What We Really Need

On Sunday, October 14 the fine folks of Good Shepherd in Asheboro held church as usual.  What made the day different, however, was that they did so without any electricity at all.  There may have been a time when we would've simply canceled our liturgies, given that our church building gets very little natural light, so both the chapel and the sanctuary are ridiculously dark, even in the daylight.  Still, we gathered as our ancestors did in the catacombs, in the dark, huddled together by the light of candles.  Say what you will about how a church with carpet everywhere shouldn't use hand-held candles, but on this day it was perfect!  With the light of Christ in our hands we gathered to worship, to sing in the ancient call-and-response style, and to break bread.  And wouldn't you know it, but Jesus showed up!

Good Shepherd, Asheboro worshipping in the dark this past Sunday morning.

I found it poetic and lovely that THIS was our Gospel text that day.  As Episcopalians, we are often held captive by a lectionary that sometimes does not give us much with which to work.  Not so on this day!  As if by divine providence, on a day when we were sitting in the dark with no electricity, no air conditioner, and no organ, we heard a Gospel proclaimed that called us to let go of all of our stuff.  As I said to our folks that day, we may not have had electricity, but thanks to this Gospel, we were reminded that we definitely had power!

'As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”'

Mark 10: 17-31

As most of y'all know I am a big comic book fan, and one of my favorite stories is a graphic novel called Marked by Steve Ross.  There are a lot of comic book versions of the Bible out there, but what makes this one different is that it is focused on one specific book, the Gospel of Mark, and rather than a bunch of bright colors and your usual, run of the mill images of a caucasian, blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus, Marked is done in black and white and features a Jesus that is not quite black, not quite white,and just a tad androgynous.  It's a great read, and I highly recommend it.

You can order a copy of Marked here. 

One of my favorite moments in Marked is its version of this story of Jesus and a man whom later gospels will describe as both rich and young.  The graphic novel version plays out the same way with the  man asking what he must do to inherit eternal life, to which Jesus responds that all he lacks is to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor.  At this point the image in the book pans out and up, and the reader sees that the man has been carrying all of his possessions on his back.  As the weight of Jesus' words hit him, the weight of all those possessions gets greater, until it all finally collapses on top of him.

Our culture tells us we need more and more stuff: more power, more prestige, and more possessions. It was true in Jesus' day as much as it is for us now, and then, as now, the culture preaches a gospel that tells us all of those things will fix our problems and make us happy.  What the culture does not tell us is that there is a tremendous burden that comes with all of those things, a burden that weighs us down like the man in the graphic novel version of this story, until one day it all collapses on us. This man has become so attached to his stuff that it has become his master, resulting in him walking away grieving when Jesus presents him with the opportunity to follow him.  Sadly, he is the only person in the Gospels to reject Jesus' call to follow along the way because he is held in the grip of true master.

It's worth pointing out just how perplexing this moment is for the disciples.  For weeks now we have seen them struggle with this notion that what Jesus offers is nothing like the power and greatness of the world.  They, like many folks today, saw wealth as a sign of God's providence and favor.  No one used the term back then, but nowadays we would call this the Prosperity Gospel, the idea that our money and possessions are a sign that God has blessed us, and if we are poor, well then, that means God's not happy with the lives we've been living.  Wealth is the measuring stick for how much God loves us, says the Prosperity Gospel, and truth be told, the disciples and most of the people in Jesus' time believed this as well.  Times haven't changed that much. This is why Peter, having finally lost all patience with Jesus, asks point blank:  What's in it for us?!  We've given up everything to follow you? So what do we get in return if it's not power, prestige, or possessions?

Human culture has been preaching such a message as long as there has been human culture.  What power, prestige, and possessions allow us to do is take control of our lives.  We wield our power over others, yes, but even if we are simple, poor folks this message tells us that we can have power over our own lives, if nothing else.  Prestige then becomes important in order that others may know who we are and validate our worth, while our possessions become signs and symbols of our importance and the level of power and prestige we wield.  Our culture tells us we need these things because if we place all our trust and hope in God then we will be let down.  Jesus, on the other hand, comes along and preaches something completely different.  True life, he says, is not found in any of these things, but in God alone.  God is the one with the power, true, but God is also the one that gave up all power, prestige, and possessions when coming into the world.  In doing so, God (in the person of Jesus) has come to redefine what a kingdom really looks like.

We talk a lot about the Kingdom of God, but do we really understand that God's Kingdom, the Kingdom Jesus proclaimed was both coming and already here, is not a kingdom like Rome or even a republic like the United States?  In those contexts, the rich are the ones wielding their power of others, thus in order to be somebody we must adhere to the culture's message of accumulating all of that stuff. Yet the Kingdom of God, as Saint Jerome said, is a kingdom which desires for its citizens a soul that soars aloft, free from all ties and hindrances, including our power, prestige, and possessions. What's more, Jesus' command to the rich young man is to sell, not part, but all of his possessions, and then give the money, not to his wife or his children or his friends, but to the poor.  If we are to inherit the Kingdom we must be willing to let go of everything we fear to lose, especially our possessions; after all, ain't a one of us leaving this world with any of them!  Another of those ancient church teachers, Saint Augustine, put it this way:  "Riches," he said, "are gained with toil and kept with fear.  They are enjoyed with danger and lost with grief.  It is hard to be saved if we have them, and impossible if we love them."

Augustine of Hippo (left) and Jerome (right).

"So who can be saved?"the disciples asked.  If there's no hope for the rich and powerful, what hope is there for anyone?  Oh but there is hope!  There is hope in Jesus!  There is hope in the crucified one who calls us to be crucified ourselves to all of the vanities of this world that hold us back from truly embracing and loving him.  There is hope in the one who calls sinners of all shapes and sizes, rich and poor alike, to be healed of all that plagues us.  There is hope in the homeless preacher who came daring to preach to those who are poor and calling it Good News.  There is hope, brothers and sisters, in Jesus, for just as he surrendered all of himself to God, he calls each of us to do the same, for it is in God alone that we find our worth, not any of the vanities of this world.  While time and rust will consume and destroy all of our possessions and kingdoms and republics will rise and fall, Jesus endures, and his grace makes it possible for us to be free from the bondage of our need for power, prestige, and possessions.

The rich young man did not know he was being held in such bondage.  He comes to Jesus humbly on his knees and raises a serious existential question about eternal life.  Furthermore, Jesus in no way challenges or mocks this man's integrity in doing so.  He's a good guy, but he is held captive by his wealth, and he doesn't even know it.  So many of us who follow Jesus are held captive and don't even know it.  He thought it was enough to keep the commandments.  We often think it's enough to come to church on Sunday, say our communal confession, get our Eucharist, and head home.  When Jesus invited him to see things differently and challenged his thinking by pointing out that no, in fact, that wasn't enough, his response is grief.  I'd be willing to bet that if I asked each of you if you would give up all of your possessions were Jesus to ask you to do so right here and now, I'd wager each of you would say yes.  I know I would.  But who among you and your friends has ever willingly done that?  Nobody that I know of, save for a few monks and nuns.  It's a nice thought, but actually doing it is nearly impossible, so long as the culture preaches such a message to us that if we gave all of that stuff up we would be lost, hopeless, and terrified.  Nevertheless, Jesus is still there inviting us into a relationship with him that tears through that false gospel.

Perhaps Jesus is not literally inviting you to sell all that you have and give the money to the poor, but it's worth asking:  would you be willing to do it if he did ask?  Would any of us?  Sitting in a church in the dark, worshipping as our ancestors did, we were reminded that we don't need all of the stuff that we think we need.  Jesus continues to invite us all daily to consider what the things are that we think we need but which we really don't.  The culture may still shout to us that we really do need the stuff, but we Christians can be the ones that model something different for the culture until, very slowly, we shift the whole paradigm.  We can and we will, with God's help!  Until that day, let us ponder what it is that Jesus is calling us to let go of, and let us be willing to surrender completely and utterly to the majesty and love of God in Jesus.  Do that, my brothers and sisters, and you will truly have treasure in heaven!

Children of the Kingdom

'Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.'

--Mark 10: 2-16

I would be remiss if I did not comment on how difficult this Gospel is, as Jesus unpacks the Levitical law regarding divorce.  Three years ago I wrote on this part of the Gospel, but this year the Spirit was leading me to focus more on that last paragraph, on a part of the text that I left untouched for y’all the last time around.  So if you’d like to know my thoughts on the divorce piece, I invite you to check out my blog post from October 5, 2015, which you can find here    My wife Kristen also has written an excellent piece on the divorce for the blog Modern Metanoia .  As for today, I’d like to invite us to unpack what Jesus means when he talks about children and the Kingdom of God.

A typical storybook image of Jesus and little children.

For the last three weeks Jesus has used small children as part of his teachings.  Two weeks ago it was a child that he took in his arms and placed among those gathered, saying, :  “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”  Last week, as he reminded folks that whoever is not against us is for us, he pointed to the children in the crowd and said:  “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”  Clearly, Jesus wants people to honor the children among them as full and equal members and co-recipients of the Kingdom of God.  Perhaps this is why the actions of the disciples, who instinctively brush the children aside, seems so harsh.

We have to remember that, as usual, the disciples are not entirely wrong when they try to prohibit the children from coming to Jesus.  They are merely enforcing their social norms.  No parent would let a child interrupt a rabbi when he was speaking; after all, it's just plain rude.  What's more, it was a poor reflection on the parents themselves, much more so than the children. So by trying to stop the children the disciples do what they always do: they act in accordance with how their society would expect folks to act.  And once again their behavior illustrates that the disciples just don’t get it.  They fail once more to understand that one of the major points of Jesus’ ministry is the inclusion of everyone, especially those on the margins.  And it isn't just about children.  To welcome the children means also welcoming their mothers, who, let’s not forget, would not have been offered the same privilege as men to sit and listen to this great rabbi  Thus, Jesus' action flings the doors of the Kingdom wide open!  It is to such as these that the Kingdom of God belongs.

Such as what, exactly?  Modern readers have a tendency to romanticize Jesus’ words about children; we look at a child and we use words like ‘innocent’ or ‘loving’ or ‘sweet’ to describe their behavior. The Kingdom must then belong to folks who exhibit these qualities, we might say, but ancient societies, including that of Jesus, lacked such romantic notions of childhood.  We must understand that children were not considered people.  Not yet, anyway.  Women and children both were treated as property belonging to the pater families.  When the disciples dismiss the children they are not, in their view or the views of others, dismissing cute little innocent people, but rather they're dismissing non-people.  The child in antiquity was radically dependent upon the parent, even more so than a child today might be; in fact, the father often decided whether the child would even be accepted into the family, which is why it was not uncommon for deformed children to be dismissed from their homes altogether.  Children belonged to their father and remained so even into early adulthood, especially if they were female, in which case she belonged to the father until being given away to her her husband, at which point she became his property.  The point Jesus is making is that the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these, to those who are considered non-people, who have no rights and privileges of their own and are completely dependent upon others for their needs.

This is the great teaching for the disciples.  They are being challenged by Jesus's words about receiving the Kingdom as a child to identify with a group of non-people, to turn their attention to such folks and realize that these are the ones with whom God has most associated the Kingdom, which means that these are the folks with whom the disciples themselves must associate.  This is hard for them, as we heard the disciples two weeks ago complaining about who is the greatest.  Last week they tore down the freelance exorcist to make themselves look better.  Mark’s Gospel is filled with constant imagery of the disciples trying to build themselves up over and over again—and the trend will continue next week—but Jesus offers a radical alternative.  What if, instead of using their own social norms and constructs and talking about greatness in a worldly sense, the disciples focused more on identifying with the very individuals that they would consider not-so-great?  What would happen if they really saw such folks, and instead of treating them as if they didn’t exist or as charity cases for them to throw a nickel at, they began to identify with such folks spending time with them, welcoming them into their social circles, maybe even into their worship spaces?  What would happen to them and their community if they acted in such a manner?

In short, Jesus’ language about receiving the Kingdom as a child, means that hose who hear it are to identify with the powerless persons, with those weak and vulnerable ones who have no claims to stake out and no demands to make, and to be as one such person, in order to truly be recipients of the Kingdom.  Yes, God’s grace has made it possible for all of to be inheritors of the Kingdom, but what if folks focused less on getting into the Kingdom when they die and more on building the Kingdom while they are alive?  After all, that is what Jesus’ teachings focused on, not the Kingdom that is to come but the Kingdom that is right here and now.  Remember his first words from the Gospel of Mark:  "The Kingdom of God is at hand!"  So if we who are the Body of Christ are to be the ones proclaiming that Good News—with a capital G and N—then these words today are for us as much as they were for those bull-headed disciples.  They kept wanting to look at the Kingdom of God like it was a Kingdom of Humanity.  They wanted God’s greatness and power to look like the kind human beings seek, but it’s not.  It looks like the most vulnerable, the powerless, and those who are utterly dependent on others for their own survival.  Like the disciples, we too must redefine for ourselves what true greatness and power look like, and not only reach out to, but identify with the people on the very margins of our communities, those who have historically been ignored, treated as though they were non-people.  Can you imagine what our world might look like if we who are powerful identified with the powerful, if we are who are loud identified with the voiceless, if we who are privileged identified with the unprivileged?  Jesus has already welcomed ones such as these, and as his Body in the world today it is our baptismal call to be Christ-like in everything that we do.


Perhaps no one embodied this call better than St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day was this past Thursday and whom we will honor with our Blessing of the Animals next week.  A man born with great privilege, Francis gave it all up to not only minister to but identify with the most vulnerable of God’s children.  His example, which has inspired everyone from the current Bishop of Rome to a little farming community in Siler City, both of whom took his name as their own, that example stands as an invitation for us all to redefine what greatness and power really look like; for as Francis himself once said, “Let it be your privilege to know no privilege.”

This guy got it!

So we must ask ourselves:   Who is the vulnerable one?  Who is the one who, like a child, has been silenced, ignored, and brushed aside?  Who are the unprivileged whom our societal norms keep telling us we should not listen to or care about?  You know such a person.  We all do. The next time you see them, remember Jesus’ words.  The Kingdom of God belongs to such a one.  And may you have the compassion and grace to embody the spirit of Francis, to not only address their need but to step into a relationship with that person and together, as co-recipients, build up the Kingdom here and now. 

Those Who Are Not Against Us

"John said to Jesus, 'Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.' But Jesus said, 'Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of good in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me.  Whoever is not against us is for us."

--Mark 9: 38-40

When I was growing up my sister and I fought like crazy.  Everything from what channel to put the tv on to who got to sit in the front seat:   “Mom, Joe spit on me!”  “Dad, Ashley punched me!”  Round and round we went for the better part of 12 years until my sister finally moved away for college.  It seemed as though we were all too eager, all too quick to jump in with whatever misdeeds the other had committed, as if pointing out how bad the other was would somehow make us look better by comparison.  I suspect such a rivalry is common for most households where there are multiple siblings; after all, every kid wants to feel special.  It’s just that sometimes we think that in order to feel special we have to tear someone else down.  

Adults are not immune to this sort of behavior though; in fact, we see this problem in the very first Gospel with behavior exhibited by none other than Jesus’ disciples.  Earlier in this ninth chapter of Mark the disciples tried casting out a demon with no luck.  You may recall that last week the 12 got into an argument over which of them was the greatest, to which Jesus scolded them like a parent admonishing the dysfunctional behavior of children.  Perhaps in response to that, and in order to regain favor with Jesus and feel special once more, John, acting as a spokesman for the rest of the 12, points out that the disciples had seen someone casting out demons in Jesus’ name, but because he was not one of them, not part of their community, they tried to stop him. We can almost see the look of pride on John’s face, can’t we?  That guy isn’t one of us, Jesus, so we told him to quit it!  Aren’t you proud of us?  But this episode isn’t really about exorcisms, is it? Instead it’s about the fact that the disciples are all too quick to condemn this man because he is not part of their group; after all, they have the market cornered on this whole Jesus phenomenon, and if someone else is doing their work—and doing it better than them—then that’s a threat.  They don’t feel special anymore, and they aren’t afraid to tear down this freelance exorcist in order to regain favor with Jesus.

What we see from the disciples is a phenomenon that still plagues a good many of us who call ourselves Christians, something that is born out of our belief, our assurance, that through Christ we have been made part of the elect, part of those whom God has called to live into the work of the ministry of Christ here on earth and to be joined with him in Paradise when that work is done.  But, as Walter Brueggemann  points out, the awareness of being God’s elect has often bred a form of elitism, a sense of self-importance that subtly builds barriers between groups and persons rather than bridges.  For whatever reason, he says, the need to be loved, to feel special, can lead to a lack of self-criticism and an increasing mistrust and questioning of others.  This is what we see from siblings who point out each other’s faults so that they will gain favor with a parent, and we see it in the disciples who criticize the freelance exorcist in order to get back into Jesus’ good graces.  Very often we still see it on a day-to-day basis whenever folks take up a defensive posture against someone they presume to be a threat. 

It is not uncommon for any of us to take up a defensive posture from time to time.  Especially in my life in the church I have seen this, and to be fair, I have fallen into this way of being myself.  I’ll give you an example.  In my last semester of seminary I took the General Ordination Exams.  They consist of seven lengthy questions over five days time, and depending on if you have a strict bishop or not, you may need to pass all of them, most of them, or maybe even none of them, in order to get ordained.  As my time in seminary was coming to an end and I was looking for my first job, I got word that my ordination would be delayed.  The reason:  I had not passed all of my General Ordination Exams.  Later, I found out that another seminarian from my diocese had also not passed all of the Exams, and what’s more this person had passed even fewer than I had yet was still scheduled to be ordained before me!  I was livid and got pretty defensive.  What about that other person?! Why am I the only one being punished?!  My bishop and powers that be must have had some sort of personal vendetta against me.  And the other seminarian, through no fault of their own, was a threat, and animosity, jealousy, and righteous anger burned in me for this person. who was going to get ordained right out of the gate, in spite of having worse scores than me. I was all too eager to point out how everyone around me had made a huge mistake. It consumed me until someone finally pointed out that my anger was not holy and righteous but instead was coming from that place of self-importance.  I was going to be a priest, after all!  That made me important, special.  That sense of feeling special had morphed in that experience, and instead of being humbled to be given the chance to serve God in the church, I had become defensive of my own entitlement and fell into the pit of mistrust and the questioning of others..  Thanks be to God for dear friends, mentors, and spiritual directors who brought me out of that pit.  

The church certainly has a way of making us feel special, but it can also tempt us into thinking that we are more special than others, that we are immune to criticism or that anyone who is not with us is against us.  This happens whenever someone gets scolded for brewing the coffee or touching the thermostat, when those are , of course, someone else’s jobs and always have been.  It happens anytime someone feels threatened by another, especially someone coming into the church from another faith tradition, as though such a person does not truly belong to the church, as John felt about the freelance exorcist. Quite frankly, brothers and sisters, we Episcopalians have garnered the nickname ‘Frozen Chosen,’over the years in part because we have a reputation for being a little less than warm and friendly, and in part because our assurance in being among the elect has left us with a sense of self-importance.  

But Jesus offers us Good News (as he always does)!  Those who are not against us are for us, he says.  This is a pretty big flip-flop from what we’re used to hearing, and it’s powerful in its simplicity because it takes us out of those defensive postures.  The freelance exorcist was not against the disciples.  The powers that be that felt I was not ready for ordination were not against me.  And that person who you have had a really hard time with (perhaps a member of your church), is not against you.  Jesus’ words today are for all of us who have a really hard time remembering that there are experiences out there besides our own, those of us who go on the defensive the second we feel threatened!  There are feelings and opinions that others have that we can learn from, but if we stand in our position of self-importance then we will treat them as an adversary, and that is not at all what Jesus wants from us.  Like the 12 with the freelance exorcist, Jesus invites us to see our brothers and sisters as fellow workers on behalf of the Kingdom and to respect them and their work, just as we would our own, not being quick to point out their faults or taking a defensive posture when they are just trying to help, trying to be the best Christian they can be.  Faith is not a sibling rivalry!  We do not have to earn Jesus’ love, we do not have to try to be special and regain his favor over and over again.  We’ve already got it!  That is what grace is all about!  Grace has been given to all of us so that we may no longer be held hostage by the dark sin of self-righteousness.  

Have you ever paid close attention to the way that the Eucharist is celebrated?  The priest stands with arms outstretched and palms open.  It's a vulnerable position.  Likewise, when folks come forward to receive the Sacrament they do so with hands outstretched, often kneeling and with heads bowed.  These, too, are vulnerable positions.  The truth is that one cannot celebrate and receive the Eucharist from a defensive position!  What would happen if we received others and their experiences the same way we receive the Eucharist? If you are the kind of person who tends to take up a defensive posture, like John or I did, then let Jesus show you a different way.  Those who are not against you are for you.  May you not fall into the trap of trying to prove your own self-worth by tearing down others.  May you shed that old, outdated monicker of "Frozen Chosen," and embrace someone or something new and different.  Perhaps if you can let go of your defense mechanisms and commit to being more vulnerable, you will find your own faith strengthened in ways you could never imagine.  And that is good news!

TRADITIOOOOOON!!!!!

'When the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me;

in vain do they worship me,

teaching human precepts as doctrines.’

You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”'

--Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15

Is there a musical with a better opening number than Fiddler on the Roof?  Apologies to anyone who may not have seen this classic either on stage or film.  Set in the Russian Jewish town of Anatevka, the story centers around the local milkman Tevye and his family as they deal with the changing times.  They keep the balance in Anatevka, Tevye says, and how do they do that?  Tradition!  The score then swells into the show’s first song, and we hear the ensemble echo Tevye:  TRADITIOOOOON!!  Tevye tells the audience that in Anavatevka they have traditions for everything:  how to eat, how to sleep, how to work.  But my favorite moment in the number is when Tevye says to the audience:  “You may ask, ‘How did this tradition get started?’  I’ll tell you….I don’t know!”  Rarely have I ever come across a show that pulls me in and makes me love it before the opening number is even finished, but that’s what Fiddler on the Roof does with ‘Tradition,’ the name of that opening number.  Click below to watch the full video of the song at the beginning of the 1971 film. 

Traditions are wonderful.  They bind us together with our ancestors.  They remind us that we are part of something so much greater than ourselves.  For us Anglicans tradition is one of the pieces of the three legged stool on which our faith is grounded—the other two being Scripture and reason.  When we are faced with an issue about how to worship or what decision to make we very often ask what our ancestors did, and that answer informs what we ourselves will choose to do.  But if we cannot answer that very important question that Tevye poses—How did this tradition get started?—we run into trouble, as Tevye himself does throughout that story.

The keepers of the traditions in Jesus’ days were the Pharisees, tasked with not only keeping the Law of Moses—the Torah—must also maintaining the traditions of their ancestors that grew out of that Law over time.  So often we like to paint the Pharisees as stuffy know-it-alls who were more concerned with legalism than they were an authentic relationship with God.  They have become something of a caricature to modern Christians.  And while many of the Pharisees we meet in the Gospels do come of as fundamentalists, it’s essential for us to remember that they are not representative of all Pharisees; in fact, if it weren’t for the Pharisees maintaining the traditions and customs, then Judaism would have disappeared after the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 AD, but thanks to the Pharisees the faith survived, and a new kind of Judaism was born:  rabbinic Judaism, which is the Judaism still practiced today.  We must not vilify the Pharisees as a whole simply because some were fundamentalists.

It isn't a bad word!

But what was it about Jesus that was so hard for those particular Pharisees to understand and deal with?  Chief among the issues on which Jesus and the Pharisees disagreed was tradition, how they viewed and practiced it, and how he called them out for their interpretation of it.  Take today’s story, for example.  A group of Pharisees and scribes are stunned that Jesus and his disciples eat without washing their hands, and they ask, rather sincerely, why Jesus and his disciples do not observe this tradition.  And Jesus responds by calling them hypocrites—which meant something different back then, the Greek word hupocrites simply means one who answers in a dialogue; that is, an actor, someone who is pretending or putting on a show.  They’re acting the part of being religious, and like Isaiah and the prophets of old, Jesus is calling these actors out for their phony righteousness. He then  goes on to say that they abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.  How can this be?  The Torah explicitly says that one must wash ones hands before eating, right?  Well…no.  That’s not in Torah.  That’s not part of the Law that God gave to Moses to give to the people.  That is actually one of those traditions that grew out of the Law over time, and now it has become so commonplace that the Pharisees are treating a tradition as if it were part of God’s own law.  That question from Tevye—How did this tradition get started?—they can’t answer it because they have been playing the part of being religious for so long, elevating their traditions to a place of parity alongside the Torah, which ultimately undercuts the sacred Laws that they have, ironically, committed their lives to uphold.    It isn’t that Jesus believes washing ones hands before eating is pointless—I think we all can agree that being sanitary is important—rather, his frustration lies with people who are following their own traditions as though they were from God, as if there could not possibly be any other way to live, and that’s a recipe for trouble.

Such a mindset is certainly not the intellectual property of the Pharisees alone.  This is what happens in all fundamentalist communities, where the sayings and customs and traditions of that community become so commonplace over time that people forget where they came from at all.  When this happens such sayings and customs and traditions morph into something that resembles divine mandate.  We see this in every religion and every culture—from Muslim radicals in the Middle East to fundamentalist Buddhists in Myanmar, all of whom uphold ancient traditions while ignoring what their actual sacred texts and teachings say. And, of course, Christianity itself has fallen prey to this behavior.  Customs like forbidding clergy to marry and the exclusion of women from positions of leadership are just a couple of the so-called traditions of Christianity that are so old that people cannot remember a time when the church did not uphold them.  But if we ask Tevye’s question—How did these traditions get started?—and we dig deeper into them then we learn that these are not divine mandates but simply very old traditions.  The practice of forbidding priests to be married, for example, did not arise until the 12th century, when the church was faced with the difficult challenge of what to do with its property when a priest had a child—What if the child is not going to be a priest, then what happens to the property?  The solution was to forbid clergy from having children by keeping them from being married at all, a tradition that now is so old most think it’s been around since the foundation of the Church itself.  And as for the exclusion of women, it is clear from the writings of St. Paul that women like Phoebe, Prisca, and Thekla were all leaders in the early Church, but in the patriarchal Roman society, which Christianity was brought into in the 4th century, women were of little more regard than cattle, thus resulting in their voices being silenced and their witness being blotted out for so long that, again, such a tradition got conflated with divine Law.  It is this conflation, this clinging to traditions so tightly and placing them so high as to rival the Law of God, that Jesus undercuts.  He himself is not anti-tradition—keep in mind that he observes all of the Jewish holy days and does his rabbinical duty of teaching in the synagogues on the sabbath—but he does call out those who would be so devoted to tradition that they cannot even say how it got started, nor why it matters at all.  Traditions are good and joyful things, so long as we understand them and uphold them responsibly.  This is the conversation Jesus is having with the Pharisees, one that he invites us to have with our own traditions.

Spoiler alert for those who have not seen it, but things don’t end so well for Tevye, as the final moments of the story show him looking around and lamenting that his traditions could not save him and his town from inevitable change.  Traditions alone will not save us.  If we cling to them and stubbornly utter that famous line, “We’ve always done it this way!” then both we and our traditions will cease to be; for those are the last six words of a dying community—church or otherwise.  We must understand our traditions, ask where they came from, wonder why they matter and if they are still important.  But above all we must remember that traditions are not divine mandate, and that like all human-made things they can change and will eventually fade away, but God will not.  Faith will not.  This is what Jesus calls us all to hold onto more than anything:  our faith, not in tradition, but in a life-giving, liberating, and loving God.  Our traditions can point us to God, can shape and enhance our experiences of the holy, but they cannot be the things to which we cling so tightly that we forget where they come from or why they matter.  To do that is to just be playing a part, acting like righteous people.

Do you understand your traditions and why you do what you do?  As a Christian?  As an Episcopalian?  If not, that’s ok, but don't blindly follow them without trying to understand.  Don’t be afraid to ask those questions.  Finding the answers may be difficult, but we can do so if we remember that true faith lies not in how strictly we maintain and elevate our outward appearances and traditions but in how much our hearts and minds are fixed on the actual divine mandates to love God and one another.  For no matter what our tradition, that is Good News for all people in all places and at all times.

Tackling the Hills of Faith

'Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”

Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”'

--John 6: 56-69

In the first chapter of his book Chase the Buffalo:  A 25-Year Odyssey of Discovery and Awareness, my Dad, Preston Mitchell, chronicles the first of his many bicycle trips that eventually would take him through all 48 continental States in a continuous loop.  That first trip was from our house in Flat Gap, VA to St. Louis, MO in July of 1982.  After coasting down the road from the house he hit his first major hill a mile and a quarter from the VA-KY line.  As he slowly peddled up that hill an old man was sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch of a house on the right.  He hollered at Dad, “How’s it going?” to which Dad replied, “Ok, although these hills are a little tough.”  The old man paused for a second and responded, “Well, if it was all downhill everybody wold be biking.”  As Dad put it in the book, “truer words could not have been spoken.”

The cover of my Dad's book, Chase the Buffalo.

What if my Dad had turned around that day?  What if he had said that it was just too hard, that he couldn’t go on, that he didn’t see any point?  He certainly would not be the man that he is today had he not pushed through that first tough hill.  He just kept on peddling.  Many of you have even read his book or heard his stories.  If you've met my Dad or read his book you know how impactful those bike rides have been, but it all started with one tough hill, the sage words of an old man in his rocking chair, and the determination to keep moving forward.

Faith, I have found, is a lot like that.  Following Jesus is a lot like that.  Being a disciple of Jesus can feel like one uphill climb after another for us now; imagine what it must have been like back then.  For the past month we have been listening to Jesus give what is known as the Bread of Life Discourse.  After feeding 5000 people, who then try to make him their king and get him to perpetually provide them with enough bread and fish to make sure they’ll never go hungry again, Jesus has spent the last three weeks explaining to them that he is the Bread of Life, not the bread of mere sustenance.  The Bread he offers is his very self, his life, his love, his teachings, his divine nature.  If one were to cling to him, if one were to eat of his bread, that person would never hunger for power, privilege, or possessions ever again.  Last week he commanded the people to eat his flesh and drink his blood, to share in his very life-force.  We know this to be connected with our celebration of Communion, where we meet Jesus at this table and take him into ourselves, so that we may be the Body of Christ when we go back into the world from this place.  But, we are told by the Gospel writer, that this teaching was exceptionally hard, harder than any of the rest, harder than selling all of one’s possessions and giving them to the poor, harder than being told to take up the cross and following Jesus.  This is the straw that breaks the backs of many of the camels following Jesus, and so they turn away from him because, as they put it, “This teaching is difficult.”

The Greek word is skleros, which is best translated as “hard to accept,” rather than “hard to understand.” It wasn’t that the metaphors he used were too tough. They knew what Jesus meant, that to follow him meant surrendering completely and totally to him, but accepting that surrender and allowing themselves to go through with it was a different matter entirely.  He was not there to be a cosmic vending machine that would give them whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it.  Instead, he was inviting them into a relationship that was lifelong and life-altering.  And there wasn’t anything about it that was supposed to be easy.  The beauty of this passage is that it makes no effort to hide how hard people felt Jesus’ teachings were…still are, for that matter.  The fact that those who leave Jesus are disciples themselves (like all of us), not simply members of the religious authorities, brings the issue close to him for those of us who believe that Jesus is the Son of God and believe in his salvation and his love, but who still have a hard time accepting some of those more difficult teachings that push against our social, political, and personal preferences.

Make no mistake, brothers and sisters, the message of Jesus is tough, and anyone who has had a true conversion experience and wrestled with Jesus over that message can tell you that it would have been a lot easier for them had they said no.  And once they accepted that invitation into a relationship with Jesus they found themselves climbing some pretty steep hills, sometimes wishing they could just turn back.  Because the fact is that Jesus demands full participation in his life, death, and resurrection, all three.  We are to share in his message of love and liberation for all God’s people, but we must also be willing to share in his death, the death to self that we are meant to die each day, and then to share not only in his promise of resurrection on that great Last Day but to experience resurrection on a daily basis all around us and practice resurrection ourselves.  As the scholar Walter Bruegemann put it in his commentary on this passage:  "the Jesus to be followed is no docetic figure whose teachings, arrest, trial, and crucifixion were rounds in a game of charades."  Truly embracing Jesus and following him is no easy feat; after all, his trip also takes us up a hill, the hill called Golgotha. Is it any wonder that people turned back?

Even though this passage today has a somber note of unbelief to it, it also poignantly reminds us of the power of divine grace.  Jesus himself reminds his audience in verse 65 that no one comes to him except by the divine grace of God.  No one is ever forced to do it.  Jesus offers the Twelve a chance to get out as well, saying, “Do you also wish to go away?”  If we don’t wanna climb that hill we don’t have to.  But could you really imagine a life where you didn’t accept that invitation?  Yes, it’s hard.  Yes, it will lead to arguments and possibly estrangement from folks we know and love.  Yes, there will be times when we will want to throw our hands up and quit.  But somewhere deep down there is a voice, the same voice that Simon Peter spoke with, that says, “Where else are we to go?”  Jesus is our home.  He marked us as his own forever.  He is the one with whom we belong, the one who has the words of eternal life and who invites us to share in it with him.  To follow him truly and utterly means facing a great many challenges, but it also means being more fully alive than we ever were before.  The earliest followers of Jesus were called The Way because claiming Jesus as Lord meant an entirely new way of being, whether you were Jewish, Greek, Roman, or otherwise.  It was about reorienting one's whole self toward the way of Jesus, the way of love, the way of self-sacrifice, the way of light and hope in the midst of darkness and despair.

If following Jesus were easy, everybody would be doing it.  And while it sometimes looks like we all are—especially when we drive down the road and see 10 different churches within a mile of each other—the truth is that we aren’t all doing it.  We aren’t all willing to love our enemies or give to anyone that asks.  We proclaim Jesus as Lord with our lips, but in our hearts we still act as if we've got it figured out, that we are the ones in control.  We call this functional atheism, professing we believe while our actions say something else, and Christians of all kinds fall into this modality because, at the end of the day, it’s easier to follow our own hearts and desires than it is to follow Jesus.  But blessedly, by the grace of God and nothing else, we have been called to do just that! We have been called to know and love Jesus more fully and to follow his way. We have been called to love in the times when it is hardest to love, to give when we so desperately want to retain, to keep climbing the hill when it would be easier to give up and go home.  Even when Jesus’ teachings offend us (and many times they certainly do that), we listen, we learn, we grow, and we not only become more Christ-like ourselves but we sow the seeds of the kingdom.  For that is what it means to be a disciple, to be one who follows along the often hilly path that we call The Way.