Look of love

Like many people I don't think of myself as rich. I'm almost glad I'm not rich, thankful even. There are many warnings in the Bible to the rich. They may have it now but they may be in trouble later. There are cautions in the Psalms against imitating the rich and then there is the story of the rich man and Lazarus in the gospels. So, when I turn to read the story Jesus told about the rich, young man, I am pretty sure who he was talking about and it was not me. I guess I see the young rich guy as a Wall Street investment banker making tons of money for himself and not caring about anyone else. He pulls up to Jesus in a Lexus SUV and turns down the thump thump of his bass just long enough to get his question answered. How do I score the investment you are talking about, Jesus, he asks. Jesus tells him to give away what he owns to the poor and you will have invested for eternity. The man wasn't expecting that so he got back in his car, turned up the stereo and went back to making money.

Today, Marilyn McEntyre in her book, What's in a Phrase, helped me see this story a little more clearly. She focuses on v. 21 in Mark 10, "and Jesus, looking at him, loved him."  Even before answering his question he takes a second, longer look at this young man, she writes. He takes the young man and his question seriously because he sees both his immaturity and his spiritual hunger, she says. Then she writes,"since I haven't given up my possessions, and know few who have, I realize most of us don't have any stones to throw at this rich young man when he went away sorrowing because he could not give up his wealth." She claims she tithes to her church and gives her canned goods to the food bank, but states she will probably carry her laptop to the grave.

The point of the story, she points out, is not judgment but love. Jesus loves even those who are not yet wholehearted, pure and generous. He turns toward us with a compassionate gaze, listening to our imperfect prayers, to petitions that smack of self-righteousness, and self-interest, seeing us through our learning moments, our resistances, and our spiritual failures - is how she puts it.

Some people left everything to follow him immediately. Others went home to fields in need of  plowing, and children in need of raising and families needing to be fed. They go home to ponder what Jesus said, what it means to live by grace and how righteousness is reckoned. McEntyre helps me see the rich man in a different light. Some probably did go home sorrowing or at least feeling like they wished they could be more like the disciples who could follow Jesus and not look back on what they were leaving behind. Like we might look at those who move into a house church situated in the midst of the city or among the poor of the third world. We wish we had that commitment or sense of purpose.

But McEntyre is a good and true guide, I think. She sees this story as a complement to the stories of the calling of the 12 disciples. It is more ordinary. Perhaps, she suggests, the rich young man did not leave without hope; perhaps Jesus look of love stayed with him a long while; perhaps he did not conclude right away that Jesus' way was not for him. "I imagine, McEntyre writes, he went home to restless nights, and days of wrestling with what the Lord requires of him." He had a lot to sort out, she says, and I imagine Jesus' love stayed with him and encouraged his growth process. Jesus look of love was what sustained him as he groped his way toward a new relationship with God. As it sustains us in our following Jesus.

I was reading in Matthew 14 today. Jesus walks on water is the title of this section. It's a favorite. I have always thought it cool that Peter actually was able to take a few steps on the water. Just like Jesus. He didn't make it far but he tried. I realized that Matthew probably took this story from Mark's gospel. Mark's main source was Peter himself many scholars believe. So if Peter was telling the story why did he leave himself out? Some scholars think that Peter's pride got in the way. But Mark includes other Peter stories that do not show him in a good light, for instance, his denial of being one of Jesus's followers before the crucifixion. Michael Card in his book, Mark: the Gospel of Passion, writes he used to think that, as well. But after spending more time with Peter in the book of Acts and his two letters he changed his mind. Now, he thinks Peter told Mark to leave him out of this story because he walked on water. Humility, Card says, was the reason for Peter's absence from the story, not pride.

Peter did walk on water which is  something not too many people can claim. His walking on water could have been a distraction from what Peter/Mark were teaching. When Matthew tells the story with Peter in it, the focus is more on Peter's failure than his brief success. He is going down when he sticks out his hand and yells for Jesus to save him.

It was Peter's failure more than his success that taught him humility. He took a few steps on water but he was a goner if Jesus did not reach out to him. Littlefaiths is what Jesus calls him and the rest of the disciples. Peter never forgot. Humble yourselves under God's mighty hand and he will lift you up is what Peter wrote in his first letter. He had experienced that.

We are more success oriented that failure oriented. We try to hide our failures and play up our successes. Our resumes do not usually contain a bullet list of our failures. Yet we know we often learn more from failure than success. In this case, Peter made the most of a life long lesson he learned the day he was sinking in the deep. Cast your cares on him because he cares for you.

I'm glad Peter held his water walking out of Mark's gospel story. But, I am glad Matthew included it in his. Mark shows us a lesson in humility and Matthew shows us how Peter learned it.

Church in the city

We are attending a small church in the city. It is in the historic (= old and rundown) section of the city that is undergoing revitalization (= people who have lived there a long have to move out as it becomes popular to move in there). The church meets in a storefront on Main St. On August 1 the lease will expire and so the church has been looking for a new (= old) storefront to move into. The church only has use of the present space on Sundays so people have to set up and take down every week and meetings are held in people's homes. Hopefully, the new space comes with more permanency.

Yesterday there were about 27 of us, including children, there. The pastor just returned from a week of vacation with her family on the Gulf Coast but she was able to preach a thoughtful sermon on hospitality. Another person on the mission committee presented a summary of their work on a non profit agency in the community which the church could support by volunteering. Each week for three weeks an agency will be previewed and then the church will decide on one of them. This week we heard about an agency that works on revitalizing people, especially, children and families where one of the parents is in jail. There is tutoring for the children and mentoring for the offenders who are released. There are family reunion parties to encourage positive relationships with the offender and his/her family and others. Then, in our service, another person read scripture, and another led our prayer time which we all closed by praying the Lord's Prayer and another introduced communion and the children led it.

Another person led the singing. The last song was written by Michael Hansen. I had trouble finding the words and music. So here are the words to A Generous Man:

He comes upon a place of famine
With food in his hands.
And people come from miles around.
They have heard,
They went to meet this Generous Man.
They were not worthy, they could not pay.
But still he opens his hands.

He comes upon a place of sickness
with healing in his hands.
And people come from miles around.
They have heard,
they want to meet this Generous Man.
And they are not worthy, and they cannot pay.
But still he opens his hands.

You give it away.
You give it away.
LORD, come give it away.
Come, give it away.

Then we formed a circle, held hands, and some of the children led us in a closing prayer.

yellow fly

Yellow Fly, so quick and quiet, it is on you before you know it,
It may be hours before you realize what bit you.
Then there is pain and itching and swelling.
It got you.
You recognize it now that you have been bitten.
You know what to expect.
If you are watchful you can flick it away before it bites
but most of the time it is on you before you know it, stealth like.
There is nothing to do but deal with the pain, heal up, you will.
When the pain is gone, and the yellow fly season is over
don't be surprised, be ready, next year.

Almost summer

It's summertime, almost, but don't tell anyone down here in the NE corner of Florida where it has been summertime for some time now. It is so hot and humid it is out of the question to try to do anything outside after sunrise at 6:30 am. So, if it is walking or bike riding or hiking, a headlamp is the most important gear you need for outdoor activities. It is so hot and humid that if you have to do yard work, you slather on the sunscreen and get it done as fast as you can. You may sweat the rest of the day inside with the a/c on. It is so hot and humid that you wake up and step outside and think you are in a steam room. It seems like a half hour before the car a/c can cool the car down. And then there are the bugs. My wife has a sensitivity to many of them. This is yellow fly season, there is always a season for something. If she gets a yellow fly bite she swells up like she has a small melon under her skin. She itches, and feels miserable for days. Benadryl is her best friend. So she has another reason to spend these pre-summertime days inside.

Then there is the sunscreen which I have already mentioned. We have become sunscreen addicts. We shout to each other, did you remember to put on sunscreen? Florida is the sunscreen state. At least, there is no shortage of dermatologists here. We have had spots burned, biopsied and surgeried off. But, we can't blame Florida for that! That was from pre-Florida sun abuse. It's ironic that now that we are here we are told by our doctor to make sure we avoid the sun!

And then there are the summer storms which arrive nearly daily. Thunderous thunder, dazzling flashes of lightening, and plenty of rain, as our neighbor says, "it flat laid down a bunch of rain." To put it mildly. The yards flood, roads are under water and some of the older septic tanks fill up with water and you can't flush the toilets for days. The rain brings out the frogs which bark joyfully all night long after a storm. They crawl up the windows so you can see their little feet when you look outside. They are on your car when you go out in the morning. Sometimes they jump in when you open the door and they are so quick they hide themselves before you can show them the way out. You know something they don't: the daytime temperature inside a parked car is not hospitable to frogs or humans.

Florida is not a deep state. The whole state could have a sign out at the border that says: Clean Fill Wanted. There is not enough ground to dig a basement if you wanted one.  The other day a man stopped at the house and said he noticed we did not have gutters on our house. True, most Floridians don't. You know, he said, houses here are built on sandstone. When you get uncontrolled water runoff from the roof, that's how sinkholes happen. Not trying to scare you, just saying, as he leaned up against his truck that prominently displayed his company logo: Roofing and Gutters.

It's almost summer and the livin', as they say, is interesting.

Violence and the Bible

What are Christians to do with all the violent passages in the Bible? Most of the time we avoid them, or forget them, or spiritualize them. Like the Sunday School lessons from the Old Testament for children, we sanitize these violent stories in order to draw out some spiritual lesson. Lately, though both Christian and non-Christian authors have been drawing our attention back to the violent parts of the Bible and asking uncomfortable questions. Philip Jenkins, a historian at Baylor, in a 2011 book entitled Laying Down the Sword wants Christians to play by the same rules they want Islam to play by. It's not fair to judge Islam by certain violent words in the Koran when we make exceptions for the violent parts of the Bible. There is no doubt the Bible has some ugly, nasty stuff in it, a whole lot of blood is shed. What has God got to do with it? Mark Buchanan in a recent issue of Christianity Today referred to passages in Scripture that make God look like a cosmic bully throwing a colossal tantrum. Non - Christian authors want to know how Christians can relate to a God who would order the destruction of an entire people, the Cannanites.

Many years ago there was a Christian bishop, Marcion, who decided the only way to deal with the wrathful God depicted in the Old Testament was to get rid of the Old Testament. The God of the OT was not the same God of the NT. Other Christian leaders wisely saw the error of Marcion's way and strongly asserted that the Old Testament does not show us a different God from the New Testament or one whose purposes or character are fundamentally distorted from what we find in the New Testament. As Buchanan says, the God of Moses is the God of Paul.

Even so it is important for Christians to "own" the story and stories in the Bible and not explain them away or simply take a spiritual message from them. What spiritual lesson can we draw from Jael putting a tent peg through Sisera's skull (Judges 5) or the graphically told account of the disemboweling of Eglon (Judges 3)? Judges is full of such violent stories, some told with coarse humor. What's the point? Barry Webb, an OT scholar and author of a commentary on Judges, points out that Judges is interpreted history. Judges gives us a theological interpretation of the history of some of Israel's heroes (the Judges). They were men and women who were defined by their violence. Judges gives us that violence but it is reworked theologically. So, Webb says, "the challenge for those of us who read it as Scripture is not whether we can identify with the violence but whether we can identify with the theology that frames and interprets it."

That is not saying, oh well, if it can be explained theologically then it's not so bad really, is it? Webb says, there may never be a way to dispel the  unease we feel over some of the violent passages in the Bible. The point of theology is not to give us a tidy way to deal with human suffering so we can feel better about it. But, he cautions, a response based totally on our feelings is also inadequate. Part of the challenge of being a Christian, he says, is to bring our thoughts and feelings under the discipline of scriptural teaching. A thing is not necessarily wrong because it is presented in an insensitive way or because we experience a strong negative reaction to it.

Webb gives us a few guidelines which may help when dealing with some of the violent passages in Judges and other places in the Bible. First, culture is not morally neutral, it is the manifestation of what humans are. Second, the nature of evil is far too deep and  complex to be dealt with by the punishment of this person or that act. There have been times and there are times when things are so bad that "root and branch" judgment is justified, i.e., Noah's day, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Canannites. Third, not all religion is good and it is not a guarantee of protection from divine judgement. Both Canaan and Israel are judged in Judges.

The cross was a tool of violence, too. On the other side of the Cross followers of Jesus find themselves in a totally different environment. "God has taken the sword of his wrath and plunged it into his own heart." (Webb) Christians share in the victory of Christ by embracing suffering. Our weapons of warfare are God's Word and prayer. Evil is overcome, as Jesus did, not by preserving our life but by laying it down. Wrath remains only for those who refuse to do this and it is God's place to judge them, not ours. (Webb)

Judges is no model for Christian living. But, it and other troubling passages in the Old Testament canon contribute to our understanding of faith, the character of God, the human condition, and divine judgment. If we find Judges shocking, that may be a good thing. (Webb).

Mating season

This is mating season in Northern Florida. The love bugs are back clinging to each other in a slow motion aerial mating dance. All manner of lizards, toads, frogs and other as yet unknown reptiles or insects are making a lot of noise at night, and keeping me awake, following their mating rituals. From the sound of it they are making out quite well without the help of e-harmony.com (pun intended). At least this year we are not freaking out by the sight of those small black flying insects locked in the doomed embrace of spring. And we are not ready to call 911 when a lizard slithers in while the front door is open. They are dang hard to catch and when you swat at them you might break off their tail but the main body keeps right on going. In a few days they turn up dead and dried out under a chair or sofa. After a winter with temps in the 60's to 70's and cool night air which might actually fall below 32 once or twice, the locals are glad for spring (it was brutal this winter one man told me). But, now the trees and bushes are in full flower with the sweet smell of honeyesuckle in the air. Couples are walking hand in hand, heads bobbing side to side, avoiding those crazy bugs so drunk with love they don't much care where they are going or what they are running into.