Month: June 2015

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Love and Forgiveness

One of the Pharisees asked [Jesus] to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table.  And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment . . . Luke 7:36-37

This is the Jesus both believers and unbelievers like: friend to sorrowful, put-upon women, ready to forgive a “sinner” who, truth be told, was probably more sinned against.  We think of her as young, pretty, ashamed, overcome.  But maybe she wasn’t.

Suppose she is past her prime, a bit worse for wear, brash, coarse, and unrepentant?  The kind of pushy, chip-on-her-shoulder sinner who likes to say, “You think you’re better than me?  I’ve seen the way you turn up your nose and gossip among yourselves.  Silly cows.  I could dish some dirt on your husband, sister—and yours, old lady.”  “Sinner” probably means prostitute; if she were a man it could have meant extortionist or crooked merchant or innkeeper, but women were as limited in their sins back then as they were in their choices.  The point is, her reputation precedes her into the Pharisee’s house, and no amount of fragrant oil will make it smell good.

She obviously knows Jesus by reputation.  Perhaps, passing by on ordinary business, she caught one of his impromptu sermons or was witness to a healing.  An intriguing man, no question.  Perhaps she arranges to go that way again.  And again.  This time she lingers, staying well back.

What draws her?  She’s seen the worst in people, and “sinners” tend to become cynical.  At first glance, or first hearing, this teacher may have seemed like another charlatan, or an innocent who hasn’t wised up yet—the world would get to him sooner or later.  But a second and third glance forces a revision: this man has something on the world.  He knows.  But knowledge hasn’t made him “knowing” in that cheap, battered way she recognizes so well.  Perhaps, as he was speaking his eyes met hers and she realized—with a shock—that his knowledge was not general but quite specific.

It’s bold, to go to Simon the Pharisee’s house.  But she’s known for boldness, as well as other things.  She’ll go veiled, like a servant of one of the guests, and with luck no one will recognize her.  As for the alabaster jar—that was a gift, one of her treasures, given when she was younger and somewhat dewier.  Something moves her to take it, perhaps offer it to him as some sort of appreciation gift.  She has noticed women traveling along with him, with no damage to their reputations—imagine that!  The rumor is that some of them are well-to-do and have provided traveling funds.  If he accepts money from them, he shouldn’t be too proud to accept a gift from her.  A gift for . . . what?  Hard to say, exactly.  She could tell him it was for helping so many sick people in her town, or for the strong, winged words she doesn’t quite understand.  Perhaps just for the moment when his eyes met hers.

Anyway, here she is among the other observers of the feast, veiled and silent, awaiting her moment and hoping she’ll recognize it.  Perhaps she’s practiced what she will say and plans to make her little presentation when the guests get ready to take their leave.

Here she is, right behind him as he reclines at the table, his feet stretched toward her.  How lucky is this?  She will wait and listen to the table talk, and her moment will come and . . .

Here she is.

Here she is.  And . . . he knows.

He doesn’t just know she’s there—he knows her.  All about her.  Realizing what he knows is like beating herself with a lash.  He knows about that time she . . . And that other time she cheated . . . And the time she went to her rival’s house and . . .

The calculation drops, as well as the maneuvering and advantaging: here she is, and she is a sinner, just as they all say.  The empty space between them fills up with her, with her sins and rationalizations, finally seen as they really are by someone who can no longer deceive herself.  Her head bows and a single tear falls on his feet.  Than another and another.

She is revealed; the veil is cast aside.

She is undone; her hair tumbles down.

She is broken, the alabaster jar cracks.

the-woman

This women, who confronted the world with a knowing smirk, is a blubbering mess.  These aren’t just decorous tears; it’s also snot and spit.  Having no towel, she mops it up with her unbound hair.  She’s making a scene, and in faintly aware of voices directed her way as other men’s feet jerk aside.  But not his.  He is perfectly still, as though her hysterical offering were proper and decent.  She hears his voice, speaking about her.  Then she hears it speaking to her.

The gift, as it turns out, is not really hers to give.  It’s all his, and it’s something she had not believed she could have:

Forgiveness.

And peace.

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For the original post in this series, go here.

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Are You the One?

The disciples of John reported all these things to him.  And John, calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to the Lord, saying, “Are you the one who is to com, or shall we look for another?” (Luke 7:18-19)

Meanwhile, things haven’t been going well for John.  We already know (3:20) that he’s been locked up for preaching a little too close to home for the local authorities, and (holy as he is) it’s only human to have some doubts.

Envy has nothing to do with it.  He always knew that Messiah must increase.  But now he’s now sure the man he baptized and witnessed to is really the One.  Where’s the winnowing fork?  Where’s the ax laid to the root?  Where’s the fiery Holy-Spirit baptism?  Prison is not the problem, for John was prepared for anything.  Hang him up by his thumbs, roast him slowly over hot coals—no big deal as long as his message was true.  Get ready! Repent! Judgment is on its way with the Kingdom of Heaven close upon its heels!

But the reports he is hearing are not what he expected.John-in-prison

Messiah is making news, all right, but instead of judging people, he’s healing them.  The gist of his sermons is about loving your enemies and being like your Father in heaven.  Father?  And what’s all this about “Do not judge”?  John’s sermons were all about righteousness and the Kingdom and–yes, judging.  The righteous judgment of God was the whole point.  Languishing in Herod’s prison, his life hanging on the whims of a vindictive woman, John can’t take the ambiguity anymore.  He has to get an answer, even though Jesus might be angry.  Are you the one?  Or to put it another way, did I dedicate my life to cutting a path for you . . . for nothing?

The two disciples come back with some reassurance: Jesus wasn’t angry.  But he wasn’t a model of clarity either.  Imagine the conversation: “We stayed all afternoon and watched him heal people.  Scores of people—blind, cripples, lepers, demon-possessed.  He healed them all.  You should have heard the demons screaming as they gave up their grip!  In between, he talked.  Lots of people came just to listen to him.  He quoted that passage from Isaiah, the one about the Spirit of the Lord being on him and preaching good news to the poor.”

Good news, thinks John.  Not judgment, after all?

“He told us to tell you what we saw.  And one more thing: a message for you.”

“Yes?”

“He said, ‘Blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.”

Offense?! thinks John.  Was he taking offense?  No, he was just asking . . . or maybe . . . Well.

The prophet sitting in the dungeon, soon to lose his head, has no superior in the old order.  Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah—none are greater than he.  Yet this kingdom he preached was beyond even his comprehension.  The youngest child who finds a place in it is “greater” (in understanding, experience, love) than John.  Many, many years later, Jesus’s half-brother James would acknowledge this while writing to fellow believers: Elijah? Just a man, like you.  But he had no more access to the Father than you.  In fact, you have more.  You have a blood relationship, a living Spirit.

John, don’t be offended . . . The great message you delivered was vital and necessary, but only the half of it.

Elsewhere in Galilee, Jesus pauses in his healing and preaching to glance over at the ever-present peanut gallery: the scribes and Pharisees who, Luke informs us, rejected God’s plan for themselves.  They disapproved John, they disapprove Jesus: one a fanatic, possibly possessed; the other altogether too friendly with good food and wine and tax collectors.  The only religious figure who would satisfy them might be found by looking into a mirror.  Yet—“Wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”  The children, a motley rag-tag group for sure, are beginning to make themselves known.  In fact, well see one in the next chapter.

For the original post in this series, go here.

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Arise!

Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him.  As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her.  Luke 7:11-12

Widows’ sons die every day.  If the mother is blessed by extended family, not to mention other sons, she the-widowwill at least have shelter and food in exchange for watching the children or grinding the grain.  If not, she will have to piece out a living on charity.  The pressing nature of What will I do? crushes every other concern, even proper grieving, so on top of all her other problems is the burden of guilt: she is forced to worry about her own life even while grieving for his.  Why could their fates not be reversed?  Better for all concerned to let her go, let him live—take a wife and raise his children and continue the family line, as is proper and fitting.  Sad and angry and worried, she follows the pitiful bier, having spent her last pennies for the bare minimum of a respectable funeral, with a few paid mourners and a drum.

Widows’ sons die every day, but this day would see a turnaround.  As two “considerable crowds” meet at the city gate—his followers and her mourners—it’s not the dead son but the weeping mother who catches his eye.  He raises a hand to stop the procession, and to her he says, “Don’t cry.”

It’s one of those statements that, from anyone else, would seem almost cruel, especially to the chief mourner.  What do you mean, ‘Don’t cry’?  I have every reason in the world to cry, and there’s nothing to be said about it.  Shut your mouth and cry with me, or just move along.

But if she knows who he is (the crowd of eager rubberneckers behind him might have given her a clue), she would stop crying, her tears caught in her throat.  He heals the sick but he can’t raise the dead.  Can he?  She knows her nation’s history, and remembers that Elijah, the greatest of prophets, raised a widow’s son: he stretched himself out on the boy’s lifeless body and cried aloud to Yahweh, three times.

Jesus puts his hand on the bier—really nothing but a plank carried by two men, signifying a poor man’s burial.  Who is on the bier?  A young man, that’s all we know.  Perhaps a pious dutiful son or a casual jokey son—his mother’s joy or exasperation, either one, equally dead.  And Jesus is speaking to a corpse.  “I tell you . . .”  Not crying aloud to the Blessed one, not placing mouth to mouth or heart to heart.  Imagine the thoughts racing through the observers, especially the religious elite:

I (Who does he think he is?)

Tell (Tell?! What words can get through dead ears into a dead brain?)

You (Who is this ‘you’? That’s just a–)

“ARISE!”

Death is a mystery, both then and now.  Some ancient cultures kept watch over the body for a certain number of hours in case the spirit returned to it (rumored to happen, though almost no one has actually seen this).  Wise men of all cultures debated this most-common phenomenon: Does the spirit stay with the body, or how soon does it go, or is there a spirit, and can it return?  In this particular case, all agree it’s not near-death that confronts Jesus at the gates of Nain—it’s death.  The body and the spirit have parted company.

Was the spirit lingering nearby, or was it speeding toward the afterworld?  In either case, the Son of Man’s voice darts out like a harpoon; with a word it captures the young man’s spirit and pulls it back to the lifeless body.

Arise: air surges into the stilled lungs; the flaccid chambers of the heart clench; a rush of blood to the brain revives its memories.  Suddenly awake, the young man feels a hand close on his, lift it and place it in the last hand he remembers as life left him: Mother.  All the busy little engines of his body, down to the last threadlike capillary and blood cell, charge back into operation.  The broken connection is restored.

And awe fell over everyone.

For the original post in this series, go here.

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Just Say the Word

After he had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum.  Now a centurion had a servant who was sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued by him.  Luke 7:2

Back to Capernaum, where it all began.  There’s a centurion stationed in the town, a man who has reason to know of Jesus by reputation.  Stories get around, and since some of those stories happened right there in Capernaum, they don’t have to travel far.  This officer seems to be stamped from the same mold as Cornelius in Acts 10, also a Centurion stationed in Palestine: a sober, respectable, God-fearing man.  Both feared God coming too close to them, perhaps; God-fearer, in this context, means uncircumcised.  They admire from afar, until something happens to bring God near.  For Cornelius it was a dream; for this man, a crisis.

There’s one indispensable person in household, the man who keeps things in order while the master is on patrol or on maneuvers—the rare slave (or freed servant) whom one can totally trust with business, and who is also a friend.  Let’s call him Decius, and suppose that the officer comes back from patrol one day, calls for help removing his armor, and the houseboy appears.  What’s this?

“Where’s Decius?”

“He’s taken ill, sir—the physician fears he may die.”

The bottom drops out of an ordinary day.  Everywhere the master turns, he bumps his nose against some little matter that Decius always attended to, some loose end left awkwardly hanging, some thought that could not be shared.  Perhaps, after a few days spent distractedly, trying to carry on between visits to the bedside, watching a life fade away as its value multiplies, someone mentions that Jesus has returned.

Sharp need brings God near.  What the master admired by reputation—for Jesus is a prophet, obviously close to God–becomes painfully relevant.  He requests an audience with some of the Jewish elders, with whom he’s maintained respectful, formal relations: “If you would, please speak to Jesus, and pave the way carefully with any kind words that you may feel led to say on my behalf . . .”

centurion

He sees them off.  Perhaps an hour or two passes while he paces and frets.  Suddenly he smacks his forehead: Argh!  What am I thinking?  I know how authority works.  I don’t have to be standing over my soldiers all the time to see that they do their duties—I give a command; it’s done (or else).  The prophet is obviously too busy to come himself, but all he needs to do is speak to the evil spirits, or say a word to his all-powerful God.  The work of a moment, if he’ll only do it.

“Go, boy, tell him this: Just say the word, Master, and my servant will be healed.  Yes? Repeat it to me, so I know you have it . . . Good; now go—hurry!”

More pacing, as the fever rises and his faithful right-hand man tosses and turns in delirium.  My right hand—exactly.  Without him I’m hobbled, hindered, half-blind.

Perhaps, as Matthew says (Matt. 7:5ff), the officer cast all caution and decorum aside, flung himself out the door and went pelting down the road in search of the prophet.  If you want to get something done, better do it yourself. Perhaps he dashed up to Jesus, thrust aside the Jewish elders and gasped out his request.

Whether this centurion delivered it himself, or left it in the mouths of servants or representatives, we know the message: Just say the word, Lord; just say it, and I am completely confident it will happen.

But here’s another word—amazed.

Jesus heard this and was amazed at him . . . and said, “I tell you, I have not found so great a faith even in Israel!” (Luke 7:9)

I’m amazed that Jesus is amazed.  I forget his profound humility.  He’s already healed every disease, escaped a lynch mob, cast out demons, and established a new order of thinking.  He does it all!  He knows it all!  And yet he allows himself a cleared blue space that’s open to surprise.  Not by the unexpected mechanics of creation or the hidden beauties of the earth, but by us.  There is room in him to truly connect and honestly compliment where there is any small thing to praise.

It also shows what matters to him, what genuinely pleases him.  Not just words, but faith.  Real faith, no less real for being pushed roughly against a wall.

And speaking of “the word”–he says it, and the servant is healed.  All his servants are healed, sooner or later.

For the original post in this series, go here.

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Trees and Fruit, Rocks and Houses

No tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit . . . Everyone who comes to me, and hears my words and does them, is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.  And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it.  Luke 6:43, 47-48

About fifteen years ago, when we moved to this plot of ground, we planted a cherry tree .  It’s a good-looking tree, and most years, around this time of year it starts producing good-looking cherries.  But just as they’re turning ripe, this happens:

brown rot

To the best we can determine, it’s brown rot fungus, a condition that sounds as ugly as it looks.  It’s fixable, but not easily.  So we haven’t done anything about it yet.

Rot in the heart is hard to fix, too, and hard to completely hide.  But it always shows itself sooner or later.  Deep at the root of me is an unspoken conviction that I’m actually the most important person in the world, and sometimes—when I’m pressed or upset, or haven’t met three out of five of the goals I set for myself that day—I’m angry that others don’t recognize my importance.  Doesn’t the old man driving 50 mph ahead of me on this twisty country road realize I’m in a hurry?  Don’t the shoppers chatting in aisle 10 of WalMart understand they’re in my way?  Why doesn’t the woman at the Post Office see that she’s standing right in front of my PO Box?  Did she have to get here the same moment I did?

Of course, I only think that way when I’m stressed.  It’s not the real me.  Except, according to Jesus, it is.  These moments are bad-fruit alerts.

Yeah, sure, I’m trying to get better, and sometimes nobler reactions assert themselves.  And yet, “a man’s words flow out of what fills his heart” (6:45).  Anger, resentment, pride, greed, and envy lurk within my heart, and sometimes they pop up and try to look like legitimate grievance.   But soon enough the rot shows.

As I mentioned, the treatment for brown rot fungus is difficult: you have to cut off all the diseased twigs and fruit (called “mummies”—cute), and you can’t just rake them up in a pile.  You have to burn them.  Then apply a fungicide to the decimated tree, according to the manufacturer’s instruction.  It may take more than one application; you’ll have to wait a year and see if the fungus comes back.  “Prevention is the best treatment,” the websites say–which doesn’t help me a lot now.

Prevention (to switch metaphors) is like building a house.  A wise man will select his ground carefully, then mark it out and dig down to bedrock before laying stones for a foundation.  If you hear my words and do them, Jesus says, your house will rest on just such a foundation, and no storm will shake it.  His disciples may have scratched their heads at that, because what he had been talking about up to that time sounds just the opposite of prudent. Love your enemies, smile when people spit at you, give more than you’re asked, cheerfully let yourself be taken advantage of—anybody who follows this advice (or, as Jesus puts it, Does what I say) would be lining up outside the soup kitchen in a matter of months, right?  From that angle, Kingdom living looks like dumpster diving.

But maybe at the bottom of these commands is one rather large assumption: You are not the most important person in the world.  I am.

That is, this man who apparently gave up a family and a permanent home in order to walk the dusty roads of a second-rate province in a corner of the world’s greatest Empire, is really the Emperor.  He owns the place; he knows location better than any realtor.  What he’s saying is, dig here.  Build here.  Live here.  If you do, nothing in this world will ever shake you.  Nothing.

That’s kingdom living, whether you make six figures or cash your checks at the pawn shop.  It’s building your house, as the Sunday-school song goes, on the Lord Jesus Christ.

The sermon is over.  He stands up, brushes off his tunic, wraps his cloak about his unremarkable frame.  Immediately the Twelve are at his side, and a number of disciples tag along.  The “multitude,” who came to be healed and stayed to listen, break up and go their separate ways. To most, though they might have called him “Lord, Lord,” his words rolled off like water from the proverbial duck.  But there are a few who walk more slowly, their minds still back there on the plain where he spoke to them, and his words are burrowing deep and settling in.  Soon they will sprout. He’s going to talk about that.  But for now he’s on the road again, headed to his old stomping grounds in Capernaum, where . . . .

For the first post in this series, go here.

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