Telling Stories About the Cross (Matthew 10)

            A couple of months ago, I attended a preaching workshop right after Easter.  Some clergy go into hiding.  Some of us go to preaching workshops where we talk about sermons, even after delivering more than a few the week before. 

I guess the trade is funny like that....

When you get a group of preachers together, usually there’s a little time where it’s not planned, but somehow stories start trading around the circle.  Sometimes they are “true to life” stories.  Other times, you realize that clergy can be like fishermen, always telling a story that you wonder about.  Is it fact or fiction? 

With fishermen, you know what it’s like, that guy with hands spread out generously, indicating that he caught a whopper.  You find yourself wondering, oh really, that 20 lb fish really just leap up on your hook, no questions asked? 

The preacher version that tends to raise eyebrows might be something similarly odd, like a claim that you baptized quite a few at Easter.  (Really?  You got forty-five people dunked and the service still finished on time?  Oh wait, your tradition sprinkles.  You lined ‘em up and just ran down the line with a hose….)

            When we’re not amusing each other with stories of church services gone awry or the meeting of a subcommittee that lasted three hours, debating finer points of church matters such as entrée choice at the annual association meeting (yes, I sat through a meeting back in Kansas where that conversation alone was twenty minutes by itself), clergy also like trading stories for “sermon material” purposes. 

Usually, preachers like to trot out one of those stories that you’ve experienced firsthand or found secondhand somewhere along the way.  And you want to tell a good story, resonant with theological insight and meaning.  Most importantly, it has to have a great punch line.

            One of those stories I like telling other preachers is one you may have heard before from the pulpit.  It’s a story that I think needs repeat telling, as it has resonant theological insight and meaning, and furthermore, that punch line—oh my!

The story comes from the ministry of Clarence Jordan, a Baptist preacher and ardent desegregationist.  Clarence was given a tour of a church just after a major building program completed. The church was a massive Southern Baptist “county seat” type church (i.e. in a town in the South where the Baptist church was expected to be quite a marvel to behold.)  As stories are wont to do when being shared around, the details of the church’s finery vary, though I have heard this fine church could seat several hundred, just in the choir loft.

Everything was made of the finest wood (mahogany this and mahogany that).  The gold and brass altar ware gleamed in the sun as light streamed into the sanctuary through stained glass windows. The building was honeycombed with classrooms, offices, and meeting parlors galore.

At the end of the tour, while showing Jordan the fountains out on the front lawn, they pointed to the new gold cross high atop the steeple. “Dr. Jordan, that cross alone cost us $10,000.”

Jordan looked up at the cross, looked back at his hosts and said, “You know, friend, there was a time when crosses were free”.

The story packs a good punch line, doesn’t it?  In the midst of a church swelled up with pride about what they had built, old Clarence brings things back into proper focus.  To follow Christianity is not about laying claim to the most spectacular facilities or record attendance numbers or the way that the gold cross glints in the morning sun.  To be a Christian means that you have a healthy respect for your place in the Kingdom/Reign of God, where the last are first and the first are last, and hearing the gospel properly means you don’t do it while seated in a pew so fancy it has built-in seat warmers.

When Jesus prepares the disciples to go forth in his name, it’s not to build mighty steeples or to reach a certain level of respectability and accrue the right amount of civic and cultural currency.  He tells it plain:  If you are going to follow me, there’s a cross, and it’s not optional for a disciple going along the way of Jesus.

A few years back, the American Baptist preacher Tony Campolo was speaking to a group of Kansas Baptists.  Campolo loves a good story, and his sermons are a string of stories about persons he has met and the way faith has made a difference in their lives.  Eventually, as proud fathers are known to do, Tony started speaking about his son Bart, who was working in inner city Philadelphia at the time. 

Also a minister, Bart was involved in a project where a Christian ministry deliberately found the worst place possible to set up shop. They looked for the least likely place you’d want to buy property.  And then they bought property there, rehabbing dilapidated homes to make them inhabitable again.

Why would Bart and his colleagues do this sort of thing?  Surely they looked around the neighborhood, didn’t they?  Who would live in such a place?

The ministry sought young adults looking for internships (field education for human services programs at colleges and “urban ministry” practicum for seminary students).  They were looking for “hands on experience”.  And Bart had just the place for them to live.

The students became part of the neighborhood, not just working a few hours and then going home.  They were home already.  Thus, the great experiment was underway: learning to live alongside people with deep needs:  drug addicts, prostitutes, the urban poor and other marginalized people. 

I remember there was a noticeable silence among the Kansas Baptists as Tony mapped out all of the details of his son’s urban ministry work.  These folks had shown up for the region’s annual evangelism conference, and for many, this did not sound like “evangelism” or “the work of the church”.  This was the buzz in the halls afterward the session ended:  What about saving souls with preaching?  How did these folks ever get to be fine, upstanding members on the church roll? 

Oddly enough, while folks came looking for tips on “how to reach out to people”, they couldn’t quite fathom that people living intentionally on the wrong side of the tracks had much to do with Jesus and the gospel.

I imagine some folks just muttered a bit and blanked it all out.  That doesn’t sound like “church” as we know it.  What good is this sort of story?

As Clarence Jordan said, there was a time when the cross used to be free, as the Romans used crucifixion as a way of intimidating and keeping order.  To get a cross was not an honor, nor eagerly sought out.  Then Christianity came along, the scrappy group of women and men, slave and free, Jew and Gentile, and turned that story around. 

The Matthew scholar Warren Carter observes, the cross in the hands of the gospel becomes a symbol of something else wholly (holy?) different.  Now the Cross is a symbol that

ironically indicates the empire’s limits.  The empire will do its worst in crucifying Jesus.  But God raises Jesus from death, thwarting empire’s efforts.  And Jesus will return to establish God’s empire over all, including Rome. (Matthew and the Margins, p. 244)

 The cross we take up is not for show or to be tamed by other forms of over-familiarity.  The cross is sign and symbol of a people who have felt the world at its worst, even believe Jesus himself suffered, even to the point of death upon that cross, and live like they can’t wait to tell about how the story of God at work in the world makes them a people of humble service and hopelessly in love with God and neighbor.  That cross is free—and freeing!, if we are willing to leave our self behind and follow.

The cross Jesus calls us to take up and follow may come in a variety of forms, but the cross is best known when the bearer aims to walk in the same pathways as Jesus.  When we settle down into our institutional comfort zone (local church, denomination, etc.), we mean well, but we forget that the gospel was told along a dusty trail, where the emphasis was about walking alongside those who were otherwise invisible or written off.  The gospel has to be “good news” first and foremost, and it can be translated many different ways through signs of care, love, compassion, presence, solidarity, witness, peacemaking, reconciliation, justice seeking, advocacy, and the list goes on. 

How could anything that keeps us to the task at hand, especially one that we sometimes wish was not asking us to stretch beyond our plans for the day, or the way we see life or upsets our sense of captaining our own destiny?

Why would Jesus gather together his followers, prepare to send them forth in his name, knowing that they would be rejected more than welcomed, scorned more than praised, and bearing witness to a message and worldview that inevitably leads them to a cross?

What sort of story would make you believe all that?

Adventures in Repenting (Matthew 4)

“Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.”

These words of Jesus come at the end of a very long introduction to Jesus and his identity as the Son of God and Messiah.  Up until this passage, Matthew’s gospel has been largely about “setting the stage”:  a lengthy genealogy with all those names from the Bible, meant to show Jesus as the culmination of God’s long involvement and investment in human history, as told by Israel.  (Really, that list is one of those passages we all hope isn’t scheduled the Sunday when you have to read scripture.  As we used to say back home when lists of tongue-twisting names came up in the readings, we would say, “And there were people”.) 

After the “begats and begots”, then it seems a bit like Christmas, telling the story of magi wandering over the territory and Herod conniving to keep assuage his insecurities about competition, if it weren’t for that dreamer named Joseph who navigated the difficult social and political challenges of a miraculously pregnant virgin wife in a stone-throwing society and a royal court not beneath slaughtering innocents to protect the king’s petty fears.  

Then it’s the pyrotechnics of baptism, as John the Baptist chastens the masses with his call to conversion and then gets a shock when it’s time to baptize Jesus.  It’s not just every day when the heavens open, a dove comes down and James Earl Jones does the voice over.  Toss in forty days and forty nights of testing and temptation out in the desert (dude with pitchfork included), you’d think the prelude is most of the story, yet the gospel is just getting underway.

Jesus steps to the center of the stage and in one short sentence, summarizes what has come before and what is just about to unfold.  The agenda and the tone for the gospel are set in these ten words, inviting those who listen to consider a new way of looking at the world and themselves.  These ten words constitute a challenge to those ‘kingdoms’ of the earth that their power and interests are not the timetable that Jesus and his followers will be living out their lives.  It’s the beginning of a story that continues to this day, the story of Jesus and those who would follow him. 

Despite what you might think, the first word, repent, is all about a journey getting underway.  When I hear the word, I usually think of how the word is used among those who I would call the “evangelically strident”, Christians who use the word with a bit of edge in their voice.  When living in Kansas City, I would see them occasionally at a prominent traffic stop, walking up and down the street with microphone cords trailing back to small amplifiers.  The word “repent” was oft-used in the 30 seconds one might spend waiting for the light to change, and your lane of traffic just starting to get underway.  Such fervor really did not make much of an impression on most people waiting in traffic.  They sat there, trapped by the red light, trying not to make eye contact with the street preachers, perhaps cranking up their car stereo to drown out the preaching. 

The word “repent” gets a bad rap, thanks to the sometimes artless ways the word is communicated.  Shorn of interpretative baggage usually framed by images of “sorrow and remorse”, the New Testament word “repent” by itself is quite a powerful word, as the word Jesus uses in the gospels (Gk metanoia) means “to change the direction of one’s life” (“Matthew”, New Interpreter’s Bible).  Such a concept asks much of the believer, yet such a concept can be that lifeline we have been looking for, a word that gets in edgewise of the “stuck” feelings we have about our lives, or when we dare to engage possibilities previously unexplored in our lives.  To repent is less the image of the penitent coming forward at a revival’s altar call.  To repent in the metanoia sense means that you’ve decided to go a different path with your life.  Repenting means you ain’t going back to the way things used to be, and you couldn’t be more satisfied with this new direction.

Could we think of “repenting” as the best thing that ever happened to you?  I recall a guest preacher at our seminary chapel.  As he spoke of repentance as “change”, he would talk about things that kept us down and then through a positive change in one’s life, how one could feel renewed or unburdened when making good choices about how one lives life.  He flourished it with a little leap in the pulpit, left to right, speaking of ways one lived before and then after repentance took place.  Making that leap, that change is indeed an occasion for feeling like life has stopped getting too heavy for its own good.  In joy, we can change our attitudes and habits, our sense of feeling stuck or unmoored.  Repentance is the beginning of an adventure you would not have found yourself on otherwise.  To repent is literally a transformative act

For the Christian believer, to repent means turning one’s life to the way of Jesus.  Rather than wearing oneself down running the well-trodden path of the rat race, the Christian seeks to trace her way through the contours and questions of the gospel.  Reading one’s way through Matthew’s gospel, you encounter a variety of people who decided to follow Jesus rather than stay in the midst of what they knew, even those things in life they were most comfortable doing.  Matthew gives up tax collecting, a life of easy money by extortion and graft, taking up the way of Jesus, who said “you should love your neighbor as yourself” and that the poor are the most blessed in God’s eyes.  (Don’t we all wish the IRS repented in such a manner?)  Peter’s headstrong attitude is given a test when he realizes he cannot walk on water.

Repentance stretches a person, as you continue down a path that you could not have previously imagined.  To choose repentance, the decision to reshape one’s life, is necessary if one is to choose Jesus.  Over the next few Sundays, we’ll hear the Sermon on the Mount as our reading from the gospel.  As we shall see, teachings that seem “simple” will ask very hard questions of persons as they live in the tension of the world’s ways and the ways of Jesus.  

This mindset is needed if you are to live in the kingdom of Heaven.  To live as a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven is to live in tension with the kingdoms of the world, especially those to whom you would otherwise claim close allegiance.  Matthew’s gospel warns a follower of Jesus about maintaining a too-familiar relationship with the kingdoms of Herod and Rome.  

This kingdom of heaven shall be a different sort of reign, where local demagogues (i.e. Herod who just hauled John the Baptist off to certain misery and death) and even the ones ruling from Rome are going to be declared second fiddle to this movement called “the kingdom of Heaven”.  Jesus selecting fishermen as some of his first followers demonstrates the “otherness” of the Kingdom of Heaven raising up those that the Empire and Herod’s court exploited and disregarded.

In turn, those following Jesus’ way are called to be just like him, living out his teachings and calling others to do likewise.  The disciple will be not only evangelizing the good news, the disciple will be the example for why Jesus’ teachings matter. In other words, a repenting and faithfully following Christian has many difficult choices to make about how to live faithfully in the world.

Ethicist Stanley Hauerwas suggests that we have a choice: are we admirers of Jesus or followers of Jesus?  Admirers might like Jesus from afar, yet followers are the ones who take up the Cross and follow the way of Jesus.  To illustrate, Hauerwas recounts a story from Clarence Jordan, a Baptist who worked for desegregation in 1950s era Georgia. 

Jordan led a group of people committed to racial integration, living as an intentional community in Americus, Georgia. When his religious community experienced some legal problems, Jordan approached his brother who was a lawyer.  Jordan’s brother refused as it might harm his law practice and his political aspirations.  In their argument over the matter, Clarence pointed out that the two of them joined the Baptist church on the same Sunday when they were boys.  Clarence wondered if his brother had missed something along the way about Jesus being his Lord and Savior. Jordan wanted his brother to answer this question:  Do you just admire Jesus or do you follow Jesus?  (Cf. Hauerwas, Matthew, p. 57).

A man walks down the shoreline and summons fishermen to follow him.  They leave their lives behind and follow.  Were these fishermen in their right minds?   What sort of religion asks for such commitment without it veering off from “faith” to some type of fundamentalism or cult-like behavior?  How do ordinary folks like you and me claim to follow rather than admire Jesus?

The gospel narrative offers puzzling questions and leaves unsettling questions within us.  Is it bravery or bravado that one makes when choosing to follow Christ?  How does one repent and live to tell about it? 

The Challenges of the Life of Faith (selections from Hebrews 11)

When I interviewed with the search committee four years ago, somebody asked if I was a Red Sox fan or a Yankees fan.  I wisely replied, “Are they football teams?” 

Four years hence, I still know very little of baseball, so I was quite puzzled by a New York Times article a few weeks ago.   When team owner George Steinbrenner died, it was reported that a pre-game memorial would take place at the next Yankees’ home game.  The article also noted that as part of the tributes, a group of fans had agreed not to chant during the game.

Puzzled even further, I tried to figure out why not chanting during a ball game was considered a tribute.  Again, I did not know of the mysterious rituals of certain hardcore Yankees fans.  I learned of the fairly modern tradition (since 1996) of a group of fans sitting in a certain section of Shea Stadium (section 39 in the old Shea stadium and now section 203 in the new one). The fans spend the first inning chanting the names of each Yankees player out on the field.  For them, not chanting and being generally raucous was considered a sign of respect for Steinbrenner.  Not surprising was to learn of their nickname:  the Bleacher Creatures. 

You might be wondering:  where is he going with this?  How a bunch of “super-fans” (often known for their rude habits and rituals) wind up in a Vermont Baptist church service where the strongest concession item we offer is a stout cup of coffee? 

Oddly enough, the Bleacher Creatures’ habits of cheering and shouting and making some noise to see their home team win fits in with the Epistle to the Hebrews.  In this book, the writer of Hebrews talks about the saints/heroes of the faith who have gone on before us, now in glory above, shouting their encouragement to the rest of us (and not with the Bleacher Creatures’ other habits thrown in).  The saints above encourage those of us down here to run the race of faith, with the writer of Hebrews claiming the Christian goes on a long journey, where endurance and determination is needed.  Such support from the saints before us is given to us, though we have to listen for it.

Listening to words of encouragement can be hard.  We tend to hear all of the other voices around in (or in us) that discourage yet the New Testament claims the abiding word for the disciples of Jesus is that certain word that calls us to press onwards.  Elsewhere in Hebrews, the writer claims that disciples can get discouraged and wore down, using this powerful image of a people of “drooping hands and bent knees” (Hebrews 12:12).  Picture this image in your mind, and perhaps you find yourself thinking, “That describes me!” 

The world of the New Testament might seem distant from us, written with the perspectives (and biases) of the emerging Christianity of the first century, yet the scriptures also weave themselves into our twenty-first century life, sometimes encouraging, sometimes chastening us to remember that some tropes about human life have not changed, despite the centuries dividing us from the “early Church”.  We still struggle with discouragement.  We remain puzzled about the way life tends to work: unpredictable and a little chaos thrown in.  Certainly, we hear Hebrews loud and clear when we read of drooping hands and bent knees.  That sounds just like “home”, “work”, “family”, “homework”, and yes, even “church”.  However, can we hear that contrary word of encouragement?  Can you hear that good word lilting above the din of the world and the noise within you?

The writer of Hebrews launches into a roll call of the faithful, those who have lived out their lives in fullness and faithfulness before God.  It’s a veritable “who’s who” of the great people some of you first learned about in Baptist Sunday school.  The roll call starts off with one of the greatest of the greats, Abraham, the one whose covenant with God made him the father of multitudes, generation upon generation of faithful followers.  Abraham lived a very difficult life, even after he was called out by God to do great things. 

            A few years ago, journalist Bill Moyers explored the Book of Genesis alongside Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars, writers and religious leaders as part of PBS series.  Moyers observes about the call of Abraham:

John Gardner tells us that history never looks like history when you are living through it.  It looks confusing and messy, and always feels uncomfortable.  You can certainly say that about history as we find it in the Book of Genesis.  God is founding a dynasty, the beginnings of Judaism, Christian, and Islam.  One might expect the storyteller to pain the “First Family” ten feet tall with several coats of whitewash.  But the picture we get of these men and women is uncomfortably human.  There is so much marital conflict and sibling intrigue they almost forfeit the call and fumble the promise.  Yet the storyteller refuses to clean up their act.  This is the amazing thing about the people of Genesis.  The more we talk about them, the more they look like people we know—faces in the mirror. 

            In the mid-20^th century, Baptist translator, scholar, and social justice legend Clarence Jordan translated most of the New Testament into Southern vernacular.  He translated Hebrews 11:1:“Now faith is the turning of dreams into deeds; it is betting your life on unseen realities.”   I love that turn of phrase: faith as “betting your life on unseen realities”.  It asks us to make a choice about how we live our lives: is life nothing than the drama between letdowns, or an adventure that has its twists and turns, yet is well worth living? 
            Faith is the glue that holds us together when the world seems to be shaking at the foundations.  Faith is the spark that fans to flame our sense of a future well worth seeking out.  Faith is that belief so deep down within that it is woven into your very being.

            Abraham and many, many others in the Bible were people of faith while still being “uncomfortably human” or just like that face we know in the mirror.  The book of Hebrews aims to see the same faithfulness flower in the midst of the early Christians, struggling as a minority religious community in the midst of the Roman Empire.  The epistle writer sees the weariness etched across the faces of the church members: the challenge to live daily life, the challenge to live that life out with faithfulness to God.  With the knowledge that life was difficult, that faith can wax and wane as life’s travails add up, the epistle writer still put these words down on the page, offering the roll call of the faithful, claiming that somewhere there’s a crowd cheering you (yes, you!) on through life’s journey, providing a counter-claim to the world as we know it from first-hand experience as a hard, unpredictable place to be.

Abraham hands down to us a case study in what it means to be faithful, though he probably did not consider his faith that “great” if you were to ask him what his secrets to a life lived in faith.  He made mistakes.  He faltered.  He had moments that some readers might consider of questionable judgment.  As Moyers said, we should refrain from whitewashing the stories of the Bible in favor of often pale, unrealistic interpretations of the sacred stories.  Pay close attention to the full story of a biblical character, a saint, or a believer you would highlight as a person of admirable faith, and you will find one such as Abraham:  a person who knew life in all its adversity and wonder. 

Despite what you might believe about your own faith journey, faith is not about success or importance.  Really, it’s not even about your ability to “knock one out of the park” each and every day.  Faith is built on day-by-day living, letting your beliefs and your life intertwine, sometimes harmonizing and other times seeming at odds.  Little by little, belief takes root, and faith flowers.

Preaching Back Home (Luke 4:14-21)

      The first sermon:  every preacher has a story about the first time standing in the pulpit, trying to keep it together.  One minister suggested the pulpit for a first time preacher ought to have a glass of water, a decent reading light to see your notes, and most important, an oxygen mask.  First time sermons can be a bit painful to deliver (and sometimes to hear), but folks know that you need to support the first-timer, smile a bit while wondering if the sermon, a valiant attempt surely, ever will come to an end.  One venerable preacher was told of another church hearing a young seminary student giving a first sermon.  He asked, “So, were there any casualties?”

      The passage from Luke is called often the first “sermon” of Jesus.  Jesus is back in the town that raised him.  Indeed, in the Greek text, Luke describes Nazareth as the place that nourished him.  Here Jesus came into his own, growing up in the midst of the people, and now they are eager to welcome him into this new calling.  As he enters the synagogue, he is welcomed as a teacher respected enough to be invited to read and interpret sacred text in the midst of the assembly. Perhaps one can imagine the assembly filled with persons beaming with pride.  This is a great day, welcoming one of our own!

Jesus reads the text and then gives what is the briefest of sermons. The response moves from silence, to puzzlement, to grumbling, to rage. For readers familiar with the gospels, the way the story ends is well known.  Those who nourished him and raised him up will try to toss him off a cliff.   (Come to think of it, my first sermon didn’t go so bad after all….)

      The crux of this story revolves around the ways one responds to Jesus’ teaching.  Jesus reads the text from Isaiah and claims the prophet’s word has been fulfilled.  The comment is made, “Is this not the son of Joseph?”

      Sometimes, going home is the hardest journey one makes.  Sometimes you feel like persons see you still as that young child, chasing after butterflies in the backyard or buzzing by on a bike on a hot summer day.  People can treat you like you’re forever the kid, the daughter or son of the folks at the end of the street, failing to recognize you or give you credit for being who you are today.  Going home sometimes feels great.  Other times, you wonder why you put yourself through it all, feeling treated as the juvenile version of yourself at best, and at worst, realizing the “you” who you have become might as well be invisible.

      The Harvard chaplain Peter Gomes recounts an experience when serving as a resident scholar at Emmanuel College in Cambridge, England.  He found the faculty reserved at first, however, he began to enjoy collegial friendship, though he notes he was “the only person of color on the premises”.  At the end of the term, he remembers one of the college staff saying, “Well, Gomes, considering your background you’ve done well here.”  Gomes notes, “Never have grace and malice been more subtly mixed and administered as they were then” (A Scandalous Gospel, p. 39).  Years later, Gomes claims empathy with Jesus when the crowd mutters, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” (i.e. the subtext of “who do you think you are?”)

      When Jesus came to speak to the hometown crowd, I would argue that he gave his teaching not seeking to cause controversy.  Admittedly, this can happen. Sometimes people show back up in town with a chip on the shoulder, ready to set those folks straight.  Garrison Keillor recounts in his novel Lake Wobegon Days of a longtime town resident nailing 95 theses to the door of the Lutheran Church.  This list included just about every aggravation he had with his fellow churchgoers and town in general.  He did not get them affixed to the church door that night, as the church was hosting the Luther League’s Halloween pizza party, and he didn’t want to be caught with list and hammer in hand.  Instead, he waited, and sent it in for the local paper to publish.  Thankfully the local editor always found some other story to cover in the newspaper…. (Cf. Keillor, p. 251ff.) 

Three of the four gospels tell variants of this story of Jesus before the Nazareth assembly.  Luke places this story up front in his gospel.  The “first sermon” is part of the introduction to Jesus and his ministry, a foretaste of what will be unfolding in the rest of the story.   Reading Luke, I suggest this passage needs to be bookmarked, to refer back as you read of Jesus’ parables, ministry, miracles, and engagements with disciples and opponents alike. If you want to understand Luke’s gospel, this text is a good touchstone to learn how to “read” Luke and understand the Jesus he proclaims. In preaching Isaiah, Jesus establishes himself in the tradition of what has gone before him especially the prophetic tradition’s affirmation God will not forget the marginalized or those who are otherwise written off.    

To side with the poor, the captive, the blind and the oppressed will not win you the victory parade through the streets of Jerusalem or Rome.  He gets into the gritty part of human existence, dealing with the hard questions of people getting exploited and those enduring hardship.  Most important, he stands upon the traditions of the sacred text, which call the faithful to look out for the most vulnerable. The gospel Jesus proclaims is one of inclusive hope.  His gospel goes against the grain of the worldview of the villagers, the powerful within the religious establishment, and the prevailing ethos of Rome.  His gospel fits within the ancient witness of the prophets before him, and like the prophets, Jesus is learning he is not welcome among his own people.  The violence of the crowd demonstrates the costliness that can come with such effort. 

The controversy revolves around Jesus’ commentary after his first remarks.  Not only does he claim his ministry will be to those otherwise forgotten, he cites scriptural narrative where even the Gentiles will be included.  Even the complete outsider shall be part of “the fulfillment” Jesus claims to have brought about. It becomes an unsettling word to consider. The question of “who’s in” and “who’s out” challenges us to be clear about our beliefs and practices.  When we say of our ministry that “all are welcome”, do we live it out?  These are questions people of faith do well to answer, though admittedly, such self-examination can go neglected or discouraged.

            A few months ago, the town of Americus, Georgia, held a ceremony celebrating local persons who made a difference in their town.  Of interest was a very posthumous recognition for a man who died in 1969.  The Baptist leader Clarence Jordan was remembered for his civil rights leadership by the town leaders, an odd turn of events, considering town officials back in Clarence’s day tried to talk him into leaving town.  They didn’t want his controversial beliefs in integration and civil rights disturbing the peace.  Forty years later, the same town that rejected Clarence Jordan gave thanks for his work.  It is a remarkable testament how times change and the determination and clarity of vision it takes to be a prophet in your own hometown.

“Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Reading Luke’s story of the “first sermon”, the faithful reader is challenged to ponder what effect Jesus would have if he were the guest preacher in your own congregation.  Would he be thanked at the door or tossed out of it?  Jesus presents an ambitious vision of the gospel, the same gospel we are called to carry out.  To care for those who are vulnerable, to engage in efforts to meet basic human needs, these are signs of the gospel coming to life.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the end of a very long day.  I had been behind the computer screen working on administrative matters for so long, I lost track of time.  I looked outside and thought it was looking fairly overcast.  Actually, it was nighttime.  I got up from my desk to head for home.  (The dog doesn’t walk herself. She does, however, take me for walks.) 

By this time of day, the free clinic had set up its waiting room space, which crowded with patients, mostly young adults hoping to see a doctor.  Just around the corner, in the fellowship hall, the church choir was in the midst of rehearsal.

As I walked through the hallway and into the fellowship, moving from the murmur of patients shooting the breeze to pass the time to the choir working on the Sunday morning anthem, I felt a bit of joy rise up above the fatigue of wading through paperwork. Some days, it seems a bit up in the air, this effort to be a missional church engaged in the community while keeping up with all of the necessary elements of congregational life. Moments like these help me make sense of “the big picture” of ministry here at First Baptist. 

As the choir sang, the patients waited for a nurse to say “Next!” I could swear I heard another voice in the mix. 

“Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

The Might of the Mite (Mark 12:38-44)

The “widow’s mite”—it is a fairly well known story to long-time Christians.  The old widow joins the crowd standing underneath the banner “Sunday School Stories Annual Reunion”. It’s that place within our memory where we keep those beloved stories from religious education and Vacation Bible School long ago.  The guest list is a veritable “who’s who”: the Prodigal son looking sheepish after hitting rock bottom and starting his career as a feeder of pigs, the rich young ruler still hoping he can bend the rules and still take his overstuffed backpack wedged somehow through the Pearly Gates, and just for old times’ sake, the shepherds from the Nativity narratives turned up, bleary eyed from staying up to watch their flocks by night.  (Conspicuously missing are the three kings.  They said they were coming, but they’re running late. You know what they say, wise women should have been sent out to seek the baby Jesus.  After all, at least wise women know how to stop and ask for directions.....).

            The widow’s mite doesn’t sound that exciting of a story. A poor woman gave two coins, which does not sound like much, yet it is said these two coins are the sum of all she owned.  Standing there at the annual reunion of the stories learned in Sunday school, the rich young ruler sees the widow with her two coins and looks away.  Doesn’t look like much, what she has there, just holding the coins.  Why, money should have a fine purse if you’re going to carry it around!  He shifts the weight of all he owns on his back and wonders why he has yet to find the path to eternal life.

The prodigal looks at the two coins and starts weeping.  He had great wealth—half his father’s estate and yet he spent it all living the high life.  He ponders whether he’ll ever be welcome at home again…. (For the record, remember, the prodigal is always to be welcomed home.) 

The shepherds look at the widow and nod.  They understand her predicament.  More often than not, shepherds are lucky to have much money on them.  You don’t make much working the shepherd third watch shift.  You’re more likely to be serenaded by angels than make a decent living in this work….

            As grownups, the widow’s mite is heard around stewardship time. The widow is celebrated as a sign of all that is good about giving to church:  give with a sense of sacrifice, give to God with glad hearts, and the like.  The “Widow’s Mite” becomes a phrase, sort of churchly “code language” for someone who has given generously, sacrificially even, “out of very little”.

            For American Baptists, the “widow’s mite” is recalled by our denomination’s pension board.  Each year, churches give to a “thank you!” offering to retired ministers and missionaries and their spouses who have served our denomination.   The American Baptist congregation that gives the most, despite being one of our smaller churches, receives an award for their generosity.  The award remembers a time back in the early days of the Retired Ministers and Missionaries Offering (RMMO), commemorating

the anonymous gift in 1981 of a Vietnamese refugee woman worshipping with the First Chinese Baptist Church in Fresno, California.  Not knowing the full intent of the offering, but understanding the words ‘thank you’ printed on the offering envelope she slipped off her wristwatch, her only possession of value, and placed it in the envelope”.  (MMBB press releases)

            A wristwatch does not sound like much, yet it serves as a reminder of the sort of generosity that has made many of our denomination’s institutions possible.  Over the years, American Baptists have supported seminaries, care homes, neighborhood centers, and regional and national programs, thanks in part to donors who give out of their love for Christ and their desire to promote the gospel.  Our denominational history sometimes gets told as a cavalcade of the big name donors, yet a true history also remembers the witness of the multitude of donors who have made our denomination’s past possible and provided for our future through their generosity. 

Recall the witness of the Love Gift, a historic ABWM initiative, started out when the Great Depression was underway and our denomination’s national offices were in critical need of financial support.  To this day, the Love Gift boxes are still providing to help our denomination.  In 2009, the Love Gift, again just from the “spare change” and devotion of ABWM groups and individuals nationwide, provided over $400,000 as of September 30, 2009, to United Mission support—pretty impressive feat for a little cardboard box that sits on the end table, collecting coins one by one. Indeed, before the name “Love Gift” came into widespread use, the little boxes were called “mite” or “might” boxes, recognizing the humble gifts making big things possible.

            I note these stories of “the might of the mite” with due thanksgiving.  I also note that the story of the widow’s mite often gets taken a bit out of its context.  While upheld as a model stewardship lesson, the actual story within Mark’s gospel has a rather disturbing “rest of the story”.  The story appears in Mark and Luke as part of Jesus’ criticism of the corruption within the Temple.  Reading the story in the midst of its appearance within Mark’s gospel, one realizes the story has a tragic dimension.  As one scholar notes, “Although Jesus praises [the widow’s] generosity, the tragedy of her desperate situation remains. Her house has been completely devoured [by the scribes].”  (Harry Fleddermann, “A Warning about the Scribes”, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 1982: 67)   

The widow comes to the Temple treasury and gives her two coins. Jesus observes this act and recognizes her devotion. He extols her faith while exposing the corruption of Temple.  Reading Mark’s gospel, the reader discovers that Jesus sustains an ongoing critique against the religious establishment.  Read onwards in Mark as the religious establishment will collaborate with the Roman local government to get rid of Jesus.  This story of the widow’s mite comes after the “cleansing” of the Temple, where Jesus declares the commerce of the Temple improper worship.  And just after the teaching about the widow’s mite, Jesus claims the grandeur of the Temple will not last, predicting its destruction later in the first century.  The widow is a model of faithfulness in the midst of a place where organized religion has become a racket.

            Here Jesus singles out the scribes, religious authorities Jesus describes as the well-dressed, pious, high society types. Throughout Mark’s gospel, the scribes appear as the challengers to Jesus’ authority.  When Jesus begins his ministry, it is said he taught “as one with authority”, affirming Jesus’ status as teacher and healer. In the same breath, Mark notes that as Jesus is recognized, he is not decidedly nothing like the scribes.  Jesus criticizes the scribes for the limelight yet keeping some pretty shady practices.  The scribes are unveiled as pious and predatory. 

            Read any passage in Mark where the scribes are mentioned, and you find in the scribes’ behaviors and practices the opposite of Jesus’ teachings on discipleship.  Jesus tells his disciples to be servants, stating the first is last and the last is first.  The scribes maneuver for “first place”. The disciples are told to go out with few supplies and clothing to proclaim Jesus’ word.  The scribes wear long robes to signal their status to any onlookers. The scribes pray and then prey on the vulnerable.  Jesus’ prayers turn his followers back to the needs of the marginalized.  The widow gives modestly, the scribes devour immodestly.  (I am indebted to the Fleddermann article for his reading of the contrary witness of Jesus’ way versus the scribes’ ways.)

How do we rightly read sacred text?  The same scriptures that Jesus stood upon, those we call the “Hebrew Scriptures”, called for the faithful to protect “the widow, the orphan, and the sojourner in your midst”.  The scribes claimed expertise in these same texts while creating exploitative systems of religion. Standing upon the prophetic tradition, Jesus envisioned an alternative to the Temple, a community of humble servants given to a new understanding of authority and abundance where the widow is not least.  In her, the fullness of the gospel is made known.

From time to time, I recall in my sermons the witness of Baptists who identified strongly with this facet of the gospel.  I note that the great “social witnesses” of Baptists (folks like Walter Rauschenbusch, Clarence Jordan, Martin Luther King, Jr.) heard the clear call of Jesus to wed “gospel” with “justice”, only to experience many a cold shoulder from other Baptists who considered work among the poor and advocacy for social concerns to be less important, if at all, to the “real” work of the church. Jesus cared passionately about those who were forgotten, and yet the Church tends to keep the fuller gospel at arm’s length.  The widow’s mite challenges us to speak with humility about our stewardship and our religious ideals.  How do we live out the ways of Jesus, given as they are to humility, service, and care for the least of these? 

The widow walks through the midst of the Church. Some look at her with nostalgia, fondly remembering her giving but neglecting “the rest of the story” of the harsh life she lived.  Others yearn for her to tell us anew the might of the mite, how to give to God with integrity and hearts open to the gospel. What lessons still await us in the pondering of this teaching about the widow’s mite?

      Old widow, take us by the hand. Teach us your ways. Show us in the midst of the hardships of life the faithfulness that keeps you close to God.  Help us give of ourselves, so that we might draw closer to the One who gave away his very life.