"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”

To list all of the lawless and immoral behavior we are seeing in this moment would be longer than the passage above, but let's focus on just three. We are in the midst of a time of where our country is refusing to help its neighbors in need of food and medicine, terrifying it's neighbors who have come to our country for opportunity and aid, and abandoning it's neighbors who are under attack from hostile foreign powers. We have abdicated our responsibilities to care for our world community in exchange for the hope to shake down anyone around us for what we can get. In short, we have lost any sense of Christian morality as a nation and become a state run by thugs for profit. You could argue that, things have been going this way for a while, but never have things be quite so surface level. Just this week our new "Border Czar" announced his corrupt bargain with the mayor of New York City on live television. It's just there to see on the surface.

And yet, in the midst of all this we are called to love our enemies. We are called not to judge or condemn. What does that look like?

Down the road from my house there is a small church with one of those signs that you can put different messages up on. This week their sign says, "We are called to be witnesses, not judges or lawyers." As a man with a wife who is an attorney who feels a passionate call from God to advocate for the poor and needy, I felt personally miffed when I saw it, but for the purposes of this discussion it's a useful image. This passage is all about how we, as followers of Jesus should treat people. It is not saying that we shouldn't judge anything ever. We are not called to be passive observers of the world around us, despite how much easier life would be if that were so. We are called to act!

Jesus called his followers to feed the 5000. Jesus applauded the man who helped another man of a different nation. And similarly, Jesus said that people were healed "because of their faith" or condemned because of their unwillingness to share their wealth. It is actions that Jesus is concerned with. What you do or don't do. We are called to not judge people. I can't tell what is in your heart, but I can see if you are actively trying to harm someone. Jesus does not call us to remain silent in the face of violence or active harm. We can not look upon evil actions and say, "Well, I probably should not judge this." We can love the people who would see us as enemies, and still hold them to account for their actions. And, yes, from time to time holding them to account will require both lawyers and judges.

"Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven”

I'm sure that most of you have at lease one person in your life who thinks that what is going on right now is great. Your "unchecked move toward fascism" is their "making America great again." It can be a natural instinct to do one of two things. You might either avoid them all together, or you might simply avoid discussing any current events with them. In most cases, these are unhelpful approaches.

I stress first and foremost that this is an "if you feel safe" recommendation. You can judge in your own life whether you feel safe having these conversations or any conversations at all with these people, but going forward I am assuming that you feel safe enough to talk to these people.

If you simply avoid them entirely, then it affirms their views that people like you don't "get it" and your judgement on them only pushes them farther down the path of anger and loathing that opens one up to fascist ideology in the first place. If you avoid the conversation, then the absence of your voice is a best replaced by the voices of others that affirm their views. At worst, it is considered consent to all this.

Instead, I think it is most useful to come to people with love first. This is very simplified, but I think it is the sentiment that works best: "I love you no matter what, but I am called to love others as well. Jesus calls you to do the same. Because of that calling, I must serve the poor and prevent injustice." This is not me saying that this will work, but it is the best you can do.

1. Remind them they are loved.

2. Remind them they are called to love.

3. Lead by example with your commitment to serve those in need.

Why do I think this is the best thing you can do? Because it is hard to change hearts, and it is important to do the work. The most important step is step three. Do the work. At best your family member or friend has their understanding shifted, but at worst, you are still doing the work. The work must be done.

This passage calls us to offer forgiveness as our default setting. Your loved one may have bought into some truly rotten ideas in the last few years, but they are still made in the image of God, and they are still welcome to repent and come home.

As for those committing these governmental atrocities, it is important to remember that they are made in the image of God just like us. Just like us, they need to be called to account when their actions harm others. We do not need to judge them as people to judge that their actions are cruel and often illegal. We need to do the work to keep each other safe in the midst of all this injustice. That may happen in court or in the court of public opinion, but we cannot be silent, just because we are supposed to love our enemies. Just like when you love a screaming toddler, you are still required to make them stop.

Yesterday I was processing all this, as I’m sure many of you were, and I thought about last week’s lectionary scripture. The most important commandment is to love God and “love your neighbor as yourself.” I’ve often used this passage in conversations with friends about politics to explain why I support certain policy positions or ideals. If you love love your neighbor as yourself, then you must blah blah blah. Yes, I am fun at parties. It might sound silly, but it’s at the heart of why I do most everything. Why do I support healthcare for all? I would like healthcare, and if I would like it, my neighbors would too. Why do I think we should take care of immigrants? They are both figuratively and literally our neighbors! I think Jesus is pretty clear on that one.

I think it is obvious, even in making a positive case for Donald Trump, that the inherent rejection of loving neighbor is part of his sales pitch. He is going to ignore their priorities and focus on your priorities. He’s going to deport them so there is more for you. His messaging assumes a zero sum game where there are those who support him as an inside group and those that don’t as the “enemy within.” This is openly the opposite loving your neighbor as yourself.

You know I love to go on about how our modern culture is antithetical to Jesus’s teachings, and Jesus’s teachings are so radical and counter-cultural. In this instance we have an example of a literal majority of our country voting for the avowedly anti-loving neighbor candidate. I think there can be no better example of the distance between the beliefs of modern America and the teachings of Jesus. As we enter this next four years, we need to remember to hold on to what is true. We are not called to better ourselves at the expense of others. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. We do not yet know what all that will call us to do, but we will know soon enough.

I have not written in a while because things have be pretty tough at home in the past few years, but I’m getting back to it now, so you should hear more from me soon. In the meantime, I wanted to let you know that I’ve put together a book about following Jesus in a modern capitalist country and I’m looking for some folks to give it a read through. In the book I go through the gospels and ask two questions:

What is Jesus asking us to do, and what would it look like to actually do that in today’s America?

It’s meant to be read by a small group or Sunday School class for discussion, but it’s open to anyone. If you are interested in taking a look, send me a quick email to let me know - jmartin@caldwellpresby.org

Keep the faith, my friends. There will be hard days going forward, but there will be good work to do. Following Jesus reminds us that no election is the end, and there is always work to be done for justice.

Justin

A mustard seed is small in size, but mighty in its ability to be used as a metaphor.  This week’s passage comes from the same scene in Luke’s gospel that we’ve been talking about for the last few weeks.  Jesus is talking to the disciples within earshot of the Pharisees.  He tells them the Rich man and Lazarus story from last week, and then he starts giving them some off the cuff words of wisdom.  

‘Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table”?

The lectionary passage begins with verse 5 of the chapter, with the disciples reacting to what Jesus said in verses 1-4, so it’s worth talking about what Jesus said first.  He tells them that there will be things that make them stumble in following him, and they shouldn’t make someone else stumble.  Then he tells them that they need to forgive people who repent, even if they do it over and over and over.  In reaction to that, they ask Jesus to increase their faith, which makes some sense, because you’d need some faith to let someone smack you in the face, ask to be forgiven, and then smack you in the face again seven times.  

Jesus then gives the famous “faith of a mustard seed” line, telling the disciples, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea”, and it would obey you.”  In other words if you only had a little bit of faith you could do amazing things.  As we discussed a few months ago, the disciples are almost always the stand in for the reader.  This is the case here, too.  This should definitely read this as, “Yes, YOU, dear reader, can do things that seem impossible if you have faith.”

After telling the disciples that they could do so much with faith, Jesus answers my favorite theological question, “What does that look like in practice?”  The example that Jesus gives comes off to a modern reader as somewhere between obtuse and enraging as it assumes that the reader has a person that they are keeping against their will as a slave.  That’s not an easy place to put your brain, especially in a story that has nothing actually to say about the practice of slavery.

Jesus says, essentially, that when you have faith and follow God you must cook dinner for the person who you enslave.  This image is really weird, but what Jesus is doing is using a relationship that would be familiar to the reader at the time to check three major theological boxes.  First it’s Luke’s gospel’s classic theme of reversal of fortune.  The first shall be last and the last shall be first.  The relationship of enslaver and enslaved person is swapped in an example of that reversal of fortune that God’s beloved community requires.

Second this echos all the places in Luke’s Gospel that explain that serving God means serving others.  (Also, why this whole thing is called www.radicalservanthood.com)  Later in Luke’s gospel Jesus says about himself, “I am among you as one who serves” in relation to who is the greatest. (Luke 22:27) In Jesus’s worldview the greatest is the one who serves.  This is the case here as well.

Finally, this example paints an interesting picture about the difference between doing what is required and following God’s will.  In both the character of the enslaved person and the enslaver, they are shown as failing to meet God’s call if they only do what is required of them in their situation.  If the enslaver asks the enslaved person to make food for him, then he does not live up to the standards that God requires.  But, If the enslaved person only does the work that is required, that person does not live up to God’s standards either.  This seems like an odd juxtaposition, but the point is that no matter your life circumstances, God calls you to do more than society requires of you.

This reminds me of the famous line from Google’s code of conduct “Don’t be evil.” (Which has since been changed) Jesus is saying that being a good person and doing what is required of you is not good enough.  It is not enough to just not be evil.  You must actively work for good to follow Jesus.  I think this could be a pretty troubling teaching in a capitalist society that calls you get your paid job done and head home for netflix and labels it as good.  Did you harm anyone today?  If not, awesome.  Jesus requires much more.  We must actively try to do good.  Who did you help today?  Did you serve others?  What did you do to help bring about the beloved community?  These are the questions God calls us to ask, and the standard by which we should live.

Food is a subject that Jesus talks about a lot in the gospels, and it often leads to his most interesting theology.  Everyone eats food.  Everyone got hungry then, just as we do now, so we can relate.  In this week's passage from the Luke’s Gospel we hear a story that Jesus tells about the Rich Man and Lazarus. On the surface it is about wealth and poverty, but it is also very much about food. It is a part of the same conversation as last week’s story about the dishonest manager. 

‘There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table.

Jesus is talking to the disciples, but he is being overheard by the Pharisees.  The scripture says that the Pharisees are “lovers of money,” and they are ridiculing the things Jesus is saying from the back. Right before this story begins Jesus yells at the Pharisees that “God knows their hearts!”  He certainly meant it as an insult.

Jesus then begins our story about a fancy, robe wearing, rich guy who “feasts sumptuously every day.”  There is a poor man outside of his house who has nothing to eat.  The rich man does not give him even a crumb, and Lazarus dies of starvation.  We are told that angels take Lazarus to be with Abraham after his death, but when the rich man also dies he is sent to Hades to be tormented.  This continues Luke’s Gospel’s theme of reversal of fortune as the man who had no needs is now begging for even a drop of water, and Lazarus is being well taken care of.

When I hear this passage discussed it is often looked at from the standpoint of generosity.  The rich man had plenty and did not share, and God wants us to share. Obviously that’s true, but I think there is a bit more to it.  If the message of this story was that the rich man should have shared his food with Lazarus, then it is missing one major detail.  There is no moment in the story where the Rich man doesn’t give food to Lazarus.  The story simply states that the rich man has a lot of food, and that Lazarus wishes he could have some.  It does not say that Lazarus asked for food and didn’t receive it or even that the rich man was aware of Lazarus’s need.  Lazarus is outside the gates of his estate.  The rich man may not have even known he was there.

The implied problem in the story is not that the rich man didn’t come out and give Lazarus a steak.  The problem is that the rich man is inside with much food to himself and Lazarus is outside with nothing.  There is no assumption in the text that the rich man could or should have given Lazarus anything, because Jesus isn’t talking about any specific individual people.  He is talking about the state of things as they are.  

In his time and ours it is simply a fact that there are people inside feasting sumptuously, and there are people outside starving.  That is the problem.  Jesus doesn’t want the rich guy to come out and give Lazarus a bagged lunch.  He wants a revolutionary reversal of fortune that will flip the nature of our society so that everyone may feast together.

I think it’s important to point that difference out because it’s easy to read this passage and feel guilty about having food when others have none, and then ask, “what actions can I take to feel better and serve God?”  Plenty of churches have food drives and soup kitchens and do great food ministry, and I’m all for it.  We’ll be making lunches for the people in a homeless shelter this Sunday at my church.  It’s good work, but it’s not what Jesus is calling for here.  

Jesus is condemning a society that would allow for people to go hungry when there is enough food for all.  When we feed people in need, we serve God, but we can’t forget that when we work to change our society we are serving God as well.  The goal is not to convince people with an abundance of food to share it with others who have none.  The goal is for us all to live together, sharing in God’s abundance.

I don’t think there could be a better scripture to come up in the lectionary this week than the one we got, given our current debates about student loan forgiveness.  If you haven’t yet read the scripture, you might want to click the link above to check it out.  We catch up with Jesus in the middle of a section of the gospel where he is teaching the disciples in an area where they are being overheard by the pharisees.  Jesus tells them a story about a first century hedge fund manager.

I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

Jesus introduces us to a man who is managing the wealth of a “rich man.”  The rich man has loaned money to several folks, and our money manager is called out for “squandering his property.”  The passage doesn’t explain what the money manager was doing to squander this property, but we are told that the rich man is mad and is firing the money manager.  The manager is understandably freaked out at the prospect of losing his job, and decides on a plan to make some quick financial decisions with his employer’s wealth while he has the chance that will put him in good favor with all the rich man’s debtors.  He thinks that if he cuts them all a deal on the debt, they will take care of him when he is unemployed.  The manager speaks to each of the rich man’s debtors and drops their debt by as much as 50%.  Seems like a good way to make friends to me.

The rich man finds out what his money manager has been up to, and he has a very unexpected response.  The rich man is pretty pleased with the manager.  He tells him he has dealt shrewdly with his money.  Obviously this is not what the reader would expect the rich man to say, but Jesus’s stories rarely meet the expectation of the readers then or now.  Jesus is once again trying to shift the narrative of how we understand our connection to wealth and money.

This story comes directly in between the story about the “prodigal son” running off and blowing his inheritance and being welcomed home with a party and the story of the rich man going to hell for not sharing with the poor man on his porch, so it is in good company with its commentary.  Jesus knows that the reader would think that the money manager should be using the wealth to make more wealth.  That is what money managers or for.  Instead we get Luke’s gospel’s traditional reversal of fortune. The rich man is happy that the wealth is being given away to make others happy.  The rich man even refers to this wealth as “dishonest wealth.”

So, why is this wealth dishonest, and why should the manager give it away?  To Jesus, there is no such thing as “honest wealth.” All wealth is dishonest that can be amassed in this world, so therefore the best way to deal with it is to give it away.  The next story after this concerns a rich man going to hell for keeping his wealth, and a little later in the gospel Jesus tells a man that he must give away all he has to follow him.  When taken together, I think the reasoning becomes pretty clear.  Jesus expects all things to be shared in common by his followers, and in such a group none would be wealthy, and yet all would have what they need.

Jesus caps off the parable by saying, “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”  In other words, give it all away and you are welcomed in.  Wealth is a thing that God has and shares with us all.  Wealth is not a thing that we should have.  We will just squander it.  

The passage ends with the famous “You can not serve God and wealth,” which people often give a handwave to by saying something along the lines of “What does serving wealth really mean?  We can have wealth but still be focused on God, and that will be just fine.”  When read in context with the rest of the passage, it is much more clear what it means to serve wealth.  The money manager in the story is the one who Jesus is referring to as serving wealth.  He was working to use wealth to make more wealth.  You know, Capitalism. That is serving wealth in the eyes of Jesus, and it is not ok.  When the money manager gives that wealth away, then he gets community and an eternal home.  He is serving God. We must serve God and not wealth.  

Soooooo, at the very, very least we should not complain when some of the debts of people who couldn’t afford to go to college on their own, but wanted a better life are forgiven.  First, this amounts to a terrifying regressive tax on poor people who simply want an education in a system that works overtime to keep them poor, and Second, It’s God’s money anyway.  Let it go.

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Summer is over, and the kids are back to school, so I’m back to this week’s scripture, and this is a fun one.  We find Jesus at a fancy dinner party, and he is there to serve up some Emily Post style etiquette advice with a side of theology.  The scripture says that Jesus is at the home of the head of the Pharisees, and everyone is staring at him.  In the previous scriptures Jesus had just healed a person who was sick, and then lectured the onlooking Pharisees at this party about healing people on the sabbath.  Jesus then looks at the group and lets them know that he has thoughts on their seating.

For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

At this party there are places for honored guests to sit and there are places for the rest of the rabble, and the Pharisees have all taken seats in the honorable section.  Jesus gives them a bit of advice that seems like it was probably dripping with contempt.  He tells them to sit in the lower places first and let the host tell them to move into the section of honor.  That way no one will ever have to awkwardly tell you hop back to the lame table.  Sound advice, as well as a little jab at the Pharisees by implying that maybe they need to move it on out of the honored section.

Jesus follows up by repeating what really is the theme of Luke’s gospel, “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”  As with many other stories in the gospel, Jesus reminds us of God’s great reversal of fortune in the Kingdom of God where the last shall be first, the hungry will be fed, etc.  Normally in the gospel we hear this as good news, but in this case it is basically a threat delivered directly to some of the rich who Jesus says will be brought down.  The scripture doesn’t say what the Pharisees reply to this, but one would have to assume that it is not something they want to hear.

Jesus keeps the insults coming as he then goes to the person who invited him with another piece of advice.  He tells him that whenever he has a big meal like this he should invite poor people rather than inviting friends, family and rich people to impress.  In essence saying, “If you ever host one of these things, don’t invite the Pharisees who are in the room with us, they are just here to impress people.”  Ouch.  The scripture continues the theme of reversal of fortune by calling the man, and also the reader to reject building up favor with the people in power and instead feed people who are in need.

I think what is most interesting about this passage is how un-nuanced it is.  Jesus has an opportunity to dine with rich bigwigs and he uses it to literally speak truth to power.  He walks right in and does things he knows will offend them, insults them to their face, and then tells his friend to stop associating with them.  Jesus does not like the people in power, and he has no interest in currying their favor for any reason.  He is here to serve those in need, and we should be too.

We’re back in John’s gospel this week, and as always, it’s coming a little bit out of left field. This passage has been used by some to be dismissive of, or even negate, much of the teachings of Jesus about the poor that we have read over the last few months. Rather than giving all we have to the poor, this passage could be read to say that poverty itself is a natural part of God’s plan. I think there is a lot more going on in this passage for us to dig into.

Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

As the passage starts, we find Jesus preparing for Passover in the days before his death, and he is attending a big dinner with friends. The verses previous to this passage explain that Jesus is currently in hiding because if the authorities found him, they would arrest him. As Jesus was sitting at the dinner table, Mary (not Jesus’s mother) anoints Jesus with some pretty expensive perfume. The reader would have known that this was normal as a part of burial rites, and in the story this functions to remind the reader that Jesus is about to be killed. Judas comes up and says that they should have sold that expensive perfume to give the money to the poor, and Jesus tells him that Mary is doing the right thing. I’m about to be gone, and you’ll always have the poor.

This story is also found in Mark 14:3-9, but there are some crucial differences that are worth reflecting on. First, Judas isn’t even mentioned in the story in Mark’s gospel. The disciple goes unnamed, and there is no side commentary about the disciple’s motives. In John’s gospel, the disciple who is saying to give things to the poor is spotlighted for doing so to line his own pockets. In fact, the word “poor” is only used in John’s gospel three times. The first two are in this passage, and the last is in the next chapter, where again it is used in conjunction with Judas’s duplicitousness. As Judas runs out of the Last Supper early, the gospel writer says that some disciples thought he was leaving early to give things to the poor.

In Mark's gospel it’s implied that the disciple would have been correct in normal circumstances to sell the perfume. In this one instance Mary is doing the right thing because this was all she could do for him before he was about to die. In John’s gospel the only person telling people to give things to the poor is the traitorous thief, and according to the story, he is wrong to do so. That difference in context and tone says a lot about each writer’s intent in telling the story.

John’s gospel is simply more concerned with the theological meaning of Jesus’s death and resurrection than anything specific Jesus called the people who followed him to do in his lifetime. The purpose of this commentary is to look at the gospel reading each week, and see what that leads us to do. Holding this up to the light of all the other gospel scriptures, I think it would be quite difficult to take away a sense that Jesus doesn’t want us to give to the poor, but it does give the sense that the Jesus of John’s gospel is less concerned with giving things away than the Jesus of Luke’s gospel.

All four gospels were put together by different people in different contexts. The cynic in me wonders if maybe John’s gospel’s original community was a little richer than that of the other three gospels, so perhaps it got a few of Jesus’s harder economic edges filed off. The truth is that we have four retellings of the same story in the New Testament for a reason. People thought they all had something important to say. You can enjoy John’s theological flourish, and follow Luke’s call to divest of wealth and serve. But, if what you are looking for is a way to brush aside all that “blessed are the poor” and “woe to the rich” stuff, you aren’t going to find it here.

We find Jesus in a pretty wound up state this week in our passage.  This section comes at the end of a long set of teachings, so if this was a sermon, you could see it as the crescendo to the ending.  It starts with a question about some current events that the questioners would like Jesus to comment on.  Jesus essentially waves them off, and directs them back to his message.  You need to repent.  Jesus then brings up and dismisses another current event, just to emphasize his point.  You need to repent.

For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.

He concludes with a story about a man who is convinced not to cut down his fig tree by a gardener. This story is a little interesting by itself because Matthew and Mark both have similar fig tree stories.  Luke is the only story of three that is a parable.  In the other two it is Jesus who sees the fig tree and Jesus who choses to destroy it.  In Mark, Jesus curses the fig tree on his way to the temple.  After he flips the tables, the disciples see the tree on the way out, and it is withered and dead.  In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus finds the fig tree and seemingly murders it with a vicious stare-down as the disciples look on.

The stories are different because of what the fig trees represent in each one.  In Matthew and Mark’s stories the tree represents the temple system that Jesus just railed against in each story.  Jesus has just labeled the temple a “den of robbers” and the fig tree represents what to do to that corrupt system and the people who profit from it.  In Luke’s gospel, the fig tree isn’t related to the story about the temple, it is the conclusion of his previous statements about the need to repent.  Instead of representing the temple system, it represents the people that are hearing Jesus.  You, the reader or listener at the time, have not yet borne fruit.  You don’t need to be cut down for that, but you do need to repent and start bearing some fruit.

Jesus’s call to repentance is a topic that is difficult to fully dig into.  What I was taught about repentance as a child is that I should pray to God and confess my sins.  If I had hurt someone or stolen something, I should confess that to God and be forgiven.  All sins were individual sins, and the assumption was that I would stop the sinful behavior immediately.  They would say we should turn away from the sin, and turn toward God.  Unfortunately, there was never a great answer for what to do if the sins I felt on my heart were sins I was not able to turn away from.

If you’ve been reading along for the last few months, you can see that many of the sins that Jesus describes in the gospels are less about one person wronging someone and more about how a society treats the people in it. (If not, here’s a few to try.)  We may give of what we have, but we still are supported by and supporting a society that fundamentally does not love all neighbors the same.  Our country is committing a litany of sins against its own citizens and is resting on a foundation of some of the most egregious sin the world has ever known.  You can’t be “In the world, but not of it”, as some might say, if you live on stolen land, in a city founded on the profits of stolen labor, protected by powers that oppress the poor and marginalized, and staying well fed while others are starving. The sins of our modern capitalist economy are easy to document, but very difficult to turn away from.

Rather than being bogged down by these sins that we can repent, but we can’t stop, Jesus lays out a way forward.  Bear fruit.  Let the weight of all this atrocity pull you into action rather and crush you into inaction.  We are called to remember the stories of two fig trees.  The one that represents the powers of oppression and domination, God will destroy. The fig tree that represents us still has time to act.  We must repent of our sins of complicity in a crushingly sinful system, because we have to be able to admit what is going on.  Then we have to move forward in faith that God will use us to help create something better.  While we can’t do the work all by ourselves, we can’t do nothing either, because that would be an even greater sin.

Jesus isn’t always talking about economics, but it’s rare for him not to.  That’s especially the case for Luke’s Gospel, but this week’s passage is one of those few that don’t have much to say about economics.  Jesus is warned that Herod wants to kill him, and after calling Herod a fox, Jesus gives a prediction of his death and resurrection.  That is all theologically important, but the project here is to focus on what Jesus calls us to do, not what Jesus calls us to believe, so what can this passage lead us to do?

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’

For me the focus is on the first sentence.  I looked over it a few times before it really hit.  We know that Jesus dies, so it doesn’t seem that shocking for a Pharisee to tell Jesus that Herod wants to kill him, but imagine if you were in that room at that moment.   In scriptures prior to this Jesus is just teaching to the people around him, then it seems this Pharisee busts in and tells him to skip town because Herod wants to kill him.  That would be incredibly shocking.  Jesus doesn’t seem shocked in the text, and the writer sees this as all part of the plan.  While the text expects the eventual outcome will come, in the moment this must have been a huge revelation.  Jesus had now done so much to disrupt the current order that the Head of State now wanted him dead.  It’s important to not lose that fact.

Christianity has a strange relationship to societal structures of power.  It emerged as a counter-cultural force, but since the days of Constantine it’s been aligned with people in power.  The words in the gospels have remained the same, but they were now a supporter of state power from the Roman Empire to the anti-trans statehouse in Texas.  This passage should remind us that we follow the teachings of a man who so enraged the people in power that they wanted not just to kill him, but to make an example of him by killing him on a cross.

Jesus made the people in power mad.  Jesus saw that the system in place did not follow God’s call.  He saw that they mistreated the poor, the orphans, and the widows. He saw that they enriched the few at the expense of the many, and he said so loudly.  He knew that it would not end well for him, but he did it anyway.  If we are called to follow Jesus, then we are called to make the people in power mad.  They mistreat the poor, the orphans and the widows.  They enrich the few at the expense of the many, and we must say so loudly.

I have a youth group that I meet with each week.  Our motto is, “Keep Youth Group Subversive.”  At the start of each year I get to remind them what that means.  I tell them that to  subvert means to “undermine the power and authority of an established system or institution.”  At the heart of our faith is a man who was sent to undermine the power and authority of the established system of the day.  We are called to do no less.  This passage reminds us that he did so to such an extent that they killed him. 

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote in his letter from a Birmingham Jail, “So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.”  Don’t be silent.  Raise your voice and raise a ruckus.  

Here’s a good example.  If only we could all be as fearless as this young man :-)

It’s Ash Wednesday, and I am about to leave to attend an Ash Wednesday service with my favorite theologian, my wife.  She never lets us miss an Ash Wednesday service because she finds it to be one of the most profound services of the church year.  I asked her why that was, and she simply said, “It reminds us that we are all made of the same stuff.”  In this week’s scripture we follow Jesus into the wilderness to find temptation to let that idea go.

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”’

One thing that always grabs me about the story of the temptation of Jesus is that the story starts with Jesus being led into the wilderness by “the Spirit.”  In the passages prior to this one we saw the Spirit descend down to Jesus like a dove, so now we are seeing where the Spirit moves Jesus.  Unfortunately for Jesus it is leading him off to have a really awful few weeks.  Jesus has no food and presumably little shelter for forty days, and the text would have us believe that this is the will of God, because the Spirit let him there.  Jesus is out in this mess because he is following where God led him.

As Jesus is feeling horrible, the story tells us that the devil comes to him with some possible ways to get out of this mess that God has put him in.  He begins by tempting him to do something that no human could do.  He could use some special power that he has to turn a rock into bread.  In that way he could circumvent the harm that he is undergoing, but he would also circumvent God’s will, because the spirit led him to this.  Jesus gives a nice flippant answer in the form of a scriptural reference and moves on.

Next the devil tempts him with the power of the world.  He says that he can give him all the kingdoms of the world, and all the glory and authority that comes with that.  Then Jesus could easily get a nice meal as well a rule with an iron fist if he so desired.  But in trade he would have to give up following God, and instead worship the devil.  Given the offer of immeasurable power here on Earth, Jesus shuts the devil down again.

Finally the Devil gives him one last temptation.  He asks Jesus to essentially force God’s hand.  Rather than sit here and undergo this torment, Jesus could jump off the temple and force God to send some angels down to take care of him.  This would not only allow him to get out of his current situation, but it would also take some of God’s power for himself as he made God do what he wanted.  Once again Jesus tells the devil to shut it via scriptural reference, and the devil heads off to fight again another day.

One thing that all of these three temptations have in common is they are an attempt to gain power above what any person may have.  Jesus is left out in the wilderness, and he is experiencing it in the way any normal person would.  He is hungry.  It is awful.  He does use superpowers coming from himself to fix it.  He does not use power coming from the world to fix it.  He does not force God to fix it.  He came into this situation in faith, and he will come out of it in faith.  He just comes home when the Spirit says it’s time.

Now I do not believe that God leads us through terrible things just to tempt us to give up on God's path, but I do believe that following God’s call is often incredibly difficult.  I think the gospel writer knows that as well and wants us to know that Jesus went through it too.  Jesus went through some hard times following God’s call, and rather than miracle his way out of it, Jesus went through it just like would, hungry and tempted to stop.

We are all made of the same stuff.  We can’t turn rocks into bread, we can’t take God’s power, and any power we amass through not following God will be pretty useless at the end of the road.  We are all called to follow God, just like Jesus.  Sometimes it will feel like the wilderness, and we might be tempted to make decisions that take us away from our connection to God, rather than having strength in our faith to keep going.  More likely though, things are generally ok, but we are just as tempted by the fear that the wilderness might be right around the corner.  Either way, use this Lent to assess what is helping you on your journey following God, and what isn’t.  And have faith.  The wilderness is hard on all of us.

Luke’s Gospel stops the generally fast pace of Jesus’s story to hear Jesus give something like a full sermon.  Normally we get short parables and quick, sharp teachings from Jesus, but here we get to really sit with what he believed.  The sermon is also included, almost word for word, in Matthew’s Gospel, so this part is probably something written down much earlier that they both incorporated.  (Yes, you can nerd out on this really hard if you want, but that’s not really what I’m up to here.)  What is interestingly different between the two is how they start.  In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus goes up on the Mountain to start talking, and in this passage Jesus goes up the mountain for a full night of prayer, then comes down to “a level place” to speak to the people.  This entrance mirrors the reversal of fortune theme of Jesus’s sermon and Luke’s gospel.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

Jesus comes down from being with God in prayer, and gets level with the people to talk to them.  It even says that he looked up at the disciples when he began to teach.  If a person was going to address a large group of people, you generally want to walk to some higher ground or hop up on your soapbox so everyone can see and hear you.  Not so for Luke’s Jesus.  This makes a statement to the reader that this message may have come from God, but it doesn’t come from some power on high like they would have expected an important message to be issued from.  This message comes from God among them.  A God that does not have much to say to the people on high, but has some good news for you here on the ground.

As Jesus comes down and approaches the people on their level something amazing happens before he even begins to speak.  The author tells us that all the people come up to him and touch him, then all their ailments are cured.  Now it might not seem like a big deal because Jesus heals quite a few people in the gospels, but this one is quite important because the author makes sure to say that he “healed all of them.”  In other words every single person who was there to see Jesus had already felt a reversal of fortune before he even spoke.  What was unwell in their bodies and their spirits was well now.

After Jesus heals them and delivers a reversal of fortune to their bodies in the moment, Jesus begins to talk of the reversal of fortune to come.  Jesus is going to change the way they live.  The poor people who were there to see him would have seen themselves at the bottom rung of their society, and Jesus promised them to turn their society upside down.  The kingdom to come is for the people who are poor now, and the people who are full now will be hungry.  In other words Jesus is saying, “I have healed your spirit, and now I will heal your lives.”

For a modern reader who has grown up in the church, you have probably heard a lot about Jesus healing the soul and healing the body, but this healing of hunger and poverty goes one in the same with those things in Luke’s gospel.  In a modern capitalist country, the language we use for this sort of thing is redistribution of wealth.  Taking from those who have, and giving to those who do not.  That may seem incredibly radical when viewed through the lens of our capitalist system, but that is what Jesus is calling for here.  As people who follow Jesus, we are called to work toward this end as well.  Even the Pope is getting in on it! So, if this is something that seems impossible or even terrible, sit with this in prayer and open your mind to God’s call.  Jesus came to heal our souls and heal our society.  We have to help with both.

If you are into this, but want to know more, you can start here

If you want dig way deeper, you should check this out

See you next week.

It’s an odd thing to go back to your hometown when you have been away for a while.  In this week’s scripture we see Jesus heading back to his hometown of Nazareth for the first time since he was baptized by John the Baptist and he has been tempted in the wilderness for forty days.  It’s probably a pretty wild ride, so he heads back to his home before he starts out his big traveling ministry.  The scripture even says that Jesus has been teaching in the synagogues of the towns he passed on the way, and some of the folks back home have heard about what he’s been up to.

‘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,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’

When he arrives in Nazareth he heads straight to his hometown synagogue, and someone hands him a scroll of the book of Isaiah to read out loud.  He skims straight to chapter 61 and reads what stands as the mission statement for Jesus in Luke’s gospel.  Jesus is here to bring good news to the poor, give sight to the blind and free the prisoners.  This is a pretty big statement, and he notices that everyone is staring at him.  Jesus just looks right at them and essentially says, “Yep, this scripture’s about me!”  If he would have had a microphone he would have dropped it.  

Our lectionary scripture ends there with the mic drop, but the story doesn’t end there, so we’re going to do something a little different and cover this week and next week right now. It’s important to look at how the people in the synagogue respond to his bold statement of purpose.  They don’t buy it at all.  They say, “Aren’t you Joseph’s kid?” as if to dismiss him because they think they know who he is, and he is not the “bringing good news to the poor” type.  Jesus shrugs it off by saying “Whatever! No prophet was liked by the people of their town!”  The people get so mad at him that they try to throw him off a cliff, but he just walks off to follow God’s path and change the world.

I love this passage for two reasons.  First, it is a wonderfully succinct encapsulation of what lies at the heart of the ministry of Luke’s Jesus.  I used the term mission statement before, and I really do think this works like one.  Jesus essentially says that God has called him to do four basic things:

1. Help people in need

2. Heal people

3. Free people

4. Tell people God’s time is now

If you use a mission statement well, most of the work you do goes to help with one of the missions listed in your mission statement.  If you read through the gospel, almost everything Jesus does falls into one of these four missions.  This is the work Jesus is called to do, and he gets to it.  Therefore, if we are trying to follow Jesus’s teachings, then our mission statement should look pretty similar.

The second reason I love this passage is because of how real it is.  I can tell you for sure that if you start telling people in your life that you feel like you are called to serve the poor and the sick, and drop what you have to follow God, you are going to get some funny looks.  Some people are going to dismiss you.  Some people are going to tell you that you are not the, “bringing good news to the poor” type.  Some people may even get mad about it.  You may have your own moment where you just have to walk away.  But know this:  The Spirit of the Lord is upon you, too, and God’s time is right now. What is on your mission statement?

I had a nice couple of weeks at home with my children, but now they are back to school (with the exception of the one zoom schooler on lockdown behind me), so I’m back to work. I should be back to a weekly schedule as we follow along with the lectionary.  This week we are taking a look at John’s gospel, and if you are used to the Jesus that we have been talking about for the last several weeks, you may find Jesus a little odd this week.

When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’

You may remember that the last several passages we have looked at have all come from Matthew, Mark and Luke.  These three have a lot in common because, while there is some material that is different in each of them, they share the same structure and they often have whole passages that are close to word for word copied in each book.  If you are interested in a side by side comparison, here’s a cool chart.  

Rather than following the mold of the other three canonical gospels, John goes it’s own way in both the structure of the story of Jesus’s life and the way that Jesus acts.  In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus generally tends to keep a low profile.  He tells people not to tell others who he is, and he is very vague about his exact relationship with God.  John’s Jesus is essentially the opposite of that.  He makes bold declarative statements about himself to practically anyone who will listen.  John’s gospel was written the latest after Jesus’s death, so it might make sense that the author would try to make many of the things that are hinted at in the other gospels a bit more explicit.

In the passage we see Jesus at a wedding with his mother, and the wedding hosts make the most tragic mistake ever.  They run out of booze!  Mary tells Jesus about the lack of wine with a little implied horror, and Jesus has a pretty perplexing response.  He says, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”  Even more oddly, Mary just seems to ignore him.  She doesn’t respond at all.  Instead she tells some servants to do what Jesus says.  The servants gather the materials that Jesus asks for, and boom! Water is turned into wine.  The story even contains a moment to share with the reader that this is really good wine!

The purpose of the passage in the book is to be another miraculous example of Jesus’s power, but to me what I find interesting is this passage is how normal it seems.  Most stories of Jesus’s life that we find in the gospels follow one of two paths.  Jesus goes to a place and teaches, and Jesus goes to a place where he encounters someone in need and helps them.  We often don’t get much from the setting and background.  In this passage we have Jesus just taking part in the regular life activities that don’t specifically focus on him at all.  He is with his mother, his brothers and the disciples at a random wedding.  We don’t know who is getting married, but we can assume that the focus of the day is not on Jesus for most people there.  They came for the wedding and for the party.

This story is similar to some of the stories where Jesus helps someone in need, but the difference is that the stakes are so much lower.  Jesus isn’t healing the blind or feeding the masses.  He is keeping the party going.  He’s just a guy at a wedding that runs out of wine, and his mom thinks he might be able to do something about it.  He doesn’t want to get involved, but his mother makes him do it anyway.  It’s hard to say no to your mom, even when you are Jesus.  I think it’s a good reminder that while Jesus did many amazing things and called us to do amazing things as well, he also was a guy that did normal stuff and took part in all the normal parts of life.  

With Epiphany in the rear view and Lent a good ways off, it's easy to feel like we are a little less connected to God when those big moments of focus are gone.  We are not.  Jesus took part in all the most mundane normal human stuff and reminds us that God is with us in all that normal human stuff as well.  When we are putting away groceries or making sure the laundry is folded, God is with us.  In a raging pandemic, with weather that makes us stay inside, it’s a great comfort to remember that God is with us in the mundane normalcy of January.  Even in the cold and even when we feel alone, God is with us.  

Last week we had John the Baptist as a salty talking adult, and this week we have an as yet unborn John the Baptist leaping for joy in his mother’s womb.  Obviously the lectionary scriptures are not in chronological order.  Depending on the viewpoint of your minister, this may be a passage that you reflect on every Advent, or this might be something that never gets mentioned at all.  Mary’s radical song reminds us all that she is not here to simply be a silent mother of Jesus.  She was a revolutionary before Jesus was even born.

And Mary said,‘
My soul magnifies the Lord,
   and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
   Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
   and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
   from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
   in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

This passage comes immediately after the passage where Mary learns that she is pregnant with Jesus.  She is going to her friend Elizabeth’s house to engage in an activity that we rarely see in the bible.  The two women talk to one another about their own thoughts on God with no guys around.  Elizabeth knows that Mary is pregnant, and she knows that Mary will be “the mother of my Lord.”  Elizabeth tells Mary she is blessed by God, and goes on and on about how great it is that Mary’s going through this.

After all the blessings from Elizabeth, Mary bursts into a song of praise.  I like to think this happened just like a Broadway musical.  The music swells, and Mary begins her solo.  The song itself follows a familiar pattern to many Psalms, and it gives us the opportunity to hear exactly what Mary believes about God.  Mary starts out with thanks and pleasantries, but then she moves into some theological statements.  

Mary is the first person to explicitly state the reversal of fortune motif that continues throughout Luke’s gospel.  God brings the proud and powerful down, and God lifts the low up.  God feeds the hungry, and God gives the rich nothing. In other words, Mary is praising God because she believes that God is going to bring revolutionary change.  She believes God is going to flip the balance of power so that, as Jesus will go on to say, the last shall be first.

I love this as a beginning of Jesus’s story because it reminds us that Jesus doesn’t come from nowhere.  Jesus’s mom was pretty darn radical in her day as well, he probably spent his earliest nights having songs like the one we see here sung to him as a baby.  He probably heard the ideas that his own theology would be built on from his mother as he grew.  Son of God or not, moms are pretty influential, and Mary doesn’t sound like the type of mom to be tight lipped about her faith.  Jesus was probably his time’s version of the kid in the Baby Bjorn at the protest.

The gospels don’t give much more for Mary to say than this, and that’s a shame.  She isn’t mentioned much after Jesus becomes an adult, but I imagine she was still doing her part and serving God well after the crucifixion.  She and Elizabeth were mothers of the revolution.  Much like Jesus is all God and all human, his revolutionary spirit comes from God, but he also gets it from his mom. 

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John the Baptist is really not in a great mood today.  In this passage we see people coming to John the Baptist to be baptized, and John calls them all a “brood of vipers.”  That doesn’t sound nice.  Leading into this section the gospel writer introduces John the Baptist as someone who is “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah.” He has run off into the wilderness, and people are coming to him to have their sins forgiven.  As they arrive, he makes clear what he thinks of them.  They are a brood of vipers that are not special just because they are Hebrew people.

And the crowds asked him, ‘What then should we do?’ In reply he said to them, ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.’

The reasoning for John’s grumpy musings here is because the gospel writer is making a point about shifting the way people are connected to God.  For the Jews of the day, their connection to God comes from birth.  They’re family is connected to all the Hebrew families of the past going back to Abraham in the book of Genesis.  It’s not a thing you choose, it’s a culture and a heritage that you are born into.  At the time Luke’s gospel was written, the early Christian community was made up of many people who were not Jewish as well as people who were culturally Jewish but followed the teachings of Jesus.  Luke is making a statement that being a child of Abraham is not just about bloodlines.  God can make children of Abraham from anywhere.

Now, I think it’s always important to remember, especially in this holiday season, that Jesus was very much a Jew.  He participated in all the normal feasts and festivals.  He sat at the Passover table just like everyone around him.  But as we read throughout the New Testament, many people who were not Jewish came to follow Jesus, and during this period it was still not settled as to whether a person would need to be Jewish to follow Jesus.  Luke’s author is arguing that you do not have to be Jewish to follow Jesus.  He is not saying that you should not be Jewish.  Just that you don’t have to be Jewish.  

Then we get to the heart of the matter when the crowds ask, “What then should we do?’  If we can’t rely on being children of Abraham to guarantee that we are following God’s will, then what should we do?  John’s answer is simple, and hits at the core of Luke’s gospel message.  “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”  In other words, the way through the difficulties ahead is together.  Share what you have.  

You could read this to simply mean that if you have extra you should give to those that don’t have enough, but I think there is more going on there than just that, when you read it with the rest of the gospel in mind.  Remember, Jesus is about to ask everyone to give up all their possessions, so it isn’t just about a one time drop off of food and clothing to the needy (Although you should definitely do that).  John is asking them to share their things continually. To make sure everyone always has enough.  To be a community.  Similarly, when the tax collector and the soldier ask about what they should do, John essentially tells them to do their work in a way that is fair and kind.  He calls them to act in a way that serves the community and not their own pockets.  

Following God is not about whose blood runs through your veins.  It is about much more than that.  We are called to share, to be fair, to be kind and to love one another.  I think this is a great message in the Advent season.  What is a good community, Christian or otherwise, other than a chosen family.  People that we choose to live, work, celebrate, mourn and share with.  Use this time, as we wait for Jesus, to remember that we are called to share our food together.  Go find some people you love and share with them.