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Blessing and Woe

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Blessing and Woe” Luke 6:17-26

They weren’t sure what to do with a female minister, so it was decided that I could make some pastoral calls.  My first visit was to the oldest couple in the village of El Estor.  “Just how old are they?” I wanted to know.  My interpreter shrugged.  She looked at her hands as if considering counting the years, but gave up.  “Old” she said, “At least 100.  Maybe more.”

Their home was tiny, a 10- by 15-foot wooden frame.  Dried cornstalks had been woven into mats for the exterior walls.  The roof was a thatch of palm fronds, grass, and more corn stalks.  Blue sky shone through in spots.  There was no door, no glass for windows, no electricity, no bathroom, no kitchen.  The only furnishings were two plastic mesh hammocks, where my hosts clearly spent their nights, and two plastic chairs, the cheap patio kind, where they clearly spent their days.  A round plastic wall clock with a long-dead battery proclaimed that it was always 11:15.  A few long-outdated calendars with bright pictures of kittens and flowers adorned the walls.

My hosts were white haired and wizened.  When they smiled, which was pretty much all the time, I could see they had about three teeth between the two of them.  I thought my visit was going to be bleak, but they regaled me with an hour’s-worth of stories about how God had blessed them with children and grandchildren, a home of their own, and long life.  When I offered to pray with them as I prepared to leave, they asked if they could pray for me.

My next stop was a fifteen-minute walk away, down a rutted dirt road.  Pigs and hens rooted and scratched in the yard.  Children in various states of cleanliness and clothedness spied from the edge of the wood.  A naked toddler squatted to relieve herself in the dust.  This house had a kitchen.  In the middle of the single room, an earthen platform smoldered with the remains of the morning cookfire.  Overhead, a big hole in the thatch allowed smoke to escape. 

My host, a stick-thin man of indeterminate age, could barely walk, due to neuropathy in his feet from uncontrolled diabetes.  His vision was failing, so he came up close to greet me and peer into my face.  He had been widowed about a year ago and in that macho culture was still trying to figure out how to be mother and father to his children.  I expected to hear the lamentation of mourning and the heavy burdens of failing health and single parenting, but that isn’t what I heard.  I learned what was special about each of his children.  I discovered how generous and kind his equally impoverished neighbors were.  I heard about the promised miracle of healing with the help of medication that the pastor had procured.  He felt blessed.

In our reading from Luke’s gospel, Jesus challenges us to see the blessedness of those who are poor, hungry, weeping, and persecuted.  Jesus paired those four blessings with four woes, four matching statements of prophetic judgment, that targeted the rich, the satisfied, the laughing, and those who are the object of public admiration.  Jesus’s words are hard for us to hear because, let’s face it, compared to places like El Estor, Guatemala, even the poorest people among us are comfortable and well-fed.  We have plenty to laugh about.  We receive our “atta’ boys” and accolades.  We can congratulate ourselves on our accomplishments and thank God for life’s sweetness.

Jesus’s uncomfortable statements of blessing and woe were just as disturbing for his first audience as they are for us.  In Jesus’s day, suffering and affliction were often seen as a sign of God’s punishment.  To be poor, hungry, mourning, and persecuted suggested that something had gone terribly wrong in your relationship with God.  Remember when Jesus healed the blind man outside the Temple (John 9)?  The disciples wanted to know who had sinned to cause that blindness in the first place—the man or his parents.  Likewise, material wealth was seen as a sign of divine favor.  That’s why it was so scandalous of Jesus to praise the miniscule offering that a poor widow brought to the Temple, just a couple of small copper coins (Matt. 12:41-44).  Those people in the crowd who came to Jesus for healing, they were the most marginal, vulnerable neighbors in the Galilee.  The disciples, who were right there watching Jesus at work, might have thought a lot of things about that crowd, but they would not have called them blessed as Jesus did.

When New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan teaches about Luke’s beatitudes, he likes to point out who the “poor” are.  Jesus used the Greek word ptoxoi.  The ptoxoi are those who are reduced to begging because they have no other resources.  The ptoxoi are the lepers, the lame, the childless widows who must either sell themselves or beg.  In Crossan’s words, the ptoxoi are “the utterly reviled and expendable of the human family, the wretched of the earth.”

In today’s parlance, the ptoxoi are persecuted Rohingya refugees, who languish in the no-mans-land of camps, hoping for a home.  The ptoxoi are the starving people of drought-stricken Somalia, with the bloated bellies, ashy skin, and dull hair of malnutrition.  The ptoxoi are unaccompanied child migrants, maimed, molested, and enslaved by traffickers.  The ptoxoi are the people of El Estor.  The ptoxoi are blessed because they see things as they truly are.  The abject, destitute poor know they are utterly reliant upon God.  To be the blessed of God is to accept the stark reality that in the end we have absolutely nothing but God.  This is the hard truth, whether we come from El Estor, Guatemala or Saranac Lake, New York.

The trouble with our affluence, the trouble with our plenty, the trouble with our non-stop laughter, the trouble with our playing for the court of public opinion is that we can lose all perspective.  Instead of acknowledging our utter dependence upon God, we trust in our bank accounts, our stockpile of possessions, and all that good press we get. Woe to us when we believe money or things can solve all our problems.  Woe to us when we laugh while the world wails.  Woe to us when we find ourselves saying and doing unconscionable things to please the court of public opinion.

Back in Guatemala, I worshipped that evening with my new friends in their cinderblock church.  It was floored with a slab of unfinished concrete and topped with corrugated tin.  There were no stained-glass windows, just open holes where the wind blew through.  In place of pews, we sat on simple benches.  The walls were painted a bright, watery, turquoise blue.  A primitive mural of Noah, his ark, the dove, and the rainbow spanned the chancel.  There was no pipe organ, no choir.  Instead, a small praise band, powered by a noisy generator, played hymns at ear-ringing volume on well-weathered instruments.  Worshippers sang along with a wholehearted joy that I have never seen in any American Presbyterian church—and they did that whether they could or couldn’t carry a tune.

Next to me in worship, a young mother in flipflops, threadbare jeans, and a brightly embroidered huipil sang her heart out.  The little boy bouncing on her hip, flirted with me, batting his big brown eyes and then shyly hiding his face in his mother’s neck.  When I was invited forward to lead the church in prayer, every head bowed in humility and every voice echoed my words with the utter conviction that God was listening and Jesus was right there among us.  Those people were dirt poor, but as they lived and worshipped with such fervent, heartfelt faith, I saw they were blessed in ways that my affluent congregation at the time, back in Wilmington, Delaware, probably couldn’t imagine.

After worship, my supervising pastor, the mission team, and I were invited to share a celebratory meal.  The table was decked with more food than most of our hosts saw in a month: whole fish cooked on a charcoal fire, freshly made corn tortillas, a scrawny chicken stewed with savory spices, a salad of shredded lettuce, tomatoes, and onions dressed with lemon juice, sticky-sweet mangoes split with a machete; cups of syrupy sweet home-made lemonade.  Our translator told us not to eat it, cautioning that the food would make us sick.  Most of my fellow travelers looked panicked and just pushed the food around their plates.

After dinner, we visited with our hosts and asked how we could grow the partnership between the El Estor Church and our home church in Delaware.  We were ready to write a big check.  But our new friends surprised us.  “Come be with us,” they said.  “Move to El Estor for a little while.  Be our neighbor.  Worship with us.  Know us.”  It was a surprising invitation.  We needed time to think about it.  We said our goodnights and wandered back to our inn.

We talked about it a lot.  We imagined what it would be like to live there, to rough it without reliable electricity, without internet, without hot showers, without Starbucks.  We wondered which one of us would be the best to stay—a teenager taking a gap year before college, a pastor to minister to the spiritual needs, a nurse to tend their everyday illnesses?  In the end, it felt impossible.  We were too important, too responsible, too committed.  Their request, it was too hard, too much to ask.  No one stayed.

Woe to us.

Resources:

Gay L. Byron. “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 4:21-30” in Feasting on the Word, Year C. vol. 1.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Peter Eaton. “Homiletical Perspective on Luke 4:21-30” in Feasting on the Word, Year C. vol. 1.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Howard K. Gregory. “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 4:21-30” in Feasting on the Word, Year C. vol. 1.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Luke 6:17-26

17 After coming down with them, He stood on a level place with a large crowd of His disciples and a great number of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon. 18 They came to hear Him and to be healed of their diseases; and those tormented by unclean spirits were made well. 19 The whole crowd was trying to touch Him, because power was coming out from Him and healing them all.

20 Then looking up at His disciples, He said:

You who are poor are blessed,
because the kingdom of God is yours.
21 You who are now hungry are blessed,
because you will be filled.
You who now weep are blessed,
because you will laugh.
22 You are blessed when people hate you,
when they exclude you, insult you,
and slander your name as evil
because of the Son of Man.

23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! Take note—your reward is great in heaven, for this is the way their ancestors used to treat the prophets.

24 But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your comfort.
25 Woe to you who are now full,
for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who are now laughing,
for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe to you
when all people speak well of you,
for this is the way their ancestors
used to treat the false prophets.

Monumento Emblematico, El Estor, Guatemala

Facing It

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Poem for a Tuesday — “Facing It” by Yusef Komunyakaa

“My black face fades,   

hiding inside the black granite.   

I said I wouldn’t  

dammit: No tears.   

I’m stone. I’m flesh.   

My clouded reflection eyes me   

like a bird of prey, the profile of night   

slanted against morning. I turn   

this way—the stone lets me go.   

I turn that way—I’m inside   

the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

again, depending on the light   

to make a difference.   

I go down the 58,022 names,   

half-expecting to find   

my own in letters like smoke.   

I touch the name Andrew Johnson;   

I see the booby trap’s white flash.   

Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse   

but when she walks away   

the names stay on the wall.   

Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s   

wings cutting across my stare.   

The sky. A plane in the sky.   

A white vet’s image floats   

closer to me, then his pale eyes   

look through mine. I’m a window.   

He’s lost his right arm   

inside the stone. In the black mirror   

a woman’s trying to erase names:   

No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.”

in Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001)

Yusef Komunyakaa was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana. He served as a war correspondent and managing editor of the Southern Cross during the Vietnam war, earning him a Bronze Star. His poetry reflects the cadences and influence of jazz and his grandparents, who were church people: “the sound of the Old Testament informed the cadences of their speech.” He takes on complex moral issues: the Vietnam War, his experience as a black man, and the underside of life in America. He lives in New York City where he is Distinguished Senior Poet in NYU’s graduate creative writing program.

Vietnam War Memorial — Washington, DC

Slow Call

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Slow Call” Luke 5:1-11

When Matthew and Mark remembered the day that Jesus called those first disciples, it was an all-at-once experience.  Jesus saw the fishermen, Peter, Andrew, James, and John, on the lakeshore.  He invited them to a life of discipleship with the words, “Follow me.”  Then, the four mariners embarked on a new life of discipleship, leaving Father Zebedee behind in the boat.

Luke remembered things differently.  About once every six years, the lectionary brings us today’s reading to expand our understanding of Jesus’s call and the disciples’ response.  According to Luke, that transformation from fisherman to disciple didn’t happen all-at-once.  It took the better part of a day and required some persistent effort on the part of the Lord.

Peter and his friends had been out on the lake at night and into the early morning hours, casting their drag nets in the hope of an abundant catch.  In Peter’s day, fishing on the Sea of Galilee was strictly monitored.  People like Peter, Andrew, James, and John, whose families had plied these waters for generations, purchased an annual imperial fishing license.  That fee was significant—equivalent to about one-third of their average annual catch.  A series of fishless nights, like the one they had just had, meant hardship for hard-working people like Simon Peter.

The men were mending their nets and dreaming of breakfast and a nap, when Jesus came along.  Last week, Jesus may have been preaching in the backwater of Nazareth, but this week, Jesus was followed by a large crowd.  There was so much pushing, jostling, and vying for position that preaching from the lakeshore was proving to be hazardous.  A boat was needed to push out into the shallows where Jesus could safely preach while the multitude took a seat along the breakwater.

That’s where Simon Peter came in.  Just the other week, Jesus had impressed Peter by healing his mother-in-law.  Despite that, we can imagine the inner struggle as Simon Peter weighed committing his day and his boat to Jesus against heading home for some much-needed rest.  Perhaps feeling like he was doing Rabbi Jesus a favor, the fisherman invited Jesus onboard.

That back-and-forth of request and response continued.  As Jesus finished his preaching and dispersed the crowd, he made a second, questionable request of Simon Peter.  “Put out into deep water and let down your nets.”  In Peter’s response, we hear exasperation.  Who was the expert on fishing?  It wasn’t Jesus.  In fact, the Lord had a lot of nerve, expecting Peter to gather his crew, load his nets, and row halfway across the lake.  This time when Peter complied, he made it clear that he was half-heartedly following orders, simply out of respect for Jesus as a rabbi.

It wasn’t until Peter was standing knee-deep in a miraculous haul of fish that he changed his mind about Jesus and decided that the Lord was worth following.  That improbable catch confounded every law of nature on the Sea of Galilee.  All those fish in that place at that time of day made it clear to the fishermen that God Almighty was in their midst and in need of their service.  The third time was the charm.

This story with its growing awareness of who Jesus is and the claim that he has upon our lives feels authentic.  It definitely feels more in keeping with our own faith journeys than that spectacular, all-at-once, wholehearted commitment that Matthew and Mark described the disciples making.  Most of us aren’t pastors or missionaries, who quickly discern the call to walk away from what is comfortable and familiar to live a radical life of discipleship.  For most of us, our calling takes time—and persistence on the part of the Lord.

Our journey to discipleship often begins at the initiative of someone else.  As infants, our parents or grandparents make the choice for Jesus for us and we are baptized or dedicated.  All we have to do is look cute and not put up too much fuss when the water starts to fly.  Our family, congregation, and pastor make the promises for us.  We may be placed on the way to Jesus as little ones, but we are no disciples.

A second calling to obedience and discipleship may come our way at confirmation.  With the pastor, our mentor, and our classmates, we read scripture, ponder what it would mean for us to be followers of Jesus, and even begin to wrap our own language around our faith.  But that doesn’t make us disciples.  Indeed, according to the statisticians at Lifeway Research, 66% of young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two will drop out of church.  Relocation, college, or the increasing demands of the workplace cause them to lose their connection to the church and the community that formed their faith.

Sometimes, like Peter, we need to be knee-deep in a miracle before we will make Jesus our priority.  Do any of these quiet miracles sound familiar?

We find the blessing of love and we realize that, if that love is going to last, we will need God at the very heart of the relationship.  We know we need the Lord.

Our first child is born and in the wonder of that perfect little life entrusted to our care, we dedicate ourselves to the Lord.

We are broken by grief, illness, or hardship, and Jesus touches us with grace and strength that bring us on through and we want more of that.

We see ourselves as we truly are, unclean lips and all.  Yet as we break the bread and lift the cup, we learn that the Lord loves us enough to die for us and we are truly forgiven. We come to the Lord in humility and gratitude.

One day, knee-deep in those everyday wonders, we hitched our wagon to Jesus, and we’ve been following him along the Way ever since.  When did you choose to truly follow Jesus?

We may not leave everything behind—family, community, and possessions—to follow Jesus, but our choice for discipleship changes us.  Jesus takes a central place in our lives.  He shapes what we do on Sunday mornings.  He directs the way we relate to our families.  He determines how we conduct ourselves in the community.  Our behavior changes.  We dare to forgive as we have been forgiven.  We stop attaching strings to our love.  We begin to notice at-risk neighbors and we seek to make a caring difference.  We start to hunger for worship, prayer, the Word, and Christian fellowship.

One day, we realize that Jesus has done it.  We have become his disciples.  The Lord has worn us down with that back and forth, call and response, that he once shared with Simon Peter, all those years ago on the shores of Galilee.  Thanks be to God for that slow call to discipleship and the Lord’s patience with people like Simon Peter, with people like us.  Amen.

Resources:

Gay L. Byron. “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 4:21-30” in Feasting on the Word, Year C. vol. 1.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Aaron Earls. “Most Teenagers Drop Out of Church When They Become Young Adults” in Lifeway Research, January 15, 2019. Accessed online at lifewayresearch.com.

Howard K. Gregory. “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 4:21-30” in Feasting on the Word, Year C. vol. 1.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Luke 5:1-11

As the crowd was pressing in on Jesus to hear God’s word, He was standing by Lake Gennesaret. 2 He saw two boats at the edge of the lake; the fishermen had left them and were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, which belonged to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from the land. Then He sat down and was teaching the crowds from the boat. 4 When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and let down[c] your nets for a catch.” 5 “Master,” Simon replied, “we’ve worked hard all night long and caught nothing! But at Your word, I’ll let down the nets.” 6 When they did this, they caught a great number of fish, and their nets[e] began to tear. 7 So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them; they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. 8 When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, because I’m a sinful man, Lord!” 9 For he and all those with him were amazed at the catch of fish they took, 10 and so were James and John, Zebedee’s sons, who were Simon’s partners. “Don’t be afraid,” Jesus told Simon. “From now on you will be catching people!” 11 Then they brought the boats to land, left everything, and followed Him.

Photo by Taryn Elliott on Pexels.com

Spring Beauties

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Friday Photos

Here are some Adirondack spring beauties for all you folks who are tired of shoveling snow. These photos were taken on Lyon Mountain in May.

Viburnum lantanoides (Witch-Hobble)
Trillium erectum (Purple or red trillium)
Erythronium Americanum (Trout Lily)
Trillium undulatum (Painted Trillium)

“I will be like the dew to the people of Israel. They will blossom like flowers. They will be firmly rooted like cedars from Lebanon. They will be like growing branches. They will be beautiful like olive trees. They will be fragrant like cedars from Lebanon.” — Hosea 14:5-6

The Enactment

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Poem for a Tuesday — “The Enactment” by Rita Dove

“I’m just a girl who people were mean to on a bus. . . . I could have been anybody.” — Mary Ware, nee Smith

“Can’t use no teenager, especially

no poor black trash,
no matter what her parents do

to keep up a living. Can’t use

anyone without sense enough

to bite their tongue.

It’s gotta be a woman,

someone of standing:

peferably shy, preferably married.

And she’s got to know

when the moment’s right.

Stay polite, though her shoulder’s

aching, bus driver

the same one threw her off

twelve years before.

Then all she’s got to do is

sit there, quiet, till

the next moment finds her—and only then

can she open her mouth to ask

Why do you push us around?

and his answer: I don’t know but

the law is the law and you

are under arrest.

She must sit there, and not smile

as they enter to cary her off;she must know who to call

who will know whom else to call

to bail her out . . . and only then

can she stand up and exhale

can she walk out the cell

and down the jail steps

into flashbulbs and

her employer’s white

arms—and go home,

and sit down in the seat

we have prepared for her.”

in Furious Flower, ed. Joanne V. Gabbin. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004.

Poet and Professor Rita Dove grew up in Akron, Ohio. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Tubingen, Germany, before joining the renowned University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her third book, Thomas and Beulah, based on her grandparents’ lives, won the Pulitzer Prize. She became the American Poet Laureate in 1993, making her both the youngest recipient of this honor and the first African American. Her poetry has a unique musicality, grounded in her own musicianship and personal belief that “language sings.” She is an avid ballroom dancer and lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she has taught since 1989.

By Unknown author – USIA / National Archives and Records Administration Records of the U.S. Information Agency Record Group 306, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4344206

“The Problem with Prophets”

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “The Problem with Prophets” Luke 4:21-30

By our very nature, human beings mentally sort experience into categories.  It is how we make sense of a complex world.  We have in-groups.  Those are groups that we are a part of.  For example, I’m a woman, I’m a follower of Jesus, and I’m an enthusiast of corgis.  If you share any of these characteristics, you’re my people.  Human beings also naturally form the notion of out-groups.  These are the folks with whom we do not share a sense of affiliation.  We relegate folks to an out-group for any number of reasons: race, ethnicity, religious belief, gender, or their love of cats.

Psychologists tell us that we naturally tend to negatively evaluate folks in the out-group.  In a well-known series of mid-twentieth century studies, social scientists Muzafar and Carolyn Sherif considered in-group and out-group dynamics in twelve-year-old boys.  They brought the boys to summer camp, divided them into two teams, and pitted them against one another in competitive games.  The Sherifs found that the boys consistently gave better ratings to their own teammates and to their own team, regardless of their performance or real achievement.  The boys also reassigned their feelings of friendship and care over the course of the experiment.  Boys who began the summer as friends, but were placed on opposing teams, weren’t always friends by summer’s end.  In fact, 90% of the boys by the end of the camp identified their best friend from within their in-group.

We have all experienced the dynamics of in-groups and out-groups.  Remember your experience of cliques in high school?  Think of the time that you were passed up for a promotion in favor of an office-insider.  How about when you realized that your male colleagues were paid more?  For friends of color, what about the time that the sales person followed you through that high-end boutique, expecting you to shoplift?  Our in-group / out-group dynamics are entrenched, sometimes unconscious, and hard to overcome.

Jesus got into trouble over in-group / out-group dynamics on that morning he preached in Nazareth.  His neighbors praised him with gracious words when they heard that he was their long-awaited Messiah.  Who could have imagined it?  Joseph’s son—a hometown hero, one of them—was going to bring them all God’s blessing.  They were ready for that good stuff.  They nodded to one another and exchanged knowing looks in the pews.  “C’mon Jesus!  We hear of the good things you’ve been doing over there in Capernaum.  How about a few miracles for your in-group homies?”

There were no miracles in Nazareth that morning.  Rather, Jesus told his neighbors that he was just as concerned about the out-group as he was the in-group.  To make his point, he told those two prophetic stories.  Elijah resurrected the son of the widow of Zarephath, and she was a foreigner and Baal-worshipper.  Elisha healed the leprosy of the Syrian General Naaman, and he was an enemy of the Hebrew people.  In fact, the only reason he knew of Elisha was through a Hebrew war captive who worked as a slave in his household.  According to scripture, God’s love and goodness weren’t only for the in-group.  God’s love and welcome were broader than the people of Nazareth liked to imagine.

We struggle to understand the immensity of God’s love.  We are so scandalized by God’s limitless grace that our minds boggle.  We can’t take it in.  The neighbors in Nazareth didn’t like the reminder that God had a long history of reaching beyond the in-group.  They really didn’t like Jesus standing there and telling them that he was going to practice a breadth of holy love that would make a lie of all those in-group and out-group assumptions.  The initial disappointment and confusion of Jesus’ hometown friends shifted to anger, rage, and rejection.  They cast Jesus out of the in-group and ran him out of town.

In-group / out-group conflicts continue to plague our world and trouble the church.  That’s why denominations split over who can preach in the pulpit, who may hold office, who will be welcomed into membership, or how we can spend our mission giving.  Whenever we follow Jesus in practicing a broader, holier love or extending a more generous welcome, we can count on conflict.  That’s the problem with prophets.  They aren’t content to allow us to mete out God’s love in tablespoons.  They push us beyond the comfortable familiarity of the in-group.  They confront us with our bias, and we don’t like it any more than the people in Nazareth did.  Lukan scholar R. Alan Culpepper points out that Jesus’s rejection at Nazareth was a foretaste of what was to come.  That near-death experience on the cliff in Nazareth anticipated the lonely hilltop where Jesus would be nailed to a cross when he ran afoul of those ultimate in-groups of Temple and empire in Jerusalem.

Our personal experiences of criticism and rejection may be a sign that we are butting up against in-group / out-group dynamics.  Pastoral theologian Henri Nouwen and Presbyterian minister and children’s broadcaster Fred Rogers were friends who corresponded for years.  At one point, Fred was particularly discouraged.  You may remember that Rogers broke color barriers, welcomed children with disabilities, told little girls they could be astronauts, and assured all children that they were loveable just as they were.  Rogers sent his friend Henri a copy of an especially nasty attack in the press.  Nouwen sympathized.  In his experience, “little persecutions” within the in-group of the church hurt the most.  Nouwen assured his friend Mr. Rogers that he was probably on the right track.  Nouwen wrote back to Fred that, attacks “come and will keep coming precisely when you do something significant for the Kingdom. . . It was Jesus’s experience and the experience of all great visionaries of the church, and it continues to be the experience of many who are committed to Jesus.”  Reaching out with God’s surprising love, welcoming outsiders in, breaking down barriers is always risky business.

The social scientists tell us that overcoming divisions of in- and out-groups isn’t easy.  It confounds our most essential assumptions and forces us to question our perceptions.  We naturally resist that.  But dividing walls can come down.  It helps if in- and out-groups can work together toward a shared goal.  Groups also need a level playing field—or at least the buy-in from both sides that all people have equal standing and rights.  Overcoming divisions is easier when we have visionary leaders, like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.  We are better able to transcend our in-group if we can envision outsiders as part of a larger, shared group—like the Kingdom of God. 

But the most essential way of ending long-standing divisions is through relationship and friendship.  That means extending ourselves to connect in meaningful ways, even if it feels uncomfortable.  Jesus was so good at this.  Think about Jesus with his compassion for lepers, forgiveness for sinners, welcome for tax-collectors, and healing care for foreigners, like Syro-Phoenicians, Canaanites, Romans, and Samaritans.  Jesus intentionally broke down all those insider / outsider barriers with listening, advocacy, and love.  Could we dare to do the same?

I am sure that Jesus continues to work in ways that confound our in-group sensibilities, in ways that might disappoint, puzzle, anger, and maybe even enrage us.  He just does that—ask the folks in Nazareth who knew him so well.  I invite you to join me in imagining some of the places where Jesus is at work this morning.

Today Jesus is on the southern border.  He’s leaving water in the desert for weary, thirsty travelers.  He is suffering in the back of a super-heated tractor trailer, driven by human traffickers.  He is listening to harrowing stories of drug cartel violence.  He is trying to reunite families.

Jesus is on death row.  He is innocent and falsely convicted.  He is hearing last minute confessions.  He is listening to the same old lies and excuses.  He is praying with people whose gods have been violence or addiction or hate.  He is hoping, always hoping, to welcome them into his Kingdom.  He longs for last minute stays of execution.

Jesus is in the ICU.  He whispers the twenty-third psalm to the anti-vaxer on the ventilator and reminds her that she is his beloved.  He refreshes the spirit of the nurse who has been working double-shifts on and off for almost two years.  He eases the fear of the aids and housekeeping crew who take bodies to the morgue, clean up the mess, and work silently at great personal risk for relatively low wages.  He comforts the spouse who goes home with a broken heart.

If any of those examples of where Jesus may be right now touched, startled, troubled, or offended you, then perhaps I got something right this morning.  Jesus is always pushing the borders and widening the circle.  He dreams of the day when there will be no in-group, no out-group, just one precious Kingdom of love.  May we, this week, have the courage to accept the improbable breadth of God’s love and welcome the outsider in.

Resources:

David Baggett. “Letter from Henri to Fred” in Moral Apologetics, August 5, 2019.  Accessed online at https://www.moralapologetics.com/wordpress/2019/8/5/letter-from-henri-to-fred

Gay L. Byron. “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 4:21-30” in Feasting on the Word, Year C. vol. 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

R. Alan Culpepper.  “The Gospel of Luke: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible.  Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995.

Howard K. Gregory. “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 4:21-30” in Feasting on the Word, Year C. vol. 1.  Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Lisa J. Cohen. “The Psychology of Prejudice and Racism” in Psychology Today, January 24, 2011.  Accessed online at psychologytoday.com.

Luke 4:21-30 (HCSB)

21 Jesus began by saying to them, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled.” 22 They were all speaking well of Him and were amazed by the gracious words that came from His mouth, yet they said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” 23 Then He said to them, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me: ‘Doctor, heal yourself. So all we’ve heard that took place in Capernaum, do here in Your hometown also.’” 24 He also said, “I assure you: No prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 But I say to you, there were certainly many widows in Israel in Elijah’s days, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months while a great famine came over all the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them—but to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 And in the prophet Elisha’s time, there were many in Israel who had serious skin diseases, yet not one of them was healed—only Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was enraged. 29 They got up, drove Him out of town, and brought Him to the edge of the hill that their town was built on, intending to hurl Him over the cliff. 30 But He passed right through the crowd and went on His way.

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The Task

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Poem for a Thursday — “The Task” by Denise Levertov

As if God were an old man
always upstairs, sitting about
in sleeveless undershirt, asleep,
arms folded, stomach rumbling,
his breath from open mouth
strident, presaging death . . .

No, God’s in the wilderness next door
— that huge tundra room, no walls and a sky roof —
busy at the loom. Among the berry bushes,
rain or shine, that loud clacking and whirring.
irregular but continuous;
God is absorbed in work, and hears
the spacious hum of bees, not the din,
and hears far-off
our screams. Perhaps
listens for prayers in that wild solitude.
And hurries on with the weaving:
till it’s done, the great garment woven,
our voices, clear under the familiar
blocked-out clamor of the task,
can’t stop their
terrible beseeching. God
imagines it sifting through, at last, to music
in the astounded quietness, the loom idle,
the weaver at rest.

in Oblique Prayers. New Castle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1984.

Denise Levertov was born in England in 1923. Her father Paul Levertov was a Russian Hassidic Safardic Jew who became an Anglican priest. When she was twelve, Levertov sent some of her poems to T. S. Eliot, who replied with a two-page letter of encouragement. She published her first book of poems in 1940 at age seventeen. She served as a nurse during the Blitz in London. Politics, war, and religion all became major themes in her life’s work. Levertov published more than twenty books before her death in 1994. She received the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Frost Medal the Lenore Marshall Prize, the Lannan Award, a Catherine Luck Memorial Grant, a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

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“Entering the Mission Field”

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Entering the Mission Field Luke 4:14-21

Before coming to Saranac Lake, I served as an Associate Pastor in Morton Grove, IL.  Each Sunday following the service, my colleague Pastor Michael would stand at the back of the sanctuary and greet worshippers as they ventured forth.  Above the door to the Narthex of the Morton Grove Church, a banner is hung.  It says, “You are entering the mission field.”  Exiting beneath that banner was a weekly reminder that the life of faith doesn’t stop when we leave the sanctuary behind on Sunday mornings.  In fact, our work is just beginning as we go forth with love for God and neighbor to pursue our mission as Christians.

I expect that Jesus is especially fond of that banner.  Luke’s gospel tells us that as Jesus traveled the Galilean countryside, he visited his hometown Nazareth.  There, he returned to the rhythms of his growing years, worshipping in the local synagogue on the sabbath day.  In an act of respect for his growing reputation, Jesus was invited to read and teach from the Torah.  He chose to read from the Prophet Isaiah and then sat down to interpret and teach.  We didn’t get to listen in on Jesus’ whole sermon, but Luke preserved the heart of his message.  Jesus believed that Isaiah’s prophecy had been fulfilled in him.  He was the long-awaited Messiah, who was bringing good news to the poor, sight for the blind, release for captives, and freedom for folks who lived amid oppression.

Bible scholars like to suggest that Jesus specially chose these words from Isaiah as a sort of personal mission statement.  Afterall, that reading from the prophet captures the values and intentions that Jesus would make a priority in his mission.  Jesus reminded his vulnerable neighbors that God loved them and was with them—that’s good news for the poor.  He restored sight to the local blindman in Bethsaida and shocked the Temple by healing a blind beggar, who had sought alms at the side door.  Jesus set free the Gerasene demoniac, long captivated by a legion of dark spirits.  Jesus reminded his neighbors that, although they resided in the tetrarchy of Herod and were a vassal state of the Roman Empire, they belonged to a Holy Kingdom that always prevailed.

Jesus held onto that vision and purpose that he announced in Nazareth, even when it got costly.  He held to his purpose despite hostile questions from the Pharisees and open criticism from the scribes.  He stayed the course, despite coming into the crosshairs of the religious powers of the Temple and the political power of Herod.  He stuck to his mission, even in the judgment hall of Pilate.  In fact, Jesus’ mission was greeted with criticism and opposition from the start.  If I had read a few more verses, we would have heard how those Nazareth neighbors got so angry at Jesus that they drove him out of town with the intention to throw him down from a high place.  You might even say that Jesus narrowly escaped a lynching.  How is that for commitment to purpose?

This church has a mission statement.  Early in my tenure here, I resolved to read it for you each Sunday as a reminder of who we are and the holy purpose that God calls us to serve.  Some of you know it by heart.  “God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer calls the First Presbyterian Church of Saranac Lake to love and serve one another and the world around us with joy and thanksgiving.  We are a congregation that prays and supports each other and seeks to forgive and be forgiven.  We aim to share the Good News and to do God’s mission with love and compassion, both near and far.”

It’s a clarifying statement of our identity, values, and vocation.  We developed and adopted this mission as we emerged from a time of deep division and spiritual crisis.  Over the years, it has served us well by reminding us each week of the centrality not only of the Triune God but also of love, compassion, forgiveness, prayer, and care for vulnerable people.  That vision for mission has allowed us to welcome new purposes over the years.  It has inspired us to care for those tiny, vulnerable infants of the Mzuzu Crisis Care Nursery.  It has engaged us in supporting Malawi’s widows with microloans, the Clint McCoy Feeding Station, and the sewing project.  It has prompted us to feed hungry neighbors with the produce of our Jubilee Garden, our monthly food offering, 2-cents-a-meal, and the Souper Bowl of Caring.  All this outreach and more may be an expression of our mission, but we trust that it is also God’s mission, an expression of our love for Jesus, and a hopeful anticipation of his coming Kingdom.

Of course, we aren’t the only institution with a mission statement.  Here is the statement for the Marion Medical Mission: “Marion Medical Mission seeks to share the love of Christ with the extreme poor in Africa by providing all in need with a sustainable source of clean, safe drinking water.”  The mission of the Women of Grace Widows Fund is to “alleviate the extreme poverty of Malawi’s widows with food, shelter, and safety and to empower self-sufficiency and independence.”  Even the Souper Bowl of Caring has a mission: their mission is to “unite all communities to tackle hunger.”  Faithful organizations and people make it a practice to ground their service to God in a pithy statement that guides their purpose and brings them closer to Jesus.

What is your mission?  Do you have a pithy statement of faithful purpose that guides your life and directs your actions?  I invite us to allow Jesus’ mission statement to inspire us to think about developing our own personal statements.  To get us started, I’ll suggest three principles that should guide and shape our individual purposes.

The first principle is that your mission must give glory to God.  Anyone can have a mission that enlarges their bank account, pads their resume, or adds to their personal power or prestige, but as people of faith we seek first the Kingdom of God.  That means that our actions and outcomes are meant to praise and honor God.  For example, when Marion Medical Mission partners with African villages to install shallow wells, they bless and seal each well with an inscription in both English and the local language. That inscription reads: “To the glory of God.”  That well, which will bless the community for generations to come, is a perpetual reminder of the Holy One who satisfies our deepest thirst.

The second principle for your mission statement is that it must follow in the way of Jesus, in keeping with those actions and values that Jesus claimed as his own when he read the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah, long ago in the Nazareth synagogue.  Does it bring good news to poor and vulnerable neighbors?  Does it offer help and healing?  Does it free us and others from our captivity – to poverty, addiction, shame, sin, anger, unforgiveness?  In pursuing our mission, would Jesus say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant?

There is a final principle for our mission statements.  We must be guided by the ethic of agape.  Agape is the choice to love others, regardless of kinship, affiliation, or interest.  Agape seeks the best for others, even when we don’t know them, even if we dislike or fear them.  This is the love that the Apostle Paul encouraged his friends in Corinth to pursue: love that is patient, kind, forbearing, accepting, and forgiving.  It’s the sort of love that Jesus practiced, allowing him to bear with those dense disciples, care for those on the margins of society, and forgive his executioners.

What is your mission?  I invite us to take some time this week to listen, pray, reflect, and begin to develop our personal mission statements, statements that give glory to God, follow Jesus, and make the world a more loving place.  You don’t have to proclaim your mission from the pulpit like Jesus did, but you might like to share it with me, or with your beloved ones, or with a friend in the faith.  If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.  A mission statement envisioned and articulated is a promise of action that can make this world a more loving, just, and holy place.  I look forward to hearing your mission-minded musings.

This church may not have the words, “You are entering the mission field” hanging above the sanctuary exit, but we can trust as we go forth this morning, whether we are worshipping here in church or we are worshipping online, that the mission field awaits.  There’s work to be done.  What’s your mission?

Resources:

Carol Lakey Hess. “Theological Perspective on Luke 4:14-21” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Ernest Hess. “Homiletical Perspective on Luke 4:14-21” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Linda McKinnis Bridges. “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 4:14-21” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Elisabeth Johnson. “Commentary on Luke 4:14-21” in Preaching This Week, Jan. 23, 2022.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.org.

Luke 4:14-21

14Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 16When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Image source: Marion Medical Mission https://www.mmmwater.org/

As the Ruin Falls

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Poem for a Tuesday — “As the Ruin Falls” by C. S. Lewis

“All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love —a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek—
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.”

C.S. Lewis was perhaps the most influential Christian writer of the twentieth century. A noted scholar of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, he taught at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Lewis wrote more than thirty books. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.

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Chi who ly?

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Morean Arts Center, St. Petersburg

Photos of the Chihuly Collection, taken at the Morean Arts Center, St. Petersburg, FL

Dale Chihuly is an American artist, best known for his work with glass. Chihuly is a pioneer in glasswork. As a Rhodes Scholar, he learned from master glassworkers in Murano, Italy. He later went on to innovate new ways of working. Chihuly utilizes gravity and centrifugal force to let molten glass find its shape in its own organic way. Asymmetry and irregularity is a defining principle of his work. His lifelong interest in architecture and gardens has inspired him to create site-specific glass sculptures for public spaces, museums, private homes, and gardens. Chihuly says, “I want people to be overwhelmed with light and color in some way that they’ve never experienced.” (resource: https://www.chihuly.com/life)