An Unsettling Development in East Africa

On Monday Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni signed into law a draconian bill that would impose extremely harsh penalties for homosexual activity. Simply having a sexual encounter with someone of the same sex can land you in jail for the rest of your life. The very attempt to engage in gay sex is punishable by a decade in prison. And “aggravated homosexuality,” which includes same-sex relations with children or disabled persons, can earn you the death penalty. The international community came out against the bill forcefully, but the Ugandan legislature and president were defiant. These measures are now enshrined in law.

Christians and other people of goodwill can disagree about the moral acceptability of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism, and the like, but I think we can all agree that life-imprisonment for one episode of consensual sex between two men or two women is beyond the pale. When you consider that the driving force behind the passage of this law were churches and para-church organizations in both Uganda and the United States, it brings the question a lot closer to home.

How is a person of conscience, a follower of Jesus, to respond not only to the enactment of this law in a country across the ocean but also to the climate of intolerance that led to it and that is alive and well right here in the good ol’ US of A? The archbishop of the Church of Uganda is on record as saying that LGBTQ+ groups are “recruiting [Ugandan] children into homosexuality,” and that suspicion is shared by many people in our country. The recent rash of “anti-trans” and anti-drag laws in various states can be traced in large measure to the fear that some mysterious group or force is intent on “grooming” our kids.

My personal belief is that every person is made in the image of God and is loved by God beyond all measure. Voluminous evidence now points to the conclusion that homosexuality is an orientation, not a preference. If this is so, then we have to do some soul searching about how we treat LGBTQ+ persons. If they bear the image of God just as surely as straight, cisgender persons, then we have to face the fact that when God commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves, that includes our gay neighbors, our trans neighbors, our lesbian neighbors, and so on. (In fact, even if we still insist it’s a preference rather than an orientation, and therefore gayness is a sin, we are still commanded to love these neighbors as we love ourselves. Jesus offers neither an exclusionary clause nor a loophole to the command to love.)

Today is the first day of what has been designated LGBTQ+ Pride Month, so it’s a perfect opportunity to explore our feelings and convictions about these issues. What does the Bible really say about homosexuality, and how are we to understand it? In what direction is the Holy Spirit leading the church to act toward our gay neighbors? And how can we, in our current social and political environment, avoid going down the dark path that Uganda insists on traveling? What can we do as individuals and as a church to choose love over hate and acceptance over condemnation, however we may define those terms?

Playing Along: A Prose Poem Starring Judas Iscariot

The plink plink of water dripping in the bowl is the only sound in the room. Even the breathing has seemed to stop, save for the occasional sharp-indrawn breath or gasp as the rabbi’s callused laborer’s hands grasp a heel or sponge an instep with his sopping rag. Every reddened face is turned away, as if not to look is to banish the embarrassing scene playing out in this silent room—a scene in which we are all unwilling participants. I wait toward the end of the line, and I promise myself that if nobody does it before me I will put a stop to this perversity, this unholy upheaval of the order of things. All these are sheep, I grumble inwardly, mildly going along with another of the rabbi’s wild flights of fancy, his infuriating object lessons. One by one they raise their feet in meek collusion with his degradation. I scoff (silently) and vow not to play along.

Oh, I understand the lesson. It is the rabbi’s way of last-shall-be-firsting us into a new mold of community where the great are those who will abase themselves and act the slave, serving the dinner, scrubbing the crockery, washing the dirty feet. He has always been enamored of these turnabout notions of flipping the world on its ear, but a fundamental question remains unanswered: how will this—any of this—bring in the kingdom? All that matters is throwing off the brutal yoke of the Kittim; these little enacted parables of topsy-turvy social relations and open table fellowship may be all well and good, but will they bring the revolution? Not the one I’m looking for. I refuse to play along.

The rabbi draws nearer. He comes to Shimon, and finally someone objects! His gruff whisper fairly echoes in the quiet room: “You will never wash my feet!” But the rabbi leans in close, murmurs something in Shimon’s ear, and to my chagrin shears another sheep. Another dirty foot comes clean, another soldier falls in line, another disciple plays along.

Plink plink goes the dripping water, and I am next. The towel by this time is a filthy, soggy mess, and any pretense of cleaning has long gone by the boards. Still, the lesson holds, and he spells it out for the obtuse among us: “You call me Lord, but I am among you as one who serves,” and, “What I have done for you, you must do for one another.” Well, we will see about that. See if I play along.

I know how power works. I know on which side the bread is buttered. I can see who wields the sword in our land, and I know the only way to win is to wield a bigger sword. The governor has the priests in his pocket, and they think they have me in theirs. But my pocket holds thirty silver coins, the price of Joseph when his brothers sold him, and it will buy swords and hands to wield them. When the rabbi comes to his senses, when he realizes his destiny as the son of David, he will forswear these foolish games, set down his ridiculous bowl and towel, and take up the mantle of our mightiest king. All he needs is a little push, and he will play along.

I’m prepared to give him that push. A little night raid, a little kiss, and he will come around. He will—he must!—shake off these silly dreams of peace. They have no place in a time of war. For the fever of rebellion we need rebels, not foot washers. Lost in these thoughts, I am surprised when I feel those rough fingers wrap around my ankle and the wet cloth slide over my toes. I look up sharply to see the rabbi staring into my eyes with a look of indescribable sorrow and love and fury, as though he has read my thoughts, understands my plan, foresees the tableau in the garden, and knows he will not play along.

A Changeable, Faithful God

Traditional Christian theology, influenced by Hellenistic philosophy, has often depicted God as essentially changeless—the Unmoved Mover, as Aristotle put it. Impassivity was considered a virtue in a deity, partly because it contrasted so strongly with the capricious nature of gods and goddesses in pagan mythology. To be unchangeable was to be dependable; an Unmoved Mover could not be influenced or shaken by outside forces, but could rather be relied upon to be the same “yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8).

The problem is that picture of God does not match what we find in the Bible. The biblical God is personal, passionate, and intimate. God gets involved in the lives of God’s people; God becomes angry; God is hurt by the people’s faithlessness; God loves. God seeks out relationship with created beings, and relationships by their very nature require the ability to be affected and, in big and small ways, changed. One can’t have a relationship with a rock. God must be changeable in order to be a true relationship partner with us. Changeable does not mean unreliable, of course. God can be subject to being changed by God’s interactions with us but still be faithful, dependable—a rock, metaphorically speaking.

We find a clear example of God’s changeability in the third chapter of Jonah. In response to Jonah’s reluctant preaching, the entire city of Nineveh repents. They declare a fast and wear sackcloth and “cry mightily to God” (v. 8). If they held to the picture of God as Unmoved Mover, this activity would be futile, but the king and the people go through with the acts of repentance anyway. Their reasoning is based on the possibility of God’s changeability: “Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish” (v. 9).

Their gamble pays off. When God sees their response to Jonah’s preaching, God changes the divine mind about the planned punishment. In the language of the King James Version of the Bible, God “repent[s] of the evil” God had planned. That’s a striking, even jarring way of putting it, but it simply means that God has chosen a different response from what God had intended. In relationship with the people of Nineveh, God is changed.

Process theology promotes this idea that God can be changed by interaction with creation. In fact, in the process view change is essential. Every moment God is involved in a sort of negotiation with the matter, from quarks and molecules to human beings to galaxies, that makes up the universe. God always seeks the best for God’s relationship partners, but God only works by persuasion, so matter, including each of us, can resist God’s entreaties. We can follow our own ways, make our own choices, reject divine guidance in favor of our own meager wisdom. When that happens, God adjusts. God adapts to the new situation produced by our resistance and tries again in these changed circumstances to draw us back to the better path.

God loves, so God changes to remain in a dynamic relationship with us. God loves, so God never writes us off. God loves, so God holds out hope that we will come to our senses, repent, and join in the effort to realize God’s dream of peace, abundance, and reconciliation. Thanks be to our ever-changeable, ever-faithful God!

The Blue Whale

I watched an episode of “Nature” last night on PBS, and it was all about large animals—how they survive, how they feed themselves, what their biggest challenges are, and so on—and it featured the biggest animal of all, the blue whale. Not only is it the largest animal in the world today, but scientists also believe it to be the largest animal that has ever existed. At as much as  100 feet and 220 tons, it dwarfs even the biggest of the dinosaurs.

It is an awesome thing (and I don’t use the word “awesome” casually—ask anybody) to watch this gargantuan beast rise to the surface of the ocean for air and then to return to the depths, the length of its body arcing back into the water with a final flourish of its massive fluke. One can only imagine the breathtaking wonder one would experience to be in the actual presence of this giant of the deep.

I do imagine it regularly, and in a particular context. For the past couple of years I have engaged in the nightly practice of centering prayer. This is an apophatic type of prayer, which means it involves clearing one’s mind in order to experience the presence of God. Centering prayer is silent prayer; one does not put words to requests, supplications, or expressions of praise. Instead, one sits in the silence and seeks to clear one’s mind of thoughts as much as possible in order to “be still, and know that God is God,” to paraphrase the psalmist.

Ay, there’s the rub. I can sit in silence; I can make my body still; but I have great difficulty stilling my thoughts. So what I do is to use imagery. One tenet of centering prayer (and other contemplative practices) is that we encounter God in the depths of our being. So I imagine my depths as the ocean, and I visualize myself floating in the water where it is deep enough to block out sound and light. I try to rest there and let my thoughts pass as though they were ships on the surface of the sea far above.

I don’t know if I came up with this next thing, or if it came to me from another source, but lately I have started imagining a blue whale passing silently by where I am floating. I am always awed by the immensity of this being, and I imagine that the whale is God swimming up from the depths to meet me. This is how I experience the mysterium tremendum, the “tremendous mystery” of the divine presence that Elijah experienced at the mouth of his cave when the “sound of sheer silence” served as prelude to the word of God coming to him. It is the frightening holiness of the presence of God that Moses encountered in the bush that burned but was not consumed.

We sometimes become too familiar with God. We can fall into the habit of thinking of prayer as akin to borrowing a cup of sugar from our next-door neighbor. And God is indeed intimately present with us in all the mundane moments of our lives. But we need also to remember that the Divine is a transcendent mystery possessed of power and glory we cannot begin to fathom. Like a blue whale sliding past us in the silent darkness, multiplied by a million. It is good, I think, to be a little afraid when we approach God. It helps us to maintain a sense of respect and awe, and it guards us against over-familiarity. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and wisdom says, “Take off your shoes (or swim fins, as the case may be), for the place where you are standing (or floating) is holy.” Holy ground. Holy water. Holy presence.

Sound Teaching

The writer of 2 Timothy claims to be Paul, and he claims to be writing to his protégé Timothy, but many scholars have serious doubts about whether this is true. Paul and Timothy were historical figures who lived and worked in the decades following the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus in the year 29 or 30 CE. Tradition tells us that Paul was martyred in Rome around the year 64, during the imperial reign of Nero. Timothy’s death is described in a couple of different yet similar traditions to have taken place in the city of Ephesus, where he was beaten to death by a mob in the year 97.

If these dates are at all accurate, we encounter a problem. Reputable scholars date the composition of the “pastoral epistles” (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) no earlier than the first or second decade of the 2nd century, well after both men’s deaths. This leads to the conclusion that someone else wrote the letters using the name Paul as a pseudonym. This was actually a common practice at the time—writers would seek both to honor a personage from the past and to boost their own authority by claiming that person’s name. This was considered acceptable in a time when there were no plagiarism laws.

The reason for a later date for the pastoral epistles is that in many cases they are not only incompatible with Paul’s thought as we know it from his undisputed letters (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon) but also at times directly undermines Paul’s ideas. An examination of the seven genuine epistles reveals a Paul who is quite radical. Convinced that the second coming of Jesus was imminent, Paul counseled the churches he planted throughout Asia Minor and Greece to live under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. He emphasized spiritual gifts such as healing, prophecy, and speaking in tongues as indispensable elements of church life (see 1 Corinthians). He declared the obliteration of ethnic and gender distinctions in the church (see Galatians). And he promoted the liberation of slaves (see Philemon). Although his letters contain some obscure instructions about women’s head coverings and the like, in his actual practice he counted several women among his partners in ministry, even fellow apostles (see Romans, Philippians, et al.).

Apparently, the radical nature of Paul’s ideas made some later leaders in the churches uncomfortable. In Ephesians and Colossians we see an edging away from Paul’s views on women and slaves and an advancement of more traditional and conservative roles for those groups. These letters were probably written in the generation after Paul’s death. The apostle’s predictions of the return of Christ had not yet come true, and church leaders began to perceive a need to tone down Paul’s charismatic approach.

This tendency only intensified in the following generation. By then the idea of a purely Spirit-led church seemed not only hopelessly out of date but also dangerous. Around this time the Gnostic movement was gaining steam, and some church leaders were alarmed by such “heretical” teachings. What was needed, these leaders decided, was the development of doctrines and creeds to define the faith and decide who was in and who was out. While they were at it, they asserted their patriarchal control by circumscribing the liberty of women that Paul had encouraged and excluding them from leadership roles in the church. It is in the pastoral epistles that we hear “Paul” say that he does not allow women to speak in church or to have authority over men. The brief period during which women held coequal leadership with men had come and gone.

In 2 Timothy 1:13–14 we see this emphasis on—and we even get a hint of anxiety about—true doctrine. “Paul” warns “Timothy” to “hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.” Note the emphasis on “sound teaching” and the need to “guard” it. Note also that the Spirit, whom the genuine Paul viewed as the driving force of the church, has now been relegated to the role of rubber-stamping the doctrine.

This kind of institutionalization and regimentation are unavoidable. Abraham Maslow identified the process by which one person’s or group’s “peak experience,” such as a direct encounter with the Holy, if it is to be carried on to future generations must be shored up by organizational structures to perpetuate something resembling the original experience for those several times removed from it. Jesus and Paul could look to the Spirit to communicate their vision; “Paul” and “Timothy” and other 2nd-century figures had to have something extra. Rules about who can serve as leaders. Rules excluding women from positions of authority. Sound teaching to counter the poison of heresy.

In our day, how do we balance the need for structure and doctrine with the equally (or more) important need for the wind of the Spirit to blow through and shake our foundations every once in a while? Which need do you find most compelling? Are you more of an advocate of sound teaching and rules of order, or do you prefer the wild and unpredictable ride that comes with the movement of the Spirit? Can you see the value in both? How can we honor “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3) while also celebrating the truth that, as the United Church of Christ says, “God is still speaking”?

Optimism and Its Discontents

Optimism is overrated.

That is, of course, the sort of thing you might expect me to say. This blog is called “The Hopeful Curmudgeon,” after all. I am indeed a curmudgeon—one who sees the world through a jaundiced eye much of the time. I notice the little annoyances of life and see how they are often symptoms of bigger problems. The person who drives in the passing lane on the highway right next to another car, so there is no way to get around them, demonstrates the self-centeredness that plagues our contemporary world. Same thing with what passes for “customer service” in most places of business these days. Or consider the nefariousness of corporations who provide shoddy products or services, then put some non-offending kid on the phone to bear the brunt of the consumers’ anger while those who are really responsible never have to hear this deserved criticism. And don’t get me started on insurance and pharmaceutical companies, who rate their own circle in Dante’s Inferno.

There’s more, trust me. And after hearing me rant about these nightmares of the modern world for a while, you might conclude that I have a negative orientation toward life. But that’s where the word “hopeful” comes in. I call myself a hopeful curmudgeon, because despite all the evidence to the contrary I still hold out hope that things will turn out right in the end. I believe in resurrection and redemption. I believe that the commonwealth of God, present now only in fits and starts, will one day permeate the world the way kudzu blankets the ground.

But hope and optimism are not the same thing. Optimism doesn’t take into account the reality of evil in the world; it doesn’t take seriously humanity’s fallen nature. Optimism is a hear-no-evil-see-no-evil view of life, and I have little patience for it.

Worse, optimism can be a flat-out lie. Consider the inhabitants of Samaria and Ephraim who appear in Isaiah 9. They say, “The bricks have fallen, / but we will build with dressed stones; / the sycamores have been cut down, / but we will put cedars in their place” (v. 10). This is Pollyanna material, the stuff of politicians’ promises. “We may have had a setback or two, but we will come back stronger than ever before.” The Iraqis may have risen up in a counterinsurgency, but we will “smoke them out of their holes.” Our economy and infrastructure may be in a shambles, but we will “build back better.”There is never a problem that we can’t fix with good old American knowhow and a little elbow grease.

But listen to how the prophet describes this attitude: he calls it “pride and arrogance of heart” (v. 9). I have long held that true humility is not a matter of playing down one’s strengths but rather assessing one’s strengths and weaknesses accurately—not putting oneself down or glossing over one’s defects, but knowing who one is and acting accordingly. As such, the humble thing is to drop the false bravado or pandering exaggeration and see the world the way it really is. Not with pride and arrogance but with hard-headed realism.

I can’t help thinking about the energy crisis, and the way so many politicians and pundits say the solution is to “drill, baby, drill” or to increase fracking, and that if we would just subsidize the coal and oil industries a little more, all our problems would be solved—we’ll plant cedars in place of the sycamores. Or in the other camp, Joe Manchin’s recent turnabout on the climate bill means we have global warming licked—we’ll use dressed stones where there once were bricks.

A humble, realistic approach, however, looks clear-eyed at the situation and says what the Democrats have proposed is a good start, but it’s far from what we need to do to halt climate change, much less to reverse it. We are standing on the brink of a precipice saying, “Look at this view! I think I’ll build a summer house here,” refusing to acknowledge that the avalanche has already begun.

I still hold out hope for our world, because I believe in the commonwealth of God and in the power of God to bring about change. But God is not going to do it unilaterally; God works in partnership with us, so it would behoove us to take off the rose-colored spectacles, listen to the experts who have been telling us (for decades now) what we need to do, and get to work doing it. No optimistic everything-will-turn-out-right magical thinking, and no pessimistic surrender to despair, but a humble and hopeful intention to cooperate with our Creator and put in the work.

The Ministry of Vulnerability

In Matthew 10 Jesus is preparing his disciples to go out into the villages and towns of Palestine to declare the coming of the commonwealth of God and to invite people to follow his Way, and he is giving them a last bit of advice before they go. “I am sending you out,” he says, “like sheep into the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (v. 16). He predicts that they will face rejection and persecution, and he urges them to trust the Holy Spirit to enable their testimony under duress. Just as he will make the good confession before the powers of the temple state and the Roman administration before dying at their hands, Jesus encourages his disciples to make themselves vulnerable, with nothing but the truth and the grace of God to protect them.

But what kind of protection is that? To the world’s way of looking at things, it is no protection at all. The metaphor Jesus uses is apt: sheep have no means to protect or defend themselves against a pack of ravening wolves. This is not a mission for the faint of heart, nor is it one most of us would sign up for.

But it is our mission, too. I believe strongly that God is calling us to a ministry of vulnerability. When we are threatened, we tend to reach for a weapon to defend ourselves. That’s certainly the way most Americans, including millions who self-identify as Christians, respond to threats. Our national love affair with guns, combined with our susceptibility to the myth of redemptive violence, means that most of us accept the necessity of resorting to violent means of defending ourselves and our families. Many of us don’t give it a second thought. We have baptized violence and, in Bruce Cockburn’s memorable phrase, “[made] the gun into a sacrament.”

We, however, are called to something higher and better. We are called to the counterintuitive ministry of vulnerability. Too many Christians are happy to go out into the world like wolves in the midst of sheep. Too many of us are prepared to mow down our enemies, either metaphorically or literally. But that is the opposite of what Jesus says in Matthew 10. He places his Way in opposition to the way of the world known as the Domination System and the theology of that system known as the myth of redemptive violence. He calls the power-over of the System heresy and declares our attachment to the Myth idolatry. He calls us instead to embrace a different kind of power, power-with, which works on the basis of cooperation rather than competition, empowerment rather than domination, vulnerability rather than violence.

This week we have seen stark evidence of the Domination System at work. From court rulings that revoke women’s right to bodily autonomy and strike down long-standing measures to rein in gun violence to testimony that the former president intentionally unleashed armed assailants on the Capitol and nodded his approval of chants calling for the execution of his own vice president, our sheepfold has been attacked from all sides by wolves masquerading as sheep. The church I serve in Ohio saw the rainbow flag displayed in the yard burned and encountered threats from one of these wool-clad wolves to expose us as the “ABOMINATION” he just knows we are.

The question we face in light of these circumstances is how to respond. The temptation is to fight fire with fire, hate with hate, violence with violence. But as Jesus would be quick to tell us, fighting fire with fire only burns the world down faster. One of his more articulate disciples reminds us that hate can never drive out hate; only love can do that.

Our calling, then, is to face these threats, this bad news, these hungry wolves, with love. With the wisdom of serpents but the gentleness of doves. With vulnerability. That’s how Jesus conquered the powers of his day, after all: by striding sheepishly into the wolf pack and absorbing all the violence and hate they could dish out without responding in kind. By doing so, he broke the power of the Domination System.

Tragically, we continue to revive that System, re-awaken those Powers, and give them permission to enslave us all over again every time we take on the attributes of the wolves instead of the sheep. It is high time we embraced the Way of Jesus, which is the way of the cross. It stands in stark contrast to the way of the fist, the way of the gun, the way of the coup. It functions on vulnerability and power-with. It doesn’t make any sense to us most of the time, but it is our high calling and our one true hope.

A Prayer for Uvalde

We keep learning new names:
Topp’s, Parkland, Pulse, Uvalde.
We keep lighting candles, leaving
teddy bears at chain-link shrines,
offering prayers and tears,
anger and anguish.

Nothing ever changes.

t’s not the right time, say the custodians
of tragic etiquette, the interpreters of propriety
in a time of brutality—
it’s not the right time
to talk about reform,
to suggest regulation,
to offer solutions.
This is a time of grieving;
let the families mourn, let the nation weep
and forget.

How long, O Lord?

How long before we wake from our restless slumber
of acquiescence to evil, our cooperation
with the works of the devil?
How long until we elect representatives
who care more for our precious children
than their precious guns,
until their thoughts and prayers
take on the proper angle to fly the confines
of their own minds, until they begin
to think and pray the right thin
and backbone to value life over reelection,
until they think it better to protect their souls
than to sell them?

And for us, the voting public?
How long until we stop rewarding scoundrels
with seats, until we raise our voices
and demand representation
that reflects our wishes,
our values; until we stop playing
and demand democracy?

And for us, the church,
the people of God?
How long until we stand unapologetically
for life, until we set our faces like flint
and say no to the executioner,
no to the border warrior,
no to the incarcerator,
no to the up-by-your-bootstraps orator,
no to the gunmaker,
no to the lobbyist for evil,
no to the Ayn Rand-reading solipsist,
no to the killing cop and the cop killer,
no to the race-baiter,
no to the “pro-life” hypocrite,
no to the “pro-choice” ideologue,
no to the pandering, AR-15-toting legislator,
no to the union buster,
no to the billionaire,
no to the tycoon,
no to the conspiracy theorist,
no to the devil in his Gucci shoes and thousand-dollar haircut,
no to the devil in overalls at the photo-op with the tractor,
and yes to life,
yes to hope,
yes to justice,
yes to you?

Uproot us, Lord, from the soil
that has become too comfortable;
send us into the world like dandelion parachutes,
ready to spread the contagion,
the promiscuous weedy plenitude
of the commonwealth of God,
where the lambs lie down with the wolves
and all the children come home from school
at the end of the day.

Amen.

Flowing Oil

It's an age-old story: a woman has fallen on hard times after the death of her husband, and now dire consequences loom. In the case of the widow we encounter in 2 Kings 4, her debts are so great that a creditor has threatened to take her two children as slaves. She is so destitute that all she has in her house is a little olive oil.

Her husband was a member of a guild of prophets, so the widow goes to Elisha, the chief prophet in Israel, for help. She explains her predicament, and Elisha tells her to go to her neighbors and collect as many jars and other containers as she can get. She does as he instructs, and then he tells her to start pouring her little jar of oil into these vessels and not to stop until she runs out of them.

So she starts pouring, and it’s as if a spigot has been opened, because the oil starts to flow and doesn’t stop until she has filled every jar, pan, and bottle the neighbors have brought her. Elisha tells her to sell the oil, pay off her debts, and then live off the remainder of the proceeds. The wonder-working prophet has saved the day yet again.

As I was reading this story I began reflecting on its deeper meanings. What is the significance of the various elements of the story? What can we learn from the widow’s experience?

First and foremost, I think, is the assurance that God cares for vulnerable people like widows and orphans. If you have read the Bible much at all, you already know this, but it’s never wrong to be reminded of this truth. Over and over again in the Torah we find laws meant to provide for the poor, the widow, the stranger in the people’s midst. The prophets channel God’s indignation at the rich and powerful people’s uncaring treatment of these marginalized ones. In the gospels Jesus takes the side of widows and other powerless types, in one instance going so far as to raise a widow’s son from the dead so she would not be left without a protector. His brother James distills the essence of true religion as “to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (James 1:27).

In addition to all these examples, we need only look at the careers of Elisha and his predecessor Elijah to see how often they come to the aid of poor widows. Both of them perform great wonders for them, including the resuscitation of dead loved ones. It is hard to miss the truth that orphans and widows hold a special place in God’s heart.

Another thing I wonder about this story is how it relates to the life of faith. Elisha tells the widow to gather as many vessels as she can, and the oil stops flowing after the last of them has been filled. Is this a metaphor for faith? Were there more receptacles to be found, but she stopped before collecting them all? Presumably the oil would have continued flowing as long as she found more jars to hold it. Could she have exercised greater faith by going to neighbors farther afield? Could she have stretched herself a little more? It’s certain that she could have shortchanged herself by gathering fewer containers, but is the reverse also true?

I don’t know the answer to that, and the text gives no indication of judgment on the widow, but I still wonder. How many jars would I have collected? To what lengths would I have gone to see that the oil kept flowing? Would I have risked rejection or humiliation in my quest for more vessels? Would I have shown creativity by finding other holders for the oil—wineskins, perhaps—that were not as obvious?

When it comes to faith, by which I mean wholehearted trust, do you measure up to the example of the widow? How long would the oil flow for you? If the oil in this story represents life, how much life would your faith buy you? Just a few things to ponder during these days of Lenten reflection.

Book Burners Beware

Chapter 36 of Jeremiah offers a cautionary tale that is as relevant today as it was twenty-six centuries ago. It unfolds in three acts.

In act one (vv. 1–19) God tells Jeremiah to write down the various oracles and judgments he has been pronouncing, presumably under God’s direction, for some time. The content of these prophecies is God’s judgment on the nation of Judah and its rulers for their idolatry, for forsaking the covenant and the ways of God. As punishment for their unjust behavior, the prophet says God will send the armies of the Babylonian Empire to conquer Judah. Jeremiah follows God’s instructions, dictating his words to his aide Baruch and then sending him to the temple to read the scroll aloud. Among those who hear these alarming words are some of the king’s officials, who take the scroll and warn Baruch to get Jeremiah and go into hiding, but quick.

Act two (vv. 20–26) opens in the court of King Jehoiakim. The king’s officials relay to him the words of the scroll, including some choice oracles condemning him and his royal administration particularly. Sitting before the fire in his winter apartment, Jehoiakim has one of his officials read a few lines at a time, and then he cuts them from the scroll and feeds his fire with them, until he has burned the entire scroll. “Yet neither the king, nor any of his servants who [hear] all these words, [is] alarmed, nor [do] they tear their garments” (v. 24). The king then orders the arrest of Jeremiah and Baruch, but God hides them.

Act three (vv. 27–32) represents God’s response to the king’s actions. God instructs Jeremiah to reproduce the former scroll and to add some new bits addressed directly to the king: 

Thus says the Lord, You have dared to burn this scroll, saying, Why have you written in it that the king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land, and will cut off from it human beings and animals? Therefore thus says the Lord concerning King Jehoiakim of Judah: He shall have no one to sit upon the throne of David, and his dead body shall be cast out to the heat by day and the frost by night. And I will punish him and his offspring and his servants for their iniquity; I will bring on them, and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and on the people of Judah, all the disasters with which I have threatened them—but they would not listen (vv. 29–31).

It’s not hard to see the parallels between Jeremiah’s time and ours. Too many people in positions of influence in our nation want to suppress the truth. They have their own narratives that do not fit the inconvenient facts. Whether it has to do with supposedly stolen elections or ridiculous conspiracy theories or the politicizing of vaccinations and mask-wearing, we have factions in this country who are in essence cutting away the words of the scroll of truth and burning them in the fire. Never mind that the results of their reality-bending are the erosion of our democratic norms, or the suppression of millions of votes, or thousands upon thousands of preventable deaths. The purveyors of lies ignore the warnings of prophets and scoff at the word of God. And they are not alarmed, nor do they tear their garments.

I don’t believe that God directly punishes people for their sins in a quid pro quo fashion, but I do believe that our words and actions have consequences. If we stand for falsehood instead of truth; if we blind our eyes to the harm we do to others, to ourselves, and to the earth; if we put our faith in any person or ideology rather than in God; if we burn books instead of reading and learning from them and opening ourselves to being changed by them; we will deserve whatever consequences come our way.

Honor God, respect truth, practice compassion and justice. And when the words of the scroll are alarming, be alarmed. Tear your garments. Repent. And in God’s name stop burning the books!

Troubling Questions from Newport News

There have been a lot of big news stories in the past week or so—devastating storms in California, anti-democratic riots in Brasília, Kevin McCarthy’s exhausting bid to become Speaker of the House, the disclosure that President Biden’s staff found classified documents at his former office, Russian victories and Ukrainian resistance in that nearly one-year-old war—but the incident I can’t get out of my head is the shooting of a teacher in Newport News, Virginia, by a six-year-old student. It’s a story that is hard to credit and that raises more questions than answers.

When small children get shot and killed, as in Uvalde, Texas, last year, it’s a nearly unspeakable tragedy. But this episode in Newport News brings a new and disturbing twist to the narrative of “school shootings” that has become so depressingly common in recent years. I know it can be like strolling through a minefield to bring up controversial political topics in a church setting, so to address this event I will stick to the questions that have come to my mind in its wake. I believe we as followers of Jesus must face these difficult questions, and I hope we will find the courage to share our thoughts and reactions openly and frankly but with grace.

• What possible reason could a six-year-old child have for shooting his teacher? This was not an accident; it was a deliberate act. Even if the reports are true that there had been some kind of altercation between the two, what could have led this boy to decide that firing a gun at his teacher was an appropriate action?

• How did the child get his hands on the weapon? Virginia law makes it a misdemeanor to store a firearm in a location accessible to children under age 14, but it does not require guns to be stored in a gun safe in the gun owner’s home.

• What sources influenced this child and convinced him that shooting someone was the way to solve whatever problem he may have been facing? It’s common practice to dismiss the “usual suspects” of violent video games, TV, movies, and music that glorifies violence as possible causes, but it is less often suggested that we and our children are immersed in a culture of violence that pervades almost everything we do. Even in church it’s possible to paint God as violent or abusive, and many Christians hold to a theory of the atonement that places divine violence at the center of their salvation faith. Could it be that events like this one are not aberrations but are a natural outgrowth of the way we are socialized from the cradle to the grave?

• How can we begin to balance the legitimate rights of gun owners to “keep and bear arms” with the right of others to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”? Is there any way around the impasse that prevents legislative bodies—from borough councils to Congress—from enacting reasonable reforms that will keep guns out of the hands of criminals, mentally unstable persons, and irresponsible parents without placing an undue burden on law-abiding citizens who want to hold onto their shotguns and are leery of government intrusion? Can we find an option based on compromise and common sense that skirts the all-or-nothing gridlock we find ourselves in now?

• Where were the parents? What kind of environment did they create in their home that allowed their first-grader to get his hands on a pistol and take it to school? This seems like criminal neglect to me—an attentive parent would have stored the gun more securely and would have known what was in the child’s backpack before he left for school. Whatever else happens in this case, there have to be consequences for these irresponsible “adults.”

• And finally, the question that hits us where we live: what is the role of the church? Opinions may differ, but I think at a bare minimum we have to develop and nurture a culture of peace to counter the broader culture’s fascination with violence. We need to model appropriate and responsible behavior, teaching both children and adults how to handle conflict and settle disputes using words instead of fists or weapons. And we need to overhaul our collective image of God—from that of bloodthirsty tyrant and aggrieved judge to loving parent who wants to guide us into the way of life.

Punk Miriam

The images we are used to seeing of Mary the mother of Jesus are of a demure young woman with her head bowed slightly in humble reverence. She is generally dressed in blue with a white head covering, and her features were until very recently universally European. I doubt you would need to close your eyes to visualize this iconic image of the Madonna.

But the little we know of the teenage Mary (or, more authentically, Miriam) from the gospel of Luke indicates that a different portrait may be in order. I imagine her as a punk, or what used to be known as a riot grrl, sporting spiky purple hair, black eyeliner and fingernails, a sleeveless vest to show off her tattoos, multiple piercings, maybe a thin chain running from nostril to earlobe. She was anything but demure, and she boldly made direct eye contact with all comers—women, men, even angels.

This Miriam was clearly a young woman of deep faith, but she did not interpret faith as a reason or a directive to be quiescent. She must have been fearful when the angel revealed her destiny, but she met her fear with a deep-rooted courage that was prepared to take on all challenges. How else could she expect not just to endure but to rise above the taunts, jeers, and outright threats she would face in her tiny village when her unexpected and (by human authority, anyway) unauthorized pregnancy became public knowledge? The punk Miriam would not be cowed by the misguided gatekeepers of conventional morality. She knew the truth, and that was enough.

We hear punk Miriam’s voice most clearly in her Magnificat, a rebel song if there ever was one. It is a song of reversals, of a world tipped on its side until the structures of domination and oppression topple, making space for a new reality where people, not systems or ideologies or multinational corporations, are in the ascendancy. 

[God] has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

[God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones

and lifted up the lowly;

[God] has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty (vv. 51–53).

These are not the words of “gentle Mary meek and mild,” but rather of a social reformer, a gadfly, a revolutionary even, who sees clearly the injustices under which she and her people live and who knows the remedy. She sings proleptically, “[God] has helped [God’s] servant Israel, / in remembrance of [God’s] mercy, / according to the promise [God] made to our ancestors, / to Abraham and to his descendants forever” (vv. 54–55). The solution lies, Miriam knows, where it always has: in the people’s covenant with God, and she boldly calls on God to uphold the divine end of the deal, just as her son, taught at her knee, will call on the people to hold up theirs.

Jesus—Yeshua—learns at the knee of punk Miriam. We don’t think about that very often. We assume that because he is the Son of God he comes by his radical thought and subversive action automatically. But just as the child Yeshua has to learn to walk and talk, so he has to learn how to look at the world and then to think and act accordingly. What better model can he have than the mother who is revealed in the words of the Magnificat?

Ave Maria. Hail, Punk Miriam!