Today’s Gospel story confronts us with two questions:

• 1) How are we doing by our children? Not only our own children, if we are parents, but by the children of our church family, whether we are parents or not? After all, Jesus made that matter sound mighty important when he said, “… to such belongs the kingdom of God.”

• 2) In what ways does Jesus want us all to be like children? That sounds pretty important too, for he said, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

There’s more at stake than whether or not families visit this church and say, “Here’s where we want to bring our children.” I love it when that happens. But what’s at stake is Jesus’ desire to create the beloved community of which the prophets spoke, when they said things like, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;  and a little child shall lead them.” (Is. 11).

The true measure of a church, then, is not how high our steeples go, but how low does our attention go? Does it go all the way down to those about whom Jesus said, “Whenever you give a cup of cold water to a child in my name, it shall not go unrewarded?” The true measure of a church is not how many people God gives us to love, but how much we love each person whom God gives us. If we’re not doing right by the ones whom God has given us, especially the neediest, most vulnerable and dependent, why would he give us any more?

So for that first question–How are we doing by our children?– how do we stack up? I observe that we have some top notch Christian education workers here, who regularly go the second mile to prepare for their classes, even when their classes turn out to be two children, or one, or, some Sundays, none. People have also remarked on the ways we seek to include children and youth in the life and ministries of our church, and not just for our annual Christmas pageant. Some of us just followed the lead of our youth last night to gather and work at Feed My Starving Children. And we have a Safeguarding our Congregation policy by which we protect both our children and youth, plus their teachers and sponsors, from the risks of abuse, even from the mistaken appearance of abuse. So when someone signs up to be a youth worker or a Christian education teacher, no one should be surprised when they get that form for a police background check. Nothing personal; its just standard procedure, precisely so that it won’t be needed.

But let’s not let up. I encourage us to keep thinking of ourselves as something like a village, or an extended family. Even if we adults did not come here with children, I invite us all to think of ourselves as having some responsiblity toward all the children in this family of faith. If for example you see a child doing something here that could be dangerous or destructive, feel free to get down at their level and say something like, “I’m afraid you’re going to get hurt doing that. Where’s a better place to run?”

But the responsibility doesn’t lie with us adults alone. Kids, if you in your Christian Education class are memorizing some Bible verses or learning a song, how about reciting them or singing it for us during worship? We’d love it, and you’d be ministering to us. And youth, let me remind you of our mentoring program. We remind you of it every so often, but we don’t get many takers. What can I tell you that would help you get on board with that again?

So how are we doing by our children? Pretty good, I’d say, but there’s always room for growth. Now that first question: How are we doing by the children? was the easy part.

Here’s the hard part,: Question #2, In what ways does Jesus want his disciples to be like children? Especially since, elsewhere in the Bible, we are always told to grow up? Like in Ephesians 4, where we read, “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…”

Or when Paul says, in I Cor. 13: 11, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” By that he means love. So the Bible tells us to grow up and to be like children. How do we square growing up with remaining childlike? What gives?

Well, let’s consider: What are the qualities typical of children that we do well to keep? One would be trust. In our very earliest stages of life, one lesson we hopefully learn is trust. Its at the heart of everything else we must learn. We learn it if Mom and Dad are always there to feed us whenever we’re hungry, and to change our diapers, hold us close, carry us around, smile and sing and talk to us; make funny noises to engage us and draw us out into the world. Hopefully we learn that the world is an orderly, dependable, trustworthy, welcoming and loving place, at least the world that our families make at home. If we learn to trust in that time and that setting, we can learn to trust others well enough to love, in our marriages, if so called, in the church, at work, out on the streets where hopefully most people are obeying the traffic laws. And hopefully we learn to trust God, as the source of all love and trustworthiness. I think that’s one way Jesus wants us to stay childlike: trust, or faith.

No matter what our age, every stage and lesson of life forces us to choose between trust and fear. Get the lesson right in one major life event, and soon the next exam comes. If we’re parents, when it comes time to let our children go, we have to choose trust over fear, just as our children do. If we’re changing jobs or retiring, its trust versus fear again. And when the doctor asks us if our affairs are in order and recommends a hospice care center for us, its time to choose trust all over again. It doesn’t necessarily get easier every time. But it helps if we’ve had some practice.

But trust implies that we know how much we depend upon God and each other, a second lesson from childhood: embracing our interdependence. For children this sometimes poses as many problems as it does delights. Especially when we get toward adolescence and can’t wait to be as independent as possible, as soon as possible, even while the parents still provide for our basic needs. The title of a book captured that dilemma: Mom and Dad, Get Out of My Life,!!! But First, Will You Take Me and Cheryl to the Mall? Over time we hopefully grow to become more responsible and supportive to others. But we never become truly and totally independent. There are no self-made persons. So, knowing and embracing our dependence upon God and each other, and being dependable to each other, is the other side of the coin of trust, something childlike that Jesus wants his disciples to keep.

A third thing would be a sense of wonder. As we grow up, we risk getting to the point where we think we’ve seen it all. Unless we push ourselves into new experiences, we can get to where we think we know everything, and everything is ho-hum. Been there; done that; seen it all. But little children have neither the lifespan nor the temperament to act so jaded and cynical. So in second grade, when suddenly the chrysalis in the terrarium on the teacher’s desk starts to break open and a monarch butterfly starts to emerge, there’s no dignity to protect by playing it cool and saying, “Whatever; Big Deal.” There’s no keeping the children quiet; there’s no keeping them in their seats, nor any reason to.

This kind of childlike awe and wonder is what the Proverbs and the Psalms mean whenever they say, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Think holy fear, in the sense of amazement, appreciation, yes, wonder, reverence and awe. Its the difference between despising the world, or grabbing at the world, to own it and crush it, and cherishing it, protecting it, and holding it gently in the palm of your hand. That childlike sense of awe, wonder, and delight is another thing to sustain thoughout life.

A fourth childlike thing I’d recommend is play, or playfulness. Because we adults can get so drop-dead serious sometimes. Yes, I’m preaching to myself here. Of course we have serious, important responsibilities. But not everything has to be a terrible crisis, a dreaded threat to our dignity, our well-being, as though life were a zero-sum game in which no one can gain without someone else having to lose. So when disagreements, problems or complications arise, we are tempted to draw upon all the fears, disappointments and complications of our past and say, “Oh man; Here we go again; Why me?” The biggest example of that seriousness run amok is war.

Or we can say, “Well, it looks like we woke up human again today.” Anxiety is the biggest obstacle to creative thinking; nothing shuts down more options and slams shut more doors than heavy, deadly seriousness. Anxiety cannot be overcome with more anxiety. Some playfulness, humor and oddball, off-the-wall thinking can go a long way toward helping us deal creatively with many difficulties and disappointments.

That was part of the genius of the direct action campaigns of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960′s. The marchers and demonstrators knew they would likely go to jail for integrating lunch counters or refusing to move to the back of the bus. So, in their civil disobedience training, they prepared people to go to prison with an open, confident and peaceful attitude. You may even come out better for it; freer and stronger they said. Fifty years later, some of the marchers still say they had some of the best times in jail. Southern jails got full to the bursting with people who spent their time singing hymns and worshiping, telling stories, praying together, teaching and learning, making lifelong friendships and connections, sometimes even with their prison guards. Sometimes both the jailers and the inmates were sorry to part company. Because they refused to add anxiety to an anxious situation, they turned prison cells into freedom schools. That kind of openness or playfulness is also something childlike that Jesus would want us to keep.

But Paul says, “When I grew up, I put childish things away.” And that’s what I want us to remember today: the difference between being childlike and being childish. Childlike is good; childish is bad, at least according to our stage of growth.

Here’s what I mean: You ask a three-year old, Why is it that, while you’re riding in the back seat of the car at night, the moon seems to follow you? Everywhere you go, as long as you’re heading in the right direction, the moon is there moving along with you. Why? A three-year old is likely to say, “Because the moon is my friend.”

Aaaaaw. For a three-year old, that’s so sweet. Their’s is a magical universe, with themselves at the center. When they’re even younger, they are the universe. But for your average fourteen year old or a forty-year old, that kind magical, wishful, self-centered thinking is not only dumb, its dangerous. I don’t think Hitler ever outgrew it.

Or if you ask a two-year old why they should obey their parents, often they’ll say, “Cuz they’re bigger than me.” That’s a toddler’s first take on morality: might makes right. Fortunately, that doesn’t last. Its not long before you hear them saying, “But that’s not faaaair!” (That was our youngest daughter’s first complete sentence, by the way). So the childish things we have to relinquish, as we grow up in Christ, include self-centeredness, lack of self control, magical, wishful thinking, and this might-makes-right thinking, among others. There’s more, but I don’t want to start another sermon.

So, in summary, as we grow up into the fullness of Christ, into adult Christian maturity, the choice before us is either to become more childlike or more childish. Will we be childlike, in the sense of trust, interdependence, wonder, openness and playfulness, or will we be childish in the sense of the magical, wishful, self-centered thinking that so often masquerades as faith? Life has a way of forcing that question upon us, again and again, at deeper and deeper levels of the soul. But don’t worry: as the children’s hymn we sang today put it, “Neither life nor death shall ever from the Lord his children sever. Unto them his grace he showeth, and their sorrows all he knoweth.”

 There, we just heard Jesus name a terrible threat to marriage, and it has nothing to do with anything on the ballot this election year. Yes, I’m talking about the constitutional amendment up for a vote this November, the one that would prohibit same sex marriage. I mention it because some some pastors and churches are already under pressure to join the crusade for or against it. So, now that I have your attention at the start of this election year, I might as well jump into the deep end and make this commitment to you: You hopefully know my commitment, in practice and teaching, to what the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective and the Bible, as I understand it, say about marriage. But I will not use this pulpit, nor my ministry, to tell anyone how they should vote on that amendment, or even if they should vote on it, as is being done in some churches already. Nor will I make your beliefs about marriage or the amendment a litmus test of your Christian faith and discipleship. And I hope no one else does, either.

Besides, no constitutional amendment can ever neutralize the threat to marriage that Jesus has in mind. If law and constitution could help save marriage, or marriages, I would propose that we first make a constitutional amendment against low-wage working poverty, for financial strains are surely killing marriages right and left. I would also propose an amendment against pornography, for that too is harming marriages, as well as the women and children whom it exploits. But the threat that Jesus has identified is so insidious that it not only hurts marriages, it hurts, even kills, all sorts of relationships, including our relationship with God, and thus, our eternal souls.

This threat is the same one I mentioned last Sunday: hardness of heart. In verse 5, Jesus told the Pharisees: ”It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law.”Note that he was not talking to promiscuous, party-hardy. loose-living libertines. He was warning righteous, rigorous, religious people, the moral crusaders who were striving to bring the nation back to God: the Pharisees.

And that crusading tendency just might be a symptom of the problem, if it means that we’re looking for dragons and monsters, enemies and adversaries to fight and defeat outside ourselves, while ignoring the dragons and enemies inside of ourselves. That’s one sure symptom of hardness of heart: projecting onto others what we least want to see in ourselves. And it seems to be a sadly recurrent theme in history, that triumphalistic, moralistic crusaders eventually show themselves just as susceptible to the sins that they crusade against, as are the sinners against whom they crusade.

That was the case in this First Century controversy about divorce. When they tested Jesus with the question, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” they were dragging him into a long-standing debate among Jews of the time over that very question, “How easy should divorce be?” Jesus was not the only rabbi of the time to set a very high bar over and against divorce. But oddly enough, these most rigorous moral crusaders, who were trying to discredit him with this very question, were the most indulgent about divorce: to many Pharisees, a man could divorce a woman for just about anything that displeased him, as soon as she displeased him.

Not only was that terrible for marriage; it was especially terrible for women. Turning them out onto the streets was a ticket to poverty, and maybe even to prostitution as their only means of survival. But that was of no concern to these strenuous moral crusaders. They were hard of heart.

So hard of heart are they that even their way of reading the Bible was skewed. For the answer that Jesus gave them showed that their differences were over more than just divorce. He differed with them over how he read the Law of Moses. They saw every detail of the Law of Moses as an end in itself. So if Moses permitted divorce, then divorce must be okay.

Tragically and sadly, sometimes divorce is better than being bound forever to someone who abuses or betrays you. Nor am I saying that everyone with divorce in their history is guilty of hard-heartedness. We must not rush in with judgment where angels fear to tread. God knows how all marriages struggle, and how hard all couples must work at them. Whenever someone says to me, “I wonder if men and women can ever even be compatible,” I want to ask, “ What did you expect?” and “That, my friend, is precisely why God puts us together.” Couples make wedding vows for the same reason that all Christians make baptismal vows: the things required of us on our journey of discipleship, whether single or married, do not come easily nor naturally; they must be promised, not just suggested, worked at, not just taken for granted. That’s why I urge no one to give themselves intimately, in body and soul, to another person until such promises have been made and trust has been earned.

Nor do I take Jesus to mean that, after divorce, no one can ever remarry, when he says that “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.” I wonder if he’s telling the Pharisees, “You can’t dress up adultery as divorce whenever you expel your wives, to look for a better spouse, instead of working at being a better spouse.”

Still, nobody should rush from divorce into another marriage; rupturing the one-flesh bond between man and woman, whether there’s a ring or not, is one of the most painful things ever. Time and care must be taken to address what went wrong. The burden of proof should be against divorce and remarriage. But to say that no one gets any forgiveness, or any second chances after divorce, is at odds with all the other second chances that Jesus gives for everything else.

So, when it comes to reading the law of Moses, Jesus points us to an even greater good in the Law. It’s right there in the first three chapters of Genesis, and it takes priority over the permission to divorce. “At the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female” he says,….. “therefore, they are no longer two, but one.” Its the melding of very different beings–man and woman– each one a reflection of God–into a unity of body and spirit that also reflects God, through the love, respect, dignity and care they show for one another, mutually and equally. This harmony can happen in marriage, supremely, but not just.

Even if we are not married, this is well worth reflecting upon, because we all owe our very existence to this powerful drive toward the union of genders that God has built into creation. This drive and desire is nothing less than a reflection of God’s very nature, and of God’s delight in and desire for each of us, by name. What’s more, the Bible compares our glorious destiny of redemption to a riotously joyful wedding celebration: the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the marriage of heaven and earth. In that sense, all Christians are married, at least once. So, the tender-heartedness that Jesus advocates for marriage is a survival skill that all of us need in our spiritual journey, whether married or single.

So, lets examine the nature of our love and respect for the other gender, whether we’re married or not, as a sign, an indicator, of our love and respect for God. Its what I mean by “tenderness of heart.” Another way of putting it is with the words I most want us to remember today: they are “willingness” and “willfullness.” Those are two words that the Christian psychologist, Gerald May, uses for what the Bible calls hardness of heart and tenderness of heart. Tenderness of heart is akin to willingness, while hardness of heart he calls, willfulness. Here’s how May described the two: “Willingness implies a surrendering of one’s self-separateness, an entering into, an immersion in the deepest processes of life itself. It is a realization that one already is a part of some ultimate cosmic process and it is a commitment to participation in that process. In contrast, willfulness is the setting of oneself apart from the fundamental essence of life in an attempt to master, direct, control, or otherwise manipulate existence. More simply, willingness is saying yes to the mystery of being alive in each moment. Willfulness is saying no, or perhaps more commonly, ‘yes, but…’ But willingness and willfulness do not apply to specific things or situations. They reflect instead the underlying attitude one has toward the wonder of life itself. Willingness notices this wonder and bows in some kind of reverence to it. Willfulness forgets it, ignores it, or at its worse, actively tries to destroy it. Thus willingness can sometimes seem very active and assertive, even aggressive. And willfulness can appear in the guise of passivity.”

For a supreme example of willingness, consider Jim and Della, a young, poor, hardworking couple in O’Henry’s classic story, The Gift of the Magi. Each wants to honor and thrill the other with a Christmas gift. But being poor, they have to hock their most prized possessions to be able to buy it. Jim sells his heirloom gold pocket watch, which belonged to his father and grandfather, to buy Della a set of beautiful combs for her long, gorgeous hair. But unbeknownst to Jim, Della cuts and sells her long, gorgeous hair, to buy him a platinum chain for his heirloom gold pocket watch, that he has just sold, to buy her beautiful combs for the beautiful hair she has just cut and sold. We can laugh over the irony of each one getting a gift that the other cannot use. But O’Henry’s point is that their tender-hearted willingness to please each other, to the point of sacrificing their most prized possession for each other, is their true gift to each other.

All relationships, require the willingness to cherish, honor and protect, rather than the willfulness to grab, take and exploit; the willingness to invite and engage, to welcome and receive, rather than the willfulness to demand, impose or, should someone disappoint us, to expel; the willingness to serve and support, rather than the willfulness to control and to use; the willingness to listen and to learn, even when the truth hurts, rather than the willfulness of defensiveness and denial; the willingness to learn, grow and change, rather than the willfulness of dominating and demanding that others change.

Consider then what damage a hard-hearted willfulness can do to any relationship, especially to the intimate bond of marriage. Men and women are equally susceptible to it. But as a man I have to take some responsibility for the male versions of this willfulness against women, because they are staples of mainstream male culture, all over the world. Consider the contempt that is all too common toward women, even though we all came into the world through women. Go figure. This contempt for women and all things female is called mysoginy.

The worst examples of misogyny are physical, verbal, emotional or sexual abuse. Or when men withdraw from their wives into work, TV, sports or alcohol. Or pornography. Or the kind of crude talk about women that you often hear in locker rooms or some business board rooms. As the Pharisees show in today’s passage, there are religious ways of being willful and hard-hearted, too. In the church, whenever men interpret biblical words like “headship” and “submission” to mean domination, superiority or hierarchy over women, we’ve missed the whole biblical meaning of submission and servanthood according to Jesus.

Remember how Adam pointed to Eve that day in the Garden and said to God, “That woman, that you gave me, she offered me the fruit and I ate it.” That says to me that there has long been a deep wound of estrangement, shame, fear and distrust running through the male and female expressions of God’s nature in creation. I wonder if that wasn’t the fall: Adam blaming and rejecting of Eve, and God, in the same willful, accusing breath. Because of that wound, men are still tempted to use their unique, God-given masculine powers in willful self-assertion and dominance over women. Or failing that, in passive resistance and withdrawal from them.

The Law of Moses did not intend to heal that wound. The Law only served to bandage that wound, so we might limp along as best we can in our fallen condition. That’s the best that any law can ever do.

But as John the Beloved said at the beginning of his gospel, “Law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” When God administers grace and truth to us through the Holy Spirit, we’re talking about nothing less than lifelong radical spiritual healing heart surgery of the kind that God promised through the Prophet Ezekiel, when he said, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

In other words, justice between the genders require nothing short of a radical spiritual heart surgery that would uncover and remove our hardened shell of willfulness and replace it with tender willingness, a willingness to love, cherish, honor, delight in and please God and all those whom he gives us to love, especially our spouses, if God has called us to marriage. To survive and to thrive on the journey of marriage, and indeed in any relationships, in life itself, no human law or amendment can heal us where we hurt most. We must choose, as often as necessary, to be and to stay on that journey of the transformation of the heart, from stubborn, fallen willfulness, to gracious, tender-hearted willingness. Let’s pray about that:

You are love. We love because you first loved us. But only your love is perfect, complete, unalloyed with fear. You called and welcomed each one of us by name into existence through the very love that makes us so dependent upon each other, so inter-related, with not a one of us sufficient unto ourselves. We thank you and bless you for the mystery and the majesty of such love that ties the world together. With the strength of our weak and fragmented loves, we would respond to you. Reveal and heal all that is broken, bruised or hardened within us or among us. Make tender our hearts, and willing our souls, that we would not shrink from you nor ourselves, nor any others, when you reveal how much we have yet to grow; that we would not rush to defend nor justify ourselves when it is you who so willingly justify us. Bless and strengthen all the connections and relations among us, by conforming us ever more into the image of Jesus. For he is the gracious and truthful human face of your love to us, in whose name, for whose honor and will we pray. Amen.

]]> http://www.emmanuelmennonitechurch.com/2012/01/30/jesus-and-marriage-moses-and-law/feed/ 0 http://www.emmanuelmennonitechurch.com/2012/01/30/a-mirror-to-ourselves/ http://www.emmanuelmennonitechurch.com/2012/01/30/a-mirror-to-ourselves/#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:34:37 +0000 Mathew Swora http://www.emmanuelmennonitechurch.com/?p=1376

Mt. 15: 21 Jesus left Galilee and went to the area of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A woman from Canaan lived near Tyre and Sidon. She came to him and cried out, “Lord! Son of David! Have mercy on me! A demon controls my daughter. She is suffering terribly.”  23 Jesus did not say a word. So his disciples came to him. They begged him, “Send her away. She keeps crying out after us.”  24 Jesus answered, “I was sent only to the people of Israel. They are like lost sheep.”  25 Then the woman fell to her knees in front of him. “Lord! Help me!” she said.  26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to their dogs.”  27 “Yes, Lord,” she said. “But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their owners’ table.”  28 Then Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith! You will be given what you are asking for.” And her daughter was healed at that very moment.

This is a difficult story. Naturally, the first question that comes to mind whenever we hear it is, Why would Jesus compare anyone to “a dog?” Especially since that was a racial term used sometimes by Jews for Gentiles? Is Jesus setting the wrong example here, especially on the day before we observe Martin Luther King, Jr. day? If so, how is it that Dr. King himself could appeal to the example and teaching of Jesus for his prophetic ministry against racism and bigotry?

But don’t let that question distract us from the other question that this story poses to us, namely: In relation to Jesus, who are we most like in this story? The disciples or the Canaanite woman? If we deal with that second question first, I believe we will be better able to resolve the first one: Why Jesus would put this mother off, even implying that she and her people were “dogs?”

So, are we like the Canaanite woman or the disciples? Let’s look first at the woman, and mother. She’s not Jewish. Yet she prays to Israel’s Lord and Messiah, at least when she meets him on the roadside. Maybe you too can identify with moments when your most urgent prayers seem to have gotten the same cold shoulder that this Canaanite woman got from Jesus at first, in verse 23: “Jesus did not say a word,” times when heaven seems to have left the phone off the hook, and our prayers not only seem unanswered, we wonder if they were even heard.

Not just unheard or unanswered; actually rebuffed. Rejected. Like when Jesus said to the Canaanite woman, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” But her prayers were first rebuffed by the disciples, when they said to Jesus, “Send her away. She keeps crying out after us.” That’s why we heard today from St. Matthew’s telling of the story, even though this year I’m preaching through St. Mark’s Gospel. Because Matthew includes that detail about the disciples’ initial reaction to this desperate woman. Jesus seems to have waited for them to respond to this woman, and they did. “Send her away!” they said.

So let’s look now at the disciples. Just when this woman needs friends and advocates to intercede with her, and for her, she gets the boot. I can identify with them, too. I’m not particularly proud of it. It happens whenever someone in need shows up at an inopportune moment, a very inconvenient time, and upon seeing him, I’m thinking, “Why now?” Or, “Oh; You again.” Not anybody here, of course. But haven’t there been people in all of our lives who have stretched our patience with their persistence? People who don’t seem to understand the proper way of getting things done, which half the time is no way at all? Maybe they are people to whom we really want to say, “Why should your irresponsibility become my responsibility All of a sudden?” Or, “Again? If I help you out, am I really helping you, or am I only reinforcing some learned helplessness?” Or worse?

And whenever the answer to that last question is Yes, then sometimes we do have to say No. When we just don’t have what our neighbor needs, or when we are the one in great need, there’s no shame in that, and no shame in even saying, Can you help me? We can’t give what we don’t have. There’s only one among us who has everything that everyone needs: God, and God alone.

But that wasn’t the case with the disciples in today’s story. They had rebuffed and rejected her, when she needed friends to pray and intercede with her. If they had any justification for such attitudes, I bet it went like this: “What do you gentiles and pagans expect for worshiping idols, engaging in magic, sorcery and divination, and all around dabbling in the occult, but demonic possession? Isn’t that why you are as unclean to us as……DOGS?” Isn’t that why God gave us the Promised Land and turned your people out?

Technically, they may have a point. But…… there’s a child involved. Even if the mother did something to open the door to the dark, demonic depths, this child cannot be held responsible for it. Same as when someone comes to us looking for help, and you see that morning’s hospital discharge papers, or the prescription that needs filling, or their children in tow, and Community Emergency Services is closed until tomorrow, and the only open overnight shelter with any space is in St. Paul. So, you get the prescription, or the bus tickets, or the grocery store coupon as though you were getting it for Jesus himself.

Because, in effect, you are. Especially when it comes to children.

Naturally we don’t want to be taken advantage of. But our even greater fear should be that other occupational hazard of life: hardness of heart and indifference, to the point that we turn even Jesus away “in his most distressing disguise of the poor,” as Mother Teresa used to say.

And I think that’s why Jesus first responded to the Canaanite woman the way he did, putting her off at first. Not because he was afraid of being taken advantage of. Nor because he was a racial bigot who really thought of Gentiles as dogs. I think Jesus was teaching the disciples something about their own hard-heartedness and indifference to the woman, by holding a mirror up to them, in his own words and actions.

Some people say that this encounter, with this woman, is when Jesus first learned to see Gentiles as something other than subhuman, or “dogs.” But that doesn’t make sense. By this time in his ministry, Jesus had already demonstrated amazing care and compassion for Gentiles. He had already shown a scandalizing disregard for the customs that kept Jews and Gentiles apart from each other. He waited a moment to see if the disciples got the lesson, and obviously, they did not.

Besides, if Jesus really meant to put her down, to put her in her place at the time, as a woman and a Gentile, why didn’t she just wither and slink away at his rebuke? If Jesus is the human face of deity, and if, as the Psalm says, at God’s rebuke the mountains quake and the waters flee, how much more might a mere mortal stand up under the rebuke of him who terrified demons? The Saducees and the Pharisees did not, whenever they tried to argue with Jesus. So, where did this woman find the courage and the wit to come right back at the Messiah with this amazing comeback?

I think its because she realized pretty quickly that this was a test, that Jesus was mirroring to the disciples their own callous indifference and hardness of heart, so that they might see it in full view, in all its sordid, ugly detail. Musicians among us know what that’s like. Don’t you just hate it when you’re taking lessons and your teacher says, “Here, listen while I play back what I just heard from you?” Or if you’re in any kind of class at all, or a business meeting, and the teacher, or your boss, repeats what you just said, and then asks everyone else, “So, what do the rest of you think about that?” Don’t you just want to crawl under the nearest table?

If that’s the case, then Jesus is teaching the disciples something, by answering their prayers quite literally, in such a way as to show them what they’re really made of. That had to be embarrassing. The embarrassment of having your blind spots revealed. The embarrassment of suddenly seeing how steep the learning curve before you is, and how far you are from the end.

I can’t prove one hundred percent that that is why Jesus first said what he did to the woman. But it best explains why the woman is so emboldened to come back at Jesus. Why else does she earn Jesus’ words of praise and honor for her comeback, for her faith, unless some spur-of-the-moment conspiracy took shape between Jesus and the woman? And why else would there be such a conspiracy around the word, “dog” but to give the disciples a taste of their own medicine? If I were writing a screen play of this, I would have Jesus winking at her when he first puts her off. And she would be smiling when she comes back at him. Then the disciples would be shocked, and then cut to the heart when their indifference and hardness of heart are exposed.

And that, to me, is what this story is most about: Who are we most like? The woman with her Won’t-take-no-for-an-answer kind of faith, or the disciples with their indifference and hardness of heart? In the Bible, according to Jesus, the worst that can happen to us is indifference and hardness of heart, whether its indifference toward God or indifference toward people. That is also precisely the most common occupational hazard of Christian discipleship. For we are often like those disciples up in Tyre and Sidon, modern-day Lebanon, wanting to get away from it all, and finding that, no, we can never quite get away from it all. Its so easy to get cynical, tired out and overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude and persistence of human need.

But I don’t think that fatigue was the only reason why these disciples first put the Canaanite woman off. Between Jesus and the disciples they had what her daughter needed. It didn’t take but a moment. Their indifference and resistance were most likely born out of fear, the fear of someone so different from themselves. And the fear of losing control in this situation to someone so strong, straightforward and pushy.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had something to say about that kind of fear-based indifference. In 1963, while sitting alone in solitary confinement in a Birmingham, Alabama, prison cell, he had long hours to think about the civil rights campaign in that city. But someone smuggled into him a newspaper. In that paper he read an essay by some white clergymen, saying that they agreed with Dr. King’s aims, but they disagreed with his means, and the speed with which he wanted change to happen. “Justice and equality will happen eventually,” they said, “but not if you keep making demands, pushing the matter and upsetting the politicians, the business owners and the police. Be patient; your day will come.” They sound like the disciples, asking Jesus to just send this pushy woman away. She doesn’t know her place.

Dr. King wrote in the margins of that newspaper his brilliant response to those fellow clergymen, his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. And this is what he said about the indifference of those clergymen: “I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

As for the faith of that Won’t-take-No-for-an-answer woman, here is what Dr. King also had to say in that same Letter from a Birmingham Jail: “We must see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

Whenever people, like the Canaanite woman, create tension by their persistent claims for their share at the table of community, they also force us to ask ourselves, Who are we most like? If we see them and their needs as just another tragic interruption to what could have been a nice outing in the park, or just as another likely scam, then indifference has hardened our hearts.

But if we see them as breakthrough opportunities for the kingdom of God, then we share the great faith of the Canaanite woman, and the compassion of Jesus. Every such inconvenience and interruption is a question that heaven puts to us, asking Who are we most like? and What are we made of? Warm, loving faith, or cold, hard indifference?

But the intent of the letter, as far as Paul’s mission, and the church’s life and ethics are concerned, come just before, in 11:13-25, where Paul says he is explicitly addressing the Gentiles (as he addressed the Jews directly in chapter 2: 17ff), “So do not become proud, but fear,” and “lest you become wise in your own sight.” In other words, lest the Roman Gentile Christians rupture the church and thwart the mission of God in the world through anti-semitism, Paul reviews the sovereign work and nature of God in the world, and reminds the Gentile believers that they are johnny-come-latelies, wild olive branches grafted into the original tree of Israel, as foreseen by Israel’s own prophets. All the talk in these chapters about God’s sovereign choice, down to the hardening of Pharoah’s heart (like Caesar’s?) is about God’s work on the grand canvas of history, beginning with his choice of a people, and his use of even their worst enemies toward his sovereign purposes. We still have a role in our individual stories of salvation, depending upon whether our response is that of humble, dependent faith, or proud, willful self-reliance, “by works.” But God has chosen to have a people, a new Israel, of both Jewish and Gentile believers, and he will accomplish that as much through Israel’s resistance to the new work of God as he did through the hardness and resistance of Pharoah. But the Gentile Christians are told in no uncertain terms: God has not abandoned Israel.

This sets the stage for the advice for life together, as the new Israel, beginning with chapter 12 through 15, culminating with 15: 7, “Receive one another as Christ has received you,” that is, with all your diversity of background, whether Jew or Gentile, or whatever kind of Gentile, receive and welcome each other. In light of the unifying work of God in a new humanity, a new Israel, Paul’s other discussions about food (ch. 14), the observance of special days, the suspension of judgment over questionable matters of preference and custom make sense, culminating in a new focus not on getting one’s own rights and honor, but on each other’s welfare, that we might “each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up (15:2).” A society in which each member competes to give honor, rather than to get it (12: 10) is a revolutionary sign of God’s kingdom breaking into the world, another sign that says “Under New Management.” This is all based on the “transformed world” of 12: 2, which is based on the sovereign work of God described in chs. 9-11. The best translation of that verse would be, “Be not conformed to this world, but to the transformed [one] by the renewing of your mind.” That is wholesale, the rest, from chs. 12-15 is retail.

PAUL AND GOVERNMENT in Romans 13:1-7 is a subject of controversy, more for its misuse in history rather than its actual meaning. German Christians during the Third Reich heard a terrible distortion of it, to the effect that whoever ruled at any given time must have been installed by God. Therefore, whatever the ruler demanded or commanded was the demand and command of God. To disobey the ruler was to disobey God, allegedly.

But while Paul calls for “subjection” or “submission” to the rulers, which he fleshes out as taxes, abiding by the rule of law, and showing respect. But the rulers of the time (and many since) called for worship, or at least blind obedience, which neither Jesus nor Paul ever gave. Yet Jesus and Paul displayed submission to the authorities by treating the persons respectfully and truthfully, and by submitting themselves to the rule of law. If there was something required by government that they could not give (worship or silencing the gospel), they still submitted to the consequences of their disobedience (crucifixion, or prison). The things which government does, such as punishing evil doers, serve a function within God’s government of the world. But they are not things that Paul commands Christians to do. If they obey the laws of God, they have nothing to fear from government, not even should the government persecute them for it.

CHAPTER 16 gives us a glimpse into the multi-cultural nature of the Roman churches, as well as their structure as house churches, meeting in the homes of those named. Some of them are women, pointing us toward the likelihood that women led and hosted house churches and did other gospel work from the first generation of believers.

Just as the main themes of the letter were revealed in the opening greeting of the letter (1: 1-7), so are they reprised in the warning (16: 17-20) and the final doxology (16: 25-27).

I CORINTHIANS 1 introduces us to the themes and conflicts that made this letter necessary. Acts 18 tells us how the church began in Corinth, fresh on the heels of Paul’s ministry in Athens. He arrived there, he will say, in Chapter 2, “in fear and trembling,” resolved to preach “nothing but Christ, and him crucified.” In contrast to his previous effort to speak to the Athenians in terms of their own wisdom, Paul evidently confronted the worldly, cosmopolitan wisdom, the class and status system, and all conventional notions of power current in Corinth with the shocking and humbling preaching of the cross, for it symbolizes the true wisdom and power of God. Throughout the letter we will see how the cross is a recurrent theme for dealing with divisions and schisms, mistreatment of the weak and less powerful, immorality, and controversies over food and holidays. The cross, as a reflection of the wisdom and power of God, is an inverse mirror to the mentalities and structures of power, privilege, status and wisdom in the world.

The Corinthian Christians would need such a shocking confrontation, because of the way in which their worldly pride, power (economic and political) and wisdom had generated schisms and controversies. Situated on the isthmus between the lower and upper Greek peninsula, Corinth was the crossroads for shipping traffic going east and west, and for land traffic going north and south. This likely made Corinth and its citizens very diverse and cosmopolitan. It also would have lent to a feeling of power, superiority and indispensability. They were “progressive,” “with it,” and “abreast of the times.” Except for the ones among them who weren’t, who they could treat like dirt. In this first chapter, Paul wastes no time in introducing the themes, naming the conflict, and presenting the remedy: the cross of Jesus, and a proper orientation toward it.

PSALM 116 is one of the Hallelujah psalms, ending as it does with that Hebrew phrase that means, “Praise the Lord.” It reflects the ancient Israelite practice of fulfilling vows to God of sacrifice and worship upon God’s fulfillment of the petitioner’s prayers.

PSALM 117, for as short as it is, still encapsulates the missional destiny of Israel, to be a light to the nations, that they too might join Israel in the praise and worship of YHWH God.

PSALM 118 contains elements of liturgy, perhaps to celebrate the king’s return, victorious, from battle. Some of the responsive, liturgical elements include the phrase, “His love endures forever” (vv. 1-3; also in other psalms) and the dialog between verses 19 and 20. This psalm also figures strongly in the New Testament. Jesus is “the stone which the builders rejected,” which “became the cornerstone.” (Mt. 21:42). When he entered Jerusalem in what we now call “The Triumphal Entry,” Jesus was greeted with the words of verse 26. That crowd understood him to be a conquering king, returning to Zion from battle.

Paul poses and answers this question because he is looking to the Roman churches to be his springboard of mission to points west, notably Spain (15:24), making this possibly the first letter of missionary introduction and support. We don’t know from the Bible whether or not Paul actually made it to Spain, but Spanish church tradition says he did. The Roman Christians need to understand the answer to this question (What is God doing in the world and how is he doing it?) so that 1) they might support Paul in his missionary work and 2) they might be strong and well-enough united to be able to support the work of God. From the list of Roman Christians whom he already knows and greets (16: 1-15), we can see that the members are both Jewish and Gentile. But Rome has a history of anti-semitism and tension between Jews and Gentiles, such as the time that Claudius Caesar expelled the Jews from Rome not long before (Acts 18:2).

With that end and thesis in mind, here’s a crude outline of Paul’s argument through the first eight chapters:

I. Introduction of self and of main themes to come: 1: 1-7

II. Introduction of letter’s purpose: 1:8-17

III. Exposition of Universal Human Need

A. for Gentiles: 1:18-31: the moral and spiritual results of idolatry

B. for Jews: 2:1-3: 5: moral and spiritual results of the law and failure to live up to it.

C. Jew and Gentile in same straits: 3: 9-20

IV. God’s Universal Answer : 3: 21- 5: 11

A. (for Gentile and Jew) 3: 21-31

B. The same answer as God gave to Abraham: faith: 4: 1-25

C. Peace with God, Peace between Jew and Gentile: 5: 1-11

V. Living Into This Peace: 5: 12-8

A. Christ and Adam Contrasted: 5: 12- 21 Christ the Source of Life

B. Our Death to the old sinful order of society, through baptism: 6:1-14

C. Slavery to righteousness: 6: 15-23

D. Release from Law: 7: 1-6

E. How Sin Corrupted the Law and through it enslaved us: 7: 7- 25

F. How God’s Spirit Does What the Law, Human Nature and Sin could not: Chapter 8

SOME NOTES:

Romans 1 is at the heart of the church’s controversy today over homosexuality, even though that is nowhere near the center of the letter’s focus or purpose. Paul mentions it in passing among many signs and symptoms of humanity’s fallenness. So it is not such a uniquely terrible thing that it is more deserving of selective Christian wrath than the many other sins listed, some of which we sometimes esteem, like greed. But I remain unconvinced by arguments that say this passage has little or nothing to do with any of the expressions of same sex attraction we may see today, such as committed lifelong same sex marriages. Graeco-roman society was as open and experienced with homosexuality as ours is becoming today; people (at least the wealthy) were considered bisexual until proven otherwise. And like most Jews of the time, Paul would not have countenanced any of it. But nor would he have singled it out any more than he does here.

The most stunning thing about his description of human bondage to sin in 1: 8-31 is Paul’s understanding of the wrath of God. No thunderbolts fall from the sky, no cracks open up in the earth. Instead, God simply “hands them over” or “delivers them up” to the evil we desire, so that they and their consequences, and what we become, are our punishment. And we would otherwise confuse this “handing over” for blessing and freedom! So, the Fred Phelps of the world who are so quick to ascribe specific events to divine punishment for specific sins are claiming more clarity and prophetic insight than the Bible writer here does!

IN WHAT WAYS ARE WE “DEAD TO SIN?” (Rom. 6) Some holiness traditions tell us to expect and to pray for anointings and experiences of the Holy Spirit that will lift us up to, or at least toward, perfection, so that we are not only dead to sin, we are dead to temptation. I am all for Holy Spirit anointing and experiences. But not even Jesus was dead to temptation until after his death and resurrection. If anything, temptation assailed him like it did no other man. Given the setting (Rome, recent Jewish riots against Christians, and the recent attempts to expel of Jews), “death to sin” can have a social meaning, as well as spiritual. Once one was baptized, whether Jew or Gentile, one was counted “dead” by the society, often the family. Then, one was dead to sin as in the sinful social order, not to temptation itself. So, Paul argues, with your bridges to the world burning behind you, you might as well move forward with the life that is life indeed.

OR CONSIDER YOURSELF A SLAVE to righteousness (6: 15-23) since so many of Paul’s Christian letter recipients would have been slaves, literally, to people. Just as importantly, slaves to sin.

PSALM 113 is a hymn of praise that celebrates God’s work in the world, from his mastery over the nations (v. 4), to his care for the poor, the oppressed, the homeless and barren, that is, to put us into life-giving relationships.

PSALM 114 shows how important the Exodus remained as a theme by which Israel interpreted its relationship even to creation. God’s liberating confrontation with the sea, the Jordan, the hills and the rocks was more than what it appears to modern eyes; it was a confrontation with the gods and goddesses of Israel’s neighbors. For the sea, the hills and other natural phenomena were worshiped as deities among these people. Ps. 114 thus celebrates not only Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, but God’s victory over the deities behind Israel’s oppression among the nations.

PSALM 115 is like the previous psalm, in that it celebrates God’s victory over the gods of the nations, which in this psalm are the man-made idols. That “those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them,” (v. 8) is an important spiritual principle: we become like whatever it is that we worship; we eventually take on the characteristics of whatever or whoever it is we are gazing upon with our spiritual eyes. Should that object of desire, worship and attention be violent, dominating or sensual, would it surprise us that its worshipers should become so, too? Similarly, should the object of our desire, worship and attention be like Jesus, what might we expect of its worshipers? The psalm ends with blessings for the powerful and the poor alike.

That “The dead do not praise the LORD,  nor do any who go down into silence,” (v. 17) shows how murky and unclear was the hope of life after death in the Old Testament. For Ps. 115, the closest thing to eternal life is in verse 18:”But we will bless the LORD  from this time forth and forevermore.” In other words, eternal life was clear for the nation, the people of Israel, in a relationship of worship to the Eternal God.

]]> http://www.emmanuelmennonitechurch.com/2012/01/23/week-85-acts-28-romans-1-8-psalm-113-115/feed/ 0 http://www.emmanuelmennonitechurch.com/2012/01/13/a-world-with-no-scapegoats-no-invisible-people/ http://www.emmanuelmennonitechurch.com/2012/01/13/a-world-with-no-scapegoats-no-invisible-people/#comments Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:04:46 +0000 Mathew Swora http://www.emmanuelmennonitechurch.com/?p=1364

  Mark 5: 21 When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. 23 He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.  30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” 31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”  32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”  35 While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?”  36 Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”  37 He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38 When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39 He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” 40 But they laughed at him.   After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). 42 Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43 He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.

“Here is my heart in place of his,” the mother prayed, through her tears. “…I give it in place of my son,” she cried, on her knees before God. The mother had just learned that her oldest son was missing in action in the Korean war. So, was he alive or dead? Not knowing was at least as bad as knowing the worst.

We meet this mother in the novel, And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him Up, by Tomas Rivera. Its about the difficult lives of Latino migrant farm workers in 1950′s Minnesota. But any parent, of any culture, any time, praying and wailing in any language, would identify with this mother and her prayer, for her missing son. “Better my life than his….He’s not even old enough to have done anything deserving of death….Why, I still have all his childhood toys and books and comics, even his kite here……”

And so, I suspect, were the prayers of Jairus and his wife, on behalf of their twelve year old daughter. “Spare her” maybe even, “take me instead.” If anyone’s prayers would be answered, you’d think that those of a rabbi, a scholar and a spiritual leader like himself would be, especially his prayers in the correct, biblical Hebrew. Instead, word comes to him, “Don’t bother the Nazarene; your daughter has died.” Like those of the Mexican migrant mother, the prayers of the righteous rabbi, the godly scholar, and those of the wife and mother who kept his kosher home, go unanswered, even mocked by death.

So were the prayers of the desperate woman in today’s story, until she met Jesus. Through the same years that the rabbi and his God-fearing wife had loved and lived with their beautiful daughter, this other woman had lived in pain and shame, in the shadows, untouched and untouchable, because her non-stop bleeding rendered her ritually, legally unclean. While Jairus was a very respected and visible man in his community, this woman was invisible, and avoided. While Jairus was very helpful and important to his community, the woman was considered expendable, even a threat, at least to everyone’s purity.

Two people then are driven to their knees before Jesus, one literally before him, to plead the cause of his dying daughter, the other somewhere behind him most likely, so as to remain invisible, just to touch the hem of his cloak. They come from very different places in society, but they end up in the very same place, at practically the very same moment: bent to the ground in desperation, literally floored by their crying need, in the presence of Jesus. There at the feet of Jesus do we see so clearly the human condition, whoever we are, whatever our status, our background, our citizenship or our education.

Because both of these stories came to a head at the same time, same place, same person, the Word invites us to ponder at least three things that the woman, the scholar and synagogue ruler, and his daughter have in common, as do we. They are:

1. The ground where we kneel at the feet of Jesus is level, whoever we are, whatever our background or our status. Something will drive us all to the ground there, if it has not already, at the very least, the common human denominator of death and dying. There we will find that no one has any advantage over another. We all share a solidarity of life and death, of weakness and need, whatever our language, race or nationality.

2. The grace of Jesus is also equal for all the desperate and despairing at his feet, whoever we are, whatever our background or our status. For there, both Jairus and the un-named, unclean woman received words and a touch of healing and hope from Jesus. It does not matter to Jesus that one is ritually clean, while the other is not. Nor does it matter that one is a scholar, learned in the scriptures and traditions, while the other, most likely, is not. His heart, and his healing power, go out to both, equally.

3. The word of Jesus is the same for all the desperate and despairing who fall to their knees at his feet. To all he says, “Go in peace; your faith has saved you,” even, and eventually, as to the little girl, “Arise.” That last word we shall even hear personally, as did the young girl in today’s story. For as Jesus told his disciples in John 5: 25 “Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” When Mark gave us the very words of Jesus, in Aramaic, the words that brought life back to that little girl, he was inviting all of us to imagine ourselves hearing the same word of Jesus, in our most desperate and despairing condition of death. Just substitute your own name before the word, “Arise.”

If we would follow Jesus, then we must also have the assurance of the same three things: first, that we are all of us in the same boat, in the same desperate straits before death, loss and suffering, that neither race, class, status nor smarts will make the ground of human need any higher or lower for anyone before the feet of Jesus. Secondly, we must be convinced that the grace of Jesus is equal for all persons at his feet, whoever they are, wherever they come from; and thirdly, we too must have the assurance that even if our prayers for healing and help are not all answered in this life, they will be when he says to all who died with faith in him, “Arise.” For its only a matter of time before we hear the same voice calling our names.

But in this year’s preaching theme of “Come, Follow Me,” we’re not only looking at who and what Jesus is for us, but what Jesus would teach us. For all the things he did were not only loving, miraculous and meaningful signs of the kingdom now come; they were also teaching moments for the very people who would carry on his ministry in the world: us. If we would follow in Jesus’ steps, then we too must have the same curiosity, compassion and care that he showed when that woman touched his robe, namely, that there be for us no invisible, expendable people.

As for being invisible: it always amazes me that, with so many people crowded around Jesus, no one could answer his very simple question, “Who touched me?” How did that woman so nearly get away with that?

But if you’ve ever read the Cold War spy novels of John LeCarre, you find that there is a science, an art, of making oneself nearly invisible, or at least, unobtrusive, un-noticeable, easily overlooked or quickly forgotten. Its not just a trick of professional espionage; we all learn how to hide ourselves, or parts of ourselves, whenever we are uncomfortable or ashamed.

As for being expendable, sacrifice-able: there’s something about most human societies that requires scapegoats, villains and victims, people to reject, on whom to project the things we most want to hide about ourselves. Having enemies and alleged inferiors also gives people a sense of unity and identity, however false and fleeting. For the people around Jesus, the people to fear would have been people like that ritually, technically unclean woman.

Being invisible and expendable often go together. People who find themselves the scapegoats, villains and victims of a group, a school or a society, often learn how to blend in, to avoid being seen, at least not in the wrong places, and to deflect attention away from themselves. This very neighborhood is full of invisible people who are trying to stay that way, because of addictions, debt, disability, mental health issues, criminal records or immigration status. And there is a corresponding effort on the part of society to keep them out of sight. Its an open secret that when a social service agency wants to set up a group home in other parts of Minneapolis, those neighborhood associations band together and say, “Not in our backyard, you don’t; Go to the Phillips Neighborhood, the Central Neighborhood, or to North Minneapolis; what will one more service agency, group home or treatment center matter in those neighborhoods?”

So now it doesn’t surprise me as much that this woman could get up to Jesus, touch him, and nearly get away without being seen, even in a crowd. Through her twelve years of illness and ritual uncleanness, invisibility was probably a learned art, on the level of LeCarre’s greatest spies. And her neighbors had likely learned how not to see her, too.

But to Jesus, no one is invisible, nor expendable. To the sacrificial Lamb of God, there are no scapegoats or rejects. Nor does he fear our infirmities or uncleanness. Jesus came expressly into our world of shadows to seek all who suffer from them. And to seek the weak, hidden and rejected parts inside all of us, to find and illuminate everyone and everything that he finds in the shadows with healing love. In every such encounter you see Jesus acting on the faith that the goodness and holiness of God overcomes the uncleanness and impurity in the world, and not vice versa. So when he got the woman in today’s story to confess her action, Jesus did not condemn her for violating the letter of the purity law. Instead, he commended her faith and her courage in front of everyone.

The lesson for the disciple of Jesus is clear: everybody counts; no one is to be invisible, expendable, scapegoated or rejected. For the one perfect sacrifice necessary has already been made once and for all everybody’s cleansing and healing: Jesus himself, the Lamb of God.

But in this time of economic uncertainty, and in an election year, its open season in the hunt for enemies and scapegoats. The newest scapegoat du jour is the immigrant, especially the undocumented, Spanish-speaking immigrant. Yes, I know there are legitimate questions and disagreements around matters of law, borders and policies. But we mustn’t forget that we’re talking about people, and their children. And the scapegoating fever has gotten to the point where many who are here with documents are being judged and treated as though they were not.

And now someone has tapped us on our shoulder, and is asking us not for pity but for partnership, not for hand-outs but for friendship, companionship on the road to full citizenship in this country, and in the kingdom of heaven. And for some tasks, English will suffice. This is our chance to demonstrate before the world a human society that needs no villains, victims nor scapegoats to stay united. Its called the Church of Jesus Christ. This is our chance to demonstrate the faith of Jesus Christ: that the goodness of God overcomes all things, even fear, divisions and death. For the ground at his feet is level for all who come to Jesus seeking healing, help and hope. That’s good news for everybody.

]]> http://www.emmanuelmennonitechurch.com/2012/01/13/a-world-with-no-scapegoats-no-invisible-people/feed/ 0 http://www.emmanuelmennonitechurch.com/2012/01/13/week-84-acts-19-27-psalm-110-112/ http://www.emmanuelmennonitechurch.com/2012/01/13/week-84-acts-19-27-psalm-110-112/#comments Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:00:43 +0000 Mathew Swora http://www.emmanuelmennonitechurch.com/?p=1361

The final section of Acts contains a tale of many temples: in Athens, in Ephesus and Jerusalem, which posed challenges and threats to Paul and his gospel. Then there is the portable temple of the church in mission, a tabernacle which even takes to sea. Paul’s sea voyages in some ways reprise but also reverse the mission of a previous prophet, Jonah. So well-detailed and recounted are the sea voyages that we can easily retrace the route and, in the right seasons, experience the same weather. The recurrent use of “we” shows that the author was eye-witness to many of these events.

In this section there is also the clash of kingdoms: that of the Lord Christ, Son of God, and Caesar, also “Son of God.” Both kingdoms are made of flesh-and-blood humans with their foibles and faults, as well as their strengths, so that no one comes out fully a villain. Among the Roman officials with whom Paul has to treat, we find nobility and respect for the rule of law, as well as corruption, foolishness and idolatry. Its especially ironic that Paul is carried to Rome on a boat that bears the names of Graeco-Roman gods. But this is precisely as Jesus promised in chapter 9, which he renewed. Note also the sovereignty of God, that even while Paul was cooling his heels and biding his time in a Caesarean prison, he was writing most of the correspondence that would become our New Testament letters. Even thus did his bondage bear fruit for the spread of God’s kingdom.

PSALM 110 is a royal psalm, perhaps of enthronement, that figures greatly into the New Testament understanding of how Jesus fulfills the prayers, promises and prophecies of the Old Testament. Jesus himself referred to it in Mk. 12: 35-37. “How is it that the scribes call the Messiah David’s Son, when David calls him Lord?” Though Jesus is genetically David’s offspring, he is his Lord both in provenance and in his ministry of peacemaking. His coming to power would be unlike that of David, as would also his kingdom.

Hebrews 5 picks up this psalm, including verse 4, “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek,” which name means “King of Righteousness.” Jesus and the apostles then saw in this Psalm a promise and a prophecy to the effect that the Messiah would be both king and priest of Israel, even the nations, as the promises of conquest and victory show. But now, post-Calvary, we know how Jesus and his ministry would turn the sword of conquest on its head to become the cross.

PSALM 111 is a wisdom psalm, done in acrostic style, that is, with each verse or phrase beginning in a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, each in order after the previous one. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” which means awe, wonder, respect and reverence, not the fear that has to do with punishment. Wisdom is also tied to the Word of God and God’s commandments.

PSALM 112 is also an acrostic psalm, in the wisdom genre. To the previous psalm it adds the qualities of generosity and trust in God. It serves as a warning against our very individualistic age, in which the greatest qualities are personal achievement, popularity and the acquisition of wealth for oneself. Security and justice are instead found in relationships and reputation for trustworthiness and generosity.

ANTIOCH AND THE FIRST MISSIONARY JOURNEY, from chapters 13 on, display a new development: the church of Antioch, rather than the church of Jerusalem, is the new center of Holy Spirit-driven mission to the Gentiles. Perhaps the Jerusalem church was occupied with mission to the Jews, such as those in Judea, Palestine and the Diaspora (e.g., Baghdad and Alexandria). Paul, Barnabas and John Mark leave Antioch and go first to familiar territory: Cyprus (for Barnabus), then Turkey (for Paul). Also familiar to them is the synagogue, where they most often preached first, to reach fellow Jews and then sympathetic and knowledgeable Gentiles, either converts or “God-fearers.” This second group then gave them entry to the wider Gentile world, so that the new Christian community was ethnically mixed. The preaching of the gospel forced a choice, of either acceptance or rejection and persecution. Either way, the gospel and the kingdom spread. Then, after much teaching, but before leaving for the next setting, the missionary team would appoint elders and pastors over the new congregations, after much prayer and fasting.

Prayer and fasting are also key to the spread of the gospel in Acts. Through them the Spirit gives direction and power for the work.

THE ROLE OF CONFLICT in the Gospel’s spread: Luke does not paint an ideal or unrealistic picture of the relationships of all the first generation Christians. Conflicts arise, such as over the care of Greek/Jewish widows, the role and place of Mosaic Law among Gentile Christians, and whether John Mark should accompany Paul and Barnabas on their second missionary journey. Either the conflict leads to discernment, which leads to new gospel breakthroughs, or, in Acts 15: 36-40, it leads to an agreement to disagree, which also permits more spreading of the gospel. Christians then should not be so afraid of differences of opinion or even of conflict, but should instead see them as opportunities for discernment, breakthroughs and growth. Conflicts and disagreements are inevitable, sometimes even desirable. The question is, How do we go about conflict? Are we hard on problems and soft on people, or hard on people and soft on problems?

 THE RESULTS OF THE JERUSALEM COUNCIL may puzzle the modern reader: “to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality (15: 29). Anything to do with idolatry and immorality we can understand, but why blood and “the meat of strangled animals?” The answer has to do not only with food, but with eating together, especially during the Love Feast. Jewish and Gentile Christians worshiping and eating together is a sign of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom. But just as Jews would have to overcome some of their ingrained habits and feelings around eating with Gentiles, so would Gentiles have to make some allowances, curtail their freedoms and show respect for the sensibilities of their Jewish fellow believers if such signs of kingdom-based interdependence were to happen.

While today the issues may not be blood or butchering by strangulation, other issues of cultural significance may be dividing Christians unnecessarily, requiring of us some voluntary acceptance of limits to our freedoms, such as in the culture wars around worship music.

 PAUL’S SERMON IN ATHENS (Acts 17): Was it a success or a failure? His act of speaking in terms that the Athenian scholars could appreciate, even quoting some of their thinkers and poets, has often been held up as a model of missionary sensitivity. And it led to a few conversions. But when Paul later reflected upon his entry into Corinth (I Cor. 2: 1-4), he said he came eschewing all attempts to convince anyone by worldly wisdom, and would instead rely on the preaching of the cross, about “Christ and him crucified,” a shocking, scandalous message that sounds like foolishness, but which really confronts the world, in mirror image fashion, with its own folly. More than a few scholars suggest that Paul may have come to Corinth shaken and disappointed by his experience in Athens. Did Paul’s attempt to appeal to the high class scholars on their own terms only do more to reinforce their trust in their worldly wisdom, when that way of wisdom is what they most needed to have shaken?

 WHY DON’T WE SEE SUCH AMAZING GOSPEL BREAKTHROUGHS such as the three thousand converts on that first Pentecost after Easter, or in some of the Samaritan and Gentile settings where Paul, Silas and Barnabas preached? Sometimes there still are, as in places where the gospel first enters a pagan people group. But for most of the people reading this blog, we are in a different context, one in which our societies are somewhat familiar with the church, have long domesticated it, are bored or indifferent to it, or even hostile to it, sometimes for fault of the church, as in recent clergy sex abuse scandals. Then the Gospel is not courting new people, but seeking a new hearing from many who have divorced from it. Acts still gives us directions in this different task: prayer, faith and boldness are still necessary for the task of evangelism. But so are great love and great integrity. And patience, including patience in the face of persecution. Rather than getting reactionary and defensive in response to real or perceived persecution, Christians should anticipate the kinds of breakthroughs that can happen when persecution and opposition are met with the essential missionary ingredients of Acts mentioned above: great love and integrity, patience, prayer and the Holy Spirit.

PSALM 107 bears the elements of a Wisdom Psalm (v. 43 “Let the one who is wise heed these things
and ponder the loving deeds of the LORD”), but also those of a hymn of praise, with a recurrent refrain that may indicate some sort of litany (v. 5 “Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind.”) We learn wisdom through worship and through meditating on the redemptive deeds of God. Some of the deeds recounted bear some similarity to other stories in the Bible, such as the settlement of Canaan, deliverance through judges from oppression, the deliverance of the crew that carried Jonah from the storm. But the language is general enough to indicate that God continues to do such things in history, and that we would do well to take note and ponder his works.

PSSALM 108 records the prayer and litany of an Israelite king (David) about to go to war. Recent events have left the nation doubtful that God has acted on their behalf (v. 11), and yet the king and the nation implore God’s help. The psalm even contains a prophecy of victory, direct from God, in verses 7-9. The phrase, “Over Edom I toss my sandal,” reflects an ancient practice by which people showed that they intended to purchase or redeem land for themselves, that of tossing their shoe onto it (Ruth 4:7). God thus lays claim to all of Israel’s neighbors and enemies.

For the pacifist Christian church, such psalms initially pose problems until we remember that  “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God for the pulling down of strongholds,
casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:4-5).” In Christ, the means and the aims of our now spiritual warfare have been transformed into a fight against every form of violence against the knowledge and the image of God, whether within or among ourselves. But we still are engaged in nothing short of warfare, warfare of the kind that Jesus waged against Satan and his wiles. Read Psalm 108 in this light for maximum insight.

PSALM 109 contains frightening and disturbing words and images of cursing and imprecation against the psalmist’s persecutors and oppressors. This doesn’t square initially with Jesus’ command, to love those who hate us and to pray for those who persecute us. At least, this is likely not the kind of prayer for one’s persecutors that Jesus had in mind.

Yet who has never felt this way against someone else? And when that happens, what is the value of hiding it from ourselves or from God? Sometimes we must discharge these feelings before we can go on to “love our enemies.” This Psalm assures us that it is safe to bring such feelings to God.

But the psalm contains another surprise. This is the prayer of the poor and oppressed (vv. 21-22). Looking to Israel’s imperial and pagan neighbors, we see that their versions of prayers and psalms usually were exercises in royal propaganda, prayers by or to the royalty as deity. Much more rarely did they pray from the perspective of the poor and oppressed, or against injustice and abuses by the high and mighty. They were the prayers of, or to, the high and mighty. So it is with media, marketing and much of politics today. Psalm 109 then contains a warning to the high and mighty, the powerful and oppressive, against treating the poor and powerless in ways mentioned here. And though we would hopefully wish on no one (and their descendants) the kinds of punishments prayed for in Ps. 109, a quick glance at history shows that such consequences do often befall the most wicked and abusive oppressors, by way of simple laws of consequences, moral and spiritual.

It was very rarely that the old shepherd, Jacob, ever saw a horse among these remote hills of Judea, so far from the roads. The usual four-legged animals about him—of which there were many—were sheep, goats and cattle, destined for sale in Zion’s Temple precincts, and for sacrificial slaughter on the altars of God.

Even more rarely did the horse ever carry a rider who was seeking him and his companions, Zacharias, Isaac and Benjamin, as this rider seemed to be doing. Their sense of mystery gave way to dread as the rider approached.

“Its young Annas,” Benjamin said ruefully.

“Barely twenty years old,” said Zacharias, “and he thinks he is God’s gift to Zion.”

“The self-appointed enforcer of the family honor, being groomed for high priest some day,” said Jacob.

“Thinks he’s royalty ’cause he comes from a priestly family,” said Isaac.

“He is royalty,” Jacob replied. “Or at least his family is the closest thing we have to royalty.”

“Don’t let King Herod hear you talkin’ like that,” said Benjamin. “Out here, even the rocks have ears.”

“Whatever you call him, this young man coming our way is our boss’ son.”

“Shall we tell him about what we seen the other night?” Isaac asked Jacob. “At some point, we gotta tell’em about the angels and the child.”

“Hold on and let me get a feel for it,” Jacob replied. “Now quiet down, everyone, a’fore he gets close enough to hear us.”

The young Annas drew near the group of four shepherds, at work around a fire, cooking food and cleaning a goat skin. From atop his horse Annas looked down upon them with an air of authority and disdain, though any one of the shepherds was at least twice his age.

“Welcome, sir. Can we offer you some bread and stew from our fire?” Jacob asked Annas.

A look of derision crossed the young man’s face. “Its probably unclean,” Annas said, “like the whole of lot of you, I suspect.”

Never a word of greeting, blessing nor respect from this boy, thought Jacob, not even for his elders.

“I’ve come to find out what you were doing the other night, that you would effectively abandon the animals,” he added.

Jacob did not want to lie to a future high priest. But priestly family or no, something about this man and his well-connected family made him seem untrustworthy. Jacob resolved to dole out only the bits and piece of truth he could safely part with, waiting to see if Annas should prove worthy of more.

“We all took turns watching the sheep, my lord. Not a one was left unguarded.”

“All of you? And throughall of the night?” the young man asked, ready to pounce on any inconsistency.

“No, not all of us, and not through all the night,” Jacob replied. “We often give each other breaks, especially when its as cold as it’s been lately.” That much was true.

“Just what is the minimum number of guards you usually keep over our livestock?”

Jacob hesitated a moment, and then replied, “It depends on where they’re pasturing, Sir, and how many livestock there are, and whether or not any should be kept near town.”

“But we’re between high holy feasts, aren’t we?” Annas sneered. “So there’s no need to keep many in the corrals near town, is there?”

“That’s right,” Jacob said, sighing.

“So now I want to know, old man, why I’ve been told that, even though everything on four hooves was out in the pastures three nights ago, there was only one shepherd with them around sunrise?” This also was true.

“Who told you that?” Jacob asked, although he knew the answer. It was as they had long suspected: the young boy who brought provisions to them was also a snitch.

“What does it matter who told me that?” Annas asked, with a rising tone of anger. “I want to know why you left everything in the care of just one shepherd before sunrise?”

Jacob thought to himself: With God’s angels all around, you don’t worry as much about wild beasts and thieves. But Jacob began to sense that this aspiring future priest would be the last man you’d tell about seeing angels and the baby.

So Jacob asked instead: “Are any animals missing, sir?”

“That’s for you to tell me, old man! And if there are, you will pay. But first, I want to know why they were effectively abandoned, when bandits or bears or jackals could have shown up and taken the whole lot.”

“Have any been seen around here of late, sir?”

“Stop trying to distract me! I’m the one asking questions. So: Why were all the animals left in the care of just one shepherd ? How would one man fight off beasts or brigands? And where did the rest of you go?”

“To Bethlehem, Sir. Its the closest town to the pasture where we were. And its well within reach of the flocks should anything happen.”

“Is that common practice among you, going into the nearest town at night?” Annas asked.

“No, sir.”

“So, the other night–” Annas began saying.

Jacob interrupted him to say, “That night were different, Sir. It won’t never happen again.” That much was truer than Annas could know.

“It had better not. If Bethlehem provides such distraction, do we have to order you never to pasture the flocks in that area again?”

Jacob liked the direction the conversation was suddenly taking, away from the reason for which four shepherds had left one in charge. Nor did Annas need to know that the one who had been found alone with the animals at sunrise had also taken a turn seeing and contemplating the wonder in Bethlehem that night, while others took his turn with the flocks.

“It would make the local shepherds happy if we never grazed there again, Sir. They don’t like the competition for the best land around.”

“Let them try to stop us,” Annas said, with a smirk. “But I’m still curious as to what might bring you into Bethlehem. Do we not provide you with enough to eat and drink?”

Jacob knew he had better not answer that one any more truthfully than he had to. “Sometimes we just get a hankering for the warmth of someone else’s company, you know?”

“So you just went to visit someone.”

“We was invited!” Benjamin interjected.

“Invited by whom?” Annas asked.

“By angels!”

“Uhhhh—the people we seen were so nice,” Jacob added, “and it were so cold, anyone would call’em angels.”

“You were cold,” Annas said, contemptuously. “Even around your customary campfire. You must be getting older than I thought. But you should be glad that I can better tolerate weakness of the flesh than I can weakness of the spirit. Do you catch my drift, old man?”

Jacob did not.

“Do I have to explain myself? All right. Our overlords, the Romans, fear the Hebrew spirit more than they fear the Hebrew sword. Our reputation for rebellion and resistance, that’s what I mean by ‘weakness of the spirit.’ There has even been a subversive song going around these past nine months, sung by women, about how God is about to bring down the mighty from their thrones and raise on high the humble and the poor. We’ve traced it all the way back to Galilee. Perhaps you’ve heard it?”

“All we hear ’round here,” Zacharias said, “is sheep.”

“Ba-a-a-ah” Benjamin added, for comic relief. No one laughed.

“Well, when even illiterate women are singing the most subversive words of the Psalms and the Prophets, you can understand why Caesar and King Herod would be asking us questions, don’t you?”

Jacob nodded in agreement.

“And do you know where the expected Deliverer, this supposed Son of David they sing about, is to be born?”

To keep from incriminating himself, Jacob shrugged his shoulders and said, “You are the scholar of the scrolls, and not this illiterate shepherd.”

“Bethlehem, old man. Bethlehem, where everyone seems to have gone the other night, without proper authorization.”

Jacob mimicked a look of surprise.

“What’s more,”Annas added, “We’ve just received visitors from Persia.”

“But Sir, we’re at war with Persia. Everybody knows that.”

“Yes,” said Annas. “But these men came armed only with expensive gifts, saying that they were looking for this ‘Son of David,’ the newborn ‘King of the Jews.’ Do you know anything about them and their visit?”

At that moment Jacob knew he must steer the conversation away from all the other amazing things he had seen that week.

“I won’t lie, Sir. In this open country, we see a lot of things. A caravan from the East would be hard to miss. But that don’t mean we trouble ourselves with such things.”

Annas continued: “Sooner or later, old man, they’re going to come back this way, looking for this supposed Son of David. Herod is sending them this direction, so they can fill him in on what’s happening. But honestly, why the Son of David would waste time in that wretched little wide spot in the road, among the likes of you unlettered and unclean louts, is beyond me. We Saducees don’t even believe in a coming ‘Son of David.’”

At this insult, Jacob felt a warm flush of shame and anger rising to his ears. More resignation before the likes of young Annas would strangle his soul, he knew. He would take the shame out on himself or someone else if he didn’t stand up to this provocation.

“Sir,” Jacob said, “with all due respect, I may be, as you say, unlearned and even unclean. Because of that, half the time we can’t even take part in the very sacrifices and ceremonies that we make possible. We may not even know which way to read a scroll. But at night, whenever we gaze at the stars, they also tell us something about the Almighty, just like your scrolls do. Its just like seeing and hearing angels sing about the glory of God and peace on earth. In a way, you can even say that we have seen and heard such things.

“Now, I have attended a few synagogue services over the years, and while I can’t read, at least I can remember some of what I hear. And one time I remember hearing the rabbi read from the Psalms of David, that God makes his dwelling place with the lowly and the contrite. Well, sir, did you ever see a more lowly bunch than us weather-beaten old buzzards?”

Benjamin interjected: “Why, some of us are even contrite! Or at least we should be.” Some nervous laughter ensued.

“So,” Jacob continued saying, “if the Most High dwells with the lowly and the contrite, don’t you think that a hole-in-the-wall like Bethlehem would be the first place to come lookin’ for the Son of David, when he does show up?”

As Jacob spoke, he saw a look of contempt grow on young Annas’ face.

“You dare to lecture me on the scrolls and the faith of Israel? Anyway, it wasn’t even David who said that, it was Isaiah. I’ll even quote it for you: “For this is what the high and exalted One says— he who lives forever, whose name is holy: ‘I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.’”

“As you say, Sir.” Jacob restrained himself from asking, “So, how many of the contrite and lowly do you meet around Herod’s palace?” But that would not be a very contrite and lowly thing to say.

“It will be a cold day in summer before I ask the likes of you to interpret the scrolls,” Annas said, leaning back and pulling on the horse’s reins.

Suddenly, the horse leapt and bolted forward, throwing Annas onto his back, in a cloud of dust. A ripple of nervous laughter swept through the group of shepherds. So much for his plan to intimidate the shepherds from horseback.

But Jacob did not laugh. He felt pity instead for a man who felt the need to distance himself from others, and above others. He remembered something his father had once said, that “no one is to be pitied more than someone with no pity.”

As Annas got back up onto his feet, wiping the dust from his clothes, one shepherd stepped forward to wipe the dust from his back of his cape.

“Don’t touch me!” Annas cried. “I have priestly duties tonight.”

Jacob remembered something else that his father had once told him beside a campfire one night, long ago. “Son, whenever you feel bad about being poor and despised, like us shepherds often are, just remember that deep down inside, everybody feels little and lowly, too. Somewhere inside everyone is a little child who feels lost, alone and little, whether he’s a king or a street sweeper. Its just that some people can hide that from themselves and from the rest of us, while others just can’t. But before the Most High and Almighty, we’re all the same lost and lonely little children, like the newborn lambs in the fields around us. And the ones what get carried home on the Almighty’s shoulders are them what recognize how little they are, and who cry out for help. So its no shame whenever you feel the need of a shepherd to protect you and carry you around in his arms. Blest are you.”

Here before him, in the arrogant and self-satisfied person of young Annas, was one of God’s little lost lambs, Jacob suddenly knew. Too bad that Annas didn’t know it. They could have been friends, or like uncle and nephew, had they shared this knowledge about themselves. They could also have shared the joy of that night, and that birth, in Bethlehem.

With Benjamin holding the horse’s reins, Annas climbed back into the saddle. Before riding off, he said, “Remember: keep your eyes open for anything strange, and be sure to tell me about it. Strange things are afoot, so no more leaving the high priest’s livestock to less than four or five guards. Remember, you’re responsible for any losses.”

As they watched him ride back to Jerusalem, Zacharias spat onto the ground and said, “We’re responsible for any losses, eh? Why, on what they pay us, we couldn’t even buy one of these animals that we’re protectin’ once the likes of him sells them in the city.”

“Good thing you didn’t tell him what all we seen the other night,” said Isaac. “Somehow, I don’t think he’d take it right. We can’t trust him with such news; he’d feel threatened by it. For a wee little baby, that boy’s turning out to be mighty dangerous and troublesome. Still, it don’t seem right that we get to see angels and meet the Messiah, and he don’t.”

“That’s cuz he don’t know how much he needs to,” Jacob replied. “What’s more, if’n he wants to see God, he ain’t lookin’ low enough. There’s all the difference in the world ‘tween lookin’ down, and lookin’ low. Low is where you’re gonna see angels an’ such, which ain’t the same as lookin’ down yer nose at the world.”

“Ya mean, ‘lookin’ down’ on the likes of us?”said Zacharias.

“Yeah, the lowly and the contrite!’” added Isaac.

“There’s a lowly and contrite part inside all of us,” Jacob answered, “even him. And that’s what the baby, and them angels, come for.”

Jacob couldn’t resist adding: “Whoever it was what said it.”

The End

The Pentecost outpouring in Acts 2 changes the game. The formerly clueless and cowardly disciples, having gone through a necessary apprenticeship of failure in the power of the flesh, are thereafter emboldened and empowered by the power of the Spirit to understand and do what eluded them previously. Pentecost will have its smaller scale reprises, such as in the mission to the Samaritans in chapter 8, and Peter’s visit to Cornelius in chapter 10. It also is a game changer because the kingdom of God begins to impact non-Palestinian Jews, even converts to Judaism, paving the way for the later inclusion of Gentiles.

Oddly enough, the eleven (and Matthias) do not, in the scope of Acts, obey Jesus’ command to go to “the uttermost ends of the earth.” That job is first undertaken by the next generation of leaders, the deacons, introduced in chapter 6, who are Hellenistic Jews, from outside of Palestine and Galilee. Their gracious selection, when they were the first to raise the first recorded post-Pentecost conflict, is a case study in how conflict can become a vehicle to growth and opportunities, when graciously addressed in the fruits of the Spirit and a kingdom of God perspective.

We will also see how persecution and opposition can work, jujitsu-like, to the benefit of the gospel’s spread. Nearly every breakthrough, from one region, or one ethnicity, to another in Acts is met by some opposition and persecution, which in turn is met by confidence, worship, prayer and a break-through.

One of the deacons is Stephen, also the first recorded martyr of the post-Pentecost church. The reasons for a chapter-length text of his defense (by offense) before the Sanhedrin, in effect, a retelling of Israel’s story, may include: 1) showing how sojourn, pilgrimage and the portable Tabernacle are closer to the way of God in the world than the sacrosanct temple, which he has been accused of blaspheming, thereby foreshadowing the missional pilgrimage of the church with the tabernacling of the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit; 2) showing how powerful and privileged elements of Israel have always rebelled and resisted God, as they were doing then; and 3) how Jesus of Nazareth fulfills the promises and purposes of God as far back as Moses.

Following the Spirit of Jesus “to the uttermost ends of the earth” will be done most by Paul, the former adversary of Stephen, then Saul of Tarsus.

PSALM 104 is a hymn of praise to God as Creator and Sustainer of the natural world, including natural phenomena that would be worshiped as gods among Israel’s neighbors, such as mountains or seas.

PSALM 105 is a hymn of praise to God as Creator and Sustainer of his people, Israel, through his covenant faithfulness. There seems to be an order and affinity among this section of psalms, at least from PS. 104 through 106, in that they also begin and/or end with “Halelujah” and bring to a close the 4^th Book, or collection, of Psalms.

PSALM 106 is a corporate, or national penitential psalm, recounting seven sins of the people during the Exodus and their settlement into the land of Canaan. As it ends with a call to “gather us from the nations,” it may reflect a time of composition during or after the Exile. By repentance, then, the worshiping people of God prepare for God’s next act of deliverance, a second Exodus. Combined with the previous two psalms, the message is: to prepare for the next mighty act of God, reflect upon and praise God for his mighty acts of creation, and his covenant faithfulness in history (his work of re-creation), and repent of your sins, so as to not thwart and fight the work of God as did your ancestors, which finally led to Exile.