Reflection on Matthew 19:16-30

Tonight, I want to reflect a bit on how we read the sacred testimony in our scripture. Where we stand shapes how we see things. Because we're so diverse, we each read scripture with different eyes. But in order to understand Jesus, we also need to put on the eyes of the people Jesus was speaking to: the common people, the poor, the outcasts, the marginalized.

I have a bad habit, and many churches in America have this same habit, of reading scripture from the only the perspective of the powerful. Our church is pretty good—maybe you don't have this problem— but I've been various communities where discussions have assumed that "we" are all on the powerful side—the story of the rich young man is a judgment on "us"; how do we respond, goes the discussion, given that we are relatively wealthy or powerful.

Putting on multiple sets of eyes is a both necessary and a hard thing to do. It is true, that living in a place where there might be violence, but not war; hunger but not starvation, makes us all relatively privileged. We need to remember that, because there's a whole world out that that says "we need more". But it is also true that many of us, in important spheres of our lives, don't have privilege: some of us have been without homes, been discriminated against at work, had the government not recognize a marriage, been chronically ill with difficulty getting health care, been afraid to come out to parents, been victims of domestic violence, been a target of racism or harassment. This is not "them", this is us, this is the church, this is who Jesus was speaking to.

So let's take the exercise of reading this story from a different perspective. From the rich and powerful, it's a story of judgment: You read the story, and you hear it's easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God--this is horrible news.

But put on another set of eyes: you live in a world that tells you the rich have it made, that they deserve to be rich, and that because they are rich, they can do all sorts of good deeds that make them have favor with God. But then in this story, you hear that a rich young guy wants to know what he really needs to do to find favor with God—and it turns out that this guy can't do it, he's too sad. But you, you're following Jesus already, and you are doing what this guy and all his wealth can't do: picking up, following Jesus, a piece of the kingdom of God being revealed on earth.

If you didn't get it the first time, the disciples are there to ask the "dumb" question: "Look, we've left everything to follow you: what do we get?". Jesus says, "what you've left behind, you'll get back a hundredfold." This is a story of good news. Astonishing news, but good news.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this story wasn't primarily designed to tell people with money what to do with it, thought it certainly is suggestive. Rather, I think this story is telling us that the kingdom of God is so important, that it brings such reward, that we should push aside anything that gets in our way, and if there's less in our way, we should be thankful.

My invitation to you is that to consciously recognize the places in which you stand, to read scripture with multiple sets of eyes, and hardest of all, to try to read it with the eyes of the people Jesus was speaking to.

Reflections on the Christmas Stories

The gospels give us the only stories we know of Jesus’ birth. We really have two very different stories of the first Christmas, and two other introductions to Jesus.

The earliest gospel, the gospel of Mark, dives right in, with John the Baptizer appearing in the wilderness, proclaiming a gospel of repentance—change—and the forgiveness of sins. And that is how Mark introduces us to Jesus: John is preparing the way for Jesus, and Jesus comes to John to be baptized by him, and the Spirit descends on Jesus. What Mark wants us to know about Jesus’s origins is this: John prepared the way for Jesus, and Jesus is the fulfillment of John’s message.

The gospel of John begins in a very different way: with a Poem in the Prologue that harkens back to the book of Genesis and the beginning of time: “In the beginning was the Word—the Logos— and Word was with God, and the Word was God…. It continues: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Gospel of John goes back to the beginning of the creation story, and there was the Word. “Word” in Greek is “Logos”, but this Logos in Greek thought wasn’t just a spoken word, but the divine principle of reason, of thought and ordered mind. And so John is linking Jewish thought and Greek thought in Jesus: Jesus is coming from the Jewish God, but is the Logos, Reason, The Word in flesh, is breaking in to the world. And then John jumps right in where Mark began: Jesus coming to John the Baptizer to be baptized.

And so now we come to the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, which give us the stories of Jesus’ birth that are familiar to us. The stories might actually be too familiar—they’re difficult for us to hear afresh. And though we’ve combined them in our minds into one Christmas story, with shepherds and Magi and Gabriel visiting Mary, Luke and Matthew tell us two very different stories of Jesus’s birth. The story we’ve created is somewhat sentimental, but Matthew & Luke are anything but. The stories are different, and each of them is a mini-gospel—what theologian Marcus Borg calls an “overture”, a statement of the theme of the gospel.

We have to begin, though, by getting our genre correct: we would never mistake John’s Prologue for a newspaper account: that’s a poem. And neither are these birth stories newspaper accounts: instead they tell a true story about who Jesus is, in a genre familiar to ancient readers—where great leaders have great origins— but not quite analogous to anything we’ve got now.

The Gospel of Matthew is perhaps the most “Jewish” of the 4 gospels: it presents Jesus as the New Moses—who gave the Law and who lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Jesus here is the authoritative interpreter of Moses, a Moses for Jews and for Gentiles alike.

Remember the story of Moses: Moses was born as Pharaoh was killing the infants of the Hebrews. Ancient Jewish legend says that Pharoah was murdering the children because he had a dream that a liberator of the slaves would be born.

Matthew’s birth story focuses on a series of dreams to Joseph—Mary doesn’t get a speaking part or a dream in this story. In Matthew’s story, Mary & Joseph are engaged, and they live in Bethlehem. Joseph is going to separate from Mary when he finds out she’s pregnant, but Joseph is told in a dream that it is ok, that Mary will bear a great savior. The Magi—wise men, gentiles from the East—show up in the story, looking for this great child. They encounter the Roman appointed king, Herod, and ask for the child who will be a great ruler. Herod doesn’t like that idea, and so like Pharoah, Herod decides to slaughter the infants to prevent the rise of a new king. God warns Joseph in a dream, and so Mary, Joseph and Jesus flee to Egypt. When Herod dies, they move to Galilee, not to Bethlehem.

This is not a warm and fuzzy Christmas story, but the start of a story where the world is turned upside down: Jesus is the new Moses, who will set his people free. And it is the Roman rulers and Herod, the Jewish collaborator, it is they who play the role of Pharoah; the holy family flees to Egypt, of all places, a refuge. Matthew is telling us that Jesus has come to save the people, not from some eternity in hell, but from living in the midst of oppression and injustice. It’s a story where the poor are blessed, and the dispossessed will inherit the earth, and gentiles are invited into the kingdom of God.

Luke’s story has more of the familiar elements you’d see in a Christmas pageant: pretty much everything, except for the Magi & Herod. Luke begins with two birth stories: first, the birth of John the Baptizer to his parent Elizabeth and Zechariah, and then, of course, the birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph. Like Abraham and Sarah and other characters in the Hebrew scriptures, Elizabeth and Zechariah are “getting on in years”; they are old and childless, but then are blessed with a miraculous child. Mary also has a miraculous conception—but a type not found in the Hebrew Scriptures: a virgin birth, with a divine father, the start of a new thing. And unlike Matthew, Luke has a strong focus on women, as well as men: Mary & Elizabeth get major parts, and while Zechariah gets a major song, Joseph stays in the background.

In Luke’s story, Mary & Joseph are living in Galilee; Mary is visited by the angel Gabriel, and she is told the good news: she will bear a son, who will be great: the Son of the Most High, the Son of God—to which Mary essentially responds, “Ok”. A little while later we get Mary’s famous song, the Magnificat, which gives us a window into the meaning of Jesus’s ministry: Mary says her spirit rejoices in God, her Savior— because with Jesus, God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.

And then we come to the birth itself. Remember, Mary & Joseph are living in Galilee here. But, like Matthew, Luke has Jesus born in Bethlehem, the city of King David. And so we get the story of the Roman census , which required Joseph & Mary to travel to Bethlehem. They arrive in Bethlehem, and there is no place for them at the inn, and so Jesus is born in a manager.
Then we get the inspiration for many Christmas carols: angels appear to shepherds in the fields, and give the news that a Savior is born: singing “Glory to God and peace on earth.” It is the shepherds, low class and on the margins of society, who the first to hear of Jesus’ birth.
In his Christmas story, Luke tells us about the kingdom of God: it’s for all people, Jews and non-Jews, it’s here on this earth: there will be peace, the poor will be lifted up. And less obvious to the modern reader—Luke is setting the Kingdom of God against the Empire of Rome. The descriptors of Jesus— Savior, Son of God, Bringer of peace—these are what the Romans claimed for their leaders. But Luke says it’s not the great power, Rome, that will bring peace, but this guy, Jesus, born in a manger, honored by shepherds.

I invite you, this Christmas, to consider what these Christmas stories mean today—for you and how you live your life. The gospels say something very particular, to a particular time. It can be a lot of work to translate that into our own lives. I find inspiration in these stories because that are full of hope and promise, that a better world is possible, that God is breaking into history, that a mighty Savior has shown us the way to living in harmony with God. It can be hard to follow the Way during our Christmas season—shopping and gift giving can seem far from the Way of peace and justice. But there are also seeds of generosity and faithful living that can be planted this season, and with God’s grace, bloom.

Reflection on a Text of Terror

This Psalm is not often read, and it’s a good followup to the sermon this past Sunday on “Texts of Terror”: “Set over him a wicked man… may his children be orphans, wandering and begging.”
This anger is ugly, and even if the man were evil—wishing him death— but wishing suffering on his children? But it’s in there, in our Psalms.

It’s so offensive to find this, in fact, that NRSV thinks it is not even in there: it puts these words in the mouth of the bad guys, adding in, “they say” at the beginning on really limited textual evidence. It’s controversial.

I think it’s important that we remember that the ugliness is in there, not because it tells us something good and true about God, but because it tells us something about what the psalms are, what the bible is.

The Bible is rough—it doesn’t paint a picture of a lovely world, of perfect people, or even a perfect God. The Old Testament is full of people haggling with God—“God, what if I can find just one nice person, can you hold off your wrath?” Jesus gets snippy, and makes some ethnic comments about Gentiles (comparing them to dogs) that are probably not a good model for, say, the Mideast peace process.

The bible isn’t always an instruction manual for living, and perhaps the psalms aren’t always the best model for prayer.

The best way I have to think about the Bible is as an entryway to discover God, a testimony of many author’s perceived experience of God. Sometimes they think God does strange things, many time they think God does wonderful, beautiful things, and few describe a God doing evil things.

The Bible is an entryway because it invites me, or forces me, to think about God in a way that I hadn’t before. Sometimes I’m stumped or resistant—I’m still working on loving my enemies, and I’m somewhere more in the range of praying for them. But other times, the stories set my heart afire, the stories of Jesus’ promised commonwealth.

Each week we pray a psalm, learning and sharing in the prayers of our ancestor. They say things about God that are beautiful, that are longing—a few weeks ago we prayed:

May there be no invasion, no exile, and no cry of distress in our streets

These psalms give us language to speak to God: “My heart is pierced within me”.

And so here we have Psalm 109, a human psalm if ever there was one. These are feelings we probably know, feelings I know. The Psalm invites us to see those feelings in another, to reflect on those feelings theologically, to bring those feelings before God. Maybe we don’t want to end where the author of Psalm 109 ended. And that might be the value of this “dirty” psalm— we see this hate in another, and so we bring our hate before God, and say: here it is, help me, heal me, show me a way forward.

May God grant us wisdom and peace in our prayers. Amen.

God is Still Speaking

I read about Hillary Clinton and her faith in the New York Times:

As for how literally to interpret the Bible, she takes a characteristically centrist view. “The whole Bible gives you a glimpse of God and God’s desire for a personal relationship, but we can’t possibly understand every way God is communicating with us,” she said. “I’ve always felt that people who try to shoehorn in their cultural and social understandings of the time into the Bible might be actually missing the larger point.

The UCC advertising is effective. First thought: "God is still speaking."

What do Christopher Hitchens and Jerry Falwell have in common?

They sound like they both went to the same Sunday school.

Hitchens has accomplished something quite deft in his book God is Not Great. Take a pre-modern reading of the Bible. Call that interpretation "religion". Show how ridiculous it is. Repeat as necessary.

Money quote from Atlantic Monthly interview

Interviewer: Reform Jews do believe that the Bible was written by humans. Should Reform Judaism still be called a religion?

Hitchens: Well, that’s honestly what I wonder, whether it should be in that case, or whether it’s just a social club. There, I almost sympathize with the people who say, “Well, it’s not heresy, but it’s just another name for hedonism or believing whatever you like.” I’m okay, you’re okay—that’s not a religion. Religion is saying that you know the mind of God and you want to obey His revealed commandments, on pain of losing your soul, at least. People who really live their lives in fear of that—God-fearing, as they used to say—I can respect. People who are somewhere between Unitarianism and Reform Judaism—it just seems weak-minded to me. Why bother?

So, what Hitchens is saying is: Believe the Bible was dictated word-for-word by God = foolish. Believe the Bible is more complex than that = "seems weak-minded to me". Nice of him to ignore fifty-plus years of hermeneutics.

Sounds like the work of a hack.