We call today the shortest day of the year. But anyone who knows how to keep time knows that all we mean by this is, the light is going to run for cover faster today than it does on any other day.
We still get the same blessed 24 hours— no fewer and no more. It will simply be that a few more hands of the clock will be spent in darkness than in light.
And here's the thing, we can't do a thing to change this (unless we're going to drive west all the time). It's not like we can go to the store to exchange some of the extra darkness for extra light.
But who would want to do that anyway?
Don't we know that without the darkness there is no light? There is no waiting for the stars to come out at night. And O how brilliant are the stars! There is no sun rising over the blackness of the sea. There is no possibility to learn to trust in what can only be felt. And there is no hope of tomorrow, when the light will start to creep back into the day a couple minutes more at a time.
Until one day we will reach the longest day of the year and, looking back, we'll say, Look how far we came together. Let's do it all over again.
Next April my dog, Quimby, will turn 7. When we first got her, we did what a lot of dog owners do with puppies. We bribed her. I mean, we trained her. When we said “sit” and she sat, we gave her a treat. When we said “come” and she came, we gave her a treat. And when she went out into the yard to do her “business,” we gave her a treat. To be honest, the training never really took. To this day, when I say “come,” she mostly runs away.
But one thing she has managed to get pretty good at it is knowing where we keep the treats. Even after I’ve had to go out and get her because she wouldn’t come when I called, sometimes dragging her by the collar just to make clear she’s in trouble, she will still come into the kitchen and go right to the cabinet where we keep the treats. I hate to say it, but she will even come in and sit right down in front of that cabinet, like she’s paying homage to her god, like she is a most obedient servant. I will tell her, no, you don’t get a treat for doing what I made you do. A few minutes later, I’ll wander back into the kitchen from wherever I went off to because I was trying to ignore her shameless plea. Always, she will be sitting there, looking grand and at attention, staring up at the treat cabinet.
The funny thing is, it’s been years since we kept any real treats in the house. Ever since we had our kitchen remodeled, and ever since the veterinarian told us Quimby needed to lose about 15 pounds, the only treats have been carrots and the occasional apple slice. Clearly, Quimby never got that message, or she just doesn’t care. She’s holding out hope that, someday, her master will once again fill that cabinet with treats, the good kind…with bacon.
Then, a couple days ago, fortune came through for her. I was out in the yard chatting with my neighbor. Quimby was rolling around in the grass, giving herself a back scratch, all four legs stretched to the sky. “She’s the happiest dog around,” my neighbor said. “Yeah, and we don’t even give her treats anymore,” I said wryly. I proceeded to tell him about our failed training, the kitchen cabinet, and the 15 pounds.
Later that evening, there was a knock on my door. It was my neighbor, holding a bag of dog treats, the good kind…with bacon. “Put these in the cabinet and give her one every so often, whether she deserves it or not. Otherwise, what’s the point in hoping?”
This Thanksgiving, may we be filled with the kind of hope that perches itself in front of an empty kitchen cabinet. May we remember the millions of creatures, and especially the children, who go to the kitchen cabinet every day to find them empty. And may we all be the kind of neighbor who shows up at the door with treats, the good kind. Because what is hope if not that thing which comes to us when we need it, and even when we don’t deserve it?
My son plays basketball. If you ask him what he loves about playing, he’ll tell you, being on the team and shooting. He loves being with the other boys on the team. He doesn’t even have to be on the court with them. He loves just being on the bench with them, doing what teammates do—being in the huddle, cheering on a good play, cheering each other up after a bad play, sharing packs of bubble gum. He loves the feeling of belonging that comes with putting on a uniform. Whenever I see him wearing it, he always looks 10 feet taller.
And he loves to shoot. He’s pretty good at it, too. He has a smooth jumper and he’s always one of the few out there who can consistently hit a 3-pointer. But when it comes to playing defense or going under the basket, he shies away.
We talk all the time about how in basketball you can’t just do one thing. Your team also needs you to make some steals, block some shots, and drive for the hoop. And the thing is, in his mind he knows he can do all these things. He’s got quick eyes and good height. And I know he can do all these things. I’ve seen him do them a hundred times out in the driveway when playing against me, or when mixing it up with his own teammates. But out on the court, with 9 other 12-year-old boys all going for the ball, and 5 of them kids he’s never seen before, it’s a different story. He doesn’t want to end up on the ground. He doesn’t want to wrestle for the ball and wind up taking an elbow to the face at the same time. Who can blame him? I try to tell him it’s no big deal. So you take an elbow to the face, you get fouled, or even give a foul. It’s all part of the game.
If I had to guess, though, taking an elbow to the face is not really what he sees when he imagines himself driving for the hoop. He sees blood, broken bones, and himself being carried out on a stretcher. You understand, I’m exaggerating. But you get the point. The mind is a powerful friend or foe. It doesn’t matter, nor does it seem to help, that I give him pep talks. You just need to tell yourself you’ll be alright. Don’t think the worse. Mind over matter. You know the cliches, and so do I, because my parents gave them to me, and they didn’t help me, either. In fact, most of the time they only made me dig in my heels, convinced me even more that, if I took their advice, things wouldn’t turn out alright. I’m sure I even told myself in those moments that my parents didn’t care about me.
Now, as an adult, I’d like to think I’ve gained some perspective, perspective that my own kids will have someday. Part of that perspective comes in seeing, and admitting, that my parents did care about me. That when they signed me up to be part of the local theater group, or picked me up to put me on the ski lift to the top of the mountain—“We didn’t pay all this money so you could conquer the bunny slope,” my dad said—they weren’t actually trying to kill me. Yes, I still believe I would have been perfectly happy all my life on the bunny slope. Not everything in life must be a lesson in how to overcome. As a parent (and as a human being), I try to remember that my great adventure doesn’t have to be someone else’s great adventure. For some, the most courageous thing we could do today was done the moment we chose to get out of bed.
And yet, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’ve also gained perspective in believing this: my son probably needs to take an elbow to the face. We all do. Not because I want to see him or anyone else get carried out on a stretcher, but because it may be the only way for us to have our minds changed about who or what has any real power over us.
It may be that if he did take an elbow to the face in a game, he would hit the ground. He might even bruise or bleed. But I also believe two (three!) other things would happen. One, he wouldn’t die. Two, whoever elbows him to the face would be the first not only to help him up but also to ask if he’s alright. And three, he would discover that what he has long feared is no longer to be feared.
Can you imagine how different the world could be right now if humanity agreed to play by these rules? That if you hurt someone, purposefully or not, you have to personally bind up their wounds. That if you shoot a gun to kill someone, you must dig your victim’s grave, lay their body in the ground, and comfort their loved ones. That if you fire a rocket to destroy the homes of millions, displacing them to the streets, you have to rebuild their homes, and, meanwhile, take those millions into your own home.
Can you imagine how different the world could be right now with a love like that? Shamed by kindness, we would never go to war again.
In recent months, we have all seen the death and destruction wreaked by Hamas on Israeli citizens. What has been done is tragic and inexcusable by any standard of humanity. I have nothing but sorrow. We have been reminded once more that anger is powerful, and violence only leads to violence.
When staring into the face of the pained and dead it is only natural to ask: who did this to you? Then, if there is an answer, even a faint one, we take our place alongside the victims. For who would ever want to be accused of keeping company with the victimizers, especially when the evidence of their deeds is still lying warm in the streets? No, we know what we must do to avoid any appearance of impropriety: decide who the enemy is, and should you see them, especially them, lying hurt and bleeding in the street, go around them. If you really want to try your hand at being a good Samaritan, just know this: it will come at a great cost to your own safety and reputation. You may wind up being counted among the guilty.
And yet, who is the enemy? We must be careful to decide. Those who are familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan know it to be a story of decisions. When someone lies dying and bloodied in a ditch, how do you decide on whether to stop and help them? Some conclude quickly that the person deserves what they got. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and should have known better. The tattoo on their arm, the label on their clothing, the hue of their skin, the cut of their hair confirms it for you. They’re in your part of town and no amount of personal or professional obligation could make you their helper, let alone their neighbor. They are the enemy, the reason you—so inconvenienced—must find another way home. That a Samaritan stops to help is shocking because Samaritans were considered the enemy. Categorically outcasted in every way, we simply don’t ever expect to be helped by our enemies. It is much easier to think of them as the people who would blow us up, and so we must blow them up first.
I visited the Middle East many years ago now. I remember vividly the feeling of walking through the streets of Hebron. One of the most ancient towns in the region, it was once home to Abraham, that great tree from whom Jews, Muslims, and Christians all take their life and grow their branches. The cobblestone streets were filled with Palestinian women selling their wares, while men sat nearby on grain sacks, their backs perched against buildings strong but sagging with time, bantering and smoking the day away. Up and down the streets, like mice scurrying underfoot, children kicked soccer balls. And every 5 or 6 feet there would be an Israeli soldier holding a machine gun. I thought then, as I think now, that people who carry guns without need of food are the most scared people in all the world. And yet, fear is not without its reasons.
Modern day Israelis know that not even a century has passed since their grandparents were living in Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia or some other European homeland, peaceably tending to life when one day their windows got smashed. Running to get under the floorboards in the kitchen, not everyone made it. Pulled outside, yellow stars sewn on their jackets like a breast plate, they were stacked on trains bound for Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Birkenau. Not a one was tried but 6 million plus were still found guilty. And of what? Of being someone; of being Jewish. Those who survived the gas chambers and death marches still came out wounded, to be forever haunted by ghosts.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world reeled from their own brand of guilt over not having stepped in sooner to stop the massacre, over having to realize the answer to the question—who did this to you?—was now, we did, we did this to you.
For the Jewish Holocaust survivor, returning home was both dangerous and unpopular. The War was over but prejudice and bigotry would not be defeated so easily. In time, The United Nations, that global symbol of goodwill and good intention, would give these millions upon millions of refugees a new home. A sliver of Mediterranean land about which prophets once said, milk and honey will flow. And they will not hurt or destroy on my holy mountain. What could be more promising and perfect for a people who have just come through hell than to settle in a place where nothing and no one can hurt or destroy? So became the official State of Israel.
And yet, along with a thousand hopes and fears, the scars of near extinction remained. In the new land of Israel were also Abraham’s other children. Palestinians. Mostly Muslim, some Christian, together with the Jews, they were like the stars in the sky. A galaxy of lights that could give warmth like a bidding fire, welcoming the neighbor in, or spew its heat like a .22 caliber, perched in the window and aimed across the street, never to trust their neighbors again.
That the State of Israel has controlled the borders in and out of Gaza and the West Bank for decades, keeping their neighbors in check at all times, tells us something about how powerful memory is, and the fear it kindles. I can only imagine what it is like to be an Israeli today. To live in dread that what the world did to your grandparents in the fatherland of Germany is now happening to you in the motherland of Israel. The Israeli solider I encountered in Hebron years ago is no longer there. I am sure, though, that another one, machine gun in hand, has come along to take their post, and that is of little wonder.
But fear of our neighbors also kindles oppression and desperation for our neighbors. Which is to say, as sick, twisted, and reprehensible as what Hamas did to Israel is, it did not happen in a vacuum. To whatever degree rocket launching and gun slinging appears random, indiscriminate and unprovoked, it may also appear to happen in a vacuum. Except, nothing happens on its own.
When the State of Israel began, it was weaned on land that Palestinians had already been existing on for centuries, though they were not a state themselves. They were subjects of British colonization. Not foster children, not even adopted children, Palestinians have persisted on the hope of one day just not being subjects anymore. Then, with the founding of Israel, they became subjects all over again, and that’s how it remains to this day. I can only imagine what it is like to be a Palestinian. The frustration and desperation that comes from being walled-in and occupied by another because they deem you a threat. No question, the tactics and thinking of Hamas is disgusting. That the majority of Palestinians believe they are disgusting is worth noting, as is the fact that they can imagine what drives them to extremes.
Yes, there has always been some measure of talk on the part of the world about helping to foster a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine living side-by-side on the map as equals. I don’t know if any two-state solution is ever going to happen, or even be possible. I do know that, as with anything, solutions begin with having the right ingredients, for you get what you put in. So Israel could choose now to act justly and reject vengeance. This would be a start. Justice doesn’t turn a blind eye to what has been done. It takes account, but stops short of thinking that the only way to guarantee your own safety is to obliterate everything and everyone who reminds you of your enemies. Justice would never kill children.
The United States, the “most powerful nation on earth,” could show up not just on the side of Israel, but on the side of the vulnerable, which would mean showing up in Gaza. If we’re going to provide tanks and guns for people to go to war with, we must also be prepared to stand in front of those tanks and guns when they are pointed at innocent lives. How powerful that would be.
Our faith communities can reject the dualism that says supporting Palestine means being anti-semitic, or supporting the existence of the State of Israel is anti-Muslim. It is not un-Christian to love your Muslim and Jewish neighbors as you love yourself. We all come from the same tree.
And we can all agree that we have done this to each other. We have insisted on choosing between Israelis or Palestinians, war or peace, Jew or Muslim [insert a thousand other binaries here], and so we have left ourselves no option but to walk down only one side of the street. But every street has two sides; every border has two sides; every person has two sides, and crossing over is as simple as choosing to do so. Because unless we cross to the other side, nothing, nothing, nothing can ever be made whole. And wouldn’t whole be wonderful?
You always barked when I came over.
Even now, I choose to believe
you were just announcing my arrival.
You were that kind of dog.
You told of the world (or were you telling off the world?)
You barked at the lawnmower,
the vacuum,
and the kids jumping in the pool.
When a certain kitchen drawer was opened,
you barked at the thought of the electric knife.
(it wasn’t even Thanksgiving)
But when I’d sit on your head, or
bound through your screen door and into the kitchen
to eat your food,
you didn’t make a sound.
You’d lift your head and just watch me go on by.
And when I’d chew on your leg
like it was my Thanksgiving dinner
(it wasn’t even Thanksgiving),
you’d let out a satisfied groan. Like you were glad
to be someone else’s sustenance.
When Dr. Lee saw the teeth marks, she asked what you’d gotten
yourself into.
You just looked up at her with your two marbly brown eyes.
Two weeks later, I had to go see Dr. Lee.
I think she understood then that life is never our fault,
only the consequence of the company we keep,
and your company liked you an awful lot.
By the time I moved in next door, you already had some friends.
Bella and BooBoo, and later, Briggs and Poo.
But you were my first friend.
I was over your house today.
They told me you wouldn’t be there.
I think they thought I wouldn’t want to go then.
Stupid humans.
Don’t they know that dogs don’t care about such things?
I let myself in like the old days.
Your owners let me go upstairs,
then downstairs,
then upstairs again.
Good people, not afraid to let me see what’s missing---
I can see why you loved them so much.
Then they let me sit there while they ate turkey sandwiches.
I tried not to bark for a bite. It was so quiet.
But what’s a dog to do? You weren’t there,
no one had announced my arrival,
and I thought they’d like to hear from you again.
If Mr. Newton was correct, what goes up must come down. Go ahead, test him on it. Pull out whatever is in your purse or pocket, toss it to the air and see if it all doesn’t come down. Short of a feather, things are made to hit the floor hard and quick. A feather will also reach the floor, it will just take a little longer to get there.
Granted, this isn’t a theory we really need to test out. The fact that you are probably sitting right now and not floating on the ceiling should be enough to tell us it’s true. The way in which children, swinging from the monkey bars, let go and fall so effortlessly to the ground; the way in which food travels from the mouth, down the esophagus and into the stomach; the way our bodies and body parts sag into our later years; all proofs that everything which goes up must come down.
Scientifically speaking, we call this gravity, nature’s guarantee that we stay in place where we belong. As my mother used to say to us kids when we’d ask if we could sleep in the trees, if God wanted you to sleep in the trees, he would have made you a bird. My mother’s point being that it would be unnatural for us to think we could stay up in the air if, God forbid, our branch broke off or a stiff wind came along to blow us off or, just as horrible, the whole tree went over, taking us with it. You don’t have wings and you don’t bounce, my mom would add.
Of course, even things with wings eventually must come down. Planes, hot-air balloons, and skydivers all must land back on the ground. They cannot stay above the clouds forever. Birds must come to the ground from time to time to get their food, foraging through the forest or some stray picnic basket on the beach. If their wings are working properly than their landing will be graceful and smooth. If not, if their wings are broken, or the bird (or plane if you must) were to experience a mechanical failure, then not even wings may be enough to save them. In that case, we call it a crash. You see, everything which goes up must come down. It’s only natural.
On the other hand, not everything that comes down necessarily goes back up. How many have looked with sadness on the famous Sycamore Gap Tree that was cut down in England last week? For over 300 years the tree came to be a symbol of beauty and strength along Hadrian’s Wall. Now it has been cut to the ground by someone who had neither right nor reason to do so.
Contrast this with Shel Silverstein’s Giving Tree. In The Giving Tree, a tree, we are told, loves a little boy, and loving this boy, the tree tells him he can cut off all her branches and level her to the ground just so he can build himself a boat and a house. These are the things the boy believes will make him happy, and the tree only wants the boy to be happy. So the boy cuts down the tree and builds his boat to travel the world. He builds his house and gets married, but still, he is not happy. In the end, the boy, old and tired, comes back to the tree one day, only now he no longer believes happiness is really real. Meanwhile, the tree is still looking to give him something that might, finally, make him happy. Except, now just a stump, she worries she has nothing left to give him. How glad she is to discover that the boy, perhaps weary from searching, doesn’t want for much. Come, sit down and rest, the tree invites him. And the boy does, we are told, and the boy is happy, and the tree is happy. Though we are left to wonder if—for someone who has fallen in and out of happiness his whole life—we are left to wonder if this time really will be different. Will the boy truly stay happy? Will the tree?
The story is both tender and difficult, reminding us that we need to be careful with our actions, because love without boundaries has consequences. Love that gives itself away at all costs will get cut down in the process, just as love that wants it all without cost will also get cut down, with each being left only to sit and hope that what remains will be enough.
Such is the kind of love Saint Paul once wrote to a small band of saints in Philippi about:
If, then, there is any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any partnership in the Spirit, any tender affection and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
What makes this description of love so extraordinary is that Paul says it exists in one who is God. In Paul’s world—2nd century ancient Greece and Rome—people, let alone God, didn’t move downward; it wasn’t natural. Like our world today, everything tried to move upward. Life was a survival of the fittest, a competition to see who could climb the ladder the fastest and highest. As anyone who has ever studied Greek and Roman mythology knows, there were hundreds of gods, and each god had its own distinct trademark. Among the gods, the point was to stand out, not to fit in. And power, power was a matter of showing each other, and when necessary, showing humanity, who was in charge. Poseidon could stir the seas into a tsunami; with a wave of his hand, Apollo could cover the sun and blacken the day; Aphrodite and Venus could make you fall in love, or keep you forever from it; and Zeus, Zeus with his thunder and lightning bolts, was the most powerful of them all.
If you were a human being living in this world, at best the gods were something to aspire to; at worst, something to fear. They were not, however, something to relate to. Granted, this didn’t stop people from trying. The Roman Emperor Caligula once reminded his people: “I have the power to do anything to anybody.” And though Augustus was never known to declare himself a god, after he died, his subjects did. And yet, the point may be, he still died. But what kind of God does that? What kind of God dies?
Well, Paul’s God does. And should you be crazy enough to believe like Paul, then your God does. “Only a suffering God can help,” said Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his cell in a Nazi prison camp. I don’t need a God who rises up and never comes down. Nor do I need a God who comes down only to go back up. I need a God who comes down and comes down to stay. I need a flesh-and-blood God who draws near to sit beside me. A God whose power can be seen not in the ability to control all things, but to endure all things; not to avoid suffering, but to feel it, to help heal it. A God who knows what it is to be me—someone who falls down a whole lot in this world—and who speaks my language of hope.
In her poem titled, “Gate A-4,” Palestinian poet Naomi Shihab Nye tells the following story about wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal once.
“After learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.”
Well—one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”
I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly. “Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-se-wee?”
The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, “No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later. Who is picking you up? Let’s call him.”
We called her son, I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and ride next to her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo — we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.
And then the airline broke out free apple juice from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving it and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend — by now we were holding hands — had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, this is the world I want to live in, the shared world. Not a single person in that gate—once the crying of confusion stopped—seemed afraid of any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.
This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.[1]
This is the kind of world I want to live in—a shared world, a world of cookies. Do you want to live in that kind of world? Something tells me you are the kind of people who want to live in that kind of world. Something tells me you are the kind of people who can make it happen.
When I was in seminary working on my master’s degree, I had a friend there named Tom who was a PhD student. By the time I met Tom, he had been at it for several years and was nearing the end of his program; all that was left for him to do was defend his dissertation before a committee of professors, all of whom were considered experts in the fields of theological study and biblical interpretation. I don’t recall the exact title of Tom’s dissertation, only the main premise, which was, why I’ll be sharing a bunk in heaven someday with Hitler. It wasn’t a question. Had it been a question, quite possibly it would have been, why should I share a bunk with Hitler in heaven someday?The inference being either that I’m too good to have to share a bunk in heaven someday with the likes of Hitler or that there’s no way someone like Hitler is good enough to share a bunk with me, let alone to get into heaven someday. But it wasn’t a question, it was a statement. Why I’ll be sharing a bunk in heaven someday with Hitler.
I don’t know what you believe about heaven—where it is, what it’s like, how we’ll know when we’ve arrived there, or who can expect to be there. For all we can imagine about heaven, the one thing classic Christian teaching has worked hard to make clear is that heaven is not here, which means it is also not now. It is up there—in the sky, far above the clouds, a land flowing with milk and honey, where the streets are paved with gold, lions lay down with lambs, and we can be with our loved ones again. In heaven, everything that has been wrong here on earth is made right again. The broken are made whole, the hungry are fed, crying is no more, sorrow is no more, pain is no more. A new creation, the prophet Isaiah once declared it to be.
I suppose, if we think of heaven this way, it’s not hard to imagine that, indeed, it must be in another time and place. For if this world we are in now is heaven, then all we can say about heaven is, it’s the same old same old. What a blow. But if heaven is still out there somewhere, then we have reason to hope that this world in all its faded glory is not all there is. It is this hope that gets sung about in many old-time hymns. Hymns like “How Great Thou Art,” “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” “Amazing Grace,” and “The Old Rugged Cross.”
To the old rugged cross I will ever be true, its shame and reproach gladly bear. When God calls me someday to my home far away, there God’s glory forever I’ll share. So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross, till my trophies at last I lay down. I will cling to the old rugged cross and exchange it someday for a crown.
Lyrics by George Bennard, 1912
The picture we get here is of a pilgrim who is only passing through this world. For this weary traveler, the cross is a pleasurable burden, one they carry in hope of one day being able to cash it in at the gates of heaven for something richer, like a crown. Contrast this with the picture we get, however, in other hymns like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Every Time I Feel the Spirit,” and “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me.” African American Spirituals, all of them first sung, perhaps, in the cotton fields of Virginia, the buses in Montgomery, and the streets of South Africa; sung by enslaved persons who looked to God not in hope of their own crowning someday, but of crowning justice and equality today.
It is curious to note that when Jesus was asked one day about how to get into heaven, the person asking the question assumed heaven to be someplace else, and those who get in to be those who are “good.”
Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
From the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 10
The question comes from a young man who is, we are told, well-off and therefore thinks in terms of what he stands to inherit someday. However, this man has a dilemma. His dilemma is, he also thinks inheritance is subject to good behavior. Which is it? In the end, do we get what we get—some, trust funds and crowns, others, pain and poverty—because of who we came from, or because, no matter who we came from, we are good? Jesus, seeing the man’s dilemma, cuts right to the heart of the matter. Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. For Jesus, the answer to eternal life is not to figure out how to be good, for no one, not even Jesus apparently, is good. But lest we think this means being good doesn’t matter, Jesus tells the man, Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. What does Jesus mean by this? Was Jesus a socialist who believed only the materially poor can get into heaven? Or was he a capitalist who believed it’s possible to buy your way into heaven? Or was he both, believing that you can buy your way into heaven by becoming materially poor? I think it’s fair to say Jesus wanted this man to see what it would be like to depend upon the poor for his inheritance. To stand at heaven’s gate and realize you have nothing with which to cover your entrance fee, but that’s okay because having nothing is what gets you in.
From The New Yorker, 8/2/2013
I heard an interview once with Martin Sheen, the Hollywood actor. A devout catholic who has also been arrested over 60 times for protesting things like war and nuclearism, he was asked in the interview what brings him joy. He described standing in line every week at church to receive communion. “For the most part I stand in that line and I am so stunned to be there that all I can say is, thank you. And when the bread is handed to me, and the cup offered to me, if anyone ever asked me why I should get to have them, I’d have to look at all the other people in line with me, and all I’d be able to say is, ‘I’m with them.’”
It isn’t something that just happens, though. Just because we think we’re in with Jesus doesn’t mean we are. When Jesus tells the man who wants to get into heaven that all he must do is go sell what he owns, give the money to the poor, and come, follow me, the man turns and walks away sad. It turns out, heaven is not far away for this man after all; he is standing right on the doorstep, one step away from being in line. But he will not be getting into heaven today, and it is not because he is rich, it is because he does not want to be counted with those who get in for nothing. What a dilemma.
To stand at heaven’s gate and realize you have nothing with which to cover your entrance fee, but that’s okay because having nothing is what gets you in.
Such was the dilemma also faced by a guy named Jonah. In the whole Bible, Jonah’s story is only four chapters long. It begins with God calling Jonah to go to Ninevah. “Get up Jonah, go to Ninevah. That city has become overrun with sin and wickedness. Preach your best judgment upon them.”
Jonah, we know, was a Hebrew, and the Hebrew people had a history of being enemies with the Ninevites, and so this should have been an easy assignment for Jonah. Heck, bringing judgement down upon your enemies should be an easy one for anyone. Except when Jonah gets the call from God, rather than go to Ninevah, Jonah gets on a boat and heads away from Ninevah. And why? It’s simple really. Jonah is a Hebrew, which means that in addition to belonging to a country and having a national identity, he also belongs to God. As he tells his shipmates, “I worship the Lord, the God of all creation,” which means Jonah’s god is notonly Jonah’s god but also the God of all creation, who must care not only for Jonah and the Hebrews but also for the people of Ninevah. So Jonah doesn’t go to Ninevah. How can I go to Ninevah and preach that I’m #1 when I know that’s just not true? God has a way, though, of turning even the proudest heart, and when Jonah does eventually arrive in Ninevah to preach his sermon, and the congregation hears it, they change their ways. They turn from evil to God, and God, God of course turns to them. And Jonah turns away from the whole thing. He goes out of the city and finds a lonely hillside to sit on all by himself, and there he sulks. I knew you wouldn’t go through with punishing the people of Ninevah, God! I just knew you wouldn’t. You who are slow to anger and abounding in love. But if you weren’t going to do it, why did you bring me all the way out here to say you were going to?
Jonah never receives an answer to his question. The story of Jonah just ends rather abruptly, with God asking a question and Jonah left having to think about it.
“Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?”
Jonah, chapter 4
In other words, if it bothers you that I care so much about the people, you’re going to love the fact that I care just as much about the animals.
For all the folklore surrounding the story of Jonah, it is, in the final analysis, a story with great practical implication. One can think of Jonah when they think of any number of issues we face today as a society. Like, what does our care for the environment say about our care for others? As people, do we think critically about our view on heaven, where it is and who we expect to find there? And, how does our view affect our daily compassion towards those whose religion, faith, behavior, or morals are different from our own, those whom we don’t expect to share a bunk with in heaven someday?
I thought of Jonah this past week when I was at my local library. I sit on the Board of Directors at the library and as part of our monthly meeting we were discussing the impact efforts to ban certain books from public libraries has had on our communities. As complex and politically charged as this issue has become in so many towns and cities, one board member reminded us that book banning isn’t really about books. Good parenting has always meant being involved in our children’s lives, including knowing what they are and are not reading. But banning books really isn’t about good parenting, or good books for that matter. It’s about who gets to decide which stories get told alongside our own. As the Nazis did in Germany during World War II when burning books was a way to keep people from imagining any other world than the one Hitler wanted for them— a world of hateful exclusion, of death and destruction.
But banning books really isn’t about good parenting, or good books for that matter. It’s about who gets to decide which stories get told alongside our own.
Jonah didn’t want to go to the people of Ninevah. He didn’t want to risk finding out that in the heart of God, his story and their story are inextricably bound together by love and mercy. That God found a way in the end to get Jonah to Ninevah anyway is, in and of itself, an act of love and mercy. For God would have us find out that there is a bunk, a resting place, out there in the world today and—surprise-surprise!—room even for us.
In the first church I worked there was a woman named Maggie. Her actual name was Magnes, which is why, according to her, she asked everyone to call her Maggie. Every Sunday Maggie would come to church and sit, along with 3 or 4 other women, in the back pew, as close to the exit as anyone could get. There was something about all these women that was remarkably similar. They all had wrinkles on their hands and forehead, they all wore fancy hats, and they all walked a bit hunched over with a swagger that came from being 80-years old. Like Maggie, they also all came alone, most of them driving either a tiny Ford Escort, all that their fixed income could afford, or a Cadillac the size of a Carnival cruise ship. They drove those cars always thinking about what it used to be like to sit in the passenger seat, back when their husbands were alive and did all the driving.
For Maggie, however, there was now Gary. At the time I met Maggie, she and Gary had been married just a few years. I remember Maggie telling me plainly, “Gary was convenient.” Gary, a widow himself, could never survive the future without someone to cook and clean for him, and Maggie couldn’t survive the future without someone to pay for the food. So they got hitched. Gary’s grown daughter Suzy wasn’t crazy about the arrangement. It mostly had to do with Maggie, whom Suzy felt was only looking for an inheritance from Gary. Mind you, Suzy wasn’t mean, not at all. She cared about Maggie and about seeing Maggie cared for, and she didn’t mind her father helping Maggie out. She was also grateful for Maggie and the around-the-clock care she gave to her father, who sadly, just after getting married to Maggie, was diagnosed with cancer. What Suzy did mind was seeing her father be generous to someone who hadn’t done for him nearly as much as she—the twinkle in her daddy’s eye for 64 years—had done. Call it the plight of the Prodigal’s older sister, call it the luck of the worker who shows up at closing time and gets paid the same as the worker who put in an 8-hour day, sometimes there is nothing harder for us to take than grace when it is given to somebody else.
To make matters even harder, Maggie’s only son, Roy, whom Maggie would say, “never really had a father,” showed up at the door one day looking for a place to live, and Gary rolled out the welcome wagon for him, giving Roy, of all things, Suzy’s old bedroom to sleep in. Roy needed this grace because, well, along with Gary, he too was dying from cancer. For Roy, it wasn’t the first time. When he was just three, he was diagnosed with cancer. He fought and beat it then. But it cost him a kidney, and for the next 47 years Maggie kept telling her son, “You’re special,” and Roy believed her. I’m sure it’s what brought him to show up on Gary’s front step, and what brought Maggie, on the day Roy died, to ask me if the church would allow her son a funeral service.
He’s not a member, you know, she told me. And he never even comes to church.
I don’t think God cares about any of that, I told her.
Well, no, I suppose not, but maybe the church does?
No, we don’t care about any of that either, I assured her, half assuring myself as well.
What about his past though? Maggie added. I mean, Ray had a past.
Don’t we all, I thought. Tell me about it, tell me about Roy’s past.
Well, when he was 23, he called me up to say, ‘Mom, I’m an alcoholic and a drug user.’
I bet that was hard to hear. What did you tell him?
I told him what I’d always told him. “You’re special.” Then, I got him some help, found him an AA group to be a part of.
And did it? Did it help?
Yes, I think so. He moved around a lot—Florida to California and back to Florida. I didn’t always know where he was or how he was doing, but he was special, he was very special.
On the day of Roy’s funeral at the church, the service was at 10 a.m. At 9:30, the parking lot, which held 300 cars, was jam packed under a haze of cigarette smoke. Curious—and admittedly, a bit annoyed—I stepped outside to see what all the commotion was about.
Good morning, I said to a man standing near the door.
Oh, ah, good morning. I hope you don’t mind, reverend, it calms us down, he said, tucking his cigarette ever so slightly behind his back.
In my head, I was trying to figure out what was going on. The way Maggie told it, I figured we were going to be lucky to fill up one pew at the funeral. Are you, are you all here for Roy? I ask the man still puffing on his cigarette.
Well, we’re not here for you, he said with a cheeky grin.
If you don’t mind me asking, how do you all know Roy?
And that’s when he told it to me, the Gospel like I’d never heard it before. We all know him from being in NA and AA together. He sponsored nearly all of us. If not for Roy, most of us wouldn’t even know the word recovery. Because of Roy, we know it’s more than just a word.
At the funeral, I learned that, at one time or another, Roy had sponsored 225 people through NA or AA. One of them got up to read a story about Jesus and Matthew. What a crazy story this is.
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
Matthew, chapter 9, verse 9
Jesus calls Matthew to follow him, and Matthew does. There are no negotiations, no promises made. Jesus doesn’t say, Follow me, Matthew, and I’ll throw in an all-expense paid trip to Bermuda. Matthew doesn’t say, I’ll follow you, Jesus, so long as you agree to pay me more than what I’m making now as a tax collector. With other disciples, Jesus at least promised that the work they’d get to do with Jesus would be both personally and professionally more fulfilling. Follow me, Jesus said to Peter and Andrew—two fishermen who weren’t very good at fishing—follow me and I’ll make you fish for people.
But with Matthew it’s a simple directive. Follow me. And Matthew does.
I don’t know what makes Matthew do it. Maybe he was tired of running the rat race, fed up with being a hatchet man. Everyday his job was to not care about whether you could afford to buy groceries or to keep a roof over your head, so long as you paid your taxes, so long as Rome got richer. It was degrading work, degrading to Matthew’s soul. But it was a runaway train and Matthew didn’t know how to get off. Then, one day, Jesus comes along and throws him a lifeline. “Follow me.” And Matthew does.
Next thing we know Matthew is throwing a dinner party.
And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
verses 10 – 13
Jesus is there and all of Matthew’s former co-workers are there as well. Tax-collecting low-lifes. What can you say? If there’s nothing harder to take than grace when it is given to someone else, there is nothing greater than taking the grace you’ve been given and sharing it with others.
Of course, and this is what gives grace its name, as far as we can tell, Matthew wasn’t asking for it. He wasn’t even looking for it. Not until Jesus comes along to tell him there can be something more does Matthew even realize more exists. But once he has it, there’s no keeping it to himself.
You understand, this is not a story about a parking lot. It is about what can happen when we give each other full and equal access to holy places. And we need holy places in our world today. We need them in Morocco and in Ukraine. We need them in Washington, and anywhere else we’d like to call home. Places where hope meets us at the door and call us by our one true name. Where recovery is not just a word, but a thing we work for together. Where grace surprises us at every turn.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear… For it is the nations of the world that seek all these things, and your Father knows that you need them… Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out…” (Luke 12).
I read an article recently about how little things are dying just as big things are getting bigger. I suppose the article could have been talking about any number of realities, but it wasn’t. It was talking about the church in North America.[1] Frankly, I find the article to be a dime-a-dozen. Regarding the North American part of this reality, one might argue that getting bigger has been the recipe from the beginning. We’ve always been getting bigger, or at least wanting to be. One of the first topics we cover in school as children, next to basic math and learning to write our name, is the explorers. Essentially, what we are after is the answer to such questions as, how did we get here? Who got here first? And where did they come from? As a fourth grader growing up in New England, my answers amounted to nothing more than a list of names and places. To Coronado we owed the southwest, including the discovery of the Grand Canyon; to de Soto we owed Texas; to Ponce de Leon we owed Florida and that elusive fountain of youth; to Christopher Columbus we owed the Bahamas; and to that hearty band of pilgrims who left England in 1620 for fairer shores, we owed everything. Am I right about this? Maybe it was just my generation, or my family and church who said that while Columbus discovered America, it was the Pilgrims, landing on Plymouth Rock in 1620, who gave us America. Fleeing the persecutions and idolatries of the Church of England, they risked life and limb to set sail for a land where they could live and worship freely, the way they wanted to. For right or wrong, this was the story of America I was told, and this is the story I bought into. As such, this was a story about an America where not just ideals and dreams are supposed to be bigger, but where God is supposed to be bigger, and where God is behind the getting bigger.
And so, it was not hard for America’s first pilgrims to regard this land as their manifest destiny, God’s divine gift to them, meant for them to have, that in having it they might also enlarge it. For a gift left untouched and unused is but a destiny left unfulfilled.
History has shown that in the early years of Plymouth Plantation, life was governed somewhat successfully by a series of treaties and compromises made between the Pilgrims and the natives, whose homeland the Pilgrims were living on. This would not change the fact, however, that, to the Pilgrims, the natives were considered savages, likened to the Canaanites they had read about in their Bibles, the ones about whom the Israelites once said, “They are giants, and we’ll never take them,” but about whom their leader Moses said, “If the Lord is pleased with us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us.”[2]We can take them, it is our manifest destiny. And take them they did. In the first 225 years of the founding of the United States, upwards of 100 million Native Americans were forcibly removed from their homes, ultimately to die from the spread of unwarranted and unmitigated disease, warfare, and genocide at the hands of those whom today most of us call our American ancestors, who believed it was their destiny to get bigger.
I don’t share this bit of history in order to make social or political hay, or to spark confrontation with anyone whose version of the story may be different. Plus, surely someone will say, you can’t have it both ways, you can’t say the church isn’t called to have a national identity and then use the pulpit to talk about America. Fair enough. I admit, figuring out how to speak of God and America in the same sentence is as complicated and complex as trying to figure out how to tie your shoes. There’s more than one way to do it, and some people just choose to wear slip-ons.
Just the same, we must reckon with the fact that, to whatever degree history gets told by the victors, in America, it was the church-goers—and by “church-goers” we mean those who once-upon-a-time dared to invoke the name of God in declaring independence for themselves—We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—it was the church-goers who also stipulated that enslaved persons, black persons, counted as only three-fifths of a person. It was the “church-goers,” the so-called Christian missionaries, who, in the spirit of manifest destiny, landed upon the shores and moved across the frontiers, but who left in their wake trails of tears upon which Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and so many others were forced to march from their homes to go live on reservations, reservations whose dignity to this day is threatened by poor access to healthcare, education, and corporations who would steal their land for profit. And it was the “church-goers” down south, and up north, whose houses of worship and personal fortunes were made bigger and bigger by the hands of people they would never actually allow into their churches.
Wren Chapel
Many years ago, I visited the Wren Building on the campus of The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, the second oldest academic institution in the country. The Wren Building, constructed in 1700, is the oldest academic building still in use today. Within the building are several classrooms, offices, and a chapel. As part of the chapel there is a small balcony. I remember learning that, back in colonial days, the balcony is where enslaved persons sat, while their white masters sat down below. One might think slaves wouldn’t even have been allowed in church back then. However, their masters wanted them there, to hear the sermon. A typical sermon being one that served to remind enslaved persons that their station in life was by God’s design.
Hearth Memorial
I am glad to say that if you go to the campus today, there is a memorial bearing the names of people who were enslaved by the college over a period of 172 years, some of whom, undoubtedly, built the chapel.
When we consider how getting bigger has been the way of it for America since her beginning, and how the church, for better or worse, has helped her in her quest, it should not surprise us if we, as a church, should feel a certain desire to always be getting bigger as well. I know I feel this way sometimes. As embarrassed as I may be to admit it, on both a personal and professional level, I want bigger crowds, a bigger budget, a bigger safety net. I feel better when people are asking, what can I do? Rather than, do I have to do that again? When my brain is feeling inspired, not empty. When I am not thinking about how to keep something going, because I am too busy trying to keep up. When we, with our ten thousand other things to do, couldn’t be happier to put it all down and show up to church for another Sunday. Yes, I too would like to be bigger.
But who am I kidding? If the article I read recently is any indication, only those churches that are already big are getting bigger, while the little ones are dying. Of course, the article didn’t say what constitutes “big” or “little,” leaving open the possibility, I guess, that 2 people could be considered big, and 2,000 people could be considered small.
What I find interesting is what Jesus says: Do not be afraid, little flock. At the time he said it, Luke records there were thousands in the crowd, so many people that they began trampling on one another.[3] Some were sick, so sick they were dying, and they just wanted to get close enough to have Jesus touch them. Others were lonely and wanted to get close enough to have Jesus hug them. And others just wanted to get close enough just to hear what wisdom or hope he might have to offer. There were thousands of them, and Jesus called them a “little flock.” It’s almost as if Jesus knows, no matter how big we get, we’re still just a little flock.
The truth is, we can super-size our order at the drive-thru all day long and build houses as big as old Solomon had in all his glory, but we’re still going to be found wanting. We can live to see the greatest medical achievements of all time, but there will always be something that can kill us. We can work our fingers to the bone putting food on our table, and even on our neighbor’s table, but the poor we will have with us always. We can be as big as an empire, protected and preserved on all sides, but still, we’ll be a little flock, wishing we could be bigger. So, take heed: do not be afraid, little flock.Do not be afraid for your life, what you will wear, what you will eat. For it is the nations who worry about all these things, and you are not a nation.
If we take Jesus at his word here, it would be easy to take him as reckless. Do not worry about what you will wear or what you will eat. “Man, are you crazy! Everyone needs to eat, and some already haven’t had a bite in days!” But it would be a mistake to take Jesus as saying that in this world possessions do not matter. For what Jesus says is, it is God’s good pleasure to give you a kingdom, and in this kingdom, possessions matter greatly, because in this kingdom people will sell their possessions to provide for the poor. Because in this kingdom, sharing, generosity, and human equality rule. In this kingdom, purses will be stuffed with a kind of riches that will never run out, the riches of brotherhood and sisterhood. In this kingdom, a piece of bread broken and offered in grace will be worth a feast. So, take heed little flock, and do not be afraid, there is a kingdom, God’s own, and it belongs to you.
He put before them another parable: “Let the weeds and wheat grow together…”
-Jesus of Nazareth, 1st century.
Jesus is preaching another parable today. Did you know there are many ways to preach? It doesn’t always have to be from a pulpit, or in some holy church or temple. The sermon doesn’t always have to have three finely tuned points, make your heart sing, or your feet to dance. For Jesus, the great majority of his sermons took place on a whim. While he was walking along the beach, or sitting on a hillside of flowers, or observing some token of human kindness, or human suffering, and he would say, You know what this is like? This is like the kingdom of heaven. And then he would go on to tell a parable, a story about how a farmer sowing seed is like heaven, or how a shepherd searching for one lost sheep is like heaven, or how an employer who pays the last hired worker on the day the same wages he pays the first hired worker on the day is like heaven, or how one person showing mercy to another person, no matter much bad blood there is between them, is like heaven. Signs so visible and ordinary to the world that if someone didn’t point them out to us as being of God, we would miss them. But point them out and everyone goes, “Oh, I get it!”
Or not.
There’s a reason Jesus told so many parables. It may have had something to do with the fact that he just liked them. Like a writer who prefers writing poetry over novels. But more likely, the reason Jesus worked in parables so much is because no one ever understood them. In fact, not only did people seem to struggle with the meaning of his parables, but the closer you were to Jesus, the more you heard them, the less you seemed to get them. Now you would think, for this reason, that Jesus might have changed up his methods, tried preaching in iambic pentameter, or setting his sermons to parody. He couldn’t have liked being misunderstood any more than his listeners liked not being able to understand. But no, he just kept right on with his parables.
We can imagine, then, that when he put before them another parable, everyone in the congregation shook their heads in dismay. “Ugh, not another parable.” We can also imagine that people might have gotten up and walked out, headed down the street to find a different preacher, one who doesn’t preach in parables but instead gives it to you straight. I mean, seriously, why does Jesus preach in parables? Hold that thought for a moment while we consider this one:
“God’s kingdom is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. That night, while his hired men were asleep, his enemy sowed weeds all through the wheat and slipped away before dawn. When the first green shoots appeared and the grain began to form, the weeds showed up, too. “The farmhands came to the farmer and said, ‘Master, that was clean seed you planted, wasn’t it? Where did these weeds come from?’ “He answered, ‘Some enemy did this.’ “The farmhands asked, ‘Should we weed out the weeds?’ “He said, ‘No, if you do, you’ll pull up the wheat, too. Let them grow together until harvest time. Then I’ll instruct the harvesters to pull up the weeds and tie them in bundles for the fire, then gather the wheat and put it in the barn.’”
Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 13:24-30
I’m not a farmer or gardener, but one doesn’t need to be to know that this is indeed a parable, full of strangeness. For who needs to ask where weeds come from? Everyone knows they just come. No one needs to plant a weed to make it grow; they just do. And when they grow, they grow everywhere, without help, without permission, without consideration. So says the amateur. Real farmers, that is those who get up with the sun and work all day trying to grow things that aren’t weeds, know that nothing just grows. Cucumbers don’t just grow, azaleas don’t just grow, redwoods don’t just grow. Farming is a chore of daily optimism, of hard-earned faith. The farmer puts a seed—by all appearances, nothing but a speck of hard material that, depending upon the type, will cost you $10 for a thousand on Amazon—into the dark, black soil. The next morning, the farmer gets up with the sun again, only they know they will see nothing for their work from the day before. It will take dozens of sunrises and 14-hour days spent taking water from the well and pouring it on the seed before a sprout of green might appear out of the black soil. What is more, the farmer must also pray for rain, without which the well will run dry of water. No rain, no water; no water, no cucumbers; no cucumbers, no food; no food, no life. It’s a chore of daily optimism and hard-earned faith—farming. To believe the sunlight will somehow reach the seed in the darkness, that the rains will come, that in the same place where we bury our dead, new life is growing.
To have a full appreciation for the parable Jesus is telling today, and how strange it is, we must understand this: the magnitude of the farmer’s chore, and what is at stake for them, not just cucumbers but life itself. Because when the farmhands see that weeds are coming up alongside the grain, they ask the farmer, Where did these weeds come from? Most people, when they think of a weed, probably think of ugly dandelions growing up through the cracks in the driveway, but, by definition, a weed is any plant growing where you do not want it. This means a weed could be as glorious as 100 corn stalks in what is supposed to be a garden of tomato plants. Both are tasty, and on their own they will grow just fine. But together, they will compete for soil and water, and potentially kill each other on the way to survival.
In Jesus’ day, it was not uncommon for someone to sneak in at night and plant a weed in a neighbor’s garden. Farming was big business, and the way most families made their living. Planting a weed in someone else’s garden, then, wouldn’t just ruin their crop, it would ruin their future. In short, it was an act of sabotage, and an easy way to make an enemy.
Here in my little corner of New England, I don’t suspect a lot of people for sabotaging my crops. But like any good parable, the point is to get me thinking about who or what does feel like a sabotage upon my future, and my children’s future. Who or what do you consider a threat to your way of life, and look upon as an enemy? I could name them for you, but my guess is, you know them already. Their face, their address, what car they drive and how many, where they buy their coffee, how they vote, where they spend their Sunday mornings, and what it is they said or did once-upon-a-time to make you think they’re a bad seed and they should be weeded out.
We must understand this: the magnitude of the farmer’s chore, and what is at stake for them, not just cucumbers but life itself.
The thing is, weeding out the bad seed is precisely what you’d expect a good farmer to do if they’re going to protect their crop, family, and future. It’s the responsible thing to do. That Jesus has the farmer tell his farmhands to do just the opposite seems surprising, if not reckless. I mean, when you see something or someone that could cause hurt or destruction, shouldn’t you put a stop to it right away? When a splinter becomes infectious, shouldn’t you take it out? When a relationship becomes toxic, shouldn’t you get out? Even churches have protocols for telling a person whose behavior has become so contrary to their unity, it’s time for you to leave.
What is Jesus thinking, then, to say, No, leave the weeds alone to grow alongside the good seed.
It’s worth noting that Jesus’ concern really isn’t for what’s going to happen to either the good seed or the weeds if they are left to grow side-by-side. In the end, he says, both will be where they will be. The good seed will grow into wheat that will be gathered into barns, and the weeds will be gathered for burning. Jesus’ concern is with the gardener, whose tactics and disposition, he fears, are not suited for the job at hand. What if in pulling up the weeds, you also pull up the good stuff? No, better to leave both until a time when someone who knows what they’re doing comes along.
Two weeks ago, along with several adult advisors and 11 students, I spent an afternoon at NeighborWorks of the Blackstone River Valley, an organization committed to enriching community life in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. We know this, that there are pockets of every village, town, and city where invisible (and sometimes not so invisible) lines have been drawn. These lines, often separating the haves from the have-nots, always result in higher rates of poverty and crime for the have-nots. Too often, the answer to dealing with poverty and crime in America has been to weed out the poor and criminal by sheltering the first and incarcerating the second. Woonsocket is no exception. What makes NeighborWorks especially unique, however, is the way they say no to this tactic. Believing that the best hope for people is life in community with others, NeighborWorks seeks to root people by creating opportunities and resources for every individual and family to be able to afford their own house.
In a world where we have grown so quick to take sides and draw guns, it is a chore of daily optimism and hard-earned faith to not pull at each other like we’re weeds but instead to stick it out with one another. But stick it out we must, for this is what Jesus says heaven is like.
The famed Irish poet Seamus Heaney once wrote:
Human beings suffer, They torture one another, They get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured
History says, don’t hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracle And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing The utter, self-revealing Double-take of feeling. If there’s fire on the mountain Or lightning and storm And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing The outcry and the birth-cry of new life at its term.
The Cure At Troy
“The Descent into Hell,” by Tintoretto, 1568
In classic Christian theology there is an image of Jesus that comes from a line in the Apostles Creed which says, He was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. After three days, he rose again. Many have wondered at what Jesus was doing down there in hell for three days, waiting for his resurrection. I like to imagine he was pulling up all the souls of the dead who, like weeds, had been tossed to the fire for burning, gathering them once again to be side-by-side with all the other good seeds.
I honestly don’t know why Jesus insists upon telling parables—these stories that make us think the world is never as bad as it seems and hope is just that good—but thank God someone does.
