Already Jesus knew that all was not well. The Good News was not being recognized. Wake up! Wake up!
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But he continued his loving healing, giving sight to the blind, speech to one whose tongue was tied. And more and more often the protagonists of his stories were not the ones people might have expected; they were women and beggars and lepers and Romans and Samaritans—we don’t have any equivalent today of the Samaritans, who were wholly other from “us” and even worshiped God on the wrong mountain. Was it something like the frightened fear some Protestants had of Catholics who, with their statues of saints, and the unspontaneous structure of their liturgy, could not possibly be Christians?
But Jesus’ healings were there for the people to see, and they continued to question who this man might be with his compassion and his healing and his joy.
Have you ever seen the face of a surgeon who has just completed a delicate and dangerous operation and who takes off his mask to reveal eyes full of relief and joy? This gives us a glimpse of what Jesus must have looked like.
He sent his twelve closest disciples out to continue to spread the Good News, telling them not to go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. They were to take nothing with them, but depend on others for hospitality.
And already he was calling them lost sheep. Why else would he have come, except to those who had lost their way? He told the disciples the laborer is worthy of his hire, and he was fierce about those who refused to receive them. If they were not welcomed in a house they were to shake the dust of that place off their feet. Already he was beginning to be rejected. The love with which he had come from heaven to earth was beginning to be scorned and misunderstood. He warned his disciples that they, too, would be mistreated even by their families and closest friends, and that they might be brought before the courts because of him. “But don’t worry about what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you what you ought to say.”
Hasn’t it happened to us in times of crisis, words given to us that we would never have come up with ourselves? Jesus assured the disciples how much God loved them, and then again he baffled them. “For there is nothing hid except to be made manifest, nor anything secret except to come to light.”
And then he further confused them by foretelling the gift of himself which he would give us in the Communion service. “I am the bread of life,” he said. “Your forebears ate manna in the wilderness, and they are dead. But this is the bread which has come down from heaven, that you may eat, and not die.”
What was he talking about? How could this man give his flesh to eat?
And then Jesus shocked his followers even more by saying, “Verily, verily I say unto you, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
What!?!
Jesus was deliberately breaking the great taboo: blood. Blood is life, and blood is taboo. Women in menstrual period were unclean.
Women who were bleeding were not even fit to say prayers. Our present casualness about women’s periods as simply being a normal part of the human cycle would have been incomprehensible two thousand years ago. For the women themselves the period of exile (escape?) from the family routine may have been one of the most pleasant and relaxed times of the month. They were free from all chores. They could gather together and talk about their children and their husbands and their neighbors. They could catch up on sleep. And the ritual bath after the menstrual period must have been a special joy in an arid and dusty country.
After Jesus had spoken so scandalously and mysteriously about their eating his body and blood, “from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Then Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘Will you also go away?’ ”
But the twelve disciples he had chosen as his heart’s companions were still faithfully with him. Nevertheless, there was continuing confusion for them. Jesus warned them of division among households, children against parents, against brothers and sisters. But no matter what, they must each take their own cross and follow him.
In the midst of miracles and stories and wonders, the shadow of the cross was falling darkly across the land.
His miracles and his love were frightening to those who looked for power, not love. The religious authorities clung to their realism and were blind to healing. It doesn’t make sense but, now as then, those who want to attack are seldom held back by reason but are impelled by anger and self-righteousness.
Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and have revealed them to babies, for this was your gracious will.” When children clamored around him, climbing up into his lap with their filthy little feet and hands, he forbade the disciples to take them away.
What does he mean? What is this emphasis on our being like children? How little? Little ones who confidently hold up their arms to be picked up, who climb into laps, who ask for stories, who know that it is in story that truth is found?
He said to his disciples, “Truly, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter it.” And he continued, “Whoever receives one such little child in my name receives me.” And he warned them that they must never tempt a little child to sin.
I wonder who it was, and how many hundreds of years ago, who was taught to jump up on a pile of dirt or a rock and chant, “I’m the king of the castle! You’re the dirty rascal!”
One of the more bewildering statements Paul ever made was, “When I was a child I thought as a child, but now I am grown up and I have put away childish things.” I don’t want ever to lose my child’s ability to believe in the impossible. But perhaps Paul was in his middle years when he said that, those middle years when most of us feel reasonable and grown-up.
Children know how to believe the impossible, children who have not yet fallen into the game of power. Later, alas, children can be mean, deliberately hurting a weaker child. Children learn early, from their elder siblings or parents, to be unkind, to feel prejudice, to be divisive. Jesus would teach us to unlearn.
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O Jesus, thank you for being born for us, God in a baby, wonderfully impossible, but true. When we stop being children and try to make this glorious love possible, we lose it.
Do we have the loving hearts of children Jesus calls us to have?
If we do not, how can we understand Jesus’ love, his brightness, his laughter, his warnings, his hopes? How can we understand that what he says is true, and that the truth will make us free?
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When I was a child I loved my parents, both of them. It’s not very popular today to affirm that you had wonderful parents. One time at a writers’ workshop I gave the assignment: “Write a story about a good mother.”
There were twenty students in the class. Only one was able to write a loving story about a good mother. This evoked surprise and discussion. One writer finally said, “My mother did the best she could, with her limitations.” Another said, “Was I expecting too much? Was I expecting perfection?” Another said, “It’s easier to remember the things that my mother did wrong than the things she did right.”
All human parents make mistakes. Mine did. I did. My children who are parents do. It is part of being human. Mostly we do the best we can with our limitations and imperfections. The most important thing we can do is to give love. Love always, no matter what. Love which truly loves enough to say no instead of the easier yes. I was sometimes angry with my kids during those inevitable times when they were terrible, but I always loved them, and I think they knew that. And I knew that my parents loved me. Therefore, I could get at least a glimpse of God’s love for me and for all of creation. Jesus was always certain of the Father’s love for him. There is no indication in S
cripture that he ever thought of God as being angry with him. Or disappointed. Or impatient. “This,” God said, “is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
The Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Earth Maker, Pain Bearer, Life Giver. Family. We’re again in a great marvel. Jesus was man and Jesus was God, and Jesus as God did not need to beg God to forgive him, since he himself was God, and neither did he need to beg God to forgive us. Forgiveness is one of the greatest gifts which Jesus gave us, his own forgiveness, and the forgiveness of the Father. It is a gift of grace, not an act of will. How often Jesus compares human love with the much greater love and forgiveness of God. How often he tries to teach us to forgive: as you forgive, so will you be forgiven. Jesus taught us with his own actions—forgiving the man who was lowered through the roof; and he taught us with his stories—the father lovingly and joyfully forgiving the prodigal son. Forgiveness is an action of love, total love.
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THE FAITH OF JESUS
If I want to have the faith of Jesus, then it is faith in the Father who loves him, and who loves us, who loves us so much that Jesus came to embody that love, in-carnate it.
When did the idea of an unforgiving and angry God come into the history of Christianity? Surely it is a misreading or at least a misemphasis of Scripture. God is so loving and giving that this love was expressed in Jesus.
I had never heard the phrase substitutionary atonement until I was in my middle years and had been invited to speak at Wheaton College. My best understanding of it is given me in Oscar Wilde’s beautiful story “The Happy Prince.” In the story, in the village square there is a magnificent statue of a prince encrusted with gold and jewels, with great sapphires for his eyes, and a ruby in his sword. He is covered with gold leaf and brilliant stones. Little by little, as needs arise, he gives himself away, a sapphire to a struggling student, the ruby to help a poor man buy bread for his family, his golden cloak to a freezing little girl. Little by little he gives all of himself away, his gold, his jewels, his sapphire eyes. Eventually there is nothing left of him but a lump of lead, which the village authorities see and throw on the dump heap.
This is God, completely giving away power and glory for the needs of us lost and hungry sheep. This is Jesus, faithfully fulfilling God’s love in his life and death and resurrection.
With all our human struggling for power we cannot heal ourselves, so God, with wondrous love, gives away power, gives away himself so that we may be healed. We cannot do it ourselves. God does it for us.
It is again great mystery, and one which we do not express well, partly because of the change in language over the centuries. When Christopher Wren first built St. Paul’s Cathedral, it was called awful, but awful wasn’t what we mean by the word today. The cathedral was awe-ful in its beauty.
In Scripture we read much of the fear of God, and here again we have another word which has changed meaning in the centuries since the King James translation. According to Abraham Joshua Heschel, the word does not mean abject, cringing fear, but the awe of the glorious love of God, of the soaring beauty of St. Paul’s Cathedral, or the awe that Jairus and his wife must have felt when Jesus healed their little girl, or the awe I felt as my newborn baby was given to my waiting arms.
My babies were the result of actions of love, ordinary, human love. The love of the Creator is so much greater we are blinded by the brilliance. It’s too much for some of us. It threatens our power for God to give away power. We cannot bear the humility of God’s love in coming to us as Jesus.
Why is there so much confusion? Have we had brutal parents? Teachers who have never known love and cannot understand that it is love that made the world and all of us? A friend of mine at a church meeting was horrified when she heard a man say: “I know that I am forgiven because Jesus hung on the cross with the full weight of God’s wrath and anger pouring down on him.”
How could I live a life of love and joy and generosity if I thought of God as some sort of Wotan, the Germanic god who threw thunderbolts?
What a sad way to live! How unhappy someone must be to forget God’s love! All through both Testaments we find affirmations of God’s love. God creates, looks at creation, and calls it good. God is making us with love, teaching us love by sending his own love. Jesus came to us with love, and rose from the grave for us with love, and sent us the Holy Spirit with love. Always we are surrounded by the love of the whole Trinity.
I am frightened when someone insists on a God of wrath, a God who actually hates his own creation; his own, yes, for surely this angry god seems to me to be masculine. Is a God of love and freedom and Hagia Sophia even more terrifying than a God of implacable, legalistic justice? Yes, I believe that God judges, but it is the parental judgment of love.
The love of Jesus and the faith of Jesus is shown me by my friends who have been brought up in a Christian tradition totally different from mine—and yet in our living and learning we have moved in the same direction to much the same place. All I can do is be grateful, delightedly grateful.
Thank you, God, thank you, Jesus, thank you, Holy Spirit, for loving us so much that you show your love in the extraordinary birth of Christ as a human baby, a baby who grew up to be the most exciting man to walk the earth.
He was extraordinary and he did extraordinary things. One time the disciples were in a small boat, and in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went to them, walking on the sea. And the disciples thought he was a ghost and were fearful, but Jesus said, “Be of good cheer. It is I!”
Peter said, “Lord, if it’s really you [Did he doubt it?], tell me to come to you on the water.”
And Jesus said, “Come.”
So Peter walked on the water until he remembered that he couldn’t do it, and then he began to sink, and Jesus had to pull him up.
One day on the Sabbath Jesus and his disciples were walking through the grain fields, and because they were hungry they began to pluck and eat the ears of grain. Did Jesus do this deliberately, knowing they would be seen and chastised for breaking the law on the Sabbath? Jesus calmly reminded his critics of David who ate the shewbread from the temple when he was hungry, bread which was meant only for the priests. And Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for us, not we for the Sabbath.” And then he said something which he must have known would infuriate them: “The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Not the Son of God. The Son of Man.
There it is again.
What did he mean?
Was he questioning, asking, seeing how much they understood? He tested his hearers more and more often as they understood less and less. There is a slow and subtle change as his message is not wanted by the religious leaders whose power was threatened by Jesus’ own refusal of earthly power.
It is very possible for us to misinterpret Jesus’ stories, refuse to understand them, but that does not mean that we should ever stop looking for truth in story, that truth which Jesus promised would set us free. What surprises us, and what we are often not willing to accept, is that Jesus’ stories, and his answers to the questions put to test him, almost always turn things around, upside down, inside out, and the tendency of the Pharisees, and our tendency today in our churches, is to try to get everything right side up again, back into the familiar boxes of recognizable laws and customs.
Jesus went from the grain fields to the synagogue, where there was a man with a withered hand, and the leaders of the synagogue asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” so that they might accuse him.
He knew they were trying to trick him, so he asked in return, “If one of your sheep falls into a pit on the Sabbath, wouldn’t you pull it out? Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or to do harm?” And he asked the man with the withered hand to hold it out, and he healed it. This angered the rulers of the synagogue, and they gathered together to find some wrong with which they could accuse him.
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Jesus, aware of this, left, and many people followed him. He continued his loving ministry of healing, but he was mindful that those in authority were more and more suspicious of him. His parables changed, became sharper and more pointed, and some of the most difficult and even brutal ones (such as the vineyard workers killing the owner’s servants, and then his son) came towards the end of his life when he was telling such stories to the very men he knew were plotting to kill him. The stories grew steadily darker as his mortal life drew to its close.
He told about the servant whose Lord forgave him his many debts, but who then went to his debtor and tried to collect the much smaller debts. And the other servants and the master were outraged at his unjust behavior.
When the seventy he had sent out returned, full of joy because of their success in healing and in driving out demons, Jesus said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven,” the only time we know that he talked openly with his friends and disciples about Satan.
He continued, “Don’t rejoice that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
Always the religious leaders watched him, and a lawyer tried to put him to the test by asking, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus, as he so often did, answered with a question. “What is written in the law? What do you think?”
The lawyer replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
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