Where (and when) is the kingdom?

Matthew 20:1-16     The kingdom of heaven is like . . .

Matthew’s Jesus uses this phrase a lot . . . my phone found over 30 places, some in which Jesus repeats it in consecutive sentences, and since My New Testament professor often said “If it’s repeated, it must be important” I’m thinking that tells us something. What . . . and where . . . do you think he was referring to when he used that particular phrase? Sometimes we hear it like Marco Polo might have used the term “the east” – to describe a place far away, with strange and mystifying ways. Or, maybe like someone trying to describe an experience others have not shared (and likely never will) , like standing on top of mountain after a successful climb, the taste of some exotic food, or bringing life into the world. I think some hear it as the beginning of a threat, or at least an uncomfortable promise of something that sounds delightful but from which they will surely be excluded, with the reasons for that exclusion to follow later in the sentence or dialogue.

But what if Jesus was using it more like the “You Are Here” sign on a map . . . as a means of orienting us to where we find ourselves, perhaps with an implied invitation to join in all the more fully? We are  . . . or at least, I have been . . . too quick to let the word “heaven” transport us to some far place, distant in time and space as well as character from where we are now. I have come to believe that Jesus was (and therefore we ought to be) a whole lot less focused on life after physical death than in bringing real life to those who have their bodies but have lost their hope, their will, and/or their sense that what they are doing actually means something. We look around, listen to the news, then read the Bible and find our world is not so much different from the one in which Jesus lived and taught, then, before we even realize it, our brains interpret that to suggest there is no point to life, no purpose. Is it any wonder Rick Warren sold so many copies of The Purpose Driven Life (and all the training materials and paraphernalia associated with it) to refund every dime he had been paid over the years by Saddleback Church?

But Jesus seems to keep saying “WAKE UP!” in parable after parable, sometimes even resorting to physical actions to make his point – scooping up a child and placing it at the center of his teaching circle, writing in the sand when the religious leaders prove once again they can’t see the writing on the wall, or turning over the tables in the temple. He wanted the people of his time, especially the religious/community leaders, and the people of every time, especially the religious/community leaders, to recognize the very ‘good news’/gospel he began to proclaim at the very beginning of his public ministry: “The kingdom of God/heaven has come near!”

God’s odd economy

Mathew 20:1-16     A landowner and his money . . .

This is a story that could almost be used as a test of one’s maturity, sort of like a Rorschach test for the soul but without all the funny inkblots. The plot is simple enough: the owner of a vineyard picks up some day laborers first thing in the morning, sending them into  his fields to work. He keeps going back to the town square throughout the day, sending more laborers into the vineyard in mid-morning, noontime, mid-afternoon and just shortly before quitting time. The only ones he made specific payment arrangements with were the first batch; after that, he merely promised a reasonable wage. But at the end of the day, everyone was paid the same amount promised to that first group, which surprised everyone and left those who worked longest unhappy. Oh, and the whole story was one among several illustrating what the kingdom of heaven is like.

Now, some read this and come away with a sense that the landowner, who of course is a stand-in for God, is not too bright. Or maybe he is just celebrating an especially good season with his grapes, and has decided to share a tiny portion of his expected profits. Perhaps he is experiencing some guilt about being wealthy when the townspeople are, in general, so very poor. Or maybe the old saying is wrong, you CAN take it with you, and in the kingdom of heaven the billionaires will dole out small portions of their amassed fortunes to keep workers around until the harvest is complete. Wait; no; maybe what Jesus is trying to let us all know is that God is capricious, doing whatever He wants and throwing out smartypants retorts when someone points out that the divine choices are unfair?

Well, OK, I’m the one throwing out smartypants comments, but the point is even the simplest parable or metaphor can be taken a variety of ways. Clearly Jesus expects his listeners to be at least a little discomforted by the outcome of this one . . . actually, with most of the parables he shares. I mean no disrespect to labor unions when I suggest they would no doubt be very unhappy if their members were paid as these laborers were, even though no one lost anything and some were rewarded well beyond their expectations. I’ve heard many folks talk about what a bad business plan this would be, how it would certainly lead to dependency and laziness as more and more laborers decided to play most of the day then show up for the last hour of work and receive a full day’s wage. Isn’t it essential that all rewards function on a reasonable basis, encouraging hard work and allowing those who work hardest and longest to receive the most benefit?

That is certainly the human way, probably reflecting the reality that some of our greatest fears as a society are laziness and having others take advantage of us. God, however, seems to be more interested in drawing folks into participation and insuring no one is excluded from either the work party or the celebration.

Bent over

Luke 13:10-17

Maybe it’s because my back has been acting up quite a bit over the past few weeks (chiropractor time this afternoon), but I have found myself wondering about the bent-over woman’s response. Not so much what the story tells us – that as soon as she straightened up she began to praise God – because that makes perfect sense and is easy to both understand and picture. No, what I wonder about is how this all impacted her relationship with the worshipping community where her reconciliation took place.

I suspect she was well known in the town, at least by sight. I have encountered a few folks who suffered from this physical condition and it has always made me very aware of my own back and neck. Having an interest in the metaphors life presents, I also tend to envision such folks carrying overwhelming burdens. I mean, it has to be true at least on the face of it, given the natural limits the position imposes, from reaching items on higher shelves at the market to the difficulty moving through a crowd when people often don’t see you coming then quickly look away in embarrassment when they have nearly walked over you. But there are no doubt also social implications, both for the woman in the story and those who even now share the affliction. Some will be so uncomfortable they will go out of their way to avoid having to even see, much less interact with the bent-over ones. Others will have more questions than one has either the time or patience to answer, perhaps including the one Jesus’ students asked about one blind man – who sinned, the person, their parents or even ancestors further back.

But this woman was either sufficiently accepted in her community or had enough internal strength to be part of the worshipping community. She may have prayed as well and persistently as she knew how over the years for God to remove the burden from her, to allow her to stand up straight and tall. Maybe she had come to believe that she somehow deserved to be crippled, whether due to some concept of Who-She-Really-Was or a waning belief in any God both powerful enough and loving enough to answer such prayers. Clearly her synagogue leader had nothing to offer her in this regard; he probably made no more attempt than I would to intervene on her behalf, being sure he held far too little personal power and alignment with God to pull off any significant improvement. Then this wandering man some called Rabbi and others Teacher or Master showed up, took one look at her and the unexpected miracle became a reality in a moment! Straight and tall! Free from the binding up! Able to look people in the eye! Who would be able or even willing to restrain their joy or hold back their praises even long enough to get outside or wait for the service to conclude?

But then, there is the synagogue leader, someone she may have believed stood in her corner, knew her and would have relieved her if he could have, raising his voice to protest what just took place! Inconceivable! She is healed . . . reconciled . . . freed from the satan’s binding . . . praising God . . . what could possibly be worthy of complaint? No, not just complaint; abasement, a clear attempt to shame both healer and the healed for not finding a more opportune, less offensive time to transact this miracle! An untimely miracle, coming as it did on what the leader believed to be the wrong day! Would you come back to a church where such a miracle took place and was condemned in such a way? Man, we are all scurrying around to try to be sure what we offer is authentic, challenging but not overwhelming, with just the right balance of technology and musical styles to hold onto those who have traditional tastes and still attract and hold onto those with post-modern sensibilities!

I wonder if this was the woman’s last day in that worshipping community? And perhaps the beginning of her commitment to aligning with God instead of human practices, with God’s life-giving intentions instead of life-diminishing rules?

Tied up by the satan

Luke 13:10-17

When you hear that word – satan – what do you imagine? Do you envision a demonic figure, perhaps with horns, a pointy tail, forked tongue and holding a diabolical pitchfork? Or maybe you think of some historical figure like Hitler, Idi Amin or Stalin. The Hebrew people did not imagine any such figure; in fact, they had no such concept or word until being introduced to it during their extended ‘time-out’ in Babylon, and even then seemed to understand it to be a metaphor for evil. Now evil . . . that was something they understood. Not in their earliest days, perhaps, but certainly long before the time of our biblical prophets, much less Jesus. Long before the 8th century BCE (Before the Christian Era), when they faced the overwhelming military powerhouses of Assyria and then Babylon, they had lived with a set of rules that separated ‘good’ from ‘evil’ and ‘righteous’ from ‘unrighteous.’ Of course, being human and all, folks tried to find some wiggle room in those rules. “Thou shall not commit adultery” – What exactly constitutes adultery? What if you are unmarried and unaware that your partner is married? Which physical acts are included, and are any specifically excluded and therefore free of evil? Even if we get to the top of the list –  and make no mistake, the list is definitely ordered – folks surely asked then and still ask now, how much can I chase after something before it begins to fall into the category of ‘idol’ and my behavior begin to be considered worship? Does “Have no God before me” mean I can have other gods either simultaneously, equally or perhaps with slightly less commitment? Slice after slice, split by split, we tend to work on creating space to hold onto our favorite forms of evil, the ones we convince ourselves don’t really hurt others that much or are so valuable/beloved that we are willing to live with a bit of harm either to ourselves or others (actually, both) for the sake of whatever benefit we believe we receive.

Jesus never suggests such wiggle room; he comes across as either/or when it comes to evil and both/and when it comes to good. And when he sees evil at work, he recognizes it, steps up and steps in to undo what it has done. When he sees the bent-over woman in the synagogue, he does not seem to wonder, much less call her aside to inquire about, what she had done to be so afflicted. As he explains in response to a question from his apprentices in another story, evil is not always a matter of one’s personal choices. For example, in our day, we might name poverty ia a form of evil without meaning that everyone who is poor is, therefore, evil. Folks who are making choices to pursue evil may certainly be poor, but we can see plenty of evidence they can also be wealthy – if looking at corporate CEO’s whose companies are losing money while they receive obscene bonus packages is too uncomfortable for you, maybe you can substitute drug lords.

Jesus also knows that removing the evil binding-up this woman has endured for nearly 2 decades will not remove evil from the world, or even her world . . . or even her choices in the future. But what he does know is that she is bound up in an obviously unnatural, uncomfortable position, one which God never chose or intended for her and has been so for far too long. Seeing no reason to delay for one second her reconciliation with God’s intentions for her, he calls her to himself – as he calls all of us – and she comes – the response of a disciple or at least a potential disciple. She does what Abraham did; she hears a call and responds with faith/trust. Upon being released from the evil binding-up, she wastes no time either; she straightens up and lets loose with praise of the only source of such a healing and freedom she can imagine: God.

So who is left bound up once she is free?

Missing the point

Luke 13:10-17

At the beginning of the 2nd chapter of Genesis, we are told God rested from the creative process and set aside one day of the week for resting in and remembering God. I believe there are several benefits/purposes we can receive from/ascribe to this ‘holy day’ of rest. The first mentioned in that section of Genesis is to remind us that even God rests; as creatures made in the divine image, we, too, are well-served by following suit. It is good for us to regularly pause from our chasing about to enjoy that which we have chased down. As we do so, we also have the opportunity to realign ourselves with our Creator, which often leads to/involves thankfulness and appreciation. It is a good time to also pay attention to our earthly relationships – with family, friends, neighbors, strangers and the full range of non-human creation – which, again, can lead to thankfulness as well as drawing us more deeply into one another’s lives, where we can recognize our interrelatedness and interdependence. If we really give ourselves over to the process, we might even lose track of the many lures of money and stuff, which, even if only temporary, is very good for our souls.

But this process has never been easy or simple. It comes up again and again throughout the Bible, getting incorporated in the Ten Commandments and causing no end of conflict between Jesus and the religious leadership of his time. Suggestions are great, but can, by definition, be ignored. My wife and I had some laughs this past week on our day off, as we drove down the far side of Lake Coeur d’Alene. It is a winding road, full of twists and turns to accommodate both the shoreline and the hills that shoot up from it much of the way. While the posted speed limits were never very fast, which was fine by us since we were not trying to get anywhere at any time, there were frequent yellow signs showing the road ahead would be especially curvy and containing even lower speeds. I understand those yellow signs to have different legal status than the white ones, being, in my understanding, cautionary and suggestive rather than absolute. My expectation is that if I drove through a radar check of my speed in such a section, as long as I was not exceeding the speed posted in the last white sign, I would not be stopped or ticketed. At the same time, if I failed to stay on the road because I was going faster than the yellow sign suggested, even if still slower than the last white one mandated, I would face the strong possibility of being ticketed for something like driving too fast for conditions. Of course, the real goal of the folks who post all those signs is to give drivers the best opportunity to successfully navigate the road, including warnings about especially tricky areas, and thereby avoid accidents and injuries.

The issue between Jesus and the religious leaders around the sabbath (and pretty much everything else) was the foundational understanding of God’s purpose in making the suggestion/commandment in the first place, an issue we still face today. As already mentioned, my understanding is God’s motivation and intentions circle around relationship – interpersonal and human-divine – with the goal of strengthening and regularly returning to those bonds, thereby allowing everyone involved to be strengthened, encouraged and lifted up in the process. So, if we use the approach from last week’s reading from Isaiah, we might ask one another to judge between Jesus and the leader of this particular synagogue: which was acting in accordance with God’s intention? Who acted in accordance with God’s point, and who seemed to miss the point entirely?

You be the judge

Isaiah 5:1-7

 

What do you know about God? Better yet, what God do you know? There seem to be a lot of different kinds of God revealed across the many books of the Bible, from wrathful to forgiving and threatening to encouraging. I suspect this is partly because God is just too expansive to be captured by any single portrait, but also due to the reality that those books, inspired though they clearly are, have human fingerprints all over them from their telling to their hearing. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard or read that one of the top reasons folks, especially from those elusive generations in their early 30’s or younger, find the loving Jesus portrait hard to buy is because is it so very different from what they have heard, or think they would hear if they ever attended worship, about God. While the hardest passages in this regard tend to show up in the early, formative centuries of the covenanted relationship between God and the line of Abraham, the prophetic books can be a bit scary as well. After all, as I have said before, those books tell about God’s last ditch efforts to either warn the set-apart people to change their ways or explain why awful things are about to befall them because they failed to do so.

So, back to those opening questions . . . is your God responsible for all and everything that happens, from bad weather to your (or someone’s) loved one’s cancer? Does your God beat people up when they screw up – even monumentally – while claiming to be slow to anger and divinely patient? I suppose in a sense I’m asking how big your God is, but I know I’m also getting downright personal about what you have been taught about the Bible and God, maybe even “getting up in your grille” a bit about boxing God into predictable, definable, as-too-human boxes. And I am doing so because these questions are absolutely critical to how this passage (and the whole Bible) is read.

I think an easy summary folks make of the opening parts (Chapters 1-39) of Isaiah, sometimes referred to as 1st Isaiah, goes something like this: things have gone from bad to worse to worse yet in both Israel and Judah, with a series of mostly corrupt, self-serving kings; God has tried to set them straight, reminding them of the millennia-old covenant made with David, all to no avail; and, God’s patience have finally been stretched too far, so God is about to use neighboring militant states to punish them by destroying (eventually) both kingdoms and even the City on a Hill – Jerusalem – and its temple, brutalizing and killing the vast majority of the population, all the time talking about how much He loves them. Just to be clear, this is pretty much how things look, so I understand the perception; I just have to question whether that is the God I know or you know and whether it sounds like a God any of us should believe in, much less commit our lives to following?

I hope you are reading the actual passage in Isaiah – I stopped printing them here because it inflated the space and I suspect turned some potential readers away before even seriously exploring what this is all about. I have looked at a wide variety of interpretations of this passage, from the King James to The Voice, and all of them have this passage describing the message to come as a love song shared with a beloved. What kind of sicko promises a love song then proceeds to sing about carrying out disastrous, deadly harm? Certainly not the God I know and believe in! None of the versions I saw interpreted God as saying He is about to put on the garb of the Divine Warrior and lead the Assyrians or Babylonians in their conquest of His beloved. Instead, what I see is a portrait of impending ruin, which God is neither creating nor preventing. I hear an incredibly sad, heart-wrenching story told through God’s tears in anguished tones, like a parent talking to beloved children while they await the police or ambulance . . . or Coroner. God does not claim to be calling forth the destruction, but makes clear He will not cover their great multitude of evils any longer, will not hold back the natural and logical consequences of their beliefs, actions and failures to act. This is not God judging so much as asking folks to simply look at the evidence and judge for themselves on which side of the covenant had the brokenness taken place.

God does not say, “I am judging you” but “You judge for yourselves – which of us has caused this mess?”

 

Unrequited love

Isaiah 5:1-7        “Let me sing my love-song . . .”

It is the stuff of more songs, books and movies than can be named or numbered, probably because it is something so many of us have experienced firsthand – unrequited love. The teen years are especially prone to this form of heartache, as hormones begin to kick in and we find ourselves in the throes of powerful new feelings that confuse and confound us. For a few years we are likely to be caught up in great, sweeping dramas, sure that our lives either might or should end then and there when we discover the other whose very presence in the room makes it hard to concentrate has no idea who we are, perhaps because they are similarly enthralled with someone else. Fortunately, the vast majority of us not only survive but eventually get a handle on this new twist on relationships, sorting out infatuation, attraction and connections that offer real depth and perhaps even longevity, and move, mostly intact, even wiser and more mature, into the realm of adulthood. Of course, as nearly daily news reports illustrate, not everyone makes it to that level of emotional maturity. Whether it is former spouses or brief partners, or sometimes folks whose only relationship is a one-sided fantasy-turned-to-obsession, things can turn ugly, tragic and even deadly.

But this particular story is not about human love; in fact, it is about the lack of human love even in the face of God’s persistent, glorious love. This is as good a place as any to separate out our understanding of God from the mythologies of Greece, Scandinavia and elsewhere by stepping back to remember our creation story. All life was created by God, so our story goes, not because the Divine was bored and decided to start a reality series for purposes of amusement. Nor were/are we given life so God can be adored and worshipped through public displays and precious gifts – that would reduce God to the most powerful tyrant ever, a sometimes benevolent Eternal Ruler who never leaves the sword out of reach. Genesis 1 offers a portrait of creative love and loving creation, as God chooses to abandon the perfection of internal, isolated and ideal balance to first release a dark chaos “without form,” then rhythmically continue the process transformatively, drawing specific forms out of the wildness without ever trying to remove the underlying energy of chaos. No specific explanation is offered regarding God’s motivation or intentions, but we do hear the sense of divine pleasure at the conclusion of each step. In the next chapter, when the order of creation is turned around, we find a God who recognizes in man the longing for one like-and-yet-different-from himself. Perhaps God knew something about that particular desire?

We have a tendency to use words like ‘vengeful, angry, jealous, and dangerous’ when we think or talk about God. And certainly when the prophets are bringing a word from God, it is rarely recorded to be any form of “Attaboy – great job! Keep up the fine work!” But I suspect that is less because God fails to ever offer such a measure and more about how much easier it is for most of us to hear those words than the ones that end up calling for a human delivery system. If the Jerusalem leadership had been listening either for or to God, there would have been no need to send Isaiah or any of the other prophets!

So I wonder if the question we need to ask ourselves here, in relationship to this passage and in general, might just be whether we are willing to recognize and remember in the midst of the tragedy about to unfold that the events are not so much a result of God’s anger, jealousy or even the Eternal One’s preferential care for the oppressed as it is about a human failure to return or even share God’s love?

Open wide!

Luke 12:32-40  

Jesus said, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom!” 

I used to begin each day by reading the newspaper, or at least working my way through it, picking some articles to receive my full attention and scanning others. I don’t do that anymore, for several reasons. Now I try to go work out first thing, just as soon as I can get myself ready, before I allow myself to get bogged down or distracted by anything else. I recognized some time back that the news definitely bogged me down and distracted me, getting me riled up and opening the door to frustration. So now I just get dressed, make my protein shake and head out the door, then get in some reading on my iPad at the gym. I still know there is bad news waiting out there, just waiting for me to turn on the radio in my car or connect to the internet. I often add my name to causes I believe in, so every day brings word of all sorts of grievances and injustices, and those are merely the ones I have already shown an interest in! So while I choose to begin my day with a bit of ignorance, it is never long before the daily fears begin to make themselves known.

The folks who showed up to experience Jesus – N.T. Wright’s The Kingdom New Testament: A Contemporary Translation, which I generally begin with for these reflections, starts Luke 12 with this claim: “Crowds were gathering in the thousands” – had plenty of reason to fear, and perhaps even to suspect God viewed them in the same way Imperial Rome . . . or their religious leadership . . . did. In both cases, they were mainly little cogs in very, very large machines; they could be replaced, worn out, used up, disregarded, accused, beaten, and otherwise oppressed. Just look at what offended the Pharisees: carrying one’s mat on the Sabbath, even being healed on the Sabbath! In Imperial eyes, people were seen, at best, as producers, folks who grew, caught, or made things others wanted. At worst, they were seen as our own society sees most of us now: as consumers, folks who pose a threat if we want more than a minimum share of the results of tour own work, while also being told it is our patriotic duty to consume/buy whatever folks are selling, without ever looking at the label or considering whether we need or even want it.

Then there is Jesus saying, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom! ” Do not be afraid? Really? Why not? Oh, because you are not alone . . . you are a part of the flock, and not just any flock, but God’s flock, the ones tended with Divine Care and Love! Even more amazingly, Jesus says it is God’s good pleasure to give the kingdom away! Not to sell little token pieces to put on our shelves; not to begrudingly allow that we are likely to make off with bits and pieces if not closely watched; and not to promise we will be remembered in God’s will at a much later date, to inherit something of value if we such up enough during our lives. Nope; just given, freely, no catch, small print or ‘conditions that might apply.” All we have to do is accept it, and the only restriction on how much, how completely, how deeply we receive that kingdom is how widely we open our arms, hearts and lives to it!