an open and affirming community of faith
n open and affirming community where faith is questioned and formed, as relationships are made and upheld.
Jesus goes home and kicks a hornet’s nest of hospitality and inclusion to all—one that won’t finally settle down until the powers and principalities, the folks at the top, finally get their way and push him over the cliff on Good Friday.
Apparently, in the reign of God that Jesus announces, that’s what love requires.
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We’re called not just to point toward justice and peace but to be people who embody justice and peace.
We’re not just given the task of telling people about God’s grace and compassion; we’re given the responsibility of extending God’s grace and compassion to our neighbors—even the ones (perhaps especially the ones) with whom we wouldn’t be caught dead on a Saturday night.
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In other words, what endears Mary to God, at least according to Luke, has more to do with her poverty than with her probity. She probably is a really great person on the inside, but that's apparently not what draws God's attention.
God is moved by the fact that Mary's the perfect candidate for the kind of person on behalf of whom Jesus is being born to fight: a soon-to-be unwed mother from a backwater town on the poor side of nowhere. Her prospects in life added up to just about nothing.
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How do you think the poor, the outsiders, the depressed, the bereaved, and those who’ve felt abandoned by a system that values its own interests above all else would hear John the Baptist telling the followers of God to think first not about themselves, not about their pocketbooks, not about their profit margins and brokerage accounts, not about their reputations in the community, but to think first about the last, the least, the lost, and the dying?
What constitutes good news may just depend on where you’re standing when you hear it.
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If it feels like we already live in the lush lap of paradise, then maybe we aren’t properly situated to entertain the voice of liberation.
But if we’re in a hard land where things are fractured and flimsy, if we roam through forsaken country where the streams have dried up and the flowers have wilted in the blazing heat, if we find ourselves in a realm where dust fills our nostrils and tears leave tracks on our dirt-brown, weathered faces, then a voice crying out in the wilderness is music to ease our souls for ten thousand years.
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Apocalyptic is dismissed with a patronizing wave by the well-situated as fine for rubes and dullards. Sophisticated people, however, don’t pay much attention to the end-of-the-world talk.
But, I would like to suggest to you that the tendency to shrug off apocalypticism is a sign that we’ve grown too used to the way things are—which is to say, too used to a world that seems designed with people like us in mind. A world where one group enjoys a life of relative ease, while others do not is not the world God has in mind.
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It’s possible to live in fear, and to fail to live lives recognizable to Jesus—the one who embraced his fear, who—when presented with the opportunity to let love show the way—was never shy about walking down the dark alleys where fear lives and appears to make all the rules.
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Our passage this morning about the new Jerusalem doesn’t say that God’s home is among mortals … except for, you know, the Muslims, or the atheists, or the Republicans (or Democrats, depending on your politics). God doesn’t say, 'This place would be just perfect if we could get rid of the people who live on the other side of town, if we could just check papers for the undocumented, or the hoodlums, or St. Louis Cardinals fans (😉).' God says, 'Ok, so it’s a fixer-upper. I’ll take it. I’m going to do a little renovation anyway, but the neighborhood is just exactly my kind of people.'
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So when Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” I’m pretty sure I know how to respond. “This or that,” I think, is what will enable me better to follow Jesus “on the way.” A little tuck here, a pinch off there, and I’ll be good as new. I don’t need much. Already in pretty good shape.
But what if Jesus’ vision of what I need is different? What if Jesus sees a completely different road from the one I’ve been trained to expect? What if following Jesus is being given eyes to see that what formerly looked like failure is precisely the path down which I’ve been called?
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What the disciples demonstrate they don’t understand about Jesus’ mission has less to do with whether or not it will come true, but what it might mean if it does come true.
What do I mean?
Simply this: the disciples ask to have important positions alongside the new messiah, to be included in all the grand happenings after Jesus comes into his glory. They assume they know exactly what that glory will look like. That they don’t grasp Jesus is going to be killed as a common criminal demonstrates that they don’t really comprehend what kind of glory Jesus is going to come into—a kind of 'glory' to which nobody aspires.
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In the young man’s search to inherit eternal life, Jesus shows him that he needs the poor just as much as they need him. So, when the young man walks away dejected, it’s not only because he can’t bear to part with his stuff. Part of what drives him away is the thought of letting go of a system in which he has few needs, in favor of a system in which the powerless are on equal footing, a system in which the rich looking to inherit eternal life need the poor ... as much as the poor looking for an equitable community where everyone has enough need the rich.
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Jesus argues that God set down the law as a way of establishing a community whose primary purpose is to protect those who are often too defenseless to stand against the way the world is ordered. In other words, Jesus offers a vision of God’s reign that turns the taken-for-grantedness of those who are privileged on its head, and stands beside those who are too easily trampled by folks at the top of the food chain.
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According to James, we’re not called to believe the right things, say the right things, or have the right bumper stickers on our cars. According to James, our job is live like Jesus asked us to live.
Simple. Do the things Jesus did and people will see Jesus standing right in front of them. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, bind up the broken-hearted, give voice to those who have no voice, sing with those who sing, mourn with those who mourn, heal the sick, pray and cry and laugh and confess your sins—because Lord knows we’ve all got plenty to confess. And the miracle of it is, when the church begins to act like Jesus—it’s its own best advertisement.
And we don’t do any of those things because by doing them we’ll be successful, attract hoards of young families pulling trailers full of cash into our parking lot. We live like Jesus because it’s the right thing to do—because Jesus asked us to.
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Jesus isn’t talking about some subjective experience, some inconvenience, like being near-sighted or having an uncle whose an overbearing loudmouth nobody wants to sit next to at Thanksgiving dinner. The cross is something we decide to bear, something we take up, not some physical infirmity, our aches and pains. This is a voluntary thing, not something thrust upon us by genetics or lack of aptitude or just sheer bad luck—things over which we have no control.
The crosses we bear, like Jesus before us, have to do with the consequences we suffer in our determination not to stay silent in the face of injustice, with the pain and suffering we embrace as those who try to live like Jesus by saying “yes” to the vulnerable and the destitute, while saying “no” to those who operate the machinery of the death-dealing systems of domination.
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I believe this Syrophoenician woman challenges us to encounter newness and change not as a threat, but as God trying to break in among us and stretch our understanding of how big this welcome is we’re supposed to be giving, how expansive is the vision of just who God wants to offer hospitality to.
So, here’s what I think: We ought to be asking ourselves what kind of gifts God is sending us in people courageous enough to seek us out to see if there’s anything to this “Jesus thing.” Because sometimes God shows up looking like the very people we’ve spent so much of our lives avoiding.
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