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A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, April 21, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture: Luke 24:36-43 and John 14:18-28
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer
We’re mixing together Luke and John today. That’s always a little dicey, talking about two different gospels in one sermon. Each gospel writer wrote from a different context and each gospel writer had favorite stories and their own point of view. So we need to be careful when talking about two readings that are from different gospels. I’ll do our best.
Let’s start with the Luke passage we shared at the beginning of worship. Though this may seem a strange way to explore this resurrection story, I’ll ask the question anyway: Have you ever seen a video of what happens when you put a cucumber behind a cat? These videos made the rounds on social media maybe eight years ago or so. Lots of people filmed their cats after they snuck up on them and quietly placed a cucumber behind them, typically while they were eating. Here are a couple examples.
Confession time: I admit to finding these videos to be funny. I also find them to be cruel. I don’t know that there’s a definitive explanation of why the cats freak out when the turn around a see a cucumber. One explanation that seems to get a fair amount of traction is that the cucumber looks enough like a snake that it triggers a protective, evolutionary reflex in the cats. The other explanation is that it is simply surprising.
A lot has already happened in the 24th chapter of Luke’s gospel. Women found the tomb where Jesus was buried empty when they went there early that morning and two men in dazzling white (typically understood to be angels) told them that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Peter confirmed their story about the empty tomb (though there were no angels there by the time he got to the tomb). Two disciples who had left Jerusalem met Jesus on the way to Emmaus and finally recognized him as their resurrected Lord when he broke the bread with them. Those two (who weren’t among the inner circle of the 12 disciples) ran all the way back to Jerusalem that evening and tell the 11 (the 12, minus Judas Iscariot). And now, while they’re talking about what happened, Jesus stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”
Their reaction was not one of peace. Their reaction was much more like a cat’s when a cucumber is placed behind it. What are they seeing? Is it a ghost? You might remember that in one of John’s resurrection stories, Jesus gets inside to where the disciples are hiding – even though the doors were locked. Luke seems to be addressing this exact concern.
“Touch me and see,” Jesus says, directly addressing their fears and doubts that, rather than a resurrected Jesus, they were actually seeing a ghost. “… for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Luke frames Jesus’ act of showing his wounds as not only an act of demonstrating who he is (as in, “look, I’m the one you saw crucified”) but also an act of demonstrating his physicality (as in, “look, I’m a human being, not an ethereal spirit”).
Jesus asks them if they have anything to eat, and this, too, seems to be a “ghosts don’t eat broiled fish” proof that the resurrected Jesus isn’t a ghost. I think something else might be going on here. Some early Jesus-follower communities celebrated communion with bread and wine – and fish. Just as Jesus breaking the bread in the Emmaus story helped the disciples recognize the resurrected Christ in their midst, the disciples giving Jesus some broiled fish might (and I stress might) be a nod to communion. The other thing that could be going on here is simply the importance of eating together.
Dr. Marcia McFee points out, “Meals are one of the best ways to be with people. Something about sitting down together and eating just loosens up the things that might keep us from interacting and connecting with our neighbor. I don’t think it is an accident that our most important ritual and sacrament is in itself a meal.”[1] Eating together has the power to help us reach across the divide of loneliness so many people feel.
I know that some of the loneliest I’ve ever felt was when someone I deeply loved died. When my mother died, I was living alone in a big apartment complex in Martinez. I was surrounded by lots of people, and they were all people I didn’t know. I had never taken the time to introduce myself to them and they had never taken the time to introduce themselves to me.
Her death wasn’t a surprise. She had had cancer and been through a year of chemotherapy that was awful. When the cancer grew back, she decided not to go through the treatment again. And then one morning, she died. And I didn’t know the people around me and so I couldn’t turn to them for support.
Thankfully, I had a friend in Berkeley and I called him, I think more to say the words out loud – “my mother died” – than for any other reason. He came over. He dropped whatever it was he was doing and came to my apartment, just so I wouldn’t be alone. He got me to change the flight I had already booked so I could fly back east the next day, while he cleaned some dishes that had accumulated in the kitchen sink. He made sure I ate – and that I didn’t have to eat alone. He got me through that first day.
I was in high school when my grandfather died. All these years later what I most distinctly remember is eating dinner in my grandparents’ home. The six from my family, my aunt and cousin, my grandmother, and my grandparents’ pastor gathered around a table. I remember neither getting to Pennsylvania, nor getting back home. I don’t remember how long we were there. I don’t remember where we stayed. The only other snippet of the trip I remember is of being impressed by the pastor’s sermon, that he seemed to actually know my grandfather. Other than that, the one thing I remember is eating together.
“Do you have something to eat?” the resurrected Jesus asked the disciples. Could he have been helping them simply be with each other in a way they didn’t know they needed. They were in each other’s presence, there in their room. But were they really in each other’s company? It is so easy to be in a crowd and still feel alone.
A year ago, the Surgeon General wrote an opinion piece published in The New York Times about loneliness.[2] He wrote, “At any moment, about one out of every two Americans is experiencing measurable levels of loneliness. This includes introverts and extroverts, rich and poor, and younger and older Americans. Sometimes loneliness is set off by the loss of a loved one or a job, a move to a new city, or health or financial difficulties – or a once-in-a-century pandemic.
“Other times, it’s hard to know how it arose but it’s simply there. One thing is clear: Nearly everyone experiences it at some point. But its invisibility is part of what makes it so insidious. We need to acknowledge the loneliness and isolation that millions are experiencing and the grave consequences for our mental health, physical health and collective well-being.”
Interestingly there isn’t uniformity of loneliness across demographic groups. For instance, a study commissioned by the insurance company Cigna found that young adults (18-24) for nearly twice as likely as seniors (66 and older) to experience loneliness.[3] Still, there’s a darn good chance that between a quarter and half of us gathered here today, whether we’re gathered on site or on line, are experiencing some level of loneliness. Even though we managed to get up and get dressed, even though we are in a group with a common purpose, a big portion of us are experiencing a measurable level of loneliness right now.
The consequences of the “epidemic of loneliness” reach far beyond the individual. “When we are less invested in one another,” Murthy wrote, “we are more susceptible to polarization and less able to pull together to face the challenges that we cannot solve alone – from climate change and gun violence to economic inequality and future pandemics.” He says that addressing loneliness requires “reorienting ourselves, our communities, and our institutions to prioritize human connection and healthy relationships. The good news is we know how to do this.”
Dr. Murthy says there are three areas that need our attention. First, we need to strengthen social infrastructure. He’s talking about the programs, policies, and structures that aid in the development of healthy relationships. This needs to happen in our schools, in our workplaces, in our community programs and institutions, and in our faith communities. Really, any place where people come together.
Second, we need to change our habits and uses of technology. This means doing things like putting down our phones so we can be more present with one another. It also “means choosing not to take part in online dialogues that amplify judgment and hate instead of understanding.”
Third, we need take steps in our personal lives to rebuild our connections with one another. Murthy says that “small steps can make a big difference.… It could be [as simple as] spending 15 minutes each day to reach out to people we care about, introducing ourselves to our neighbors, checking on co-workers who may be having a hard time, sitting down with people with different views to get to know and understand them, and seeking opportunities to serve others, recognizing that helping people is one of the most powerful antidotes to loneliness.”
While I agree with Murthy that reaching out to others is a great way to decrease loneliness, if you’re the lonely person, that can be hard to do. Though I don’t know if there’s science to back up this claim, I suspect that depression and loneliness dance together. When one is dealing with clinical depression, simply getting out of bed can be a victory and, once accomplished, there just isn’t anything left to be the one doing the reaching out. Similarly, loneliness untreated can, I deeply suspect, lead to depression. Likewise, it can be hard to reach out when one is dealing with other health concerns or disabilities. It’s hard to get to the neighborhood senior center if one has had to give up driving, and being around crowds can be dangerous when one is immunocompromised. All the more reason for the portion of us who aren’t lonely to reach out to the portion who are.
“I will not leave you orphaned,” Jesus says to his disciples (according to John). This is part of Jesus’ “farewell discourse,” and long monologue Jesus offers on Maundy Thursday. He knows he’s going to be killed by the powers that be. And, still, he promises that his death won’t leave them orphaned, he won’t leave them isolated and alone. They belong, and as his 21st century disciples we belong, to God’s family. Jesus says that it’s important to keep his commandments, which might seem like a tough thing to do. But at their core, Jesus’ commandments are this: love God and love one another.
And isn’t it wonderful, that when we keep that commandment, when we actively love one another, we become the presence of Jesus for others (whether they recognize it or not). When we love one another, we fulfill Jesus’ promise not to leave us orphaned, not to leave us alone.
I’m not sure what the opposite of loneliness is. I think it has something to do with belonging. I think it has something to do with being home. I think it has something to do with being seen. Perhaps the opposite of being lonely is being found. And having been found, being loved.
In this time of quiet reflection, I invite you to think about the resurrection power of being found. Has this look at the resurrection power of being found unlocked one of your resurrection stories? How might you speak up and share this good news?
[1] Marcia McFee in her “Sermon Fodder” for this Sunday in the worship series Resurrection Stories: Unlock Yours, published on https://www.worshipdesignstudio.com/.
[2] Vivek H. Murthy, “Surgeon General: We Have Become a Lonely Nation. It’s Time to Fix That.” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/30/opinion/loneliness-epidemic-america.html (posted 30 April 2023; accessed 20 April 2024).
[3] “The Loneliness Epidemic Persists: A Post-Pandemic Look at the State of Loneliness among U.S. Adults,” The Cigna Group, https://newsroom.thecignagroup.com/loneliness-epidemic-persists-post-pandemic-look (based on the study dates, I assume this was posted in early 2023; accessed 20 April 2024).
A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, April 14, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture: Nehemiah 9:9-15 and John 20:19-23
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer
I began my sermon last week by quoting the Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber. I want to again, because she summed up in two sentences the core of Christianity, and she points us to what this worship series during the great 50 days of Easter is all about. Here’s what she said:
“The Christian faith, while wildly misrepresented in so much of American culture, is really about death and resurrection. It’s about how God continues to reach into the graves we dig for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life, in ways both dramatic and small.”[1]
In the course of this worship series, we will get a chance to both hear from others and discover within ourselves the many ways we dig graves for ourselves, and the many ways God reaches into those graves to pull us out, giving us new life.
Our theme for this week is Release. Today we look at how resurrection comes in the form of release. Let’s start with our reading from Nehemiah.
The historic setting for the book is the return from the Babylonian exile. It is about 70 years since the leaders of the Kingdom of Judah were first sent into exile when the Babylonian Empire conquered the country. The descendants of those who were exiled are finally being allowed to return and to reestablish themselves as a people and as a nation. Key to their identity is the story of the Exodus, the story of God intervening in history to bring the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt and into the land they thought of as promised. In our reading, Ezra, the high priest, reminds the people of this story.
Both stories have deep parallels and are both quite clearly stories of release. The Hebrew people were released from the bondage of slavery and led through the desert, finally arriving at their so-called “promised land.” A people held for generations in exile have been released and allowed to return to a land they had never been in, a land they nonetheless considered “promised” to them. God’s hand was at work in the Exodus. God’s hand is at work in the release from exile. The tasks of becoming a self-governing people are the same for the people of the Exodus and the people of the exile. In both stories, God is granting a newness of life, a resurrection of release to an entire people.
The people who experience a resurrection in our reading from the gospel of John is much smaller. In this story, it’s easy to focus on the resurrection of Jesus. He’s the central character. He’s the one who has literally risen from the dead. And, as we will see, he’s not the only one who experiences a resurrection. It’s the evening of the day of Jesus’ resurrection. Mary Magdalene has had her dawn encounter with the resurrected Jesus at the tomb. She’s told the disciples about it. Now, evening has come. The disciples have locked themselves away, John says, “where they had met.”
Diana Butler Bass interprets this to mean they had locked themselves away in the upper room where Jesus had washed their feet and where they had shared a last supper with him.[2] They are back in the room where Jesus gave them the mandate to love one another. But the doors are locked. They are afraid. John says the doors “were locked for fear of the Jews.”
Bass writes about this, too: “In recent decades, many liberal theologians and mainline preachers have gone to great lengths to minimize the antisemitism of John’s passion narrative, a story full of references to ‘the Jews.’ This year, my own pastor sent out a note to the congregation explaining (rightly) that during Holy Week we’d hear texts that mention ‘the Jews’ but those references really mean the Jewish authorities who collaborated with the Romans. The clarification is now fairly commonplace in mainline churches – which is a very good thing. Not all Jews, [only] certain Jewish enemy sympathizers.
“Thus, the opening words of Easter evening – the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews – are read softly, skipped over, or mentally reinterpreted to say ‘for fear of the Jewish authorities.’ We want to move on quickly, not dwell on this problematic phrase. Much better to put the emphasis on the end of the sentence: Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’
“Whew. Now we can breathe.
“But what if the writer – in this case at least – really meant ‘for fear of the Jews’? Why wouldn’t the author say Pilate’s men or the Roman soldiers if the disciples were afraid of the authorities? There were plenty of bad actors they might have feared.
“Why ‘for fear of the Jews’? That’s odd given the fact that all the disciples locked in the room were themselves Jews. Were they afraid of their own people? Were they afraid of themselves?”[3]
Are you ever afraid of yourself?
I know there have been times I’ve been afraid of my grief. I’ve been afraid that if I really allowed myself to feel how deep a grief was, I might never surface again. And I’ve been afraid of my own anger – afraid that if I really felt it, I couldn’t control it and that it would explode destructively.
Are you ever afraid of yourself?
My older sister celebrated a 30th anniversary last month. I got her permission to talk about it today. She’s been sober for 30 years. As we looked at the John passage during Monday Morning Bible Study, I wondered if my sister was ever afraid of herself, afraid that she might drink again. So, I called her up and we had a beautiful conversation about it.
Sally, my sister, said the fear she has of herself is not that she’ll drink. Her fear is, as she put it, that she’ll act like a jerk. Let me explain. We’ve all been in situations we can’t control. Sally’s old script – the script that goes back to her childhood – tells her, when she faces something she can’t control, to act out in a way that she subsequently sees as “acting like a jerk.” Then, because she’s acted like a jerk, she feels shame. And when she feels shame, she wants to anesthetize hit. And her anesthetic of choice is alcohol. She knows that when she acts like a jerk, she’ll end up wanting to drink. Thus, Sally’s fear of herself takes the form of fearing that she’ll act like a jerk.
The first three steps of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are sometimes paraphrased, “I can’t; God can; I think I’ll let him.” More formally, they are (and I’m using the traditional language of AA even though it genders God as masculine):
- We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
- We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
The AA “big book,” as it’s called, offers a specific prayer to help ground the third step: “God, I offer myself to Thee – To build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life. ‘
When I told my sister the theme for today was “release,” she immediately thought of this prayer. She thought specifically of the line, “relieve me of the bondage of self.” The line could easily have been, “Release me from the bondage of self.”
Sally says that her sobriety started by her thinking her partner’s alcohol use was the problem. Then she accepted that her alcohol use might be the problem. The breakthrough happened when she realized, “I am the problem. “Not the alcohol,” she told me. “I am the problem. So I need to change. And I can’t change me. God can.” Those are the first three steps. Steps 4 to 12, Sally told me, are all about letting God change us.
I asked Sally what release from the bondage of self looks like to her now. She says it’s about not having undue attention on herself, and she does that by “helping the next guy,” to use her words. In that action, the action of helping the next guy, she discovers the wisdom and truth in one of the lines from the prayer of Saint Francis: it is in giving that we receive.
The fear of the Jews that John says the disciples were feeling that night may have been a bondage of self. They locked the doors to keep others out. And to keep themselves in. Jesus got through the locked doors. And when he did, he stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” And after he showed them his wounds, he said to them again, “Peace be with you.” And he added, “As the father has sent me, so I send you.”
Be released from this tomb. Be released from the tomb of exile. Be released from the tomb of fear. Be released from the tomb of the bondage of self.
“As the father has sent me, so I send you: go and help the next guy.”
In this time of quiet reflection, I invite you to think about the resurrection power of release. Has this look at the resurrection power of release unlocked one of your resurrection stories? How might you speak up and share this good news?
[1] From a meme quoting Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix, (New York: Jericho Books, 2013).
[2] Diana Butler Bass, “The door was locked. Until it wasn’t,” The Cottage, https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/sunday-musings-4c2 (posted and accessed 7 April 2024).
[3] Ibid.
A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, April 7, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture: Acts 16:16-34 and Luke 24:13-25
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer
“The Christian faith, while wildly misrepresented in so much of American culture, is really about death and resurrection. It’s about how God continues to reach into the graves we dig for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life, in ways both dramatic and small.”[1]
That assessment from the Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, is, I think, spot on, and in the course of this worship series, we will get a chance to both hear from others and discover within ourselves the many ways we dig graves for ourselves, and the many ways God reaches into those graves to pull us out, giving us new life.
Take, for instance, Paul. Paul sure ends up in prison a lot. Most of the time it’s for preaching the gospel. Not this time. In our reading from Acts, we hear a story about one time Paul got tossed into prison – well, for a reason I find amusing.
Paul and his entourage have been bopping around Asia minor (modern day Turkey) trying to find people who will hear the good news – without much luck. He ends up going across the sea to Greece and Macedonia, and finally ends up in the city of Philippi. There, he meets some women who listen to what he has to say, and so he hangs out in the city for a while, seeing if he might be able to start up a community of Jesus-followers.
While he’s there, he meets a girl who’s enslaved. This girl has a gift of divination; she was a fortune teller. Apparently, this skill made some descent money for the people enslaving her. Well, this girl starts following Paul around and Paul finds it very annoying, so he casts this spirit of divination out of the girl. Does he stand up for the girl and seek her freedom? No. This “healing” isn’t about justice, and it isn’t about freedom. This healing is about stopping someone who Paul found annoying.
Start digging your own grave, Paul.
Of course, this took away the girl’s ability to make money – not that she ever saw any of the money. It all went into the pockets of the people who were enslaving her. And they did not like that one little bit. Those “owners” [please note the heavy air quotes] marched Paul and Silas into the marketplace before the authorities. The charge? Keeping us from making money. Interrupting the capitalist system. After having them flogged, the magistrates tossed them in jail. They ended up bound by stocks and placed in an “innermost” cell.
The way the story’s told in Acts, they don’t seem to mind being imprisoned. This is the second thing I find amusing about this story. “About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.” Suddenly, the earth shakes, the doors to all the cells are opened and the chains unfastened (which is amazingly precise work for an earthquake).
The earthquake wakes the jailer and when he sees all the prison doors open, he assumes everyone has escaped. He’d better kill himself now. Paul intervenes and stops the jailer from harming himself. This so overwhelms the jailer he asks Paul and Silas what he must do to be saved. Paul and Silas tell him the story of Jesus and he and his household are baptized. The next morning (this part isn’t in our reading), Paul and Silas are freed.
There is, in this story three threads of bondage, three graves for God to reach into. The first is the bondage of the enslaved girl. We don’t know how she ended up enslaved, only that she is enslaved. The second is the imprisonment of Paul and Silas. This is a bondage of their own making. They are the ones who started digging this grave. The third is the bondage the jailer thinks he’s been thrown into when he sees the prison doors opened by the earthquake. He assumes everyone has escaped, so he was dead anyway. He might as well kill himself.
God reaches into two of these graves, but not the third. God brings a resurrection of freedom to the jailer through the actions of Paul, shouting out that the prisoners have not run off. God brings a resurrection of freedom to Paul and Silas through their own compassion and witness, and how it changes the heart of the jailer. The grave God doesn’t not reach into, at least not at this point in the story, is the grave of slavery. I think that’s because slavery was accepted. No one challenged the institution in general nor the specific enslavement of this girl. God, it seems, wants to use our hands and feet and voices as a means to bring the resurrection of freedom.
I learned recently about a contemporary story of imprisonment, music, and freedom. Do we have any country music fans in the house today? Though I’m not a country music fan, the story of the singer/songwriter Jelly Roll resonates with the story from Acts – and not only because there’s singing in both stories.
Starting at age 14, lock-up became Jason DeFord’s (that’s Jelly Roll’s real name) second home. His other home, the one with his parents, wasn’t all that great either. His mother who struggled with drugs and his father who booked bets. Barely a teenager, DeFord was arrested and incarcerated for drug possession, drug dealing, shoplifting, and aggravated robbery. He was in and out of lock-up for the next ten years. When he wasn’t getting in trouble, Jelly wrote songs. Even when he was imprisoned at the Metro-Davidson County Detention Facility in Nashville, he wrote songs.
The CBS show Sunday Morning took Jelly back to the county lock-up as part of a story they did on him. Everything changed for him when he was 24 and learned from his prison guard that he was a father of a baby. At the time, he didn’t even know his daughter’s name: Bailey. Out of prison, DeFord continued recording and distributing his rap music until he experienced a breakthrough in 2020 with an acoustic version of one of his songs that caught the ear of country fans. The following year, he performed at the Grand Ole Opry. And this past November was twice nominated for Grammy awards – Best New Artist and Best Country Duo/Group Performance.[2]
Now Jelly Roll’s visits to prison are to speak words of hope to inmates as he shares his story of redemption with them. Though in the interview on Sunday Morning Jelly doesn’t explain how he was redeemed, I think I know part of the story. God reached into Jelly’s grave with the little hand of an infant. It was the resurrection of the Christmas story all over again. Bailey’s birth started the ball rolling. And what redemption looked like for him was freedom from the carceral system.
Now, I need to tell you that it is very unusual for jails and prisons to be vehicles of resurrection. That part of our criminal justice system – the “lock ’em up” part – is not, generally speaking, rehabilitative or restorative. That’s why I’m glad that here in Alameda County there is the Interfaith Coalition for Justice in our Jails. As they describe themselves on their website, the ICJJ “is dedicated to bringing members of diverse faith communities together to achieve transformative change within the Alameda County justice system.”[3]
The changes they seek include reducing incarceration as a response to social problems the county, working to change abusive and dangerous conditions in the jail, supporting alternatives to incarceration especially for people with mental health and substance abuse issues, and “generally changing the punitive criminal legal system that causes immense damage to thousands of families each year – especially in Alameda County’s Black and Brown communities.”[4] If you want to learn more about ICJJ, I encourage you to speak with Judy Zlatnik or Randy Fewel.
Now, the freedom that comes through resurrection is not limited to the freedom from literal jails and prisons. The truth is that we often put ourselves in prisons. Jelly Roll imprisoned himself in low self-esteem. The chorus to his breakthrough song, “Save Me,” says, “I’m a lost cause / Baby, don’t waste your time on me / I’m so damaged beyond repair / Life has shattered my hopes and my dreams.”
In a similar way, though they were out on the road to Emmaus, seemingly free, the disciples who met Jesus on the road were in emotional prison. It might have been a prison built with grief over Jesus’ death, or with fear that they could be next, or with their resignation that the Jesus wasn’t the Messiah (or at least not the Messiah they were expecting), or with their anger directed at nothing and everything, or with the simple yet profound confusion that can come with a death. I think one of the reasons they didn’t recognize that they were walking with Christ on that road was their imprisonment.
For them, freedom came in recognizing the presence of Christ in the breaking of the bread. This was an earthquake for the disciples on the road that busted open their prison doors. Suddenly they had hope, and they freed them from their prisons of grief, fear, resignation, confusion, and anger. They were so free, they ran (in the gathering dark) all the way back to Jerusalem.
At Monday Morning Bible Study, I asked what we can do to create the space for resurrection to bring freedom. The ideas that were shared were all about building community. I absolutely agree. “Find something to do, especially for someone else.” “Be with people.” “Look for Jesus in others.”
In the Emmaus Road story, it says that the disciples’ hearts burned within them as Jesus explained things to them on the road. But they didn’t notice that their hearts had been burning – until after they recognized Jesus. And they recognized Jesus when they invited him (still a stranger) into community, to stick around for a meal.
“For freedom that Christ has set us free,” it says in the letter to the Galatians (5:1).
In this time of quiet reflection, I invite you to think about imprisonment and freedom. Has this look at resurrection freedom unlocked one of your resurrection stories? How might you speak up and share this good news?
[1] From a meme quoting Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix, (New York: Jericho Books, 2013).
[2] See https://www.grammy.com/artists/jelly-roll/54236 (accessed 6 April 2024).
[3] Interfaith Coalition for Justice in our Jails website, https://www.icjjalamedacounty.org/ (accessed 6 April 2024).
[4] Ibid.
A sermon preached at the Niles Town Plaza, Fremont, California,
as part of a community Easter Sunrise Service
sponsored by Niles Discovery Church,
on Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture: John 20:1-18
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer
I think the first time I saw this particular meme on Facebook as about two years ago. It started cropping up, right on schedule, yesterday in by Facebook newsfeed: If you church has a sunrise Easter service, only women should be allowed to go to it. Then they can tell the men, who will be so excited that they’ll run to the 10:00 service.
Another one I especially likes says, “In the interests of biblical accuracy, all the preaching about the resurrection this Easter Sunday will be done by women.” My apologies: you’re stuck with me.
In all four gospels, the first people to go to the tomb where Jesus had been buried, the first people to find the empty tomb, the first people to experience the resurrection were women. The names vary from one account to another. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it’s a handful of women who go to the tomb. In John’s account, it appears to be just one woman who goes to the tomb: Mary Magdalene.[1] In fact, the one person who shows up in all four accounts is Mary Magdalene. Is it any wonder that she is given the honorific “Magdalene”? Mary, the tower of faith. Mary, the magnified.[2]
While it was still dark, John tells us, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed. Her heart had been torn out at the execution of her beloved rabbi, and they wouldn’t even leave his body alone. They had come and stolen his body during the Sabbath or in the middle of the night. She ran back and told two of the disciples that Jesus’ body had been stolen.
Peter and the (unnamed) beloved disciple ran to the tomb, and sure enough, just as Mary had described, the tomb had been disturbed, the stone removed, the body missing. All they saw were the linen cloths that had been used to wrap the body. John says that the beloved disciples “saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” That is a strange statement and I’m not sure how to interpret it. Maybe John was saying that the beloved disciples saw the burial cloths laying there and believed something miraculous happened, and still didn’t understand that was going on. Maybe I’m reading that into what John meant because it rings so true to my experience: belief and not understanding held simultaneously.
The disciples headed back home, and Mary stayed at the tomb. She looked in and saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying. They asked her, “Woman why are you weeping?” and she said to them, “They’ve taken away my Lord and I do not know where they laid him.”
Woman why are you weeping? I love Nadia Bolz-Weber’s response to this question.[3] “I must confess that I used to hear this as a slightly passive aggressive question, as if the angels were implying that Mary was overreacting. Or this question was the equivalent of sending her some vapid ‘don’t worry, be happy’ meme,… as if Christian faith is mostly a mechanism to bypass negative emotions in favor of delusional positivity.” As if Mary didn’t need to grieve. “Theologically speaking, this is what we call ‘hogwash’.”[4]
I firmly believe that grief is holy to God. I have come to believe that grief isn’t “the cost of having loved.” Rather, I have come to believe grief is an expression of love. Sometimes our love is so vast, it leaks out our eyes. And when Jesus cried at Lazarus’ tomb, his tears were just as salty as yours or mine.
No, the question the angels ask is not an accusation. The question is an invitation. Why are you weeping. Tell us your story, Mary. Tell us your grief. Don’t bypass the truth of your sadness. Tell the truth of the darkness you’re experiencing. Tell the truth of how you feel robbed. Tell the truth of how “death is a thief we cannot put on trial and punish.”[5] Tell the truth about how the grief you’re feeling now “has opened the door and let in so much other grief” and that you “don’t know how to uninvite its friends to this party.”[6]
It’s been almost six years since my best friend died. Every time a member of the church dies, the grief I feel at their deaths invites the grief I still feel from the death of Lizann to make its presence know. I find myself longing to hear her voice, longing to hear her call me by name, longing to see her seeing me in a way that no one else ever has.
Grief is an expression of love, and it is holy to God. “While there are those who would reduce the Christian faith to moralism and delusional positivity, we know that the God we worship is not a shiny toothed motivational speaker churning out cheerful memes in times of suffering. We know that the God we worship is a crucified and risen God. Which is to say, we worship a God that is also not unfamiliar with darkness, a God who comes close to those who mourn, a God who comes close to those who stand outside tombs, a God who is not far off, but who is as close as that choppy breath that falters when you’re sobbing.”[7]
Nadia Bolz-Weber so eloquently expressed why Mary was weeping. “I think she was crying because, having felt divine love in the presence of Jesus, she knew she couldn’t go back to living without it and she didn’t quite know yet she wouldn’t have to. So she cried, saying they’ve taken him away and I don’t know where he is. They’ve taken love away and I don’t know where it is. They’ve taken kindness away, they’ve taken my own wholeness away and I don’t know where it is. And so, while it was still dark, she went to his tomb thinking maybe the tomb was the end of the story.”[8]
And then she learned that it wasn’t the end of the story. Turning from the angels and the tomb, she bumped into someone who must have been the gardener. Maybe he knows what’s happened to the body. And then the gardener says her name. The gardener calls her back to herself, and she realizes it’s not the gardener. It’s her beloved Rabbi.
“Go and tell the boys,” Jesus instructs her. Have you ever wondered why Mary Magdalene got this job? “I don’t think it was because she had followed the instructions for how to make herself worthy to witness the resurrection. And I don’t think it was because she fit the high priest description of an ideal preacher. And I don’t think it was because she had pure doctrine. [And] most importantly, I don’t think it was despite who she was; I’m pretty sure it was because of who she was.… I think Mary was chosen because she knew what it was like for God to move, not when the lilies are already out and the lights are on, but while it’s still dark. Because, unlike when the men looked in and saw only laundry, when Mary Magdalene looked in the tomb, she saw angels. Mary Magdalene saw angels because she was not unfamiliar with the darkness. She had the kind of night vision that only comes from seeing what God does while it’s still dark.
“I do not know why this is God’s economy, that it’s while we’re still in despair, while we’re still grieving,… while we are sure that nothing good will ever come – that it’s when we’re faced with the nothingness of death that were closest to resurrection, that while it’s still dark, God does most wondrous work.”[9]
It’s not because Mary Magdalene had perfect faith that Jesus picked her to be the first one to tell of good news of the resurrection. It was because her faith was good enough.
Even in the darkness (whatever that darkness is for you – fear, grief, anxiety, loneliness) your faith is good enough. So we can say, even if we don’t really know what we’re saying, “Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!”
[1] I say, “appears to be,” because Mary does use “we” when reporting what happened to Peter and the beloved disciple.
[2] While “Magdalene” has long been assumed to refer to a town that Mary came from, recent scholarship suggests that “Magdalene” is, in fact, an honorific derived from the Hebrew and Aramaic roots for tower or magnified. See Yonat Shimron, Religious News Service, quoted in “Was Mary Magdalene really from Magdala? Two scholars examine the evidence,” Christian Century, 9 February 2022 edition, p. 16.
[3] Much of this sermon has been influenced by (and I’ll be quoting from) Nadia Bolz-Weber’s sermon preached at the funeral for her friend Rachel Held Evans, https://rachelheldevans.com/funeral.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, in Fremont,
on Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture: Mark 16:1-8
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer
It is tempting to think of the Last Supper, that scene in the Upper Room that we remember on Maundy Thursday, as a dreamy, candle-lit fellowship meal, rather than, as Ched Myers has called it, “the conflict-ridden final hours of a fugitive community in hiding.”
Likewise, it’s easy to imagine Jesus praying at Gethsemane in a calm, resolute manner, at peace in his submission to a pre-ordained plan, rather than the deep, sweaty struggle of a man coming to terms with the consequences of his revolutionary vision and calling.[1]
It is easy to hear the story of the so-called trials of Jesus before the Sanhedrin and Pilate and blame all the Jews. The gospels seem to do a pretty good job of this, making it seem as if everyone in Jerusalem was standing outside Pilate’s palace shouting, “Crucify him!” when, in fact, whatever mob might have existed were more likely the sycophantic toadies of the religious elites and collaborators with the Roman occupation.
It is easy to forget that crucifixion was the Roman form of execution, so Jesus was executed by the Roman government, by the Empire, not by the occupied Jews. He was perceived as a threat to the established imperial order, perceived as a threat by the 1% of his day who concluded: Have done with him. Get rid of him. End this threat. So Jesus was executed by a detachment of Roman soldiers on orders from their government.
One chilling part of the story is how Jesus faced this execution alone. One of his disciples betrayed him. Peter followed at a distance, but when pressured to admit his association with Jesus, he denied knowing him. The rest of the male disciples ran off. Only the women and Joseph of Arimathea (who we meet for the first time just a chapter ago in Mark’s gospel) knew where Jesus was buried. There is nothing pretty about the last days of Jesus’ life. Nothing romantic or dreamy or calm. Jesus was cruelly tortured and killed by the Roman government and the powers that be. And one would think that this was the end of the story.
But it’s not the end of the story. The ending of the story, at least as Mark tells it, is much stranger.
Early on Sunday morning, some women went to the tomb where Jesus’ body was buried, but the corpse was not there. “As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.”[2] Freaked out might be more to the point, though Mark doesn’t say who this “young man, dressed in a white robe” is. He becomes an angel (or two angels) in later gospels (whose writers almost certainly had a copy of Mark’s gospel when they were writing). All Mark tells us about the young man is what he says: “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”[3]
This could be the beginning of a great ending. The women go to the disciples, tell them what they experienced, and then all kinds of wonderful things happen. And that’s not how Mark ends his gospel. Mark ends it with the sentence: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”[4]
The End. “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
New Testament scholar, Dr. Mary Ann Tolbert, says, “To end the gospel on such a resounding note of failure is very upsetting from a modern perspective.”[5] She points out that throughout Mark’s gospel, Jesus has continually struggled to get his disciples to understand his teachings. Jesus predicted his passion three different times and they never really understood what he was talking about. The disciples hear his parables, sometimes even get them explained to them, and they still don’t understand what he’s talking about. They witness him healing people, but they can’t see beyond that happens to that was revealed in the healing. The people (almost always unnamed) who are healed – they get it, and time after time, even when they’re told not to reveal who Jesus is, they go and tell people. But not the disciples.
“Again and again, the disciples disappoint, and so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that these women who, let’s remember, had the courage to stay with Jesus to the end and then ventured to his tomb to tend him, nevertheless fail like the other disciples.”[6]
There’s a demon in Mark’s gospel who recognizes Jesus, asking, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” (Mark 5:7). And there’s the Roman centurion, who immediately after watching Jesus die states, “Truly, this man was God’s son” (Mark 15:39). But the disciples? They miss it.
Here we get to the end of the story, when it would be so nice to hear that the disciples finally got it and finally started talking about it. And they don’t. Even the women who have been the most faithful of all, the woman who stayed with Jesus through his crucifixion and burial, “said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
Dr. Tolbert convinced me that “The expectations raised and then crushed by the end of the Gospel are intended to move the hearers of the Gospel to action. If the women do not carry the message, is there anyone else who can? Is there anyone else who has heard Jesus’ preaching, seen his healings, watched his crucifixion and burial, and listened to the wondrous announcement of the resurrection?
“Well, yes! The audience of the Gospel has heard all of this. At the end and indeed by means of the end itself, the audience of the Gospel of Mark … are challenged to become themselves faithful disciples, carrying the message to the world,…”[7]
In other words, the central message of Mark’s gospel is, “Speak Up.” And that message is addressed to you and me. Mark is asking us to speak up.
This ending even makes the beginning of the Gospel make more sense. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). What Mark tells us is that his whole Gospel is just the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ. The story keeps going – if we keep telling it.
And that’s great. Except for one little thing. Speaking up isn’t always easy. The reason why the whole “if I tell him I love him, will it scare him off?” RomCom trope works is because speaking up about something as real as love is scary. Speaking a truth requires of us a level of emotional vulnerability, and who wants to be that exposed?
And what about when the truth you have to share isn’t positive? I think back to the beginning of my ministry when I worked as a chaplain in a juvenile hall. Kids would reveal to me various types of abuse they’d suffered, revelations they had never made before. Sharing that kind of truth required a special kind of vulnerability.
And the truth can, at times, be dangerous to speak. This is especially true for women and people of color. So, while Mark’s gospel calls us to speak up, I don’t think Mark’s gospel calls us to take unnecessary risks in sharing how Jesus is alive today. That said, I asked a group of colleagues[8] if they would share stories with me of times they’d spoken up and it had life-giving results. Here are two of their stories:
Mandy shared a story of being at the beach and noticing that her brother-in-law had a number of, what seemed to her to be, new moles on his back. “We were all in graduate school, and none of us could afford healthcare. I remembered the story of a family that I had babysat for, where the wife pointed out something on her husband’s back and a life-threatening cancer was discovered by their doctor. I told the story to my brother-in-law, and said that I thought he should go to the doctor, now! A month and half later, his wife called me and said, with a quavery voice, ‘You saved his life.’ It’s been 30 years, and with skin surgery, and careful monitoring, he’s still alive and doing well.”
Chris shared, “When Obergefell v Hodges was released [that’s the 2015 Supreme Court case that legalized same-gender marriages], I contacted the paper and solicited an interview because I was happy to do same sex marriages. I also did a video interview with a local news service. This was in an extremely conservative town where no other pastors openly offered this welcome. My own … church folks kind of freaked out at the attention, one member instantly quit, and I got a lot of hate on social media, particularly from a different former member. But, at the same time, scores of people who weren’t themselves churched or Christian spoke up in gratitude to hear a Christian pastor standing with LGBTQIA+ folks. Maybe in that town they hadn’t heard that before.”
Yes, speaking up takes courage. And I believe we can find that courage in the promise of the resurrection. As Bishop Steven Charleston has said, “We are not afraid, even if we have every reason to be. Yes, our eyes are open. Yes, we are aware of the realities around us, the hard realities, but even if the daily news tries to press the hope out of us, still we are not afraid. Why? Because we know every living thing is under the watchful eye of love. Every prayer, ever said, by anyone, is heard and received. Every life, ever lived, is redeemed by a power far greater than even imagination can contain. So, no, we are not afraid.”[9]
Be not afraid. Speak up. Amen.
[1] Debra Dean Murphy, “Palms and passion,” The Christian Century Blog, http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2012-03/palms-and-passion (7 April 2012), including the quote from Ched Myers.
[2] Mark 16:5.
[3] Mark 16:6-7.
[4] Mark 16:8.
[5] Mary Ann Tolbert, “Mark,” The Women’s Bible Commentary, quoted in “Mark 16,” Dwelling in the Word, https://dwellingintheword.wordpress.com/2022/02/21/3351-mark-16/ (accessed 30 March 2024).
[6] David Lose, “Just the Beginning,” WorkingPreacher.org, http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=574 (accessed 7 April 2012).
[7] Tolbert, op. cit.
[8] This question was posed in a closed Facebook group. I was given permission to share their stories.
[9] Bishop Steven Charleston, daily Facebook post, https://www.facebook.com/bishopstevencharleston/posts/pfbid06669xRMmwrcd9jzZ55CAtM3tXg7vMYjZDRBDc2xJjMdJsQEohWBbD2BJFv5T2bZpl (posted and accessed 27 March 2024).
A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, March 17, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture: John 12:20-33
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer
“Tea Cakes with Jesus,” by Kate Gaston.[1]
You’re knocking at my front door.
I wasn’t expecting you, so of course I’m still in my pajamas.
Cracking open the door, I say, “Hi, I think you’re looking for my sister.
She lives down the street at number 31, with her wool and flax and busy hands.”You remain standing there on my front stoop, unfazed by my awkward greeting.
You want to come in.I give myself full marks for my tidy doorstep;
it’s well-swept and cheerful; welcoming, even.But as I swing the door wider to let you in,
I am acutely aware of the mess of things I’ve gathered around me—
dusty participation trophies, moldering stacks of self-help remedies.You don’t hesitate;
you even remove your boots in case they might dirty my hopelessly smudged floor.You take the folding chair I offer you;
it’s rusted and uncomfortable;
pilfered from a cold church basement.I take for myself the seat of honor:
a blue velour La-Z-Boy, covered in cat hair and coffee stains.My throne.
As I pour you a lukewarm cup of tea,
you talk to me.My answers are curt, churlish;
much like the way I make small talk after church on Sunday
when all I want to do is put on sweat pants and eat some lunch.Even so, you’re leaning in like you really might care.
Before I know it,
I find myself telling you the things I think about behind my closed eyelids in the dead of night;
the stuff I’m afraid to whisper aloud lest my life be consumed by heartache, despair, and chaos.Dear Lord, here I am telling you what I don’t tell anyone;
my deepest carnality passing from my honey-dripping lips into your keeping.Rather than stiffening in injured propriety like any normal person would, you soften.
Your face assumes that shape which can only be interpreted as compassion.
And are your eyes filled with tears?For me?
And there I was, so damn certain you were some blank-eyed automaton
handing out bread and fish and platitudes of come-unto-me.But we just took a face-first swan dive into my heart’s deepest crevasse,
and you’re still sitting there in that rickety folding chair.I don’t know much, but I do know that platitudes don’t swan dive.
I also know now that I want you to have my recliner, Jesus.
I want to stand up and get out of the way;
I want you to sit enthroned in this rat-nested, broken odds-and-ends, Mad Hatter heart of mine.You do, oblivious to the cat hair sticking to your pants.
Like any decently-raised southern woman, I want to feed you;
as I bustle to the pantry, I’m aware of all my furniture.It’s still mine, yes, most of it still dirty and duct-taped,
but it has been changed,
charged with some holy current.Some gold-veined Kintsugi spell of reconciled redemption
has been injected through the whole thing.I smile.
I hand you a tea cake—my grandmother’s recipe—and we eat together,
unconcerned about the sweet crumbs sprinkling onto our laps.
My friend[2] who introduced me to this poem calls it “the most beautiful description of prayer I think I have ever heard.” It is, for me, too, a beautiful description of prayer and a wonderful metaphor of the efficacy of prayer, of the transformative, healing power of prayer, of how in prayer Jesus lifts us up.
In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus talks about how he will be lifted up, and that when it happens, he will draw all people to himself. And then John tells us, “He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.”[3] That line in John’s gospel makes me first think John is focusing on the crucifixion, the “kind of death” Jesus was to die. Sadly, if I go there, I think I miss what John is really saying.
In chapter 11 (our reading is from chapter 12), Jesus brings his friend Lazarus back to life. Then, at the beginning of chapter 12, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, drawing a big crowd. (We’ll look at how Mark tells that story next week.) The religious authorities find this troubling and John ends his telling of this story with some Pharisees complaining about the crowd Jesus attracts, saying, “Look, the world has gone after him.”[4]
It’s just days before Passover, so Jews from around the Mediterranean world are gathering in Jerusalem. The crowd includes some Greeks, who want to meet Jesus. Those Pharisees seem to be right. The whole world has gone after him.
This is troubling for the Jewish leaders. And it’s not jealousy. They figure that if the numbers of people following Jesus continue to grow, the commotions he seems to stir up may well attract attention – and even provoke a preemptive attack – from the Roman occupiers, who always seemed to be worried about the potential for rebellion. “Thus, for the authorities, the more Jesus’ celebrity grows (and what’s more spectacular than raising someone from the dead?), the more the temple and the whole people are put at risk.
“Apparently sensing this tipping point when he hears that two foreign pilgrims want to meet him, Jesus declares for the first time [in John’s gospel] that ‘the hour has come’ (12:23). At several points earlier in the story, beginning with the wedding at Cana (2:4), Jesus has said that his hour has not yet arrived – but now it’s at hand. Now he will come fully into view, for all to see. Now he will be ‘glorified’”[5]
But what does that mean – “glorified”? The Greek, a biblical scholar told me, means to value something for what it truly is, so to glorify Jesus is the value Jesus for who Jesus truly is. Okay … and to be honest, that isn’t especially helpful for me. I like that agricultural metaphor Jesus uses to help me understand: “a grain that falls to the earth and dies, and then grows as a seed grows, bearing much nourishing fruit. In other words, being ‘glorified’ will look like a human life freed from self-centered isolation, a generous life lived for others in community, in which both self and others flourish.”[6] So, the kind of death that Jesus is going to die is a death that can’t be separated from his resurrection. His death will lead to rising, the bearing much fruit, the drawing people to him, to the flourishing of life. That is what being lifted up is all about for Jesus: the flourishing of life.
I’d like to tell you a story (so I’m going to) that illustrates how we can be part of this glorification when we lift up each other. The year is 2007 or 2008, maybe seven years after the attacks of September 11, 2001. The story is Naomi Shihab Nye’s,[7] and I’ll apologize in advance for mispronouncing some of the words.
Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, 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 apprehensive about 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.
It’s a wonderful thing – to lift up another. And, in my experience, so often when we lift up another, that lifting energy causes us to be lifted up as well. And God is glorified.
Retired pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes[8] reminds us:
You are not just one seed.
You don’t have to go and die for Jesus.
You are a whole bag of seeds.
Strew yourself in this world.
With every act of kindness or generosity,
every time you forgive,
another seed slips through your fingers.
Every time you care about someone,
even a stranger, especially when it’s risky,
you scatter a handful of seeds.
Let them go.
Toss your love wildly into this world.
Scatter seeds in good soil and poor.
Many will be eaten by birds
or trampled under foot.
But only the ones you throw away will grow.
You have a whole bag of love. Sow it all.
Amen.
[1] Kate Gaston, “Tea Cakes with Jesus,” Rabbit Room Poetry, https://rabbitroompoetry.substack.com/p/tea-cakes-with-jesuskate-gaston (posted 6 March 2024; accessed 16 March 2024).
[2] The Rev. Dr. John R. Mabry.
[3] John 12:32-33, NRSV.
[4] John 12:19c, NRSV.
[5] “The Hour Has Come,” Salt Project, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/lectionary-commentary-lent-5 (posted 11 March 2024; accessed 13 March 2024).
[6] Ibid.
[7] Naomi Shihab Nye, “Gate A-4,” Poets.org, https://poets.org/poem/gate-4 (© 2008 by Naomi Shihab Nye; accessed 16 March 2024).
[8] Steve Garnaas-Holmes, “Sow it all,” Unfolding Light, https://unfoldinglight.net/2024/03/11/sow-it-all/ (posted 11 March 2024; accessed 16 March 2024).
A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, February 4, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture: Mark 1:29-39
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer
My imagination evokes two scenes of chaos as I read today’s gospel lesson. One scene is inside the house and the other scene is outside. Here’s why.
I don’t remember my mother ever getting sick during my childhood. She must have. Four kids coming home from school with who knows what viruses and bacteria – she must have caught something at some point. Still, I don’t remember it ever happening. I think it was her sheer force of will that kept her healthy. She had a high bar for what constituted “being sick.” To stay home from school, us kids had to be running a fever or be throwing up. My mother, no doubt, held herself to that same standard. Plus, I think she figured things would just fall apart if she allowed herself to take a sick day from her job running the house.
I project that experience into my reading of the story of Jesus and his first disciples going to Simon and Andrew’s home. It appears to have been an extended family household. If Simon and Andrew’s parents were still alive, they might have been living there, I suppose. However, I imagine Simon’s mother-in-law as the person who really ran things in the house.
A mother-in-law implies that Simon had a spouse, and even though it was Simon and Andrew’s house, I don’t imagine Simon’s spouse running things. Especially if Simon and his wife had children, I imagine his wife’s primary attention would have been on them. So I see Simon’s mother-in-law being the one who ran things. We don’t know anything about Andrew – if he was married or had children, or if he had in-laws living in the house. That silence keeps Simon’s mother-in-law in charge (at least in my imagination).
With Simon’s mother-in-law sick in bed, I imagine things in the house to be in a state of chaos. And then guests come over: and itinerant healer and some of his followers. What’s a matriarch who’s sick in bed to do? Maybe it was a good thing that one of the guests was an itinerant healer. With his help, the household could get beyond the chaos. If he could heal Simon’s mother-in-law, order could be restored.
Only, I don’t think that’s why Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law. And I don’t think Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law so he could get some lunch. I think Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law because to do so is the good news. The first thing Jesus does is he comes near to her and takes hold of her hand.
I spoke last week about the importance of moving beyond the boundaries that preclude someone from community or in some other way death-dealing. Here, Jesus moves beyond the boundary that says he should stay separate from her (and she from him) because of her illness. Jesus takes her hand and lifts her up. The verb here translated “lifted” is the same verb translated “raised” at the end of Mark’s gospel when the Angel tells the women who come to the tomb, “He has been raised. He is not here.” When Jesus lifted Simon’s mother-in-law, he raised her.
And what does she do with this resurrection? Diakoneo is the Greek we translate “served” when the text says, “she served them.” Diakoneo. To serve; to minister. It’s the root word from which we get “Deacon.” Maybe this makes Simon’s mother-in-law the first Deacon in the New Testament. One commentary I read in preparation for today’s sermon says that the literal meaning of this Greek verb is “to kick up dust.” In lifting her up, Jesus frees her to kick up some dust and get things done.
As I said, the other scene of chaos I see when I read this passage of scripture takes place outside the house. “That evening, at sundown [when the Sabbath was over], they brought Jesus all who were sick or possessed by demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door.” As I hold that picture in my mind, I imagine all kinds of chaos. People pushing and shoving, trying to get in the door, trying to get to Jesus.
There’s a similar scene at the beginning of the next chapter of Mark’s gospel. In that story, the crowd outside the door is so big some people dig a hole through the roof so they can lower a friend who’s paralyzed down to Jesus so that he, too, can be raised. A scene from Jesus Christ, Superstar also comes to mind. In this creative telling of the story of Jesus, the crowds seeking healing from him are so big and so demanding Jesus loses his cool and yells at them, “Heal yourselves!” The chaos outside the house, at least as I imagine it, is overpowering. The crowd is so big, Jesus can’t get to everybody. I wonder if he felt overwhelmed.
A colleague, Ben David Hensley, uses his imagination, too, when he reads this passage.[1] Ben sees a rhythm in the passage. Jesus goes with his first disciples to the synagogue on the Sabbath. While he’s there, he has a confrontation with an unclean spirit that he exorcises from a man. After their time at the synagogue, the bunch go to Simon and Andrew’s home and, “after a convenient healing from fever,” as Ben puts it, he imagines Jesus just hanging out, “presumably eating and fellowshipping before he started working again in the evening.” Then, after an evening of healing people and casting out demons, and presumably some sleep, Jesus takes a different kind of break. Early in the morning, Jesus heads out to a deserted place and prays. Then the disciples come looking for him and they head off to other towns so that Jesus may proclaim the good news there, too.
It’s the rhythm that Ben sees that’s important. Be about the healing, liberating work for a while. Take rest in one form or another for a while. Be about the healing, liberating work for a while. Take rest in one form or another for a while. Rinse and repeat.
The whole thing leaves me wondering how I could do a better job of moving beyond the chaos. Simon’s mother-in-law coped with the chaos by being lifted up by Jesus. Jesus gets beyond the chaos by stepping into it for service, and then out of it for renewal, and back into it, and back out.
Neither of these are my go-to strategy. I am frequently tempted to deal with things until there’s nothing left to deal with. Of course, there’s always something else to deal with. And when I’m in the midst of chaos my tendency is to work harder to force some order. I love my “to do” lists, and when things get chaotic, I typically often find myself trying to figure out what I can do to restore order. I want to figure out the steps and the sub-steps. When the chaos too isn’t significant, this can be successful. And then there are times when the chaos is too big, the distance from here to orderly is too great, and I just can’t see how to get there.
I had that experience on Thursday. On Wednesday, our church moderator, vice moderator, and I attended a 6-hour workshop called a “human resources boot camp.” We learned a lot. And we left with an overwhelming list of things we need to do to be compliant with labor laws.
On Thursday, in between the several meetings I had that day, I tried to bring some order to the chaos in my mind about all we need to do. It didn’t work. The chaos I was experiencing who just too chaotic.
At some point during the day, I decided to try following Jesus’ example from today’s gospel lesson. I decided to step out of the chaos and to rest in Jesus. Friday is supposed to be my Sabbath day, a day to turn off work and to rest. And that’s what I did. Rather than trying to figure it all out, I rested. I had a project at home that I’ve been putting off for a long time. It wasn’t urgent. It wasn’t big. It was something that could wait. And now I can talk about it in the past tense. One little errand to run and it will be finished.
That’s what I did on Friday, and because of that, I’m convinced a funny thing happened on Saturday. After taking Friday away from the chaos, I realized on Saturday that I don’t have to do anything about the HR chaos. At least not yet. It will come. There’s still lots to do; that didn’t change by taking some rest away from it. The thing that’s different is this: I know what the first step is, and I’ll take it tomorrow. And the second step? It will reveal itself in due course. And if all this gets too chaotic again, I’ll step away and rest in God and move beyond the chaos.
Amen.
[1] Ben wrote about this in an online forum that’s part of the Worship Design Studio’s support of preachers using their worship resources.
A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, January 28, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture: 1 Corinthian 8:1-13 and Mark 1:21-28
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer
For most of my 36-year career as a pastor, one of the requirements for maintaining my standing as clergy in the United Church of Christ (and more recently) in the Disciples of Christ has been to attend a clergy ethics and boundaries training every three years. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that I found this training to become more and more boring. Just divide 36 by three and you’ll understand why.
I’ve found the one way I can deal with my boredom in situations like this is to teach the class, so I don’t have to take the class. So, a few years ago, I got boundary trainer training and offered my services to the Conference and Region, and last year, they took me up on the offer. So here I am, a boundaries trainer, and I’m going to talk about going “beyond the boundaries” today.
Let me start by saying that maintaining appropriate boundaries is important in any profession. There are reasons why doctors aren’t supposed to treat their family members – for instance, their emotions can get in the way of their clinical judgment – and so there’s an ethical boundary established around that. Likewise, it is important that clergy maintain appropriate professional boundaries. For instance, it is inappropriate for a local church pastor to become close friends with a member of church for many reasons, not the least of which is because that member would lose their pastor as the close friendship became their primary relationship. Boundaries around finances are also important. A pastor shouldn’t be a check signer on church’s checking account and the pastor should be responsible for the charges they make on a church credit card until those charges have been reviewed and approved for payment by the appropriate lay leadership. These boundaries protect both the church and the pastor.
Boundaries can be very helpful and healthy. Boundaries that create a work-life balance can stave off burn out. Boundaries around confidentiality and confidentiality’s limits, when communicated clearly, can help build trust and facilitate greater communication.
The purpose of all these boundaries that I’m talking about is to maintain safety. Some people think of boundaries as being iron-clad rules, like reinforced concrete walls. The image I prefer is to see these professional boundaries as being like the chain-link fences that get erected around construction sites. I’m talking about the sections of chain-link fence that are strung together by the concrete footings they rest in. These fences can be moved in and out, depending on when construction is happening and what is being accomplished that day. Working on the sidewalk today? Then the fence gets moved out into a lane of traffic. Working on the drywall inside the building today? Then the fence can be pulled in to the edge of the construction site. The purpose of this fence is safety. It helps create an area within which the construction crew needs to wear safety gear, and it creates an area that the general public needs to stay out of – for their own safety.
Healthy professional boundaries and healthy personal boundaries are there for the safety of the people involved. One way to look at today’s reading from 1 Corinthians is as Paul’s side of a discussion about an appropriate boundary for the early community of Christians in Corinth. The boundary question they’re wrestling with is, Is it okay to eat meat that’s been offered to a pagan god?
I asked Liz to read from The Message because it is much easier to understand Paul’s points than reading the New Revised Standard Version (though the NRSV is technically better translation of the Greek). Paul ends up supporting a boundary of “Don’t eat the meat.” However, he doesn’t say, “Don’t eat the meat,” because it is spiritually or physically dangerous food. He says, “Don’t eat the meat,” because if someone who is trying to figure out how to be a good Christian after of life of idol worship sees you eating it, it may cause them confusion or anxiety.
“Say you flaunt your freedom by going to a banquet thrown in honor of idols, where the main course is meat sacrificed to idols. Isn’t there great danger if someone still struggling over this issue, someone who looks up to you as knowledgeable and mature, sees you go into that banquet? The danger is that he will become terribly confused – maybe even to the point of getting mixed up himself in what his conscience tells him is wrong.”
Paul is saying, let’s put a fence around idol meat for the safety and welfare of your fellow Christians.
So, here’s point one of today’s sermon: Boundaries can be good. Boundaries can be loving. Boundaries can be healthy and protect the health and safety of many people. In fact, healthy boundaries are so important, we’re going to sing a song that celebrates them at the end of the sermon.
And here’s point two of today’s sermon: Not all boundaries are healthy, and those boundaries may need to be crossed. There are times when we are called to go beyond the boundaries. And I think there’s an excellent example of this in today’s gospel lesson.
Things happen quickly in Mark’s gospel. We’re still in chapter one, and Mark has told us about Jesus’ baptism and the calling of the first disciples. Now Jesus is going to the synagogue and has a direct and dramatic confrontation with an “unclean spirit.” Jesus has recognized his own authority in his baptism. The disciples he has called recognize his authority and are following him. And now, an “unclean spirit” recognizes Jesus’ authority, naming him “the Holy One of God.”
This story, that is (in Mark’s gospel) the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, makes clear that Jesus comes into the world as a healing liberator in direct, authoritative opposition to the death-dealing forces of evil in the world. Jesus doesn’t simply talk about healing and liberation. He heals and liberates.
Though this is the first story of Jesus healing on the Sabbath in Mark’s gospel, it is hardly the only story of Jesus healing on the Sabbath in the gospels. In most of these stories, Jesus gets into trouble for healing on the Sabbath. Healing someone was considered work, and the Sabbath is supposed to be a day free of work. It’s a boundary that was set up for the Hebrew people when they were escaping slavery in Egypt. When it was set up, it was an amazingly liberating boundary. When they were enslaved, the Hebrew people had to work seven days a week, and even with that work schedule, they barely got enough to survive. When freed and journeying to a land they thought of as “promised,” a boundary was set up to take a day off. Rest. Renew. Be. Trust that God provides enough.
This boundary that was set up to be liberating had, by the time of Jesus (and probably earlier), become a boundary of judgment and control. Even when someone was in bondage to some illness, there was to be no liberating them on the Sabbath; that would be working! Even when someone was wrestling with demonic spirits, there was to be no liberating them on the Sabbath; that would be working! Time and again, Jesus goes beyond that boundary for the sake of liberation and healing.
In this healing story, Jesus doesn’t get in trouble for working on the Sabbath. In fact, the people in the synagogue are pretty impressed by what they see and hear. The people, at least as I read the story, celebrate Jesus’ liberating action. It’s the start of his reputation in Mark’s gospel.
Now, it’s easy for us with our modern sensibilities to want to explain away this “unclean spirit.” I know that I don’t believe in demons. I don’t believe there are individual entities with evil intent waiting to get into us individually. I may be wrong about that. It is, nonetheless, what I believe.
I also believe in evil. I know there are death-dealing forces that are often experienced as “possession” or being “caught up” in dynamics that far exceed our intentions or control. Think of how addiction overwhelms individuals and families, or how difficult it is to overcome the prejudices and biases we have internalized, or how white supremacy keeps putting on different clothing so it can keep hiding in plain sight, or how anger consumes, or how envy devours, or how all of us, even against our will, are complicit in changing the chemistry of the atmosphere and ocean resulting in the overheating of the planet.
“We may or may not call addiction or racism or the sexual objectification of women ‘demons,’ but they are most certainly demonic. They move through the world as though by a kind of cunning. They resist, sidestep, or co-opt our best attempts to overcome them. And as we make those attempts, the experience can be less like figuring out a puzzle and more like wrestling with a beast.
“And so for Mark, Jesus comes into the world to wrestle with these shape-shifting beasts. The word ‘salvation’ comes from the Latin salvus, which means ‘health’ – and in Mark, Jesus’ idea of salvation isn’t to give us a ticket to a heavenly land in the sweet by-and-by, but rather to bring new health into our lives and communities today. For the sake of all people and the whole of creation, the death-dealing forces around us must be confronted and, ultimately, overcome. To follow Jesus is to join him in just this kind of confrontation, to speak and act with boldness and clarity, to heal and liberate with our words and at the same time with our deeds. As Mark tells it, when Jesus says to the disciples, ‘Follow me,’ he means follow him into the fray, into the shadows, into the menace itself. He means follow him into the work of building up from the ruins, of freeing the captives, of salvation (health!) … right here and right now.”[1]
Yesterday morning I attended meeting called an “ecclesiastical council.” In the United Church of Christ (which one of the two denominations our church belongs to), one of the major steps one has to take to be ordained is to be examined by the clergy and lay representatives of the congregations in an Association. At this examination, called an ecclesiastical council, the gathered body of representatives (who have, at least in theory, read a lengthy paper by the candidate describing the candidate’s spiritual journey and theology) get to hear more from the candidate and to ask questions of the candidate, all to discern if God has called this person to a vocation of ordained ministry and that they are fit to fulfill such a calling.
We examined two candidates, so it was a four-hour meeting. The meeting took place in the sanctuary of City of Refuge United Church of Christ in Oakland. Hanging in the center of the chancel is a banner that says, “Transcending Boundaries, Restoring Hope.” All week, today’s gospel lesson had been bubbling in my head. All week, I’d been thinking about Jesus going beyond the clean/unclean boundary of his culture and religion, to liberate a person who was being oppressed by this binary. Either you’re clean or you’re unclean. Either you’re in or you’re out. And then I sit for four hours in a meeting under a banner that says, “Transcending Boundaries, Restoring Hope.”
Some of our boundaries are safety-producing and life-giving. Some our boundaries are death-dealing. When our boundaries become binaries that draw some people in and push other people out, those are the boundaries that have become (or always were) death-dealing. And we are called to go with Jesus beyond the death-dealing boundaries.
Let me say that again. When our boundaries become binaries that draw some people in and push other people out, those are the boundaries that have become (or always were) death-dealing. And we are called to go with Jesus beyond the death-dealing boundaries.
Amen.
[1] “What Is ‘Salvation’?” Salt Project, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/lectionary-commentary-epiphany-week-4 (posted and accessed 22 January 2024).
Though I have made some mention in sermons of the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel and the military response being prosecuted by Israel’s government, I have not written or preached in any detail about it. Even this Pastoral Word will not provide enough space to be as detailed as I would like.
At one level, the situation is simple: a terrorist organization in Gaza (Hamas) launched a terrorist attack in which around 1,200 people were killed and around 250 people kidnapped and held as hostages. In response, the current Israel government launched a military offensive in Gaza, an operation that has continued for over 100 days. Israel’s military campaign has resulted in the killing of over 24,000 people in Gaza, about 40% of whom were children (under the age of 18). There have been close to 200 Israel military deaths in the fighting in Gaza.
I join with U.N. General Secretary António Guterres in his condemnations of Hamas: “Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians. Nothing can justify the launching of rockets towards civilian targets.” And I join him in calling for “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”
I also have deep concerns about Israel’s subsequent military action. While Prime Minister Netanyahu says his goal is to “eliminating Hamas,” the way the war is being fought looks very much like ethnic cleansing to me, perhaps even genocide. In addition to the tens of thousands of people killed in Gaza (and the thousands who are missing), much of the small strip of land has been leveled, making it unlivable. The actions of his government do not look like those of a government that thinks a two-state solution (a Palestinian state and a Jewish state) is the direction to head to bring a lasting positive peace to the region.
I am not the only one who thinks the prosecution of the war in Gaza is ethnic cleansing or even genocide. South Africa has brought an accusation of genocide to the International Criminal Court in The Hague against Israel, claiming they have committed and failed to prevent genocidal acts “to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.”
Of course, none of this has happened in a vacuum. The history of this territory is complicated and involves many nations, ethnic groups, and prejudices. There are all kinds of international actors who are fueling or taking advantage of the war (I’m thinking of Iran, the USA, and Russia, to name just three). At this point, however, trying to unpack the history and geopolitics to decide who is a greater victim and who is more responsible will not end the current violence. The world needs and, more so, the people of Gaza and Israel need an immediate ceasefire.
While we didn’t get into details of our individual reasons for wanting to do so, the Cabinet reached a consensus at our meeting on Monday to send a letter to President Biden, Senator Padilla, Senator Butler, Representative Swalwell, and Representative Khanna calling on each of them as our elected representatives to exert diplomatic pressure to move all parties to adopt an immediate ceasefire, to de-escalate, and to respect international law to prevent further violence. Today, our Moderator Mark Twist and I sent this letter on behalf of the church; you can read it here.
You can also send a letter to your representatives, too. The United Church of Christ has an online tool to make it easy. Go to https://p2a.co/ZeQpr20 to get started.
The nature of an email blast (like this one) is monologue. This issue is one that I think is deserving of dialogue. To that end, I will be posting this Pastoral Word on my blog and you can leave comments there, if you so desire.
Working for a positive peace,
Pastor Jeff
P.S. I wrote a blog post on October 22 about the Hamas attack and Israel’s military response which you can read here.
Sources:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-rcna134047
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-01-15-2024-966bd5a9375e7439dd3de5fc113a7e7d
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/10/south-africa-israel-icj-genocide-case/
A sermon preached at Niles Discovery Church, Fremont, California,
on Sunday, January 14, 2024, by the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer.
Scripture: 1 Samuel 3:1-10 and John 1:43-51
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey S. Spencer
Jesus find’s Philip and says, “Follow me.” Philip finds Nathanael and says, “We have found the One. It’s Jesus of Nazareth.” Nathanael says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip says, “Oh! Burn!”
No, that’s now what’s recorded. What’s recorded is Philip saying, “Come and see.” And when Nathanael comes toward Jesus, Jesus says, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”
I love Marcia McFee’s question about how to read Jesus’ response upon seeing Nathanael. Should we read it as evidence that Jesus has some special insight into the character of Nathanael? “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” Or should we read it as a snarky, sarcastic remark, perhaps even made in response to the putdown about Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown?
Either way we read it, Nathanael feels seen. “Yeah, that’s me, but where did you get to know me?” “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you,” Jesus replies.
I think we need to read this response about seeing Nathanael as an authentic response, not as snark. But that doesn’t mean we should read it literally. We can read it literally. It might signify that Jesus saw Philip at a distance talking to Nathanael, who was literally sitting under a fig tree. It might signify that Jesus saw Philip talking to Nathanael in a vision and Nathanael was literally sitting under a fig tree.
I think it’s more likely that Jesus is speaking in metaphor (especially since this is John’s gospel and John loves a good metaphor). There are passages of scripture that connect the fig tree to the coming messianic age (Micah 4:4, Zechariah 3:10, 1 Kings 4:25). When Jesus says he saw Nathanael under a fig tree he may be saying that he knows that Nathanael is waiting for the coming Messiah. And if that’s true about Nathanael, Philips excitement about thinking that Jesus is the One makes even more sense.
However we read it, Nathanael’s sense of being seen by Jesus deepens. “Rabbi, you are the Son of God!” he exclaims. “You are the King of Israel!” And Jesus says, “You think the fact that I saw you is impressive? Strap on your crash helmet, ’cause you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Now, there’s a surface theme that connects today’s two readings. They are both about calls. In the gospel lesson, Nathanael (thanks to the invitation from Philip) gets called to follow Jesus. (And by the way, you, too, can be a Philip and invite people to get to know Jesus.) In the first lesson, Samuel gets called by God to be a prophet.
In both lessons, the one who gets called doesn’t recognize what going on at first. And while I may be reading into the story about Samuel, I think there’s another theme that connects the two readings: skepticism. Nathanael has a skepticism that anything good can come out of Nazareth. And I think it’s possible that young Samuel can’t even imagine that God might be calling him. For Samuel, it’s a level beyond skepticism. Maybe we can call it a belief.
Samuel believes (not so much because of a bias as because of a lack of life experience) that he couldn’t be being called by God. Nathanael believes (because of some bias) that nothing good can come out of Nazareth. And both of them are called beyond their beliefs.
At Monday Morning Bible Study last week, we talked about biases and how they can be the beliefs that we’re called beyond. For instance, we talked about reputations and how they can become beliefs, and how those beliefs can influence how people behave. The holding of a belief by a person about some group of people can make that person treat anyone from that group in a certain way. That might be positive, or it might be negative. Nathanael asking, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” suggests he has a bias that dismisses the value and potential of that city and the people who live there.
In our world today, we can expect people to have assumptions (biases, beliefs) about people who live in Niles as opposed to other neighborhoods in the tri-cities. Likewise, people have assumptions (biases, beliefs) about people who are part of Niles Discovery Church. Even the people who are part of Niles Discovery Church may have assumptions (biases, beliefs) about people who are part of Niles Discovery Church. And those assumptions can lead to people choosing to engage less, to share opinions less often, or even the degree to which they feel they are truly a part of the church.
All people carry biases – some we’re aware of and some that are unconscious – that influence how we treat people from one group or another. When it comes to unconscious biases, we’re probably most familiar with them in relation to racial or ethnic prejudices. There’s plenty of evidence of unconscious bias at work at every level of the criminal justice system.
Harvard University has 18 different “implicit association tests” (as they call them) available online. These tests claim to disclose how we implicitly associate a particular group of people positively or negatively. For instance, I took their “Arab-Muslim Implicit Association Test” this past week and got results that I expected. I have a slightly negative implicit association when it comes to Arab-Muslims, which is something I’ve noticed in myself and is something I work to move past.
The collection of tests includes things you might expect: various racial and ethnic groups, various religious groups, sexuality and gender. They also have tests about disability, weight, and what they call a “Presidential Popularity Implicit Association Test.” The more we are aware of those implicit associations, of our unconscious biases, the more we can work to consciously overcome them.
There is another type of belief that I think we’re called to live beyond as followers of Jesus. This one is new to me. I was introduced to it through a post-Bible Study conversation. It is called “negative bias” or “risk aversion bias.” Awareness of this bias comes out of the field of psychology. Negative bias is a survival mechanism.[1]
It is a cognitive phenomenon which causes us to pay more attention to, remember more vividly, and be influenced more strongly by negative information compared to positive or neutral information. This makes sense evolutionarily. It’s more important to avoid the grizzly bear at any given moment than it is to collect that yummy food that’s right over there in that same moment. Both are necessary for survival – I need food to survive and I need to avoid the grizzly bear to survive – but I can survive being hungry for a while. I’m not very likely to survive a dance with a grizzly bear. In fact, if I’ve noticed the grizzly bear, a may not even notice that yummy food over there. The negative bias helps me to notice the grizzly bear and not be distracted by the yummy food. Negative bias helps us pay attention to danger in part by filtering out positive opportunities.
The negative bias exists because our brains did not evolve for our happiness. Our brains evolved to help us survive. That is why they evolved to have this negative bias. Have you ever wondered why you tend to focus on the one negative comment in an evaluation and ignore the dozens of positive comments? Our negative bias. Our negative bias makes us think, “The whole world is going to hell in a handbasket,” because it filters out the positive and pushes us to focus on the negative. News agencies and social media algorithms focus on the negative to hook our negative bias, because our negative bias asks us to pay attention to the negative.
Everyone has negative bias; it’s part of our brains. People who live in persistently threatening situations – living in a war zone, living on the street, living with a violent person (to name three obvious examples) – are more likely to have an extra layer of negative bias, a learned layer of bias on top of the natural level we evolved to have. The same is true of people who’ve survived traumatic experiences, especially if those traumatic experiences happened during childhood. This extra negative bias and other coping mechanisms were learned because they were necessary for survival. When we get to a safe place in our lives, this extra negative bias is no longer necessary, even though it may be functioning at full throttle. Therapy can be very helpful in peeling off or shutting down this extra layer of negative bias.
If we’re lucky enough to have had a life that didn’t teach us to be extra vigilant and develop additional neural pathways to allow for that extra vigilance, we still have our basic, evolutionarily innate negative bias to deal with. It’s evolutionarily there, and it gets in the way to abundant life – and that goes against Jesus’ purpose. Jesus is quoted in John’s gospel as saying that he came so that people can have life in all its abundance. That means we are called to live beyond the beliefs we’ve been evolutionarily taught, the beliefs we call the negative bias. How could Samuel believe that it could be God calling him in the middle of the night when his responsibilities – responsibilities he was obliged to fulfill for his own survival – called him to live within his negative bias? How could Nathanael open his heart and head to the possibility that the Messiah could come from Nazareth when everything he believed about Nazareth was negative? They needed to live beyond their beliefs, just as Jesus calls us to live beyond our beliefs.
Here are four suggestions that I think can help. The first is to notice our patterns, to notice when our innate negative bias is at work. This can be hard to do because we think the way we’ve thought. A trusted friend or family member might be able to help us see our thinking patterns.
The second is to take breaks from negative information. Take a break from social media that is feeding you negative stories. Take a break from the news (especially news on commercial stations, because for them, eyeballs equals money, so they’ll try to trigger your negative bias to keep you watching). Find feel-good stories to listen to.
The third practice that I think can help us live beyond our negative beliefs is to slow down our thinking. When our negative bias tells us a story of doom, thank it for working to keep you alive, and then gather different information. Go for a walk and intentionally notice beauty. Practice intentional gratitude by keeping a gratitude journal or writing thank you notes daily or by making prayers of thanksgiving part of your daily prayer practice.
And if you get really good at that third practice, a fourth is to interrogate your own thoughts. Are they coming from all the information or are they ignoring positive information? Is there another story you can tell yourself that challenges the story composed by the negative bias? That interrogation can help breakdown the negative bias’s power.
Remember, what we focus on is what we’ll see. We can live within the confines of our beliefs – our beliefs about the world, about our neighbors, about ourselves – or we can live beyond our beliefs where we just may discover God calling us to something amazing.
Amen.
[1] The information in this next section about negative bias is gleaned from Emma McAdam, “Why Your Brain Defaults to Scarcity and How to Flip it to Happiness” Therapy in a Nutshell, Anxiety lesson 16 of 30 in YouTube at https://youtu.be/g6zXBHdbQJI (posted 7 December 2023; accessed 13 January 2024).
Jeff's Jottings 