Peculiar Faith

Sighted and Woke

“Here is an astonishing thing!”

The man born blind says that in the iconic story from John’s account of the Gospel, which many Christians heard in church this week (John 9:1-41). Jesus grants that man sight and the man then exclaims his astonishment to a bunch of religious leaders who care more about the rules of their religion than the amazing gift he had just received.

The whole story is rather astonishing, actually: it addresses the connection between sin and health (there isn’t any); it raises the perennial puzzle about human suffering; and it prompts all sorts of questions about God’s action in the world. It’s an ancient story but it captures perfectly the impatience so many people today have with religion: why in the world would religious leaders refuse to see a miracle just because it violates their religious customs?

But we need to pause right there and name directly that this story has been used over the centuries as one of the tools for Christian anti-Semitism. There is a long and ugly history of that in the Church, and the deeper we travel into Lent and toward Holy Week, the more frequent these problematic texts surface in our lectionary.

As Good Friday approaches, Christians must never forget our own shameful history of calling Jews “Christ killers.” We must remain vigilant about this; it is far too easy to causally or inadvertently repeat violence in our worship. (A former colleague of mine, a priest and church historian, has done extensive work on this; this short piece of his is a good place to start thinking on these matters.)

The “religious leaders” I just noted above, for example, are of course Jewish leaders. And the story from John has been interpreted by some in the past, and still today, as a story about how these religious leaders were blinded to the very presence of God standing among them.

Now, it is likely true, as some biblical scholars have suggested, that John’s account of the Gospel emerged from an early Jewish-Christian community that had been expelled from its local synagogue. In many of these gospel stories we can see traces of that ancient conflict, of a religious sibling rivalry. The story of the man born blind and granted sight is a prime example of this—an early follower of Jesus is expelled from his synagogue!

Thankfully, there is more to be said about these texts. John himself and some later interpreters took these stories of religious conflict as occasions to reflect much more broadly on the human condition itself, and who God is among us, and what God is calling us to do for the sake of healing and to help our communities flourish.

We might wonder about blindness, for example, and what prevents us from seeing the presence of God at work in the world. How have we prioritized institutional structures at the expense of divine grace and creaturely flourishing?

As many interpreters of this story have noted over the centuries, those with physical sight often cannot see what truly matters; and those who are physically blind sometimes have the clearest vision. How might we distinguish between outward sight and interior illumination?

As John Chrysostom noted back in the fourth century, this story from John features Pharisees, the most prominent leaders of that first-century religious community. He does this, Chrysostom supposed, to underscore an uncomfortable truth about religion itself in every century: it provides no guaranteed access to spiritual awakening.

Surely this is a cautionary tale for every religious institution, and about human institutions of any kind, especially when their primary goal becomes merely survival rather than mission. When power and influence are threatened, institutions become defensive, isolated, even blind; and sometimes, willfully and intentionally blind.

A prime example of this is almost daily in the news: in the state of Florida today, textbook publishers are scrambling to comply with so-called “anti-woke legislation.” The writers of these textbooks are struggling, for example, to figure out how to write about Rosa Parks without mentioning race, or that she was Black, or why she was told to stand up on that bus when all she wanted to do was sit down.

This is ludicrous. Let’s remind ourselves and our neighbors that the term “woke” first appeared way back in the 1960s as street slang for being fully aware, for seeing the world as it actually is—to be aware of the need for racial healing and reconciliation; aware of the need for social and economic justice; and today, aware of the peril our planet faces from global climate chaos. (Not surprisingly, there are complexities attached to this word and it’s worth noting its more recent evolutions and convolutions.)

To “be woke” is “to see” as clearly as we can, and the lectionary for this fourth Sunday in Lent even paired John’s story with a first-century version of being “woke” from the letter to the Ephesians: “Live as children of light,” that letter-writer says, and expose unfruitful, shameful works. “Sleeper, awake, and rise from the dead!”

To see the world as it really is, in all its irreducible complexity—broken and beautiful, lively and wounded—to see this is like waking up from a very long dream, as if coming back to life.

I’m particularly intrigued by how often ancient interpreters of John’s story invite an earthy Christian faith—an item to add to the “woke” list for a planet in peril.

Consider the fourth-century deacon Ephrem of Edessa. The blind man’s eyes were opened with dust, he noted, the very stuff from which he was made at the beginning of creation. Remember that you are dust, we said at the beginning of this Lenten season; and perhaps we should add this: “with the dust of earth you will be healed.”

Caesarius of Arles in the sixth century proposed that the ground is law and saliva is grace. The law without grace is parched and arid land from which no life can come. “So,” Caesarius says, “let the saliva of Christ go down to the ground and gather together earth. Let the one who made earth remake it, and the one who created it recreate it.”

Ambrose of Milan, going back to the fourth century, urged us to notice that Jesus tells this blind man, whose face is now covered in mud, to go and wash in a pool of water; this is the font of Holy Baptism, where we are cleansed from the stains of sin, like washing mud from our face to see!

John seems to love earthy symbols to portray the mystery of God’s presence among us, and in us, and around us. In this story of the man born blind and sighted, the symbol is earth itself, the soil, and it becomes the symbol of God’s healing presence when mixed with water—and with our own human saliva!

(Fun fact to share at your next cocktail party: some centuries ago the Church decided that if emergency baptism were required, you could use your own spit.)

There are some things that once we see them, we can never “un-see” them; they change our lives and how we live. The whole season of Lent is supposed to be like that, every single year—ongoing, lifelong conversion to the Gospel, a process of seeing everything altered, new and fresh.

This iconic story from John really gives us far too many things to see, all at once: the Creator of light giving sight to the blind; the creature of dirt being healed with mud; the waters of baptism pooling in our own mouths.

Here’s what I hope to see better, and what we all need to see together: earth as healing and also the healing of Earth—with all her peoples and all her many creatures. This is the great work to which God is always calling us, now more than ever.

To see this truly, the world would look different, and we would live differently; it would be like waking up; it would feel like rising from the dead.

The Well is Deep

Jesus came to the well of Jacob, his ancient ancestor. It was high noon, the heat of the day; he was tired and thirsty. There he would have a conversation with a Samaritan woman about living water (John 4:5-24).

John introduces this story in his account of the Gospel with a reference to baptism, another image of water. In the story that came before this one, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born of both water and Spirit. And in the story before that, John’s Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding banquet.

Toward the end of this gospel, John’s Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, and while he hangs from a cross, both blood and water pour from his pierced side. At the very end of this gospel, the risen Jesus stands on a beach, cooking breakfast next to a lake, where his disciples are fishing.

Clearly, these are not just random or accidental references to water. For John, water functions as a symbol in his account of the Gospel. For John, water might even be as symbolically significant as bread: water and blood, bread and body.

That word, symbol, has fallen into disrepair. Most people seem to think of symbols as merely pointing toward something else. “It’s just a symbol,” they will sometimes say, as if our focus belongs elsewhere.

To the contrary, genuine symbols always focus our attention on the symbolic moment itself; they always involve meaningful encounter and also depth, that thick engagement with what lies beneath the surface of things.

Notice how John constructs the story we heard this morning: Jesus approaches a well of water at high noon, when he’s likely to be alone; a woman approaches, and we can surmise later in this story why she would be there alone, to avoid scandalous chatter about her so-called “lifestyle” among other villagers. The stage is set, in other words, for encounter.

Barely half a dozen sentences into their conversation, this woman notes that “the well is deep.”

John gives us that little detail as a signal: this is no random meeting between strangers; these two figures are engaged in a timeless quest for insight, for meaning, and rather simply and profoundly for love.

The well is deep.

For some, John’s symbolic storytelling places him firmly in the long and rich tradition of both Jewish and Christian mysticism—traditions that invite not mere meeting but the depth of encounter. Some biblical scholars have also suggested that every story in John’s gospel—every single one—is in some way about the Eucharist because each of these stories is about loving encounter and the mystical union between Christ and his Church.

The well is deep.

That word “mystical” needs some attention, too. It’s not reserved for spiritual heroes. It shouldn’t feel exotic, elitist, or roped off from our ordinary, daily lives.

The word comes from the same root as the word mystery—not the kind of mystery Sherlock Holmes tries to solve with his sidekick Watson, but rather the kind of mystery so many of us know in our intimate friendships, our marriages, and our communities of care; it’s the inexplicable and inexhaustible mystery of love.

That’s the heart of mysticism: love, and intimacy, and union.

Concerning this morning’s story, some early Christian commentators suggested that this woman at the well is the Church, the “Bride of Christ.” Reading the story in that frame, Jesus asks about her husband not for moral reasons but for spiritual ones—to invite her into intimate union with God.

Consider the story just before this one, about Jesus and Nicodemus. That encounter was under the cover of night, when no one else would be there. Urgent matters of the soul are usually the most intimate; you don’t discuss them in crowded restaurants or public squares but in a place where you can be alone.

Recall the story that comes before both of these: the story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding banquet—John says that was the “first sign” Jesus offered. It sets the tone for his whole account of the Gospel, the Good News of God’s love for us—not tolerance, or forbearance, or mere patience, but that love which yearns for intimacy and union.

The well is deep.

Here’s how deep: John’s mysticism is not for the sake of escape, of somehow leaving Earth for Heaven; John’s mysticism instead plants us more firmly in Earth.

John draws us into this earthy mysticism by using earthy symbols: a dove, grapes, wine, wheat, bread, trees, vines, sheep, shepherds, gardens, spices, beaches, and fish! Earth, in other words, is where we encounter God, and that makes our work today of ecological healing and renewal a spiritual discipline.

I’m guessing this is why John put water at the center of his mystical vision of the world. Water, after all, is fluid—it seeps, leaks, overflows, runs, and can’t be contained, not for long, and certainly not forever.

This is why John refers to living water in this story, something this woman already knew quite a lot about. For every society on earth, water is “living” when it is connected to its source, like a spring, and when it moves—in creeks, streams, and rivers.

That woman, that Samaritan woman, that foreign woman knew all of this. And she was tired of living with the water that stands still; the water that is fenced off, segregated, and isolated from every other community of life—like the Samaritans from the Judeans.

That can’t be what God is like, she says to Jesus. Say it isn’t so!

Pause for a moment and consider the courage and the tenacity of this woman. She was apparently shunned and shamed by her own community; that’s why she was at that well at high noon. And still, she pushes Jesus on their behalf; she asks of him, demands from him, why her people should be excluded from proper worship—that’s not fair!

She asked from Jesus what her community needed: living water—the water that cannot be contained, roped off, or restricted.

Living water is like love: it wants to flow, and spread, and carve channels of life into the arid landscapes of hate and violence.

This streaming presence is what Christian traditions have called the Spirit of God—living water.

Pause again and consider that this ostracized and nameless woman knew exactly what all of this means—much better than Nicodemus, actually, whose name we know.

So let’s live like mystics this Lenten season: opening ourselves to the flowing presence of God’s Spirit; reaching out to help others tap into the deep well of God’s love; recommitting ourselves to clean, fresh, living water for all—from the faucets in our homes and from the pulpits in our sanctuaries.

This brave and nameless Samaritan woman can be our guide.

God with All of Us

“Apache Virgin and Child,” John Giuliani

Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were not white. This is ridiculously obvious, but I didn’t really appreciate that fact until I was a young adult.

As part of a college program in the Holy Land, I had the opportunity to visit the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, Israel. A shrine or church has stood on that site for a very long time, since at least the fourth century.

“Mother of God of Africa,” Liesbeth Smulders

The latest iteration was built in the 1960s, and part of the design included inviting mosaics or paintings of Mary and Jesus from around the world, each depicting those figures in ways that were ethnically appropriate to each country or region. The result is a visual feast as visitors to the upper level of the basilica are greeted by dozens of diverse images of “Madonna and Child.”

Gazing on those images, I realized how narrow my own visual imagination had been—by default, I had always simply imagined the Holy Family to look like me. It was also important to realize that the images were not all Middle Eastern or Semitic, either.

The wide range of particularities and peculiarities in those beautiful portrayals carried a truly rich theological insight: God is with us, is with all of us—with Palestinians and Italians and Kenyans and Chinese and Indians and Irish and…the list is as long as every possible version of humanity we can think of. And I would also add to that list every possible version of God’s creatures, human and other-than-human alike.

God is with Us. That is the wonderful and always good news of Christmas. And as I realized many years ago in Nazareth, the Good News is made even richer with the glorious diversity of God’s creation. Merry Christmas!

A Public Scandal for a Merry Christmas

“Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah,” Matthew says, “took place in this way.”

Here’s the short version: public scandal.

Sacred texts, their formal language and the ritual surrounding their proclamation can easily tidy up the scandalous bits, but traces of the mess still remain: a teenage girl; an unexpected pregnancy; her betrothed is not the father.

This is a human dilemma that has been told for millennia, of course, but this week before Christmas we’re invited to consider how that story shapes our worship of a God who comes among us with scandal.

Yesterday, many church-goers heard about God doing this with help from Joseph—a carpenter, a manual laborer, a good-old-boy, who is also tender and kind-hearted. His betrothal to his beloved Mary was interrupted with news of her pregnancy.

So Joseph had some difficult decisions to make, especially in that devout, religiously observant community. Even this short little cameo of Joseph that Matthew gives us (1:18-25) is quite moving: Joseph didn’t want to expose Mary to public ridicule or shaming, even though had every right to do so.

But this good and righteous man, as Matthew describes him, decided instead to quietly break off the engagement without any fuss, no public outcry, and just move on with their lives.

That alone would make this a gracious story. But then an angel appears to him in a dream. “Just marry her,” the angel says. “Just get married to the pregnant girl.” And that’s exactly what this dear man does.

So let’s note this carefully: what began as an unconventional and peculiar family became what we now call The Holy Family—not just “a” holy family but The Holy Family. The prototype of all familial holiness emerges from scandal!

This is truly worthy of our attention: the unusual, the strange, and uncomfortable becomes the location of sanctity, of holiness, of the very presence of God.

It has been occurring to me this year that the liturgical season of Advent can so often seem so peculiar in part because the God this season presents to us doesn’t behave in the way deities generally should. This morning confirms it: God shows up in unconventional families because God is unconventional.

Yes, some of our sacred texts carry hints of thunderbolts and dazzling images of heavenly glory, but mostly what we see in this season is a tender-hearted God, a God whose heart breaks with compassion, a God whose compassion makes God vulnerable to the whims and fancies and even violence of human history.

Gods are not supposed to act like that (go back and read some Greek mythology to see what proper gods actually do and think). The God of the Bible is actually a little embarrassing—if we can’t have something that looks like the great and powerful Wizard of Oz aren’t we afraid we’ll be stuck with that little man behind the curtain, the humbug pulling all the levers?

I’m guessing Matthew realized how hard all this would be for his readers to grasp, so he gives us a story about a tender-hearted carpenter to help us imagine a tender-hearted God.

This God doesn’t fix a scandalous situation, as if it were broken, but rather embraces it, owns it, and enters the world in a brand new way because of it.

Both Isaiah (whom many of us also read in church yesterday) and Matthew give us a name for this God: Immanuel, which means God with us.

Here we need to pause and ask, exactly who is this “us”? Biblical writers like Isaiah and Matthew were persistent in noting that God shows up especially among the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed; God stands especially with the orphan, the widow, and the alien stranger.

The religiously pious and socially privileged people of Isaiah’s day, just like the ones in Matthew’s, found this kind of God troubling, even offensive. Surely God cares about the standards of respectable society, about following the rules, about working hard and associating with proper people—just like a proper God would.

Matthew begs to differ; indeed, he insists otherwise by beginning his account of the Gospel with a genealogy of Jesus, like a proper Messiah ought to have.

But there’s really nothing “proper” about that family tree, at least not for the religiously pious and socially privileged readers.

Matthew includes 42 men and four women in the genealogy of Jesus. That seems wildly unbalanced, except that ancient genealogies ordinarily include only men, so it’s highly unusual to have any women at all in such a list.

But wait! There’s more! These aren’t just any women. They are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Here’s a brief reminder of who they were:

Tamar tricked her father-in-law into having sex with her so that she could secure her place in the family after her husband dies. Rahab owned a brothel in Jericho—she was a prostitute—and helped ancient Israel conquer that city. Ruth was a Moabite, a people forbidden by divine law even to assemble with Israelites because they had mistreated God’s people in the wilderness. And let’s not forget about Bathsheba. King David had her husband Uriah killed so that he could have sex with her; one of their children was King Solomon.

Of course Joseph embraces the scandal of a pregnant fiancée—the very genealogy of the child Mary was carrying was peppered with scandal!

Now, why in the world (literally) are we confronted with all this just one week before Christmas?

If God shows up—as biblical writers insist—if God usually shows up with the alien, among the orphans, and beside the widows; if we can most reliably find God knitting families together with brothel owners and unmarried pregnant teenagers, then it really doesn’t matter whether we measure up to the standards of respectable society.

Personally, I find that liberating and life-giving. Even more pointedly, I need to realize nearly every day that if I’m spending my time and energy worrying about meeting those respectable standards, I could very well miss what Joseph’s wife said about God. We call that song from Mary The Magnificat, and in it she declares that God has cast down the mighty and lifted up the lowly, has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away, empty.

I’m convinced Mary was inspired to sing that song, at least in part, because Joseph listened to his better angel, he did the scandalous thing and married her. In doing so he became the guardian and protector of God’s Word Incarnate.

Somehow all of this needs to be a Christmas card. I mean this: what kind of sanctified scandal is God calling us to become for the sake of life?

And that is a question worthy of Christmas.

“The Angel Visits St. Joseph,” Mike Moyers

True Religion

All four Gospel writers seem to agree on at least two things. First, whenever Jesus wanted to emphasize something important about his ministry, he almost always turned to table fellowship to do so. And second, when he wanted to underscore the importance of table fellowship, he usually talked about weddings.

He did both of those things in what many church-goers heard yesterday from Luke’s account of the Gospel (14:1, 7-14). So why did this matter so much to Jesus and to the gospel writers?

Let’s start with food: first-century rules and expectations for sharing food at a common table were rather complex, not just for Israelites but for the whole ancient Mediterranean world. Family, ethnicity, economic class, religious observance—those are just a few of the components that well-behaved members of respectable society would take into account very carefully when gathering for table fellowship.

This is why the Gospel writers tell us frequently that Jesus was constantly getting into trouble for eating with the wrong people. The commonly used collective label for them was “prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners.”

I know this sounds odd and probably far removed from our own day. But consider the arc from “Downton Abbey” on television to the White House in the news and whatever the fanciest restaurant might be where you live: it matters who sits at all those tables and how they are arranged; that’s how the very structure of a society is made visible; it’s how we know where power and influence reside; the table reflects in microcosm a well-ordered world.

This is why Luke introduces yesterday’s passage about a dinner party by noting that the religious leaders who had gathered at the party were “watching Jesus closely.” They were monitoring how well Jesus would conform, if at all, to the expectations of table fellowship. Luke confirms this when he tells us that Jesus noticed, right away, that some of the other guests at this party chose to sit in places of honor.

Jesus himself is quick to acknowledge the complex social game unfolding at the party. “You know,” he says, “everyone invites friends, family, and rich neighbors to dinner parties.”

And why exactly is that the case? Because they can return the favor. This was one of the primary criteria for good table fellowship—reciprocity. The ones you invite to dinner are the ones who can pay you back.

Good dinner parties, in other words, happen around tables where everyone is just like you. That’s just good manners in a well-structured society; it’s also precisely not how Jesus would have us behave.

The Kingdom of God, he says, happens around dinner tables with “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”

Those aren’t just random categories. Those were the standard first-century ways to describe people on the margins, the ones left out, the forgotten and displaced, those who had no social or political capital whatsoever and therefore could never repay any favor or act of kindness—and those are the ones, Jesus says, that you should invite to dinner.

“Invitation to the Feast,” Eugene Burnand (17th century)

It’s not just any kind of dinner party that Jesus usually has in mind; here and in so many other places in the Gospels, he means especially wedding feasts.

Now, to talk about weddings in these Gospel passages, we need to talk about sex, and that’s surprisingly easy to do. There’s really just one thing, and it’s the most important thing, to understand about sex in the ancient Mediterranean world, namely, power.

In those ancient societies socially appropriate sex always involved inequality: one partner had more power than the other, and that’s what made the relationship acceptable. Curiously enough from our modern vantage point, gender didn’t actually matter much in those ancient assessments of what makes sex good and proper, except insofar as gender itself was about power—who had it and who didn’t.

Here again, this can sound like I’m describing some exotic culture from long ago and far away—until we recall the “#MeToo” cultural moment from just a few years ago. Let us not sweep that moment under the rug; remember, a wave of brave women spoke their truth about sexual harassment and ended the careers of more than 200 socially and economically prominent men.

Along with many other men—and I’m embarrassed to admit this—I was truly shocked to watch the flood of “MeToo” stories on social media. I suddenly realized what I should have known back then but didn’t: nearly every woman I know, just about every woman I ever meet, has experienced sexual harassment, abuse, or violence—all manifestations of male power.

First-century readers of the gospel accounts would have known all this whenever Jesus talked about “table fellowship” and “weddings.” We modern Western folks, by contrast, need explicit reminders: the issue of power sits right at the heart of the Gospel.

I could stop right there and create a “to-do” list about how to unmask and dismantle the corrosive forms of patriarchal power in our world today—and we should do that! But I worry that in doing so we will miss the life-changing invitation of the Gospel.

In addition to the passage from Luke, Episcopalians also heard a Collect yesterday from the Prayer Book, right at the beginning of the liturgy. We prayed that God would “increase in us true religion.”

Whatever else “true religion” may be, I am convinced it inspired Jesus to engage frequently in table fellowship and to talk often about weddings. The essence of Christianity blossoms around the Eucharistic Table, where everyone is just as precious as everyone else. And this is so because we encounter the God who made us at that Table and who longs for us, as a Lover longs for the Beloved.

I want to urge and beg everyone to reflect for a long time on that last phrase: the God who made us longs for us as a Lover longs for the Beloved.

That’s why Jesus talked so often about weddings, and that kind of love will change your life. It keeps on changing mine as I realize in ever deeper ways that “true religion” makes me vulnerable to love; helps me be grasped by it; to be undone because of it; to give myself over to it; and to be remade in it.

True religion will usher in that day when we yearn to see those on the margins joining us at the table; that day when we are so happy to welcome the forgotten and displaced among us; that day when we realize to our shock and unending joy that we have been embraced by those who are most different from us.

We will yearn and we will be happy and we will sing with joy about all these things on that day because of love. (I urge you to watch the short video about the making of the mural below, “The Banquet,” by Hyatt Moore; the link is provided beneath the image.)

That’s what makes religion “true” and what creates the only kind of community I can imagine for healing our violent and divided world.

So let’s get on with it.

“The Banquet,” Hyatt Moore
(see this mural being made)

Jesus Our Mother

What a crowded day on the calendar! Tomorrow is the Fourth Sunday of Easter, which is always “Good Shepherd” Sunday. It just happens to be Mother’s Day and also the commemoration of Julian of Norwich. Let the religious synthesizing begin!

“Julian of Norwich,”
Amy Zaleta Martinez

Let’s start with this: referring to Jesus as our “mother” certainly sounds like I’ve never really left my radical Berkeley roots behind, but those roots actually stretch down and back to fourteenth-century England and to Julian of Norwich, a much-beloved saint and mystic. She was far ahead of her own day concerning many things, not least in retrieving what we might call “feminine” aspects of God, including with her phrase “Jesus our Mother,” as she was fond of saying and praying.

After nearly dying from bubonic plague, she received a series of visions, what she called “showings,” or revelations of divine love. She is best known, I suppose, for insisting that “all shall be well,” but she was equally insistent that God is nothing at all except love, and that absolutely everything that exists is because of that love. In ways that are startling and beautiful, she weaves that insistence into her reflections on Jesus:

The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life … The mother can lay her child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother Jesus can lead us easily into his blessed breast through his sweet open side, and show us there a part of the godhead and of the joys of heaven, with inner certainty of endless bliss … This fair lovely word ‘mother’ is so sweet and so kind in itself that it cannot truly be said of anyone or to anyone except of him and to him who is the true Mother of life and of all things. To the property of motherhood belong nature, love, wisdom, and knowledge, and this is God.

All this past week I’ve been trying to figure out how to connect Mother’s Day with the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd in the Easter season. Julian helped me notice in those efforts that most of the visual images of Jesus as a shepherd don’t actually show him “herding” any sheep. Those images instead show him looking for a lost sheep, or cradling a lamb in his arms, or hoisting one up over his shoulders to carry her home.

There’s something tender, something intimate and affectionate about these images, something we often associate with mothers. But there’s no reason not to associate such characteristics with men, and with our fathers. And there’s no reason at all not to suppose that God, the Source of All Life, is father, mother, brother, sister, friend, and lover, and still so much more.

On this Mother’s Day weekend I am of course remembering with much fondness my own dear mother, and I’m grateful for so many others who have been “mothers” to me, and that includes Jesus—thanks to Julian’s gentle nudges.

Death is Easier

“Alleluia! Christ is risen!”

We can make that joyous declaration because women were the first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Women were the very first apostles of an Easter faith, and we must not take this for granted.

The first-century Mediterranean world was a thoroughly patriarchal society: poor women had no legal rights whatsoever; they were never taught to read or write; and they were considered the property of their husbands.

Even wealthy women—who had only just a tad more freedom—even they could not vote, could not stand for political office, had no formal role in public life, and their testimony could not be admitted into a court of law.

Let us, therefore, note this very carefully: in that thoroughly patriarchal society, all four Gospel writers—most assuredly all of them men—make perfectly clear that women were the very first witnesses of Easter!

Luke takes this storyline still further (24:1-12) by noting rather painfully that the men to whom those women delivered the glorious news did not believe the women, and these men were some of the closest friends of Jesus.

This centering of women in what I would certainly consider the core story of Christian faith is not merely remarkable; it’s a miracle.

I think these Gospel writers are making a theological point by putting women on center-stage in the Easter story. And the point is this: the death-dealing world of patriarchal domination is over. There are lingering effects of that long history of domination, to be sure, some of them quite painful and long-lived, even traumatic. But that world of patriarchal violence will never have the final word; and indeed, concerning new life, women have the very first word.

Still, I have to wonder: why did those male disciples refuse to believe the women? This should have been the happiest news they had ever heard. Why, in Luke’s words, did it seem to them merely an “idle tale”?

Luke suggests a reason with the question posed to those apostolic women by angels at the empty tomb: Why are you looking for the living among the dead? That’s an important question all of us should be asking ourselves quite regularly: why do we keep returning to worn-out patterns and toxic relationships and lifeless institutions?

Here’s an answer I’ve been sitting with for a while: because death is easier than new life.

Winter’s reluctance to yield to spring here in western Michigan this year reminded me of those cold wintry mornings over the last few months when the alarm goes off and the wind is howling and the snow is blowing and it’s dark outside.

On mornings like that, my Australian shepherd dog Judah and I both agree that it is far easier to pull up the covers and stay cozy and warm in bed.

Death is easier like that because life requires something of us. Life requires that we actually throw back the covers, get up, get dressed, and go out to engage with the world.

We seek the living among the dead because that’s what we’ve been taught and it feels natural; we already know how to nurse grudges and cultivate resentments and sow hatred and start wars…it’s actually quite easy.

We seek the living among the dead because it’s just easier to live conveniently and for our own comfort and among our own kind…even when we’re fomenting violence and killing the planet in the process.

We seek the living among the dead because death, in all its many forms, is so close at hand and so easy to find—in our communities, in our politics, and in our institutions.

And still, and yet, God is with us even there.

“Mary Magdalene on Easter Morning,” Sieger Koder

We can choose the familiarity of death and God will still be with us. God will never abandon us; not ever.

That’s good news, and there is even better news: The God who made us wants still more life for us, in abundance, the kind of vibrant life that we can scarcely imagine.

God has a dream; and especially in these Great Fifty Days of Easter, God dreams of a richer life for us, for all of us, for the whole of God’s creation. And God has turned this dream into a promise by raising Jesus from the dead, and God seals this promise with the testimony of women in a patriarchal society.

Yesterday morning in my little parish here in (snowy) Saugatuck, Michigan, we baptized a baby as part of our Easter Day jubilations. His name is George Alexander River Burt, and how wonderful that one of his names is “River”! Into that glorious river of new life that flows from an empty tomb, we baptized that dear baby in endless Alleluias and with a gladness that shall never die.

We also made some promises to George. We promised to do all that we can to ensure he never, ever hears anything about God that isn’t loving, graceful, and full of life. We promised to help him know that he is a cherished child of God, that he himself gives God endless delight.

I led the gathered faithful in those promises with tears in my eyes because many of us didn’t grow up that way, with all those reassurances and with such fortifying confidence in God’s love for us. That’s exactly why we renew those promises for ourselves whenever we make them for someone else. And on Easter Day in particular, we also ask God to lead all of us out of our various tombs, whatever they may be, and into the shocking brightness of a new day.

Shocking, because God will be with us regardless of the choices we make.

And this is also true: God still longs for us to choose life, abundant life.

So let’s do it.

“Art of the Redemption 3: Resurrection,” Josef Zacek

Harrow My Heart

Every human community has threads of resentment running through it and chunky grudges clogging up its communal arteries. This is certainly true—sometimes it seems especially true—in religious communities and in our churches. This is especially discouraging as well since many of us harbor rather high standards for faith communities, or at least some high hopes.

Since returning to full-time congregational ministry two years ago, I’ve been reminded of the sacred ground we all tread in parish life. Traces of heartbreak and the wounds of grief punctuate so many conversations, just as glimpses of joy and spiritual insight hover over our committees and circulate through our worship. I wake up every single Sunday morning astonished at the privilege of doing this work.

I have also learned in fresh ways some perennial truths about life in community: resentment is far more contagious than joy, and the infection can linger for far longer than our memory of when we were first exposed. Still more: bitterness takes no work at all (though it is exhausting) and gladness requires effort (even though it is thoroughly refreshing).

These are the peculiar landscapes of human relationships, manifesting the often complex contours of the human heart. All of this is on my mind today, on this Holy Saturday. It’s one of my favorite days on the church calendar because it marks one of my favorite religious notions—Jesus harrowing Hell.

A few scant biblical references and a single phrase in the Apostles’ Creed—Jesus “descended to the dead”—eventually blossomed in Christian traditions into a full-blown harrowing of Hell itself, smashing its gates, and releasing its captives. All of this on the day in between crucifixion and resurrection—a busy day for Jesus and not only for altar guild members readying sanctuaries for Easter morning.

I truly love the image of Jesus fetching our ancestors from whatever limbo they’ve been trapped in for however long, but right now I need Jesus to harrow the rocky soil of my heart. “Soil” is the perfect image for this day, and for more than one reason. “Harrowing,” of course, most commonly appears among farmers and gardeners; we “harrow” the soil by plowing it and breaking up the hardened clods. And according to the Johannine account of the Gospel, the dead Jesus was buried in a garden tomb.

Those images occurred to me in the shower this morning as I reflected on how easily my petty grievances can harden my heart, parch my soul, and threaten to desiccate all that fertile soil, that interior field where I would much prefer to plant the seeds of faith, hope, and especially love.

I don’t know that I want the “three-person’d God” to “batter my heart,” as John Donne imagined, but I do think its earthy fields could use some plowing, some gentle rains of grace, and the warm sunlight of compassion.

On that first Easter morning, according to John, Mary Magdalene supposed that the risen Jesus was a gardener. We sometimes say that she “mistook” him for a gardener. But I don’t think that was a mistake at all. New life sometimes—likely often, perhaps always—needs some harrowing.

Follow the Jackass

I never thought much about donkeys growing up. I mean, why would I? It’s not like I saw many—or any—in the western suburbs of Chicago. But I did think a lot about horses; they were in all my storybooks about heroes and adventures. Horses seemed quite obviously more noble than donkeys.

There are some cultural reasons for these biases: Donkeys are usually the butt of jokes, they provide a convenient stand-in for the outsider, or the underachiever, or simply the useful nuisance we keep around to do the stuff we don’t want to do ourselves.

Let’s not forget the MTV Television series called “Jackass” and the ridiculous movie spinoffs it generated (I may have seen one). Those movies were about stupid humans, but the film’s title betrays the deeper human disdain toward the lowly donkey—the jackass.

Today there are roughly 40 million donkeys in the world and the vast majority of them—more than 90%—are found in rural societies and serve as pack animals, for transportation, and in roles of agricultural labor. Working donkeys are most often associated with those living in poverty, rarely ever with the wealthy or the powerful.

Every year on Palm Sunday we celebrate a “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem as if a hero had mounted a white horse to ride into our lives and save the day. But that is not the story that launches us into the Christian Holy Week.

“Entry into the City,” John August Swanson

The donkey, all on his own, makes perfectly clear that Jesus is not a military commander, nor a rival of the Roman Emperor or even the provincial Governor. So why were the crowds cheering his arrival? Let’s be clear: they were not mocking him but cheering him.

It has taken a very long time for me to let go of the “triumph” of Palm Sunday and appreciate what the donkey teaches (I wish so desperately to know that dear creature’s name). Here’s the lesson I need to learn: Jesus on a donkey is an image of God’s deep solidarity—with the laboring classes, with the downtrodden and forgotten, with those oppressed by Empire.

More specifically for our own day, that image signals God’s solidarity with migrant farmworkers; with women of color who are single mothers working two full-time jobs; with the indigenous people of this land who are still unable to find justice with our own government.

Those are the ones lining the streets of Jerusalem and cheering the arrival of Jesus on a donkey. Perhaps, they think, just maybe, God has not forgotten them, maybe (hope beyond hope) God is standing with them.

But there’s still more to say about this story: God is also in solidarity with the donkey. After all, this beast of burden plays a starring role in this opening chapter of what we Christians call the holiest of weeks.

A donkey leads us into Holy Week!

So after we shout our “Hosannas!” it’s time to follow the Jackass into new life.

What might that look like?

Let’s start modestly. Let’s remember that this so-called “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem features a city whose holiness is shared by at least three of the world’s great religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The calendar this year all but begs reflection on those religious intersections. Even as Christians enter Holy Week, Muslims have already begun observing the holy month of Ramadan, and Passover begins this Friday—Good Friday.

While religious folks pray for peace in the world—and rightly so, and especially right now for Ukraine—religious folks have our own peace to make with each other. We need to work for peace with other Christians, with our Jewish neighbors, and with Muslims all around the world.

It matters that Jesus entered Jerusalem, that Holy City, not on a warhorse or as a general leading armies or in the garments of victory, but on the back of a donkey.

It’s long past time for us Christians to stop referring to this moment as “The Triumphal Entry”; this story should be called the “Parade of Solidarity.”

Poet Sylvia Sands writes so beautifully about this, about Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. All over the world, she writes, donkeys are beaten, starved, tortured, and worked until they drop.

And Jesus chooses that creature to accompany him on his entry into Jerusalem, to lead the “Parade of Solidarity.”

This is how our Christian holy week begins, not in triumph, not even with a whispered hint of domination or any kind of “victory” but rather with the lowly, humble, usually disdained little donkey plodding his path into an ancient city.

The Church has mostly forgotten this but queerly retains it in our lectionary texts and calendar images: the holiest of weeks marks a path of new life for us, if only we would follow the jackass.

Another poet, Steve Garnaas-Holmes, prays in precisely that direction: “O God, give me courage to follow the Foolish way, / to go the way the world discourages, / the way of love.

“May Jesus,” he writes, “riding into a set-up / on his little donkey, lead me.”

The donkey is leading Jesus where we must follow if we wish to live. It’s where God desires to be in communion with us, where God is always already in solidarity with us and with the whole of God’s creation.

Those are lofty ideas and rather far removed from how most of us live day-to-day—but not so for the donkey.

Sylvia Sands poetically imagines that one, first-century donkey being so grateful for that one man’s gentle touch on his reins; and for that one man’s sweet voice on the road; and for that one man’s improbable invitation to join him in the work of redeeming love.

We are invited to that same work of love, to travel along that same road, and to take our lead from a donkey.

The Slap that Truly Matters Comes from Earth

I’ve enjoyed watching Will Smith in some of his movies; I’ve never really cared for Chris Rock’s humor. And that’s as much as I want to say about either of them.

I know there are other things that probably should be said after their recent performance during the televised Oscars ceremony—topics that include race, and white supremacy, and patriarchy, and celebrity culture, and toxic masculinity, and…the list goes on.

I have some opinions—even passionately held ones—about all of those topics. But here’s what I really care about right now: while white America debriefs the spectacle of two Black men in a fight (hardly ever mentioning race, let’s note), the planet is literally burning up and I’m wondering exactly when Earth’s slap across our collective face will finally wake us up.

Statistics rarely help but here are a few to ponder: the Western third of the United States has basically run out of water and it’s not coming back (the Washington Post says “the West is tapped out”); nearly 75% of Earth’s land area is already degraded on the way to desertification (please read that again: 75 per cent of this planet’s land is on the verge of becoming desert); according to the U.N., 27 of the 35 countries at greatest risk from climate change are already experiencing “extreme food insecurity”—food shortages are soon coming to an American grocery store near you if they haven’t already.

I know, stats are mind-numbing, especially since Smith’s slap of Rock’s face this past Sunday evening has now garnered more social media views than all six IPCC assessment reports on global climate change combined. I have no hard data for that statistic, just the intuitive conviction that many, many more know what “The Academy Awards” is than what “IPCC” stands for (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change); here’s an analysis of that agency’s sixth assessment report.

I didn’t want to write a blog post about any of this because everything feels demoralizing these days and hardly anything seems particularly ripe with any hidden fruit of hopefulness. I prefer to find reasons for hope and write about those, especially when I can recommend promising action steps—of which I have precious few to propose. But then it occurred to me: maybe it’s worth writing about “anti-action steps,” about the things we should stop doing.

I’d say it’s time we stop having awards ceremonies of any kind—no more Oscars, Grammys, Tonys, or local Tulip Queen Crownings at the local 4H Club come May. Just stop giving out awards for anything on a planet that is dying right before our eyes. Glitzy gowns draping over red carpets under the glare of media lights? Honestly, as my dear mother would say, that’s just tasteless in the midst of so much wanton destruction.

I’d say it’s time we stop all televised sports, all collegiate sporting events, every single music concert, each and every art exhibit, and any other gathering for the sake of “culture.” This planet’s ecosystems have selected us for extinction—exactly what kind of cultural artifact would you like to make right now and who would be left to enjoy it?

I’d say it’s time to stop going to school and earning degrees and teaching classes—just as teenager Greta Thunberg did for two years—because let’s get real: on what part, exactly, of a burning planet with little water and shrinking arable land for farming would you like to use all that fancy education? More to the point, what kind of job do you hope to have when food shortages in this “wealthiest country in the history of the world” leave our grocery stores mostly empty?

Some climate scientists themselves have said it’s time to stop issuing reports on climate change because no one is reading them and no one is doing anything about them. It’s time instead to go on strike. Good Lord, these are scientists—can we please pay attention?

It’s time we stop doing all these things (and more) because it’s past time to stop settling for half-baked measures from politicians who pander to their “base” constituencies—on both the “right” and the “left” not to mention the useless “middle.” As George Tsakraklides persuasively (alas) argues, our elected politicians feed us just enough empty promises about climate action to keep us mostly well-behaved and unwilling to rock the (leaky) boat. It’s past time to write to our legislators; as Extinction Rebellion urges, it’s high time for civil disobedience, and we Christians need to be clear that such disobedience counts as spiritual activism and sacred work; there is no “Planet B.”

It’s time for every single one of us simply to stop, to stop everything, right now, and let the buses run idle and the bakery shelves stand empty and the dry cleaning go unfolded and the construction projects languish unfinished and the garbage rot uncollected and the livestock roam unslaughtered.

And then, in that pregnant pause, it’s time for all of us to stand in the streets, or on our front yards, or along the sidewalks of our cities, or at the edges of shopping-mall parking lots and gaze upon what we have wrought, what we have allowed, what continues day after day despite what we have known for many decades is our collective suicide.

It’s time for us to gaze upon all of that and then refuse to do anything more until someone steps up, or multiple such ones lead the way into a different future, a future away from mutually assured destruction and toward something like collaborative renewal and collective healing for the possibility of shared flourishing—if it’s not already too late.

I’m thinking and pondering all these things after watching what should have been an unremarkable moment of feuding between celebrities on live television go viral on social media as we Western Christians approach the waning days of Lent and Easter is teasing us over the horizon.

I had some high hopes for this Lenten season as we emerge gingerly from the Covid-19 pandemic but I have mostly failed to preach repentance persuasively in this parish I’m privileged to serve because I really don’t know how to repent myself—only that I should.

“Crucified Land,” Alexandre Hogue (1939)

I’d like to harbor high hopes for the Easter season when Spring here in the northern hemisphere underscores with natural italics the reassurances of the new life embedded in the liturgical cycle.

But my hope runs terribly thin that we’ll stop much of anything or pause for long, if at all, or pay any serious attention to what climate scientists have been warning us about since 1896. Everything we know today about climate change we knew in 1970—and we’ve done nothing. The biggest spike in greenhouse gas emissions has actually occurred in the last twenty years.

This is precisely the kind of moment the world’s religious traditions were invented to address, certainly Christianity, with its endemic apocalyptic flavors. Religion exists for the end of the world—to remind us of its end (its purpose) while also helping us navigate its other “end”—its demise.

So I’m modulating my posture these days, adopting what I call “radically modest hopes.” I’m hopeful that Christian faith communities can become sites of climate refuge and solace as we face storms, droughts, famines, and civil unrest (all of which will not get better but will only continue and worsen).

I’m hopeful that a renewed discipline of shared worship in our congregations can create communities of genuine care, islands of infectious compassion and rejuvenating tenderness in a sea of violent divisions and toxic self-absorption.

And I’m hopeful that playing with our companion animals and hiking in our forests and wandering along our beaches will soften a sufficient number of our hearts to fall back in love again with Earth.

Surely none of us is too old, ever, to remember what it’s like to fall in love: that heady rush of infatuation, surfing those tides of giddy daydreaming, and then that sudden realization that all you ever really want is the very best for your beloved. We cannot allow the modern Western forces of industrialization and the ongoing onslaught of global capitalism to keep rendering Earth an inert lump of coal for us to burn at will; we must love her back to health.

Sociologist William James Gibson calls this vital need a process of “re-enchantment” with Earth. Or as biologist and environmentalist Stephen J. Gould once urgently noted, “We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well—for we will not fight to save what we do not love.”

So, for the love of God—for the love of Earth—stop caring about that stupid celebrity slap and go take a hike.