged empty-nesters, and even retired folks with years of marriage under their belts are calling it quits. There is a lot of heart-ache out there. Weddings are among the most hopeful and joyous moments in our lives. When those dreams die, they take a piece of us with them.

The Pharisees put Jesus to the test with a question about divorce, “Tell us, rabbi, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” The fact that the Pharisees knew by heart what the Torah had to say about divorce reveals that there was a larger controversy brewing. Deuteronomy 24 instructs that a man my write a certificate of divorce if his wife commits an “erwat dabar”—an indecent thing. The two great rabbinic traditions of Jesus’ day disagreed about what an indecent thing might be. The Hillel School taught that it was up to the husband’s discretion. A poorly cooked meal, childlessness, failure to observe the Torah, sexual immorality, or inability to complete household tasks, all could be grounds for divorce. The Shammai School allowed men to divorce wives for only one reason: serious infidelity. The Pharisees anticipated that Jesus’ response, one way or the other, would make him enemies.

It is likely that Jesus’ answer offended everyone. It certainly left the disciples scratching their heads and asking more questions. Instead of weighing in on what indecent thing would be grounds for divorce, Jesus called his listeners to re-think their understanding of marriage. Jesus turned to the creation stories of Genesis in which humanity is created male and female in God’s image. Something sacred is stamped upon each of us, and we are given to one another in the covenant of marriage. Two become one with God at the center of the relationship. In that union, we find a wholeness and completeness that was part of God’s plan right from the start. “What God has joined together,” Jesus teaches, “Let no one separate.”

Behind Jesus’ words lies a deep pastoral concern for women. According to Jewish law, a woman had no right to divorce her husband on any ground. It is hard for us to understand, but in first century Israel, women were a little like sexual property. Young women passed from a father’s household to a husband’s household in an arranged agreement that had monetary and social benefit for the father. The husband had every legal right to dismiss the wife at his discretion, like bad goods that failed to live up to their anticipated benefit. The impact of divorce upon a woman could be catastrophic. She might be able to return to her kinfolk. If not, she had no safety net—no alimony, no property rights, no home, no right to even parent her own children. She depended on the charity of neighbors or was forced to beg or resort to prostitution.

Jesus’s teaching about divorce contradicted this prevailing notion of women as property. Indeed, Jesus’s suggestion that women could divorce husbands would have sounded deeply shocking and offensive to the Pharisees. Jesus invited his listeners to see women as beings created in God’s image, whose equal footing was essential to wholeness in marriage. Marriage—this shared sacred identity and need for wholeness—was at the heart of God’s best hope for humanity. Jesus’s words were—and still are—a radical, counter-cultural, deeply truthful lesson.

Despite God’s original intent and Jesus’ provocative teaching, divorce persists. Presbyterians have been debating it since the Westminster Assembly of the Divines met in 1647. They allowed for divorce by husbands or wives in cases of adultery and willful desertion. The aggrieved party could later remarry “as if the offending party were dead.” Our denomination’s current stance on divorce is best expressed in a 1981 revision of the Westminster Confession. We acknowledge God’s holy intent for marriage, yet we also recognize the frailty and sin of humankind, “The weakness of one or both partners may lead to the gross and persistent denial of the marriage vows so that the marriage dies at the heart and becomes intolerable.” When dreams die, separation and divorce may become acceptable and permissible. That same guidance applies to traditional unions and to our refined definition of marriage, adopted in 2014, between “two people.”

Beyond the words of scripture, the teaching of Jesus, and the guidance of the church, is the uniquely painful reality of divorce. It feels like something dies at the heart. On the day in 2004 when I accepted this church’s call to serve as your pastor, I stood in the pulpit and shared that I was divorced. A brief, early marriage to my college boyfriend had come to a sad end, more than a decade earlier. My ex-husband’s adultery and “willful desertion” might have ticked all the boxes for the Westminster Assembly of the Divines, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I had felt profound grief, shame, rejection, and a visceral pain that told me that part of my heart was dying. I know that many of you in your own experience have felt the same, whether you have been through divorce or experienced the end of a long-time committed relationship, whether you are children of divorced parents or your adult children have suffered through divorce.

That collective pain of divorce is so great that it is tempting to not preach about it at all. Jesus, we hear your beautiful vision of marriage that is sacred and deeply reverent with God at the very heart of it. We freely acknowledge that there would be a whole lot less divorce, and many more happy marriages, if those relationships were entered into in the spirit of your teaching. But Adam and Eve have left the garden. We live in a frail and fallen world where we regularly disappoint you and one another. Lord, have mercy upon us.

It’s significant that Jesus followed his tough teaching on divorce with the blessing of children, those most vulnerable and lowest status members of the Hebrew household. Although the disciples wished to turn the children away as a waste of Jesus’s time, the Lord welcomed them and blessed them. Jesus welcomed the children, the outsider, the vulnerable, the rejected, the leper, the Pharisee, the low-status-second-class citizen. It’s safe to presume that Jesus welcomed the divorced. It’s safe to say that Jesus continues to welcome those who are divorced. The grace of Jesus Christ is always sufficient for us. Thanks be to God.

The most recent studies of marriage have shown that as the pandemic has continued, the divorce rate has levelled and begun to decline. Some of the reasons for that may not be good. The economic strain of the pandemic may have forced couples to remain together. The lack of childcare has put plans for separation on hold. Closed courts and a backlog of cases may be causing a temporary lull. Five states that make divorce rates public are showing a drop in the number of couples rushing to the courts. A recent survey of 2,429 couples found that 17% of those questioned now say that their marriage has been strengthened by the pandemic. They began to communicate better. More time together deepened their appreciation for one another. They spent time with the kids, exercised together, cooked together, and cultivated new shared hobbies. Their feelings changed for the better. Perhaps they began to glimpse in their spouses that sacred image that each of us bears. Perhaps they are now finding in one another that wholeness and completeness that God originally planned.

Resources:

Mallozzi, Vincent. “Divorce Rates Are Now Dropping: Here Are Some Reasons Why” in The New York Times, March 24, 101`. Accessed online at nytimes.com.

Staniunas, David. “Marriage, Divorce, and Mariners” in Presbyterian Historical Society Newsletter, June 26, 2014. Accessed online at pcusa.org.

Wall, Robert W. “Divorce” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 2. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

Meyers, Ched. Binding the Strongman. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988.

Vitalis Hoffman, Mark G. “Commentary on Mark 10:2-16” in Preaching This Week, Oct. 4, 2015. Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.

Ruge-Jones, Philip. “Commentary on Mark 10:2-16” in Preaching This Week, Oct. 7, 2018. Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.

Thompson, James J. “Theological Perspective on Mark 10:2-16” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

Joann White

writer, pastor, spiritual director, and enthusiast of wild places

Month: October 2021