Foolish Wisdom

Watch the teaching related to the post below on our YouTube channel (YouTube.com/CrossWalkNapa). Or listen via your preferred podcast provider ( search CrossWalkNapa).  This post is informed by, and references noted are sourced from (unless otherwise noted) Following the Call: Living the Sermon on the Mount Together, which will inform CrossWalkNapa teachings throughout 2025.

Who are the most celebrated people in the United States? Who gets the most attention and accolades? How do we assess such a thing? Perhaps based on who gets the most headlines or endorsements? Or who carries the most sway with public opinion?

     I think it is safe to say that the way our culture defines success is evidenced in who and what we celebrate the most.  In the business world, that means high profile leaders who led their companies and themselves to great financial success: Elon Musk (Tesla, etc.), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook/Meta), Bill Gates and Paul Allen (Microsoft), Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Tim Cook (Apple), Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathaway), etc.

     We also celebrate athletes at the top of their game, like Stephen Curry, Lebron James, Coco Gauf, Kaitlyn Clark, Jayden Daniels, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Travis Kelce. Kelce and Mahomes have dominated the endorsement realm in recent years – Kelce’s agents said his multi-million-dollar football contract only represents of a fraction of his annual income. 

     Since we’re talking about Kelce, we must talk about pop stars, which has to include Taylor Swift.  She has written songs about every moment of her life which has made her billions of dollars.  All these folks are successful in terms of personal performance and income. 

     In terms of leadership style, from the big screen to politics to media commentators, our culture has elevated “strong and tough” as a key character trait desired.  Even though he was twice impeached and convicted of a felony for covering up a story that would have potentially hurt his electability, Donald Trump was re-elected.  Why? For a range of reasons, of course, but certainly it had to include that for many people, he is the epitome of success: wealth, power, and fame.  In the U.S. cultural framework, Donald Trump is a blessed man. His victory is completely congruent with our culture’s lived and celebrated values.  Whatever your political disposition, consider what it means that legal, ethical, and moral issues were trumped by just under 50% of voters to give him the victory.

     The above doesn’t tell the whole story, but it cannot be discounted.  Because all the above are so prevalent in our culture, it must also be stated that we are kidding ourselves if we don’t admit it’s influence upon us individually.  We are in denial if we think otherwise. The broader culture we live within exacts incredible formative pressure on us all.  We don’t usually know how much until we are faced with something entirely different, providing contrast. We sometimes need a reference point to know where we stand.

     Author and English professor Virginia Stem Owens gave her Freshman students an assignment – write an essay in response to their reading Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount.  The responses surprised her:

·      In my opinion, religion is one big hoax.

·      There is an old saying that ‘you shouldn’t believe everything you read’ and it applies in this case.

·      It is hard to believe something that was written down thousands of years ago. IN the Bible Adam and Eve were the first two people and if they were then where did black people come from? Also, the Bible says nothing about dinosaurs and I think God would of mentioned them.

·      The stuff churches preach is extremely strict and allows for almost no fun without thinking it is a sin or not.

·      I did not like the essay ‘Sermon on the Mount.’ It was hard to read and made me feel like I had to be perfect and no one is.

·      The things asked in this sermon are absurd. To look at a woman is adultery? That is the most extreme, stupid, un-human statement that I have ever heard.

·      Many believe that this sermon should be taken literally. I believe, on the other hand, that, because the scriptures have been interpreted from so many different languages, we should use them as a guide – not law. Another fallback is that certain Beatitudes are irrelevant to current life-styles. Loving your enemies, for instance, is obviously no observed by the majority today.

·      In this essay the author explains the doctrines of an era in the past which cannot be brought into the future in the same context. This essay now cannot be taken the same way it was written. It can be used as a guideline for good manners.

     Owens didn’t just find it surprising, however.  She was also oddly encouraged:

I find it strangely heartening that, except for the young man who found the Sermon on the Mount a guide to good manners, the Bible remains offensive to honest, ignorant ears, just as it was in the first century.  For me, that somehow validates its significance. Whereas the scriptures almost lost their characteristically astringent flavor during the past century, the current widespread biblical illiteracy should catapult us into a situation more nearly approximating that of their original, first-century audience. The Bible will no longer be choked by cloying (syrupy-sweet) cultural associations (17).

     At the bipartisan 2020 National Prayer Breakfast, Harvard professor Arthur Brooks delivered the keynote address.  As reported by the Associated Press on February 6, 2020, in his address he decried a “crisis of contempt and polarization” and urged his listeners to ”love your enemies.” Trump responded directly to Brooks’ remarks, which were based in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, simply saying “I don’t know if I agree with you”, before taking a shot at Mitt Romney for voting against his impeachment acquittal.

     This should not be a surprise to anybody, given that Trump has never in his life – until he ran for president – shown any interest in the Christian faith with his attitude or behavior. He represents a very strong sentiment in the United States – one that is at odds with Jesus’ teaching and modeling, yet one that was endorsed by many self-proclaimed Christians.

     Author and retreat leader John Dear has written what he calls the anti-Beatitudes that he suggests are quite popular and prevalent in our culture today. He writes:

These anti-Beatitudes undergird the spirituality of violence and war that fueled our culture. If we imagine the opposite of what Jesus teaches, it may help us gain a little more clarity and insight into his teachings. As we ponder the culture’s ‘anti-Beatitudes,’ we realize how profoundly we have bought into the culture of violence, how deeply its false teachings have penetrated our minds and hearts, and how strongly we resist what Jesus has to say (20).

     If you are frustrated with me, thinking that I am using my platform to talk about politics, let me reassure you that that is not my goal. I am talking about you and me, because to varying degrees we reflect the culture that has formed us.  You may love or hate Donald Trump. He reflects a strong force in our culture. So do you. There is a little Donald Trump in all of us because we have been raised by the same cultural parents.  The question is, are we aware of how much we have been influenced, and do we care?

     For the most part, I believe that the Beatitudes are not mandates to become poor or mourn.  Rather, his words are a healing balm for those who have been told that their suffering is a sign of God’s distance, uncaring, or condemnation.  Similarly, our wealth and lack of cause for mourning is not inherently a sign that we are receiving a nod from God.  Throughout his ministry, Jesus affirmed God’s love for everyone, especially highlighting the fact for those who have been clearly told otherwise.  The vision is that when we discover that everyone is equally loved we might be impelled to live like it, and work for a world where such dignity is afforded all equally and equitably.

     Martin Luther King, Jr., growing up in the church his father pastored, was fully aware of this vision and sought to realize it in his time.  His understanding of equality for all ran much deeper than our nation’s founding documents that promised it. His was tied to Jesus’ theology which was born from his Jewish tradition.  He was so impelled by love that he became compelled to do something about it.  Recognizing that while the African American community technically had equal rights, they were not treated equally or equitably, were excluded instead of included, and were a very long way from truly belonging.

     King was so impelled and compelled by Love that he put himself at great risk in pursuit of this Jewish, Christian, and American dream.  He was roughed up, arrested, jailed, and eventually assassinated because of it.  We are a better nation because he shone a light on what was really happening in our country. When he did, a deeper dream was awakened in the United States by a growing number of people. That dream was not rooted in success as wealth, fame, and power, but love for one another. Loving our neighbors as ourselves. Being salt and light. Loving not just our loved ones but even our enemies (which means we treat people we don’t like humanely).  These themes are all found in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and are as unsettling today as ever.

     Jesus ended his sermon with a cautionary parable for everyone but directed particularly toward the especially religious folk.  The story was saying that simply nodding our heads in agreement with Jesus misses the point.  We are called to a different way of being in the world that does help us weather the storms of life and does help the world become more filled with shalom.  Being is more than thinking. Being gives birth to doing. Our question today is, do we choose to be advised by the foolish wisdom of Jesus and follow him?

     I end with a few passages from the Bible. A story about one of Jesus’ followers struggling to shift his paradigm, another passage from Paul reminding us that the Way of Jesus seems ridiculous to us (not just Donald Trump), and finally, words attributed to Jesus’ bother, James, about what following Jesus – living Shalom – looks like.

          Jesus warned them to keep it quiet, not to breathe a word of it to anyone. He then began explaining things to them: “It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the elders, high priests, and religion scholars, be killed, and after three days rise up alive.” He said this simply and clearly so they couldn’t miss it.

     But Peter grabbed him in protest. Turning and seeing his disciples wavering, wondering what to believe, Jesus confronted Peter. “Peter, get out of my way! Satan, get lost! You have no idea how God works.”

     Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?

     “If any of you are embarrassed over me and the way I’m leading you when you get around your fickle and unfocused friends, know that you’ll be an even greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when he arrives in all the splendor of God, his Father, with an army of the holy angels.” – Mark 8:31-38 MSG

     The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It’s written, ‘I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head, I’ll expose so-called experts as shams.’ – 1 Corinthians 1:18-19 MSG

     Do you want to be counted wise, to build a reputation for wisdom? Here’s what you do: Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It’s the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts. Mean-spirited ambition isn’t wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn’t wisdom. Twisting the truth to make yourselves sound wise isn’t wisdom. It’s the furthest thing from wisdom—it’s animal cunning, devilish plotting. Whenever you’re trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the others’ throats.

     Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor. – James 3:13-18 MSG

How are these passages serving as a reference point for you, helping you see whether you are aligned with the foolish wisdom of Jesus?

Good News

Watch the teaching related to the post below on our YouTube channel (YouTube.com/CrossWalkNapa). Or listen via your preferred podcast provider ( search CrossWalkNapa).  This post is informed by, and references noted are sourced from (unless otherwise noted) Following the Call: Living the Sermon on the Mount Together, which will provide guidance to CrossWalkNapa teachings throughout 2025.

Have you ever been told, “You can’t see the forest for the trees?” Or the opposite, “You can’t see the trees for the forest?”  They allude to the same idea.  In the first, a person might be so focused on the detail (the trees) to miss the fuller picture (the forest). Or, people may be so focused on the general view (forest) that they don’t recognize the details (trees) that together make up the whole. 

     In our Western culture, we can easily get hung up on the details of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), dissecting what each verse or section means, and lose sight of the broader vision Jesus was communicating.  It would be like watching a documentary on last year’s Kansas City Chiefs progression toward their Super Bowl win, focusing so much on the romance between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce as to forget that the story is actually about football. Before we get into the woods, let’s remember what the larger mission (the forest) in which the sermon (some trees) resides.

     In the paragraph preceding the beginning of the sermon, Matthew provides a Bob Ross forest-portrait of what Jesus was already known for doing.  “Jesus traveled throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues. He announced the good news of the kingdom and healed every disease and sickness among the people” (Matthew 4:23 CEB).  He was proclaiming good news (also referred to as the Gospel) to people about God’s love for all and its implications for everyone and everything. And he lived it out – he was good news – bringing myriad forms of healing wherever he went. The healing presence of God was flowing through him. He walked the talk.

     Decades later, an unlikely Apostle, Paul, would write to a messy-yet-thriving church in ancient Corinth.  In a time when people felt very small and powerless under the rule of the Roman Empire, Paul wrote that “God’s Way is not a matter of mere talk; it’s an empowered life” (1 Corinthians 4:20 MSG).  Jesus and Paul may not seem likes rebels in these two scenes, but they were.  The “Gospel” was a word ripped off by Jesus from the Roman Empire, which declared itself to be the genesis of life at its best.  Jesus was directly challenging the Empire when he taught that God was the origin, not the cheap imitation, Caesar.  This kind of talk could get a person killed.  Literally.  And it did, for both Jesus and Paul.

     We will always feel a tension as people of faith wherever we live.  The culture we live in operates with values and behavior that works on some level to maintain itself.  The dominant culture in the United States, regardless of whatever aspirational words may be in its founding documents, is served to all as a cocktail with consumerism, radical independence, and the assumption that we are God’s favorite chosen nation in the world.  We pursue success based on these foundations and elevate and celebrate wild wealth as a clear sign of God’s good news realized.  Financial success isn’t antithetical to Christianity, but that American vision is not the Gospel of Jesus. Thus, tension.

     Christopher Friedrich Blumhardt (1842-1919), a Lutheran theologian in Germany, became famous for his writing and what we might call revival gatherings where he would preach the Gospel and offer prayer for healing.  At that time in history, such gatherings were happening in various parts of the world, including the United States. Healing prayer – which had been abandoned by intellectualism and deism which dominated Christian thought for centuries – was making a comeback.

     Blumhardt did not preach the Prosperity Gospel that has grown wildly popular in the United States and globally, associated with healing and wealth.  He was much more aligned with Jesus, noting that “when the Kingdom of heaven comes close to us we experience something totally new. Into the life of each individual something amazingly alive comes. God’s will is for life, for what is good, free, genuine, eternal.”

     Even at that time, however, dominate Lutheran teaching did not seem particularly informed (let alone passionate) about Jesus’ Gospel, which communicated God’s love for all, with equal access to God’s grace regardless of any limits imposed by society.  Women, children, refugees, immigrants, and high profile “sinners” (tax collectors and prostitutes) we equally loved and should be treated thusly.  Further, if this is how God feels about everyone, then wherever injustice exists, followers of God must act. The goal? Shalom – “well-being of mind, heart, and body, individually, communally [and environmentally]”  (Henri Nouwen).

     So frustrated and disillusioned with the lack of passion for the poor and mistreated from the Lutheran Church, Blumhardt helped found the Christian Socialists organization,  and announced support for the Social Democratic Party in Germany, which resulted in his getting stripped of his ecclesiastical credentials (no more “Reverend” in front of his name). 

     He would eventually run for public office, hoping that through political action he might bring about greater justice for those who were refused it.  At first, as was the case within his work in the Church, he saw signs of success as a politician.  Over time, however, he grew weary in his pursuit of realizing the Gospel of Jesus, meeting resistance on many fronts.

     Germany was filled with good Lutheran folk. How could it be that such resistance to the obvious vision of Jesus would exist so powerfully?  I think we might ask the same today in our own country.

     The United States is dominated by Christianity even though every religion is legally welcome to practice their own faith tradition.  Even people who don’t attend church align themselves with Christianity more than any other tradition, simply based on their held and stated theological suppositions.  Yet we struggle to provide basic equality on many fronts. 

     Even more striking, how is it possible that the loudest and largest voices proclaiming themselves as representing Christianity seem diametrically opposed to the vision of Jesus?  Women are still not granted the same freedoms as men, people of color are not afforded the same level of equity, inclusion, or belonging, immigrants are viewed as a pariah to our country’s wellbeing instead of brothers and sisters, the LGBTQ+ community is treated as an abomination to God, foreign policy attitudes favor violence over peaceful resolution, and growing income disparity between the wealthiest and the rest is responded to with a disheartening “meh”.  Am I wrong?

     Richard Rohr suggests that the problem in Blumhardt’s Germany and in our beloved United States today has to do with how we engage Jesus.  He notes that “even today many Christians keep Jesus on a seeming pedestal, worshiping a caricature on a cross or a bumper-sticker slogan while avoiding what Jesus said and did. We keep saying, ‘We love Jesus,’ but more as a God-figure than as someone to imitate. It seems the more we talk about Jesus, the less time we have to do what he said.” 

     More than a century before, Blumhardt wholeheartedly agreed with Rohr.  Realizing that the vision of Jesus’ Gospel could not rely on elites alone, he challenged the very people Jesus mixed with to live into the vision themselves:

We should love nothing more than to fulfill the justice of God, not in church services (which often attract people as honey attract flies) but rather in our daily lives, wherever we are. That is when we have to work zealously for the commandments of God and God’s truth, yes, God’s rights; there we must show our hunger and thirst for righteousness; there we must prove whether or not we want God. We cannot prove that in our churches alone but must do it outside, in the fields, in business, in daily life, in your family – you husband, you wife, and you children. Together, we have to look out for the rights of God... We must gather together again. Who will come under God’s rulership – who? – Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt

     Can you imagine how Blumhardt felt as The Great War began in 1914? I wonder if the stress and pain of the war’s development contributed to his stroke, which eventually led to his death.

     What can we do to heed his call, which is really to heed Jesus’ call to follow?

     In my experience, we humans need to keep the vision before us constantly, and incorporate practices into our daily rhythms that support and promote its mission.  If shalom is what we are truly about, how might we live it and not just agree with it’s principles?  What does it look like on the daily?

     What follows is an approach I developed that builds on five core practices evidenced by Jesus’s life that I think anybody and everybody can adopt on some level.  In his pursuit of shalom, Jesus chose to Stretch, Kneel, Stand, Commune, and Connect.  He stretched his mind as a lifelong learner.  He knelt in service to anyone who needed help without discrimination. He stood with and up for those experiencing injustice, leaning into a Micah 6:8 ethos.  He was intentional about communing with God incorporating solitude, stillness, and silence into his life’s rhythm. And he never did it alone – he connected genuinely and deeply with his community that he shaped and was shaped by in return.  Below is a daily recommended practice to help foster Jesus’ rhythm becoming our own (see “The Daily Guide Toward Shalom”).

     Finally, how you respond matters.  A recent article in The Atlantic tells a true story about a series of events in January 1933 Germany that could have changed world history.  Pre-Chancellor Hitler and his political adversary, Hugenburg, were arguing outside of German President Hindenberg’s office about calling for new Reichstag elections that would change the balance of power.  Hitler wanted to seize authoritarian power to deliver on his campaign promises to revive the economy, reduce unemployment, increase military spending, withdraw from international treaty obligations, purge the country of foreigners he claimed were “poisoning” the blood of the nation, and exact revenge on political opponents.   Had the argumented lasted just a little longer, President Hindenberg would have left his office, the elections would not have been held, and Hitler never would have become Chancellor.  I wonder if there was a still, small voice in Hugenburg’s consciousness that was pleading, “Stay!  Stay! Stay!” as his words to Hitler shouted “Nein! Nein! Nein!”  According to world-renowned Hitler historian Timothy W. Ryback, had Hugenburger stood his ground longer, there would have been no Hitler chancellorship, no Third Reich.  Imagine the consequences.

     Of course, there were many players who failed to listen to Shalom’s call with devastating effects.  Democracy and its constitutions assume good will, not immoral leaders like Hitler who seek to exploit its loopholes for personal power.  Joseph Geobbels, a critical player in Hitler’s disinformation campaign, ridiculed democracy, saying,  “The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its own destruction.” 

     Knowledge of history can provide appropriate fear than can act as a motivator when the stakes are high.  Yet we must remember that Jesus’ campaign was not one primarily of fear, but hope, founded on the Good News of God’s comprehensive love for all ensconced in the word Shalom.  Remember Paul: “God’s Way is not a matter of mere talk; it’s an empowered life” (1 Corinthians 4:20 MSG).  And remember Blumhardt: “When the Kingdom of heaven comes close to us we experience something totally new. Into the life of each individual something amazingly alive comes. God’s will is for life, for what is good, free, genuine, eternal.”  And remember Blumhardt’s haunting question:

We should love nothing more than to fulfill the justice of God, not in church services (which often attract people as honey attract flies) but rather in our daily lives, wherever we are. That is when we have to work zealously for the commandments of God and God’s truth, yes, God’s rights; there we must show our hunger and thirst for righteousness; there we must prove whether or not we want God. We cannot prove that in our churches alone but must do it outside, in the fields, in business, in daily life, in your family – you husband, you wife, and you children. Together, we have to look out for the rights of God... We must gather together again. Who will come under God’s rulership – who?

May you find yourself impelled by love to join in the everlasting song that ushers in  exquisite, elegant harmony, beauty, and healing for all .

The Daily Guide Toward Shalom

     The purpose of the following guide is simply to aid a person in staying in shalom and promoting shalom each day.  There are check-in features to help begin and end the day.  There are also reminders of shalom-promoting activities that you are or want to be involved with.  Reminding ourselves that we support organizations that are promoting shalom for the creation, for instance, not only encourages us to be mindful of the same, but provides a boost in spirit knowing you are helping where you can.  Remembering the titles of books, articles, videos or podcasts helps us keep it prioritized and is a pride point regarding our intentional learning.  Let the tool do its work for you, let it serve you (and not the other way around).

The Daily Guide Toward Shalom

Review this at the beginning and end of your day.

Check In With Yourself

How are you feeling as you start your day?

() Anxious () Joyful () Angry () Sad () Excited () Disgusted

() Fearful () Happy () Bored () Dejected () Content

() Confused () Relaxed () Overwhelmed () Elated

What are you grateful for today?

Intentions

How will I choose shalom today? 

·      For myself? For the people I love? For the people I don’t?

For the planet? For the vulnerable?

Remembering the Way of Shalom

How am I Stretching my mind?

·      What books, podcasts, magazines, talks are you chewing up?

How am I Kneeling in service?

·      How am I using my skills to help others?

How am I Standing for Grace and Justice?

·      How am I using my voice, attitude, presence to help the vulnerable?

·      What organizations are you supporting?

o   Environment, Global Poverty, LGBTQ+,   Anti-Racism, Immigration Reform, Gun Violence, Human Trafficking, Food Insecurity, Women’s Rights, SmartVote.org

How am I Communing with God?

·      When am I breaking away to meditate, reflect, be still, be alone?

How am I Connecting with others?

·      Who am I connecting with for deeper friendship?

Daily Review

How did you experience shalom today?

What helped you experience shalom?

What got in the way of shalom today?

Master Teacher

Watch the teaching related to the post below on our YouTube channel (YouTube.com/CrossWalkNapa). Or listen via your preferred podcast provider ( search CrossWalkNapa).

“When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions.” – Matthew 5:1-2 (MSG)

Luke Skywalker.  The mention of his name conjures up so many thoughts and memories from decades of films.  A lot of humanity was showcased in his character.  Naivete. Innocence.  Heartache.  Love. Weird love.  Daddy issues.  Courage. Suffering. Honor. Discipline. Faith. There is a lot to resonate with in the transformation of a nobody into  Jedi.  A young man who sensed something more and pursued it, moving from immaturity to growing maturity.

     I love the slowly unfolding chapter about his getting mentored by Yoda, a Jedi Master.  Luke judges the book by the cover at first, not seeing the little green creature for much more than that.  Eventually, however, Luke accepted the fact that Yoda was legit after witnessing his work with the Force.  Luke was impressed. Luke wanted as much of that as he could get – who wouldn’t want to be able to levitate stuff? How much easier it would be to vacuum under sofas and beds!  Yoda patiently mentored Luke, who was trying to “do” Yoda’s moves rather than become like Yoda in terms of being immersed in the Force. 

     We are a lot like Luke. Especially in the Western world, we focus a lot on the doing, and struggle with the being. The doing isn’t bad, of course.  If we all simply followed the Judeo-Christian ethic (and similar ethics from other enduring religions), the world would be a much better place.  Yet rule following didn’t get Luke very far with the Force.  Mainly, he became frustrated as he could sense (and see in Yoda) that there was more to experience than “doing” alone could yield.  Luke needed to work on being like Yoda.

     We need to work on being, too, should we ever want to experience what Jesus really came to offer, which, as Henri Nouwen noted, Peace is shalom – “well-being of mind, heart, and body, individually and communally (7).”  This well-being is not born from rule following alone (although it helps to eliminate those things which prohibit shalom and adopt things that promote it).  We need to become like Jesus, immersed in the Spirit, one who lived in God.

     Nouwen goes on to say:

“The whole message of the gospel is this: become like Jesus. We have his self-portrait.  When we keep that in front of our eyes, we will soon learn what it means to follow Jesus and become like him... Jesus, the Blessed One, is poor.  The poverty of Jesus is much more than an economic or social poverty. Jesus is poor because he freely chose powerlessness over power, vulnerability over defensiveness, dependency over self-sufficiency (6).”

     The choice is more than what to do with our resources. The choice is one of choosing and living within a different paradigm of life entirely.  That’s why it’s impossible to “do” – it is a matter of becoming, of maturing in our “being.”

     E. Stanley Jones, a Methodist writer and missionary to India, noted that “the Sermon on the Mount is practicable, for the man who first spoke these words practiced them, and the practicing of them produced a character so beautiful, so symmetrical, so compelling, so just what life ought to be, that his is as inescapable in the moral realm as the force of gravity is in the physical (4).”  Jesus came to teach, for sure, but what he was trying to teach was a new way of being, not a new set of laws to follow.

     Jones continues:

“You may point to parallel sayings in the past, and yet when you do, you miss the central thing here, for the central thing was the aroma about the words, the contagion of his moral person, the sense of depth that came from the fact that he spoke them – and illustrated them. He was not presenting a new set of laws but demanding a new loyalty to his person. The loyalty to his person was to be expressed in carrying out the things he embodied. He was the embodiment of the Sermon on the Mount, and to be loyal to him meant to be loyal to his way of life (4).”

     That Apostle Paul bragged about being the best Jewish rule-follower on the planet yet was stopped in his tracks when he saw the Light of Christ, which changed how he approached faith and life. He encouraged the church in Philippi to take heed:

On the difference between living a rules-based faith versus being like Jesus: “The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for (rule-keeping). And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.

     “I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it.” – Philippians 3:7-11 (MSG)

     The author of the First Letter of John echoed the same sentiment:

“Here’s how we can be sure that we know God in the right way: Keep his commandments. If someone claims, ‘I know him well!’ but doesn’t keep his commandments, he’s obviously a liar. His life doesn’t match his words. But the one who keeps God’s word is the person in whom we see God’s mature love. This is the only way to be sure we’re in God. Anyone who claims to be intimate with God ought to live the same kind of life Jesus lived.” – 1 John 2:3-6 (MSG)

     Perhaps at first, Luke wanted to be like Yoda in order to be able to do the cool things Yoda did (but without living a swamp).  Over the rest of his life, however, becoming like Yoda meant being shaped by the Force.  That shaping was not always easy, requiring humility and self-sacrifice. 

     The Spirit of God calls us to the same.  Yet humility and self-sacrifice go against our lizard brains that are meant to protect us, not to make us more vulnerable.  Humility and self-sacrifice go against the grain of an achievement culture that rewards pride and sacrificing others (in various ways) for personal gain.  The Force called Luke, and Spirit calls us, to a paradigm for life that is both counter-intuitive and counter-cultural. 

     There are parts of the paradigm, the Way of Jesus, that are very appealing. And yet there are parts that may not be welcome at all. Henri Nouwen notes:

“The Blessed One of God is a threat to the established order and a source of constant irritation to those who consider themselves the rulers of this world. Without accusing anyone he is considered and accuser, without condemning anyone he makes people feel guilty and ashamed, without his judging anyone those who see him feel judged. In their eyes, he cannot be tolerated and needs to be destroyed, because letting him be seems like a confession of guilt.  When we want to become like Jesus, we cannot expect always to be liked and admired. We have to be prepared to be rejected (7).”

       Rejected.  Rejected?  Rejected!  Ouch.  Yet the more we sit with what Nouwen is saying, the more we must admit its veracity.  The Apostle Peter surely would agree, as would the Apostle Paul.  As would every sincere person who has ever pursued “being” like Jesus instead of settling for “doing” like Jesus.  The Spirit of God is Shalom, is the source of Shalom, the energy of Shalom, the Force of Shalom, and it invites us ever deeper into our becoming.

     I have loved Shalom’s invitation when it has clearly benefitted me, especially immediately.  When I have felt vindicated after being wronged. When I have felt loved after being rejected. When I have been saved from some really bad decisions because I followed a rule here and there.  But I have been reluctant and even obstinate to accept the invitation of Shalom when it has challenged my pride or called me at times to selfless sacrifice. Or when Shalom has acted for me like the Syrophoenician woman toward Jesus, holding a mirror to my face so I could recognize my own prejudice.

     Our beloved United States loves Shalom when we feel like we’re being Christian, yet we are not so inclined to embrace the invitation when we hear that slavery in all forms should be eradicated, even if it might mean less porn to watch or more expensive T-Shirts, household goods, or tech equipment. As a nation we struggle to accept Shalom’s loving beacon guiding us to see all people as equally loved human beings worthy of dignity and human treatment. We’re not so thrilled with Shalom when we want our leaders to be the epitome of Capitalistic success more than Jesus.  Pray tell, what would happen if we had such a wimpy leader like Jesus?!

     Scholar Andrew M. Davis sums a tenet of Process Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead thusly: “Becoming is foundation; being is byproduct.” Our being like Jesus follows our willingness to become like Jesus every day, every moment of our lives.  Becoming is an eternal process that Jesus engaged intentionally, which led to his being who he was.  Like Yoda, Jesus invites all Lukas into the process as well, not as a mandate with a threat, but an invitation.  Jones reminds us that “We mistake it entirely if we look on it  as the chart of Christian’s duty; rather, it is the charter of the Christian’s liberty – his liberty to go beyond, to do the thing that love impels and not merely the thing that duty compels.  The fact is that this is not a law at all, but a lyre (4).”

     May you find yourself impelled by love to join in the everlasting song that ushers in exquisite, elegant harmony, beauty, and healing for all.

Reflection Prompts (337)

·       Think of examples of how Jesus lived out the Sermon on the Mount.

·       Why is it important to not separate Jesus’ teachings from who he is and why he came? How is following a teaching different from following a teacher?

·       Do you see Jesus’ teaching, by and large, as “good news” or “hard commands”? Why?

This post is informed by, and references noted are sourced from (unless otherwise noted) Following the Call: Living the Sermon on the Mount Together, which will provide guidance to CrossWalkNapa teachings throughout 2025.

Wise

Enjoy this brief overview of what’s coming to CrossWalk in the coming weeks and months, as well as a brief teaching on the story of the Wise Men.

Christmas Eve

Watch this teaching on our YouTube channel, or listen to it on your preferred podcast provider (CrossWalkNapa).

Over the past four Sundays we have learned a lot of interesting facts about our solar system, galaxy, and the universe.  When Jesus was born, the prevailing view of the universe was that the earth was the center of everything, the most important thing, since obviously everything else revolved around it.  The science of the day fit the theology. Both helped each other out and propped each other up.  One story helped make sense of the other. One alluded to the other. The allusion mattered even if the basis was an illusion for lack of vision.  And yet, it remains a true story – a story bearing truth.

     We discovered about a century ago that our galaxy, what we call the Milky Way, was not the full universe, and not as big as we thought. Because we have the capacity to see beyond our galaxy, we suddenly found out that our big galaxy is actually just one of potentially trillions of galaxies that comprise the continually expanding universe.  Earth is just a speck within the Milky Way, which is a speck within the universe. 

     Yet for all its largess, we are continuing to discover much that we don’t know or understand, like Dark Energy, that comprises most of the space in the universe, connecting everything, providing energy and womb-like space for everything to flourish. We are discovering that there is something much fast than the speed of light at work in the universe, so that when one thing happens in one place it may have an immediate impact anywhere within the universe. This is mind blowing. What we know now impacts how we think. We draw conclusions from one and apply it to the other. The nature of the universe alludes to our sense of meaning. One day, we may know so much more than we do now that we will once again recognize that the allusion mattered even if our current vision is illusion.  Yet ours is a true story as much as our predecessors’ – a story bearing truth.

     I think the Christmas Story itself is kind of like that.  Depending how you were raised you may have a range of feelings about the story’s literal truth.  It is quite a story, after all! And yet, even if some may determine that it may be more illusion than reality, we may be wise to sit with the allusion despite the illusion. Because the allusion speaks truth beyond the story’s literal veracity.

     This is a story about God entering into the human experience in a new way.  What happens in this birth narrative foreshadows what will happen in the grown up Jesus’ ministry. The truths conveyed to the original audience are no less important or relevant today.  As distant as God may sometimes seem given the vastness of the universe, in reality, we are closer to everything, more connected to everything than we had ever imagined possible. We are not separate from the source of life, from the sustaining genesis of creation – we are in it.  It is part of us, and we are part of it.  This is at least a manifestation of the presence of what we call God, and it is everywhere. Not distant. With us.

     Sometimes it feels like God with us is unlikely.  Who are we to command such attention? Yet the Christmas Story raises our gaze toward a higher vision. Given what we know about the Big Bang as part of our origin story, we celebrate are all made from the stardust of that creation-starting Big Bang, from the same elements and essence.  We are truly connected with all of creation, and we all matter.

     More specifically, since we humans love to create categories designed to separate each other, the Christmas Story reminds us that we are ridiculous, and that our labels and groupings that place everyone in their place on the hierarchy is not just foolish, but harmful.  The birth narrative of Jesus has a bunch of societal nobodies play the lead roles, hearing from God, invited to participate, while the elites who mock them are in the dark. It’s a statement that the label makers are wrong, and everyday people like you and me have equal welcome and belonging in the unfolding story of life and God.

     Of course, this origin story was an allusion, a foreshadowing of what was to come. This baby grew into an older adult who experienced the profound presence of the Divine that set him on a mission to declare some very Good News that we are still talking about today. God is really near, really with us, all of us, and that the primary characteristic of God is nurturing of life’s flourishing, seeking wellness and wholeness for all. Harmony between people and between all elements of creation. The Hebrew language has a word for this: shalom. We might call it love at its greatest breadth, height, and depth.

     As we remember this birth, let us celebrate the great truths still being proclaimed today. God is with us. All of us. God is love, and invites us to play our role in harmony with the love that formed us, sustains us, and guides us. We are living in a true story, a story bearing truth. It happens to be a love story where we are all invited to love.

Love

Watch this teaching on our YouTube channel, or listen on your favorite podcast provider (CrossWalkNapa).

 Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” – Luke 1:38 NLT

 This Advent season, we have used a resource from SALT project call Starry Nights, which is chock full of interesting, sometimes mind-blowing facts about our solar system, galaxy, the stars we see, and the expanding universe.  The Big Bang was the beginning of what became and continues to emerge as the universe. Everything that is stems from that origin.

     Because creation as we call it stems from that same event, everything that exists shares the same basic stuff.  To say that we are all related is not some hippy, peace loving slogan – it is literally true.  The Bible says we come from dust and to dust we will return.  More accurately, we come from stardust, which led Carl Sagan to declare that we are “made of star stuff.”

     Very recently in human history, we have discovered “dark energy”, which comprises roughly 70% of the expanding universe and appears to be the environment that fosters and energizes the current and developing creation.  I find that interesting. The womb of creation – dark energy – is hospitable to life.  Hmmm.

     Religion’s purpose has always been to help make sense of the world, the cosmos, and very personally, life itself.  Theology was science in antiquity, and our predecessors did the best they could with the information they had.  Brilliantly well, really.  Yet their understanding of what they called “God” or “the gods” seems primitive by modern standards.  One paradigm that is evident throughout the Jewish and Christian Bible is the held belief in many cultures that gods were geographical, holding power only in their respective territory.  The exodus story of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt offers a clear picture – the Jewish God was powerful even though nowhere near “home.”

     Another idea that was held was that God generally spoke to a select few – usually prophets, other religious leaders, and other “important” people. Given that nobody had heard much from God in the centuries leading up to Jesus’ birth around 6 BCE, it was also determined that God could go silent for long periods of time.

     The context into which Jesus was born? God was silent, and not looking very present (let alone powerful) given that Israel was under Roman occupation.  Jesus’s life and teaching changed the paradigm, which are alluded to in the stories offered by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke regarding the birth of the one who would save us from former ways of thinking and being.

     Mary and Joseph are each paid a surprise visit by a messenger of God, informing them that God is no longer silent, distant, or powerless, but rather is up to something unexpected and unprecedented.  The unlikely parents’ lives are part of the story: two extremely poor, powerless, uneducated “nobodies” from “nowhere” become central characters in the birth story of Jesus.  God is no longer silent. When God speaks, God chooses the most ordinary example of humans possible. 

     What was spoken? An invitation to participate in God’s self-disclosure in the person who would become the world-changing Jesus of Nazareth.  What was God’s stated mission in the life of Jesus? That through his ministry people would recognize that God was really with them, reversing the way most people saw the world, and the love and grace of God would be experienced in profound, salvific ways.

     The storyline itself points to another truth about God that seems to always come across as startling and revelatory: God works in cooperation with creation, not coercively.  God does not force even very good things on people but rather invites people to participate in the very good vision and mission God offers.  We are not pawns but serious players in what God is wanting to create.  We are at once in the womb with everyone else, and we are the womb for what will be born from us.

     God is present. With everybody. Inviting all to birth something new and good.

     We don’t know a lot about Joseph, except that he obviously got on board in positive ways.  Luke’s Gospel has Mary giving us much more, beginning with here beautiful, faithful response (Luke 1:38 NLT), “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.”  This, of course, was simply one of countless affirmative responses to God’s invitation for her to co-create.  For the next nine months, how many decisions did she make to ensure that the child within would have a healthy beginning?  Once born, how many yeses did she evidence as she did her part raising the child through infancy, childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood? We find her saying yes at the end of Jesus’ life as well.

     God’s love for the world led to Jesus becoming who he was.  Mary’s love for God and for Jesus led her to choose love time and time again. Love beckons us as well.  All the time.  Love’s vision and mission has not changed. It remains to foster love and wellbeing for all, to allow creation to continue to unfold.  Like Mary and Joseph, we have agency to decide how much we want to cooperate with this vision.

     Sometimes are choices feel exhilarating and, even though they carry significant consequences, they are fairly easy to make, like falling in love and making a serious covenant with each other.  Sometimes the choice is hard, especially when our egos flare up like an angry rash and try to dictate our every move.  Pause and perspective help us remember what we are invited to embrace and hopefully love wins more than not.  Sometimes the decision is wrought with pain, like grief when faced with loss of many kinds.  Time heals a lot, yet time and intentional, loving processing of our pain heals faster and better.  Sometimes our choices are completely mundane and ordinary – maybe most of the time, as surely was the case for Mary.  Choices like, should we eat more broccoli or Twinkies, more pure water or water mixed with fermented grapes or barley, more balanced life rhythms or frenetic, high stressed pursuing?  All choices in response to the ever-inviting presence of what we call God.

     Science and theology used to be bedfellows until 500 years ago or so when they split over competing view of reality.  Science was correct about the universe. Theology was not wrong about the loving, creating presence called God.  Perhaps science and theology might fall in love with each other again, as theologians continue to describe something all around us that seems to be loving, kind, generative, and supportive on life’s flourishing, and scientists learn more about dark energy’s influence everywhere, all the time, and similarly benevolent.  Call it what you will, but know this: it exists, and it invites.  How will we choose to respond?

Joy

I think you would agree that the sun plays an important role in our lives, yes?  So important that if it ceased to exist, so would we!  If our closest star was the size of a tennis ball, the earth would be the size of a grain of sand – 1.3 million Earths could fit inside of it!  The external temperature of the sun is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, generated by a fusion reaction at its core where the temperature sores to roughly 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.  The resulting life-giving rays take eight minutes and 20 seconds to travel the approximately 93 million miles to reach us, traveling at close to 671M miles per hour.  Our Sun is big, hot, and delivers scorching rays very fast.  Sounds kind of threatening to me.

     Some preachers now and in the past used the idea of the threat of fire to terrify people toward repentance.  “Change your life and faith or you can expect the eternally burning fires of hell to somehow torment you forever!” If we fell into such fire, wouldn’t we just immediately be turned to ash?  Never mind such questions – it ruins to flow of the appeal!  John the Baptist who preceded Jesus on the Chosen People Revival Tour that ran from 27-30 CE, apparently used such rhetoric:

     Then John said to the crowds who came to be baptized by him, “You children of snakes! Who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon? Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives. And don’t even think about saying to yourselves, Abraham is our father. I tell you that God is able to raise up Abraham’s children from these stones. The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire.”

     The crowds asked him, “What then should we do?”

     He answered, “Whoever has two shirts must share with the one who has none, and whoever has food must do the same.”

     Even tax collectors came to be baptized. They said to him, “Teacher, what should we do?”

     He replied, “Collect no more than you are authorized to collect.”

     Soldiers asked, “What about us? What should we do?”

     He answered, “Don’t cheat or harass anyone, and be satisfied with your pay.”

     The people were filled with expectation, and everyone wondered whether John might be the Christ. John replied to them all, “I baptize you with water, but the one who is more powerful than me is coming. I’m not worthy to loosen the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. The shovel he uses to sift the wheat from the husks is in his hands. He will clean out his threshing area and bring the wheat into his barn. But he will burn the husks with a fire that can’t be put out.” With many other words John appealed to them, proclaiming good news to the people. – Luke 3:7-18 (CEB)

     Merry Christmas, to you, too, John!  Good grief!  Ever take a seminar on how to win friends and influence people?  Of course, we just experienced a national election where we were reminded of just how much fearful rhetoric is used and why: it works.  Our lizard brains, upon sensing threat, hijack everything else and cause us to react like the frightened animals we sometimes resemble.  Somehow this text ended up on the third week during Advent when we are supposed to be considering Joy.  How did John’s rhetoric get overlooked? Did some old school Baptist preacher sneak this in after the final edit?

     Believe it or not, while some of John’s language and imagined tone sound every bit like Jonathon Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (give it a read – super full of Christmas cheer!), there is within his words and passion truly good news of great joy.  Yes, he does begin with a horrible introduction, calling his growing audience “children of snakes”.  They were probably Dodger fans, and John, being from the Bay Area, simply slipped.  It happens to all of us, right?  Note, however, that he doesn’t send them packing.  Instead, he invites them to rethink their theological position based on spiritual pedigree alone.  You think being a genetic Jew is the point? You think simply saying you were baptized into the faith as an infant (or adult, for that matter) is what God is really wanting? Could a simple confession of the correct words be a big enough agenda for God?  And, by extension, do you think God really is like some judge in the heavens just waiting to exact justice?

     This does not require deep thought.  Yes, our theological convictions matter, largely because they shape our worldview which then directs our every thought and action.  Yet to suggest that all God is interested in is the right answer to a question to which you may have only been fed the right answer just before being asked?  Who in their right mind would think God so shallow, so cheap, as to believe such an exchange qualifies as salvation?  This does not challenge the notion of grace – it actually affirms it.  To the Baptizers deeper point – grace genuinely received results in the fruit of grace expressed in John’s instruction.  This is why John gives instruction to his audience to choose (or produce) such fruit. 

     For regular folx who can spare some of their own surplus so that others’ basic needs are met, share the spare!  For tax collectors who had the power to rip off their brothers and sisters with the full authority of the Empire behind them, choose to treat them with justice in mind instead of greed.  This may result in less income at the end of the year, but is more income really okay if only gained inappropriately on the backs of one’s siblings?  Where is the line for such a thought-required ethic? 

     For soldiers who had the authority to push Israelites around (likely beyond the law set by Rome), grace requires a response as well.  Stop bullying. Stop extorting. Stop framing.  Just because you can get away with something doesn’t mean you should.  Choose to abide by the law you are supposed to uphold. Earn the respect you get instead of simply enforcing your title.  Respect for title has its place, but it is the lowest form of respect. Instead, command respect from the quality of your character molded by the grace of God.

     In case you hadn’t noticed the obvious that is often lost on us reading this text two millennia and 7,400 miles removed from its original cultural context, note that John didn’t refuse to talk to the tax collectors and soldiers.  I don’t know who the parallel to tax collectors and soldiers would be for you.  Dodgers fans and players?  Of course.  But perhaps there are others who, by the very mention of their name, you have a visceral reaction.  Pedophiles? Drug dealers? Illegal drug producers? Crooked politicians? Corporate fat cats who enrich themselves on the backs of those they can legally and illegally take advantage of? Warmongering world leaders? Your Ex?  We each probably have our long list.  John, in his response to all who came to hear him is unequivocal.  All are welcome to receive the grace of God, with the proof of receipt being a changed life marked by the fruit of grace – all the things that contribute to shalom.

     Have you ever watched or read Charles Dickens’ tale, A Christmas Carol? At this time of year, you should.  I hate to be a spoiler, but how do we know Ebeneezer Scrooge was a truly changed man after his night of heavenly visits?  It wasn’t just his changed attitude, or his words of “Merry Christmas” to those he encountered.  It was his behavior, too.  He became immediately generous, born from his joyful transformation.  Are you “Scroogy” this year?  You don’t have to wait for nightmares.  Watch the movie.  Or get your head out of your gloom and wake up to the beauty as well as the need around you.  You and me – we have a life to live, and a life to offer that will make a difference.  Often times, the more “we” we offer the world in love, the more joy we feel.  Stinginess leads to less joy in my experience.

     But what about the texts about inextinguishable fire or separating chaff from wheat?  While these certainly appear to pose grave threat, commentators quickly point out that such an interpretation may be robbing us of John’s joyful Gospel intent. Separating the wheat from the chaff isn’t about separating people into binary camps of “in and out.” Farmers then and now separate the husk-chaff from the wheat not to ruin it but to save, extract, or cull the grain, to allow it to be used for its intended purpose – used to provide nourishment for others.  The separating is an act of redemption, not condemnation.

     What about the fire?  The fire burns that which we don’t want, not what we do want.  It disposes of it entirely, never to return.  This is great news!  It means there is hope for us to move beyond the worst of our past, to realize the hopeful aspiration that we are new creations in Christ!  You may have been a stingy jerk all your life until you came to grips with grace, and it leveled you with love.  Let the stinky jerk husky shell burn! Embrace the generous lover within you!  You may have been getting away with cheating someone you should have been loving.  Let the cheating husk die! Embrace the faithful love within you!  You may have been a bully all your life because bullies get away with a lot because they are big and loud.  Let the bully husk die and win favor with grace and love.  Choose to be a big, bold lover instead of a big, bold bully.

     I believe John’s heart and mind were warmed by a heat greater than our Sun.  That heat had and still has the power to melt away our greatest fears, our deepest insecurities, and are darkest dread.  The unquenchable fire of the Spirit of God is here to burn away your chaff, my chaff, our chaff, the whole world’s chaff so that we might thrive as the new beings we were intended to be.  That is so hopeful!  That is such joyful news!  Luke wasn’t off his nut after all!  This really was and is the Gospel!

     May you choose to realize that the Love that is the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of all creation still welcomes you to the waters of transformation.  You “Children of Snakes,” Merry Christmas!  May the Joy that is before you bring you to your knees in joyful adoration, and as you begin to trade your non-shalomy attitudes and behaviors for those reflective of the new life within and before you, may you have eyes to see the unwanted chaff blowing in the wind toward a fire where it will be eradicated once and for all.  May you become the “you” that you were intended to become.  May we become the “we” we were intended to become, that together we will one day sing from our collective experience, Joy to the World!  The Lord IS come!And is always and forever coming at every moment.

Peace

Note: To watch this teaching, visit YouTube.com/CrossWalkNapa/videos. To listen to this teaching, search for CrossWalkNapa on your preferred podcast app.

Our collective home, planet Earth, can feel massive.  If you’ve ever flown over an ocean or the Sahara desert, it is hard for our minds to comprehend how much water or sand we’re covering at a speed of over 500 miles per hour for hour after hour.  You’ve likely seen – or maybe even constructed – models of our solar system.  Our closest star, the Sun, is huge compared to all the planets in our solar system. While Earth is bigger than some other planets, it is dwarfed by the largest planets Saturn and Jupiter.

     Our solar system, of course, sits within our Milky Way galaxy.  The largest star we can see with the naked eye in our galaxy sits as the left shoulder in the Orion constellation.  That star is called Betelgeuse (pronounced “Beetlejuice”), which is much larger than our Sun.  If the Sun was the size of a billiard ball, Betelgeuse would be the size of an apartment building!  I’m feeling kind of small right now, how about you?

     I find it cool that our ancestors in faith saw the same stars that we do.  They were likely humbled and overwhelmed like we might be when we take it all in.  I think taking time for stargazing can lend itself to peace.  I wonder if it did for Joseph, a key character in the birth story of Jesus:

The birth of Jesus took place like this. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. Before they enjoyed their wedding night, Joseph discovered she was pregnant. (It was by the Holy Spirit, but he didn’t know that.) Joseph, chagrined but noble, determined to take care of things quietly so Mary would not be disgraced.

     While he was trying to figure a way out, he had a dream. God’s angel spoke in the dream: “Joseph, son of David, don’t hesitate to get married. Mary’s pregnancy is Spirit-conceived. God’s Holy Spirit has made her pregnant. She will bring a son to birth, and when she does, you, Joseph, will name him Jesus—‘God saves’—because he will save his people from their sins.” This would bring the prophet’s embryonic revelation to full term:

Watch for this—a virgin will get pregnant and bear a son;

They will name him Immanuel (Hebrew for “God is with us”).

     Then Joseph woke up. He did exactly what God’s angel commanded in the dream: He married Mary. But he did not consummate the marriage until she had the baby. He named the baby Jesus. – Matthew 1: 18-25 (MSG)

     Poor Joseph.  A poor carpenter truckin’ along in life, engaged to a girl his parents probably arranged years before, suddenly finds himself in a lot of turmoil – the opposite of peace, perhaps.  Whatever dreams he may have had before seemed lost, irretrievable.  Add to that the emotions revolving around this conflict – with Mary, but also her parents, his parents, the community, and internal conflict as well.  What a mess! 

     We don’t know much about Joseph beyond a few verses, but we do know that he chose to pursue peace even as he decided to divorce Mary quietly.  Matthew is envisioning Joseph as a mature, kind person who sees no need to make things worse for Mary, who’s life will be forever altered by this unwanted pregnancy – who would want her now?

     I can imagine him, heartbroken and the wind knocked out of him, drifting off to sleep, only to discover that he couldn’t even get peace while he slept!  How annoying! A powerful dream entered his consciousness with a crazy invitation to reconsider the divorce and choose to go forward with the marriage to Mary because the child she was carrying was going to bring salvation in some way to the world.  At a time when dreams were taken much more seriously than they may be today, Joseph found himself in more chaos.  What to do?

     This is a story, and we are invited – even expected – to engage in dialogue about it.  How did he get to a place of peace with all of this?  I wonder if part of what helped was like what we experience when we gaze at the stars.  Perhaps he was humbled by the magnitude of all that was happening, and especially the visit from the heavens that reminded him that he was part of something much bigger than himself. 

     When faced with the grand scope of things, perhaps his perspective was changed.  His ego needs were not as significant as the whole world. The world and God’s story was too big to get caught up in his own junk. Yet at the same time, life may have felt too big to ignore what he was feeling, too.

     He surely must have processed his feelings because he continued to be kind and supportive to Mary, and Jesus and his siblings appear to have turned out to be decent human beings, to which he surely contributed.  Life was too big to get hung up on his small issues.  His life was too short to lose too much by holding on to all that was not peace for him.  The salvation that this child would bring was a saving that connotes wellbeing and wholeness.  Apparently, Joseph was one of the first recipients.  Perspective can facilitate significant peace. 

     Back to stargazing.  Our solar system is part of the Milky Way galaxy.  We see the Milky Way because of where we are seated within it.  It’s as if we were somewhere toward the middle of a frisbee looking out, through it – we see the density of starlight which creates the milky band of light.  Earth is barely a speck within the Milky Way.  If the Milky Way was the size of the continental United States, our entire solar system would be the size of a coin in Denver, Colorado. The milky band and stars would be akin to seeing the light of the city of Denver.  We are quite small.  Take that into perspective.

     Sometimes we hold onto grudges.  We hold people in a state of unforgiveness because of what they have done to us (real or imagined).  The pain we have experienced is real, leaving us without peace.  To forgive feels like injustice, so we hold onto unforgiveness and often hold it over the ones who wronged us. 

     Lewis Smedes wrote years ago that when we finally forgive someone, we set a prisoner free, only to discover that we were the ones in chains.  Forgiveness is a process that requires intentionality but that results in tremendous healing.  We don’t forget, but we do create a new way of remembering.  Brenee Brown advises that recognizing that people are doing the best they can do helps in the forgiveness process.  It’s not that people are intentionally choosing to suck, but that they may not be able to do any differently given everything that has formed them.  There is much wisdom here. 

     While there are personal benefits to doing the work of forgiveness, no longer holding unforgiveness over others impacts ongoing relationships for the better.  I’ve been on both sides of this – holding unforgiveness over others and at other times not being forgiven. The relationship in an unforgiving environment is limited – it cannot get too deep because depth requires vulnerability.  When walls of unforgiveness are in place, vulnerability is not possible. The relationship suffers. All parties in that relational system suffer the consequences.

     Life is too small to allow the heartache we have endured to have an oversized impact.  Life is too short to waste on the negative energy produced by unforgiveness when peace is within our grasp.

     Up until about 100 years ago, scientists thought the entire universe was simply the Milky Way galaxy we call home.  The Hubble telescope changed everything, helping us to see beyond the Milky Way, only to discover that there are likely TRILLIONS of galaxies in the expanding universe.  It turns out that our entire galaxy is a mere speck in a massive sea of galaxies!  If we thought we were small before...  And yet within us is a microscopic galaxy all its own – we’re huge! 

     Joseph clearly did the hard work of sorting through what he was feeling and going through, eventually to devote himself to something bigger than himself without letting it sabotage his life.  He found peace, healing, wellbeing, and wholeness – salvation.  We are Joseph, facing our own struggles, our own messed up narratives and dreams because of outside influences.  Salvation is possible, but it requires genuine faith to get there.

     Richard Rohr, writing about the need for ongoing, deep, curiosity-filled work in our lives, offers this:

     God comes into the world in always-surprising ways so that the sincere seeker will always find evidence. Is sincere seeking perhaps the real meaning of walking in faith?  The search for truth, the search for authentic love, and the search for God are finally the same search. I would rather have “one who lays down one's life for one's friend” (John 15:13) by sincere seeking, demanding scholarship, and authentic service, than those who are on no search, do no mental or emotional work, and have no open heart for the world, but just want to personally “go to heaven.” We have coddled this individualistic non-Christianity for far too long, and with no encouragement from Jesus whatsoever. – Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations: Evidence for Things Not Seen (December 2, 2024).

     To a degree, healing comes with time.  Time heals a lot of wounds, but not all wounds.  There are some hurts that we nurse all the way to our graves.  What a tragedy!  Faith calls us to work toward the peace that was available to Joseph and is available to us.  It is not easy.  It is a process.  There are innumerable resources to help us move forward.  Therapy helps.  All of this is core to becoming who we are created to be.  Life is too small (and too big) to ignore this.  Life is too short to willfully live without peace, without shalom in its fullest.

     The Apostle Paul encouraged the Philippian church to this faithful pursuit:

     So, this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul. – Philippians 1:9-11 (MSG)

     And in a letter to a different community, he offered this benediction: “May God himself, the God who makes everything holy (well) and whole, make you holy (well) and whole, put you together – spirit, soul, and body – and keep you fit for the coming of Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23 MSG).

     Christ is constantly coming, bringing salvation in myriad forms, including peace.  How will you welcome it?

Still Relevant?

As we begin Advent this year, as with every year passed, we still have every reason to sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”!  And we should.  We must.

  Christian traditionally has viewed the fulfilment of the song as the second coming of Jesus Christ as depicted in Luke 21:25-36, when Jesus is depicted as triumphantly returning to earth to be its global leader, at which point everyone will apparently fall in line or die.

  Many scholars see that vision as one born from and stuck in its first century context, that they (and perhaps even Jesus if they remembered and recorded his words accurately) misinterpreted the vision of the Son of Man’s return.  Perhaps that’s not how the story will end. Perhaps that was never the vision.

  What if there is a simpler vision that proclaims what we already know to be true from experience, that when calamity of all kinds hits, Emmanuel (God with us) is more present. Not more present because things finally deteriorated to the point that God finally cared enough to show up.  Open and Relational Theology assumes and proclaims that God is already fully present, that everything lives and moves and has their being in God. 

  We experience the Presence more when calamity hits because we wake up, we open our eyes because of our suffering, we seek God and discover that God has been with us he whole time.  In our humbled, broken state, we sometimes have the capacity to see humanity’s complicity in the human-made calamities such as war, rape, abuse, slavery, and all the “isms” we can usually think of.  We sometimes can recall when we said no to the nudge of God that would have helped change the course of thing for the better. But we didn’t, and it caught up with us.

  Every calamity’s rendition of “O Come” is a new altar call, where we say once again that we are listening, that we need love and guidance, that we are open and looking for the nudge of God.

  Like the North Star, we find that God continues to guide all people toward shalom, toward redemption and safety. For ourselves. For all people. For the planet we are inextricably related to.

  Is the calamity loud enough for you to listen, to see, and to care? We don’t have to wait. We can be proactive with our attention and lives and seek God’s guidance. We can follow the guidance of shalom at every moment should we choose it.

  What are we waiting for?

Beyond Grateful

What are you grateful for?  Take a second and list five things right now.

     What are the benefits of gratitude?  Take a minute and write down benefits you can think of.  Then Google it (or check this article out from Positive Psychology, Potential Benefits of Practicing Gratitude).

     When I was gifted sabbatical leave in 2022, I wanted to use the time wisely and put tools into place that I thought might help me make the most of the time away from the demands of my role.  I picked up a Mind Journal, which is made with men in mind (good Christmas gift for men!). The journaling practice incorporates gratitude every day, because it works. 

     One of the journal prompts was to list everything I was grateful for.  I filled a few pages.  Want to guess how I felt at the end of that exercise?  Light. Grateful. Grounded. Loving and loved. Shalom. Energized. Hopeful.  If you’ve never attempted such a thing, carve out some time and space in your schedule – maybe 20-30 minutes – and give it a go.  You’ll be glad you did and surprised by the experience.

     The perspective gratitude provides is more powerful than we can imagine.  It can sometimes be used as a denial technique to avoid really painful issues.  I’m not talking about that. What many have discovered is that taking time to reflect on what we are grateful for can buoy us even when faced with suffering that is part and parcel of the human experience.  In case you have noticed, Pollyanna, life is a mixed bag. 

     Myriad expressions of hardship great and small come with the bargain.  I am an eternal optimist, which has meant that at times I have minimized, dismissed, or completely denied (consciously and/or unconsciously) the painful realities of life.  I have been guilty of being Pollyannaish.  Yet life has a way of providing reality checks from time to time, and more of them as we age.  We feel our physical age and cannot deny the changes. We suffer the consequences of decisions we or others made years before that get played out now. 

     Sometimes life just sucks.

     Yet, as counterintuitive as it may sound, gratitude helps.  A lot.  I have presided over literally hundreds of funeral services over my nearly 30 years of being a pastor.  Where there is deep grief, there has been deep love.  Where there is deep love, there is deep gratitude.  Taking time to write out all the ways we are grateful for those we’ve lost can be deeply healing. It doesn’t magically take away the pain, but it does change it in powerful ways, softening the pain somehow, grounding it, I guess. As my mother-in-law’s memorial service approaches, my wife and I feel the loss as we swipe through photos of so many shared experiences over the last decades.  The pain is real, but the gratitude gives grief opportunity for healthy expression.  Give it a shot.

     Holocaust survivors have even noted how much gratitude has made a difference in prevailing through the horrors of one of humanity’s worst offenses.  There is a lot of power in the practice of gratitude.

     Our faith offers us another level of gratitude that can exponentially turbo charge the power of gratitude.  The proclamation of our Jewish and Christian tradition (and from several other enduring traditions – maybe all of them in their own way) is that this life we live is happening within a much greater Life that we call the presence of God, or Spirit.  Jesus was convinced (and many before him), that this Presence can be characterized as benevolent, loving, kind, gracious – all the words that collectively give us the definition of the Hebrew word, “shalom”.  In the Easter story, Jesus’ disciples collectively experienced quite mysteriously and in various forms Jesus post-grave.  The big take away? There is something more than simply life of flesh and blood.  And it is welcoming and good.  John’s words at the beginning of his “Revelation” certainly hint at such thinking:

John, to the seven churches that are in Asia:

     Grace and peace to you from the one who is and was and is coming, and from the seven spirits that are before God’s throne, and from Jesus Christ—the faithful witness, the firstborn from among the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

     To the one who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, who made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father—to him be glory and power forever and always. Amen.

     Look, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye will see him, including those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of him. This is so. Amen. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “the one who is and was and is coming, the Almighty.” – Revelation 1:4-8 (CEB)

     John’s weird Revelation reflects a lot of the hope Easter’s message proclaims.  It is helpful to remember that he wrote at a time of despair.  The Jewish community by that time had distanced themselves from the increasingly non-Jewish Jesus-following believers eventually known as Christians.  On top of that, the Roman Empire was barely tolerant of the group since it challenged Domitian’s claim of being God.  Recall that John wrote this general, coded letter to the churches while exiled on the island of Patmos, a penal colony. He had reason for despair.  Yet hope was bigger.  He recognized that God is Alpha and Omega, beginning and end.  Christ – the Presence – is, was, and will always be.  And will always be shalom in character and deed.

     The Apostle Paul never knew Jesus personally but was overwhelmed by Christ over a decade after Jesus’ death, experienced as a blinding light and voice that literally stopped him in his tracks.  Paul was utterly transformed by this encounter with shalom.  A satori moment for sure.  And it stuck.  He became a champion of the Gospel – the Good News – that Jesus proclaimed.  Sometimes it cost him dearly yet hope prevailed and called him forward with renewed strength, all the way until the day he was martyred.  Hear his words to a conflicted church in ancient Corinth:

     The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Lord’s Spirit is, there is freedom.

     We are experiencing all kinds of trouble, but we aren’t crushed. We are confused, but we aren’t depressed. We are harassed, but we aren’t abandoned. We are knocked down, but we aren’t knocked out... 

     We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus, and he will bring us into his presence along with you. All these things are for your benefit. As grace increases to benefit more and more people, it will cause gratitude to increase, which results in God’s glory.

     So, we aren’t depressed. But even if our bodies are breaking down on the outside, the person that we are on the inside is being renewed every day. Our temporary minor problems are producing an eternal stockpile of glory for us that is beyond all comparison. We don’t focus on the things that can be seen but on the things that can’t be seen. The things that can be seen don’t last, but the things that can’t be seen are eternal. – 2 Corinthians 3:17; 4:8-9,14-18 (CEB)

     As people of faith in the More, as Marcus Borg would suggest, our gratitude certainly includes all the normal things that show up on a Thanksgiving List.  Yet because of the Good News Jesus proclaimed, lived, and represented, we are beyond grateful, filled with gratitude because we believe there is something beyond the confines of flesh and blood’s limitations.  Beyond grateful with the hope that we are never alone – never have been, and never will be – because the Presence of God what gives us life and breath is our Ground of Being that never lets us go. The Spirit of God has been the fertile soil from which we sprung forth and will be the space we  find rest when these earthly lungs give out, giving way to a new, deeper, greater Breath and breathing.

     Scholar and mystic Barbara Holmes offered these poetic words, born from her real-life experience of suffering and prevailing with the shalom-Presence of God:

At the center of every crisis 
is an inner space 
so deep, so beckoning, 
so suddenly and daringly vast, 
that it feels like a universe, 
feels like God.

When the unthinkable happens, 
and does not relent, 
we fall through our hubris 
toward an inner flow, 
an abiding and rebirthing darkness 
that feels like home.

    This Thanksgiving, be grateful for the many things you can be grateful for. And be beyond grateful as well, because no matter what life doles out, we have hope for shalom to come.

The Whole Wide World Awaits

We welcome Brian Henderson to the stage, Executive Director of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, an international organization of 180+ churches around the world who are welcoming and affirming of the LGBTQ+ community and more.

From Soup to Shalom: Generosity

Enjoy the conclusion of this three week series offered by Angie Barker Jackson!

From Soup to Shalom: Community

Enjoy this teaching from Angie Barker Jackson as she takes us deeper in to the transformational power of community!

From Stone Soup to Shalom: Humility

Enjoy the kickoff to this three-week series offered by Rev. Dr. Angie Barker Jackson!

Life After God Week 5: own and poof!

What motivated you when you first embraced faith?  For some, it was simply part of the family tradition into which you were born.  I hear this a lot for folks raised Catholic.  Catholics have done a good job cultivating that with their rituals and sacraments.  I was a Baptist version of the same thing.  I grew up in the church – a pastor’s kid, no less.  It was a huge part of our life.  I have never really known a season of my life without the Church or faith. 

     Some people embrace the faith for purely practical reasons. They heard that heaven is in the balance of their decision.  So, even if they aren’t sure about the faith or heaven, what’s the harm?  This is reminiscent of Pascal’s wager that we learned about a few weeks back. 

     I knew another person who embraced the faith very late in life – deep into retirement – because he finally understood the magnitude of God’s grace and accepted, it, weeping.  He wept because of the release of shame and guilt he had carried for decades after the Korean War where he took many lives in battle.  He felt completely unworthy of God’s love and welcome due to his actions.

     I’ve also known people who were directly and indirectly told that they were no good from a young age.  Their parents and family, by their words and actions, created and reinforced an awful self-image that they assumed reflected God as well.  These people are victims of others’ awful behavior.  Hearing and believing that God loves them – that at their core they have value – is absolutely transformative. 

     What compelled you to embrace the faith?  Were any of the above part of the motivation?

     Jesus’ first sermon after returning from his post-baptism camp trip touched on some of these themes.  In that Nazareth Shabbat gathering, Jesus chose what text to speak on.  He was intentional when he read Isaiah’s vision of what God’s anointed one would be about (Luke 4:18-19 CEB):

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me.

He has sent me to preach good news to the poor,

to proclaim release to the prisoners

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to liberate the oppressed,

and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

     In another space, Jesus was remembered saying, “I am the Door; anyone who enters in through me will be saved (will live). He will come in and he will go out [freely] and will find pasture... The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, until it overflows). (John 10:9-10 AMPC).  And in yet another, “This is eternal life: to know you, the only true God... I’m not asking that you take them out of this world but that you keep them safe from the evil one. They don’t belong to this world, just as I don’t belong to this world... I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. (John 17:3, 15-16, 21  CEB)

     Mark Feldmeir, in his book, Life After God, notes what isn’t mentioned in Jesus’ borrowed vision of what he was to be about.  There is nothing about heaven, or saving your soul, or asking Jesus into your heart.  And yet for many churches, this has become a primary reason to embrace and nurture the faith.  In the 1800’s, preachers began using the threat of hell in earnest to coerce people into accepting Christ.  Billy Sunday led massive crusades in the 1920’s; Billy Graham picked up his mantel and packed stadiums for decades with this central question: are you going to say yes to Jesus or eternity in hell?  Fear is effective.  That’s why with every election cycle, we hear commercials for political candidates filled with fearful rhetoric.  Facts don’t matter much, apparently, because they don’t seem to make much difference in our current election.  They haven’t mattered a lot for many who were frightened into the loving arms of Jesus with the threat of facing a wrathful God if they didn’t.  The horrible logic in this sales pitch should have been enough to cause many to balk.  Yet millions have caved under fear.  Fear is powerful.

     How did fear factor into your decision to embrace faith?

     Jesus wasn’t about fear.  He won people to faith with love, welcome, hope, and what might be possible for the future.  For those of you who came to faith wooed by love and grace that overcame the shame and guilt of decisions past and/or the voices of many in the present, who were not so much won over with the promise of heaven but emotional healing now, consider yourselves lucky.  You experienced the invitation of Jesus that he extended to everyone.  If you embraced faith for lesser reasons, maybe it’s time to let go of the fear filled lies and trade up to unconditional love.

     Feldmeir suggests that our embrace of faith isn’t a singular decision, but a process where we decide again and again whether to follow Jesus.  It’s not so much about becoming born again as it is about being born again and again and again and again...  In the first death and birth of faith, we shed the lie that we are unworthy of love, acceptance, and dignity.  Religion wraps this in God language. We believe that God loves us unconditionally, wholly, which therefore means these things are true for us.  Some stay there, content with this very good news.

     In the second death and birth, we awaken to the truth that everyone and everything is loved as much as we are, worthy of love, acceptance, and dignity.  This is the beginning of the death of egocentrism and is difficult, because it feels like we are losing our specialness.  If we’re not more loved than others, that somehow devalues us, which is, of course, not true. Just because everyone is special doesn’t wipe out anyone’s specialness.  When this takes root, we begin to see and treat others differently, more graciously, because we recognize their inherent worth. This leads us to give people a break for being human just like us.  This allows room for the forgiveness process as well.

     The third death and birth: we die to self and embrace the vision of Jesus, willing to expand our personal vision to invest in the wellbeing of others, including our enemies. (Life After God, 187-189)

     Each of these moves and more require a death before a birth, a letting go of the past and an openness to the new.  Like a lobster molting out of its too-small-outer shells, the process is difficult, probably painful, and leads to an incredibly vulnerable in-between period as the new shell grows into place, only to happen again and again as the lobster grows. 

     Have you ever met a lobster who refused to leave its shell?  They are infamously grumpy.  So are Christians who refuse to grow, which requires letting go.  It’s hard.  It’s painful. Babies cry at the top of their lungs when they leave the womb, and we generally act like babies with every significant change.  By the way, Jesus let go of former ways to embrace the new.  He encouraged others to do the same – what do you think the parable of the wineskins was about?

     Where are you in your unfolding faith and life process?  According to theologian Bernard Loomer, a sign that we are growing is an enlarged heart, where we become increasingly concerned about the wellbeing of others.  Why is this a sign?  Because the salvation offered by God and proclaimed by Jesus was shalom for all.  Wellbeing.  Wholeness.  Equanimity. Healthy relationships. Healthy planet.  Love abounding. Peace.  I believe shalom is what we all truly want for ourselves and for everyone and everything.

   The late Will Campbell was a preacher and civil rights activist who escorted black students into the newly integrated Little Rock High School. As hate mail from conservatives came in, he recognized he hated the haters as much as they hated him and the integration itself. In his estimation, he was no better that those he was accusing of hatred. So, he began sipping whiskey with KKK members, even becoming known as the Chaplain to the Klan.  He slowly began winning them over. In time, however, he began receiving hate mail from more liberal people who challenged his relationship with the Klan members.  His response? “If you’re gonna love one, you’ve got to love ‘em all.” (191). That’s evidence of a person who has been born again and again and again and again.

     For many who came to faith based on the threat of hell and the promise of heaven, the above is hopefully a breath of fresh air.  Yet we also cling to the hope of heaven.  What do we do with that?

     Jesus is remembered as not shying away from the question about what happens when we die.  According to those who wrote down what they remembered of his teachings, Jesus believed there was more to come, all awash in the love of God.  We can often get caught up in literal details and miss the themes Jesus was trying to communicate.  In John 14, Jesus cast a wonderful vision of post-grave life as being spent in a sprawling complex built by God for us.  I hope that’s not literal.  Can you imagine how big that place must be by now? How long will it take to catch an elevator?  And what about parking?  Let’s hope and pray something more was being communicated.  Hint: it was.  The disciples would have been terrified after Jesus’ crucifixion and likely accused of being his followers, making them apostates as well.  Sure religious leaders would have told them of God’s coming wrath for their heresy.  In those moments, perhaps they would recall Jesus’s point: God accepts them now and forever. Believe it.  Trust in it.

     Yet my confidence is not only my intellectual conclusion that the God Jesus proclaimed is indeed experienced as graceful, loving, and forgiving, which means I will be allowed to pass through the Pearly Gates.  Jesus was offering a time-stamped expression of hope to his audience and all audiences who wonder about the nature of God as it relates to our lukewarm devotion to the Spirit.  The bottom line for Jesus was that everyone is loved even if not everything we do is lovely.

     My confidence is in my ongoing, growing awareness and experience of the “more” that we call God (to borrow a Marcus Borg phrase). The “more” is gracious and spacious, is present, is supportive, is the sense of love itself.  This love has held me my whole life, has shaped me, wooed me toward love for the sake of love. This love seems to be always flowing, has been forever, and will be forever.

     What, then, is the final act for me and the whole world?  It seems to me that Jesus’ insight and that of his followers was that love was the end goal: shalom for everyone and everything. I trust that.  If that means there will be a massive family reunion of sorts where everyone is somehow their best selves and still recognizable, and everyone gets along and forgets and forgives the reasons they haven’t before, I’m cool with that.  If the end is more like rivers flowing to the sea, becoming one, where all of our drips make up the whole, always part of the whole, becoming the ocean and discovering we’ve been the ocean? I’m cool with that.  If, when I draw my last breath, there is no breath here or beyond the grave, I won’t have any capacity to be anything other than cool with that!

    Regardless of the vision that will become reality, I live in hope and with hope. I trust love. I choose love as much as I am able, even if I struggle most of the time. Love has held me, saved me, continues to woo me. I don’t think love will ever let me go, and that gives me great peace. To not have any anxiousness about our end may not be possible. No getting around that. Yet I am okay trusting in the “thisness” that is the fabric of life itself. I am a part of it. It is part of me. That will never change. So, until I draw my last breath, I simply choose to breath.

Life After God Week 4: hum & buzz

If you have ever deeply loved a pet, you will resonate with this story.  We had a little dog named Banjo.  He was a “Chi-Weenie” – a mutt, really, but with some Dachshund and Chihuahua influence.  When my kids were in Middle School, they made it known that they wanted a lap dog.  Well, it was our daughter Laiken’s dream to have a lap dog.  We had a huge dog at the time, named Chico (which of course means small), weighing in at around 120 pounds before we scaled back the jerky treats...  Lynne did not want another dog, thinking the caring and feeding would largely fall on her.  CrossWalker Trudy Brutsche was rescuing a litter or pups and invited us to come take a look.  Banjo sort of chose us.  The kids and I won out, and we brought home a teeny, little puppy, somewhat to Lynne’s chagrin.  To make things easier, I brought the puppy with me to work for a couple of weeks (this is before we had to stop allowing dogs on campus).  My noon Praxis group got to cuddle with him, bringing a lot of love and joy.  Incredibly, Banjo somehow knew which Shaw family member he needed to win over – Lynne.  Long story short, before too long Lynne was head over heels in love with Banjo. She was his favorite.  She would never again sit on the couch alone.  We would never again have a bed to ourselves!

     When I was on a trip to Africa to visit a mission that CrossWalk supported, Lynne shared terrible news with me when I called home.  Banjo was not well. It turns out he had an auto-immune condition that affected his central nervous system.  Without help he would not be able to walk.  With help, there was a chance we’d have him with us for a year or so.  We chose to help, which meant that every month we would take him to UC Davis on back-to-back days, twice each day to get a shot that was used to fight cancer but was also effective at keeping the swelling around his central nervous system down.  The treatment cost a lot of money and time, but it worked!  Banjo remained a part of our family.

     The Banjo years saw a lot of change in our lives, and a lot of challenges that come with raising two very busy kids through their teenage years.  Banjo was there to provide comfort when Chico died.  Banjo was there to provide grief support when our beloved Karen died, who was a much of a grandma to our kids as their biological family members.  Other stressors crept in as well, and Banjo remained his loving, little self.  He acted as a conduit of love somehow that calmed things down when things were difficult.

     We had agreed from the beginning that we didn’t want Banjo to suffer, and that we would keep up his treatments so long as he could “be a dog.”  We had watched a neighbor keep his dog alive too long, in our opinion, because he couldn’t let go.  We wanted Banjo to live only if his quality of life was sustained.  The time came when it couldn’t be any longer.  We traveled one last time to UC Davis where the staff knew and loved him after five years of treatment.  I held him as he drew his last breath. I felt his heart stop.  I have never experienced greater sorrow. This shocked me, because I’ve lost very important people in my life who I have dearly loved.  Maybe it was in part because I was holding him, or maybe it was the absence he left us with.  I don’t know.

     When we got home, we sat in the quiet sadness of grief, together, in our back yard.  As we mourned, a white moth flittered by, playing off the breeze.  We hadn’t ever seen a white moth in our back yard before, so it caught our attention.  It felt like any time we were down for the days and week s ahead, that white moth would show up.  Call us weird, but we placed meaning on the visit.  We embraced it as some sort of sign of love that brought comfort, sort of like a white dove representing the Spirit of God descending on followers.  Even though we know it’s a moth, whenever we see a white moth, we call it Banjo.  We accept the presence of the moth as a gift from God, a reminder that love lives on. Every instance a reminder of the love we had and shared for our beloved dog.  Was God in any way part of this?

     What do we do with “spiritual experiences” where we feel like we’re encountering some aspect of the divine?  Is this just wishful thinking?  Since the Scientific Revolution, as a culture we have become more and more rationally oriented as we have come to understand how the world works. So much so that when people speak of spiritual experiences, feelings, or things like I described above, they can be written off as wishful thinking, emotional nonsense, or just hogwash.  I get it.  Our culture’s rational bias has made me wonder the same.  Am I nuts or is there really something happening that appears to be a divine interaction of some sort?

     Our Jewish ancestors were quite intentional in their story craft.  Their primary name attributed to God - by far - was Yahweh.  As we noted last week, Yahweh as a word is more of a verb than a noun. I AM WHAT I AM refers to a presence that has been in the past, present, and future that flows and is constantly around, like wind.  Ruach, the Hebrew word for Spirit, also refers to wind and breath.  These are things that are experienced for than something you can turn into an object.  Perhaps this might be why making an idol representing God was forbidden – it cannot be done and also severely impedes our understanding of what we’re talking about. 

     Stories of a breathy, windy God show up in powerful ways in the Bible.  Creation in Genesis 1. The story of the parting of the Red Sea (or Sea of Reeds) during the Exodus. Elijah’s hearing God in the sound of silence (where he could only hear his own breath). Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones becoming alive again only after receiving the wind-breath of God. Peter seeing the wind that was allowing him to walk on water and freaking out, sinking.  And Pentecost, with the sound of wind filling the room (along with tongues of fire and new tongues of language) all representing the Spirit’s overwhelming, unmistakable presence for all.  These are just a few of the mystical experiences from our deep tradition. The ancient world had no problem with such encounters – the world itself seemed magical.

     Today, we struggle with such whimsy.  But should we?  It seems to me that there will always be a tension between our experiences of Divine Breath and our rational minds wanting to discount it.  Surely even in the magical past the tension was also pronounced.  How was Abraham feeling about a strong sense of divine call leading his to start fresh in a new land?  Or Moses sensing a call to return to Egypt? Or Jesus saying yes to a countercultural, counter intuitive vision that would cost his life?

        We will never be rid of the tension.  We’re going to have to deal with that.  For those who are “all in” on mystical experiences, we need to embrace community who might help discern our experiences, so we don’t do something that is really stupid and overly driven by ego.  For those who are so questioning of Yahweh’s presence that they are practically deaf and blind to what they are swimming in, we need community to help recognize where the breeze of the divine has already been blowing in their lives to perhaps open their ears and eyes to things that have always been and will forever be. Insights on either side of the spectrum cannot be forced, and so we must walk together in humility and grace, following the breeze that will always feel like shalom, will always encourage shalom, and will always direct us tows shalom. 

    Today, may you catch the breezy breath of Yahweh that is always blowing.

Life After God Week 3: Hmm (the aim of god)

Psalm 139 is a very popular poem written about God, attributed to King David. We don’t really know what led to such a gushing of praise in prose, but it must have been something pretty powerful.  A moment of insight? Or a moment of conclusion after a long period of reflection?  We don’t know. Whatever happened, the poet was left extolling ideas about God that have  resonated with many people throughout the ages, even up to now, showing up in Ellie Holcomb’s song,Where Can I Go.  The poet offers his insights about God’s character and nature, believing that God knows everything about him – even the number of hairs on his head! He believes that God is absolutely everywhere, which is huge claim lost on us in our time – gods were largely understood to be regional in that time in history. He notes that he believes that God knows the future in advance, including every word that the poet would ever utter.  The poem is itself a declaration of adoration, but he goes further to say that he hates God’s enemies and wished them dead.  Kind of a dark turn before a more positive finish.  The poet is overwhelmed at what he perceived to be God’s knowledge, power, and magnitude.  Yet the poet doesn’t necessarily declare that God is good or kind or loving.

     At this point, it is good to remember that Psalm 139 is a poem, not meant to be doctrinal even if it certainly communicates aspects of the poet’s theology.  We need also remember that the Bible is a collection of books written over hundreds of years capturing roughly 2,000 years of ideas about God with multiple genres.  It is a marvelous collection of how people thought over time based on their learning and experience. God didn’t write the Bible; people like us did. With great care, I might add.  Sometimes what they wrote resonates so much with us that we might even say it was inspired. Yet it remains what it is, and that makes it a great gift and invitation to us.  A gift because we get a courtside view of the struggle people went through as they developed their thought. An invitation because the Bible itself displays contrasting ideas throughout, which means we are invited to wrestle ourselves with such big ideas about the nature of everything, including God.  We can take issue with the writers and craft our own poems and positions in light of our learning and experience, including what we have learned from them.

     So, where do you agree with the poet. And where don’t you agree?  If you wrote your own poem using Psalm 139 as a reference, what would you keep? What would you cut? What would you modify to make it your own? You are allowed to do this.  You already have over the course of your life, again and again and again.

     Sometimes we get tripped up by the Bible because we approach it wrongly, as written by God. When we do that, the ideas about God’s foreknowledge of everything becomes problematic. It implies that we really don’t have any volition in our lives. No agency. It has been written.  We are predetermined – the good, the bad, and the ugly.  If your life is awesome, good for you!  You won the lottery, apparently.  If your life feels sucky, well, that’s a bummer.  Too bad for you for getting handed that script.  Such thinking limits our personal responsibility.  “Hey, sorry for the pain my life has caused. But don’t get mad at me – I was just following the script – get mad at the author.”

     What do you think – is your life predetermined? Do you have relative agency over your own life? Are your decisions yours or were they scripted before “in the beginning”?

     We see a contrast in another popular passage of scripture coming from a time of agony. Israel was overtaken by the Babylonian Empire. Except for a small remnant of folk, most Jewish people were taken to Babylon as exiles.  They wondered what to make of it all, what it said about them, God, and their future.  The prophet, Jeremiah, in his reflection offered a beautiful word of hope about God’s position on the subject:

I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the LORD; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope. – Jeremiah 29:11 CEB

     In other parts of Jeremiah, the idea is presented that Israel’s exile is due to their disobedience. If they had been more faithful over the centuries, they would still be in the Promised Land.  If only they had followed God’s plan.  The idea of God’s plan is a whopper for a lot of Christians.  I have watched people agonize over major decisions, wondering, “Is this God’s plan for me? What if I get it wrong?”  I have, at times, agonized as well.  Yet, as Mark Feldmeir correctly notes in his book, Life After God, Jeremiah isn’t referring to some already predetermined plan but rather hopes, dreams, a vision of something more.

     How does this change things for you regarding interpreting God’s plan for you or will for you?  On the one hand, it takes a lot of pressure off knowing that “plans” are really hopes and not a playbook we must follow or suffer God’s condemnation.  On the other hand, it implies we bear responsibility for our own lives.  We don’t have to entertain God’s hopes into our lives at all! We can do what we want.  We always do.

     The whopper question is, what do we want to do with our lives? What role does our understanding of God play in our decisions? Why would we care about God’s hopes and dreams, according to Jeremiah’s view?  Further, which view of God in the Bible do we choose to embrace?  Some passages portray God as a hot-headed, immature jerk that is incredibly temperamental and even untrustworthy, ready to punish us if we get out of step.  Maybe that’s why there are people of faith that are jerks – they are basing their belief on that understanding of God.  The Bible is a gift in that way. When we recognize that many people from the distant past had divergent views of God, it reminds us that we are on the journey, too, figuring out what we believe, why it matters, and what we are going to do with it.

     A major theme that shows up throughout the Bible is a very big idea wrapped up in the word, shalom.  Feldmeir expresses it this way:

Shalom means to make something whole. Shalom is an experience of fullness, completeness, contentment. Perhaps the closest word to shalom in the English language is something like well-being. But even that’s inadequate, because well-being doesn’t come close to capturing the radical and counterintuitive nature of shalom. In the Hebraic way of thinking, this fullness, completeness, contentment, well-being called shalom is the result of the joining together of opposites or ostensibly opposing forces. (74-75)

     For the Jewish people, shalom is salvation.  Even though there are references to an angry, judging, wrathful God waiting to strike (a reminder of the human origins of biblical text), there exists throughout the Hebrew scriptures a counterintuitive, countercultural vision of shalom as described above.  The theme continues throughout the Christian New Testament but using Greek words instead.  Salvation itself referred mostly to the themes of shalom – being healed, made whole, deep and abiding peace.  The salvation spoken of by Jesus was also countercultural and a direct challenge to the Roman Empire, which also claimed to offer salvation.  The Pax Romana – the Peace of Rome – was peacekeeping by force: obey the Empire unless you want to suffer the consequences.  The Salvation Jesus promoted was aligned with the Jewish shalom that he undoubtedly knew and embodied. This was not peacekeeping, but peacemaking.  Not a peace kept by force, but a peace cultivated by love.  Jesus was all about this kind of salvation, a holistic wellbeing, deep peace, and abiding love that invites, compels, and instructs our lives going forward.  Jesus lived this shalom, taught this shalom, and in inviting others to follow, he was wooing them to do the same.  This is a way of seeing and engaging the world that affects our intrapersonal lives (our relationship with ourselves), our interpersonal lives (our relationship with others), and also the global community (how nations and peoples get along with each other). I believe that while we often settle for a cheap imitation of peacekeeping by force, our heart of hearts longs for the deeply rooted peacemaking shalom of God.

     This shalom, by the way, requires some very hard work.  Bringing opposites together, shining a light on things we would rather avoid or deny yet are always with us, informing us.  Feldmeir speaks into this regarding our past.  He quotes William Faulkner who famously said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”  Feldmier goes on to suggest that “our past determines our present and informs our future possibilities. We are products of our past. We are the sum total of our past choices and experiences, and the sum total of the world’s past choices and experiences” (78).   As we move forward with our lives there are three variables that determine our future.  The past and what we do with it, the always present, shalom-oriented invitation of God, and ourselves. 

     What do you want for your life?  Feldmeir offers insight on the shalom-way forward:

“Shalom is refusing to get mired too deeply in the past and refusing to live too far into the future... Shalom, wholeness, well-being happens when we join our imperfect, less-than-ideal past with the more hopeful and real possibilities of the future and choose to live most fully in the real and present moment, deciding today who we will be, how we will live, whether we will pursue the aim or intention God has set before us” (80-81).  How is this landing with you today?  Perhaps there is unfinished business in your life, unresolved, unhealed wounds from your past.  Could the woo of shalom be inviting you to take steps toward healing, maybe with the help of a counselor or close friend or a journal or at minimum time and space where you no longer pretend it’s not there?  Perhaps today you are being wooed toward peacemaking instead of peacekeeping in your relationship with yourself, others, and in the way you view global turmoil. Sometimes peacekeeping is needed to stop bloodshed, but if that’s all we settle for, there will eventually be more bloodshed. Peacemaking leads to lasting peace.  Perhaps all of us today way be feeling the invitation to refresh our commitment to living our lives by the True North of shalom, which happens to be what we are agreeing to when we pledge our allegiance to following Jesus.  Perhaps declaring such commitment regularly – daily – will remind us to stay the course even when the prevailing winds of culture come at us with gale force, demanding a different direction.  These are the biggest questions of life, and they are always before us.

    May you trust in shalom, which is to trust in God. May you fully embrace the vision that shalom-God truly does have a vision for your life that does not harm but is full of hope. May you feel the fresh breeze of invitation to this life every morning, every moment, and may you say “yes!”

Life After God Week 2: Psst (the call of God)

This series is based on Mark Feldmeir’s book, Life After God.

Below are some quotes used in Sunday’s teaching.

Letting go...

Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem. – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

But before you dismiss everything or even anything you already believe, attend first to that which you know, through your lived experience, has gladdened your soul and added beauty and wonder and joy to your life. Consider the very real possibility that such experiences might be hints of the transcendent, holy epiphanies, divine encounters, the quiet, hidden work of God. Behold them with kindness and reverence and astonishment. Protect them fiercely, even if they do not conform to what tradition or convention or orthodoxy calls authoritative or even real. Love them for what they are, for their courage to have shown up, for their companionship, for their generosity. Hold them closely, tenderly. Give thanks. (44)

Tohu va-vohu

The preexistent, primordial chaos and disorder, the wild and waste, the empty and void between being and not-being. (49).

Let there be...

The God of the Bible is a God whose power is expressed not in the capacity to make something happen, to prevent something from happening, or to coerce anything or anyone to act, but in the power to persuade us to pursue the divine wish, dream, hope that the tohu va-vohu stuff of our lives and world would say yes to all the hidden possibility that only God can fully perceive. Some theologians call this divine power of persuasion the lure of God that draws, leads, entices, and calls us and all creation forward by saying, Psst! You can do this! You could be this! (52)

Unilateral v. Relational Power

The first, unilateral power, is the ability to produce intended or desired effects in our relationships through influence, manipulation, or control to advance our purposes.

Unilateral power is one-sided, one-directional, one-dimensional, non-relational in nature, and almost always diminishes or robs the agency of the other. It takes whatever is necessary to get whatever it wants. (55)

Relational power is the capacity both to influence the other and to be influenced by the other. Relational power is grounded in mutuality, openness, responsiveness, persuasion, and interdependence. It involves both giving and receiving. (56)

Creating God in Caesar’s Image

The early twentieth-century mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead reminds us where and when the Christian tradition departed from ancient Jewish thinking about God: When the Western world accepted Christianity, Caesar conquered; and the received text of Western theology was edited by his lawyers. . . . The brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly. . . . But the deeper idolatry, of the fashioning of God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman imperial rulers, was retained. The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar. (58-59)

Yahweh and El Shaddai

Yahweh means simply, I Am, or I Am What I Am. The ancient rabbis believed Yahweh was not a noun but a verb form that expresses past, present, and future tenses all at once. They said YHWH means something like the one who was-is-will be. I Am is everywhere, in all things, in every moment, for all time. (60)

El Shaddai is from the Hebrew root word, Shad, meaning breast. The Hebrews translated the name El Shaddai not as God Almighty, but as The Breasted God. Can you envision the divine as The Breasted God who desires to embrace and hold you like a mother or a father, to nourish and care for you with a deep and abiding love? (61)

Jesus’ Abba/Dad

Life after the God we can no longer believe in can be one of the most fertile seasons for claiming a life in pursuit of the God we have never met— a God who loves us too much to coerce or control us, a God who lures, beckons, persuades, and woos us toward the divine dream, calling us to becoming, to goodness, to beauty. (65)

All quotes are from Mark Feldmeir’s book, Life after God: Finding Faith When You Can't Believe Anymore. Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

Questions to think about...

1. If you imagine organized religion as your “boat in the storm,” how do you decide when the challenge of hanging on is worth the risk of letting go?

2. Consider Walt Whitman’s advice to “Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul.” What beliefs have you found to be insulting to your soul? How do you feel about the author’s advice to, before discarding, “give them permission to exist, to sit beside you, to just be,” and then, if you find they have no further value for you, “Tell them thanks for sharing, but it’s time for them to move on now”?

3. In contrast to those things that insult your soul, what has “gladdened your soul and added beauty and wonder and joy to your life,” as the author says?

4. Is there anywhere you see God currently at work in your life or in the world? Are there small or ordinary things presently beckoning or calling you toward greater meaning, beauty, or wonder?

5. What is the difference between a God who works through relational power and one who works through unilateral power?

6. What do you make of the ancient rabbinical idea that “God/Yahweh” is not a noun but a verb? How does that affect the way we might choose to relate to God?

7. Can you identify with a call from God that sounds like “Psst. You could do this. You could be this”?

Life after God: "shh" (the problem of god)

This series is based on Mark Feldmeir’s book, Life After God.

Some select quotes...

Theodicy

I’m sitting in a seminary professor’s office one afternoon when, all at once, he pulls a gun on me. He fishes it out of his desk drawer, points it at my chest, leisurely pulls back the hammer, and asks me if I believe in God. It’s all so completely unexpected and so seemingly out of character for a professor who is, by all accounts, a vegan and a pacifist and is known for being really into the universe and having lots of houseplants and smoking peyote in the desert and practicing tai chi and commuting to campus on an old Schwinn Wayfarer ten-speed and wearing a tan corduroy sport jacket with those brown leather elbow patches. He is that kind of professor. (10)

Pascal’s Wager: Better to believe in God, because if God actually exists, you’re better off as a believer.  But to not believe in God if God exists might result in eternal condemnation.

C.S. Lewis to write his well-known book, The Problem of Pain, to resolve this enduring theological puzzle. In it, Lewis wrote famously, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, and shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” But later, after the death of his wife, Joy, Lewis reconsidered his notorious megaphone theodicy. In his book A Grief Observed, as he pondered whether God might be the “Eternal Vivisector,” the “Cosmic Sadist, the spiteful imbecile,” he confessed that, in the end, “you can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears.” (20)

When Pascal died, his servant found sewn into his jacket a brief document titled “Memorial,” which summarized his mystical experience and included the words— “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. . . . Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except God.” (21-22)

No Hard Questions?

What? Why, Shh? Because we don’t talk about these things. I tell you all of this because chances are the Shh! is as real for you as it was for me, and because there is for all of us the gun and the bullet and the questions and the contradictions and the faint sound of your own voice whispering, “I want to believe but I don’t know what I believe or how to believe.” Maybe you see the beauty of God and you can’t say no, but you see the suffering of the world and you can’t stop asking why. Maybe you believe and doubt and despair and you want to know that even this is faith. But then someone, something, some collective voice says, Shh! And then you stop asking why. And then you stop saying yes. And then you just stop believing. (26-27)

The God we no longer believe in

The Jewish sages taught that Jacob’s story suggests there’s another world—a dimension of the spiritual—right here within this world, that lies open to us whenever we awaken to it and pay attention to it. Like Joseph, we can access that world from this world, if only we can learn to see differently. (31-32)

Book Quotes: Feldmeir, Mark. Life after God: Finding Faith When You Can't Believe Anymore. Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

Questions to Consider

1. The author begins with the story of his professor’s hypothetical question about God stopping a fired bullet. How do you find yourself challenged by questions of theodicy, or why an all-loving and all-powerful God does not stop bad things from happening? Do you consider this a problem that must be solved?

2. What do you think of Pascal’s wager that it is safer or wiser to believe in God than to risk eternal punishment? Do you agree with Pascal that “reason impels you to believe”?

3. How might the opposite—“reason impedes your ability to believe be true instead?

4. Have you heard the “shhh” the author discusses—the implicit or explicit warning not to ask the hard questions about God? What questions seem most threatening to some people?

5. How would you describe “the God you no longer believe in”?

Divine Violence

Enjoy this lecture by scholar Eric A. Seibert that does not dismiss violence that is attributed to God in the Bible, but rather offers compelling ways to think about it. Below is the handout he provided for his presentation.

“The Lord Will Take Delight in Bringing You to Ruin and Destruction” (Deut. 28:63, NRSV):

The Violent Old Testament God as a Problem for Open and Relational Theologians

Eric A. Seibert

eseibert@messiah.edu

ORTCON 22

July 6, 2022 - Grand Targhee Resort - Alta, WY

I.               The Presence of Divine Violence in the Bible

A.             How many verses?

B.             How many casualties?

II.             The Cornerstone of Open and Relational Theology

A.             God is love.

B.             Quotes

 

God's unchanging nature is love.... love is what God does....love comes logically first among divine attributes....God cannot not love....open and relational theology says God must love (Oord, Open and Relational Theology, 124).

 

To love is to act intentionally, in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being (Oord, Pluriform Love, 28).

III.          The Problem

A.             Is God's violent behavior in the Old Testament loving? Does it promote

overall well-being?

B.             Violence: physical, emotional, or psychological harm done to a person

by an individual, institution, or structure that results in serious injury,

oppression, or death (Seibert, Disarming the Church, 10).

IV.           Three Possible “Solutions"

A.             Reject the Old Testament (change your view of the Bible)

B.             View God as both good and evil (change your view of God)

C.             Defend Cod's violent behavior as loving behavior (change your   interpretation of violent verses)

V.             My Proposal: Deconstruct Violent Portrayals of God

A.             Emphasize the human origins of the Bible,

B.             Contextualize violent Old Testament portrayals of God.

C.             Acknowledge God did not say or do everything the Old Testament

claims.

1.              Archaeological evidence

2.              The nature of ancient historiography

D.             Distinguish “between the textual God and the actual God.”

E.              Use the God Jesus reveals to challenge violent portrayals of God in the

Old Testament.

 

Premise 1: God's moral character is most clearly and completely revealed through the person of Jesus.

 

Premise 2: Jesus reveals a God of love: one who heals rather than harms, is kind rather than cruel, forgives rather than retaliates, and behaves nonviolently rather than violently.

Three Objections

(1)            The temple cleansing.

(2)            Not coming to bring peace but a sword

(3)            Eschatological judgment

Premise 3: God's moral character is consistent throughout time.

Interpretive Implication: The God Jesus reveals should be the standard by which all literary Portrayals of God are evaluated. Portrayals that correspond to the God Jesus reveals should be regarded as reliable rejections of God's character, while those that do not should be regarded as culturally conditioned understandings that do not reflect God's true nature.

VI.           Where Do We Go from here?

A.             Stop defending God's violent behavior in the Old Testament.

B.             Start publicly deconstructing violent portrayals of God.

C.             Offer a more accurate view of God as gracious, loving, and nonviolent.

D.             Do something creative, constructive, and responsible with Old

Testament passages in which God behaves violently.

Portions of this presentation were adapted from my previous work, most fundamentally from Eric A. Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009).