It’s possible I’ve gotten a little spoiled in that I’ve yet to go to an OB appointment alone. Jon’s got a flexible schedule, and he’s been willing and able to go with me every time. Until today, when some very important disaster training coincided with my appointment, and he couldn’t make it. Because I’m spoiled, my stepmom came with me instead. It was an uneventful appointment, and for that I am very thankful. Just a quick check in, a chat with my doctor, and off on my way, with a pat on the back because I’m still gaining the weight I need to for the babies. No bad news in the ultrasound room. No difficulty finding two little heartbeats on the Doppler. No real problems to report except that I’m still insanely insanely tired, and the constant heartburn is a little annoying, but overall I’m pretty happy for 6 months pregnant, which still feels insane to say.
I am so thankful for this uneventful appointment. I’m thankful to have a great team of doctors and nurses and genetic counselors and care coordinators. I’m thankful that, even though Claire will have to be transferred to another hospital right after birth for surgery and care, it’s the hospital where my husband works, right by our house, and one of the best in the country. I’m thankful to have family nearby to take care of all of us.
In short, I guess I’m just feeling really thankful. Possibly because I’m reading One Thousand Gifts, which is a book all about the practice of gratitude as the central practice of the Christian faith, which is a really great read so far, even though I don’t agree with all of it. The author seems to suggest that God causes all things that happen to us, be they joyful or painful, and I just can’t get on board with the idea that God causes things that are bad. That isn’t to say that I don’t believe that God works all things for the good, or that we can’t be drawn nearer to God in all things, or that we can’t learn and grow from every experience that happens to us. But I just can’t agree, though it has been suggested to me by well-meaning people, that God caused, for example, my Claire’s spina bifida. I am sure it will be an opportunity for learning and growth and drawing nearer to God, but I don’t believe God gives anything but good gifts to his children. I can’t believe God would cause disease or suffering and pain and still maintain faith in God. Spina bifida just happens sometimes. Even if you take your vitamins. Even if you say your prayers. Because that’s the way this world works. And God’s heart is broken along with mamas’ and daddies’ when they find out something’s wrong with their baby. And God rejoices when the defect isn’t as bad as it could be. That’s what I believe.
And so, I’m thankful for uneventful appointments, and for hope for the future, and for days when we don’t get any bad news. And I’m thankful for arms that hold me when the bad news comes too.
Image taken by Paul Schutzer, 1961. Via the Google LIFE photo archive.
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Last year I learned that my state, and many others, officially recognizes both Martin Luther King *and* Robert E. Lee on this day. I wrote to my legislator, but it’s still the case this year. I hope one day to see it changed.
This day is always really interesting to me. I think Martin Luther King Jr. exemplified the teachings of Jesus in a way few others have. However, when we narrow his life’s work only to racial equality, we oversimplify a man whose mission was one of the radical oneness of all of humankind. Though he was most known for his work on behalf of civil rights and racial justice, Martin Luther King Jr. also fought for the rights of the working class, and was passionately opposed to the Vietnam War and for the cause of peace. He advocated for “intersectionality” before it was a cool buzzword, realizing that oppression anywhere is oppression everywhere. He saw that racism is bound up with classism and militarism, and he fought against all of it.
We still have a long long way to go before his dreams for racial justice, equality, and harmony are achieved in this country. I hope you watch or read the “I Have a Dream” speech today, if you haven’t already. But here, on my little corner of the internet, I wanted to highlight a passage from his 1967 sermon opposing the war in Vietnam (link goes to full text), because its prophetic words about peace and the role of the US in the world still need to be heard today:
This is a role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that comes from the immense profits of overseas investments. I’m convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.”…This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, “You’re too arrogant! And if you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I’ll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name. Be still and know that I’m God.”
We shall overcome because the bible is right: “You shall reap what you sow.” With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid because the words of the Lord have spoken it. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all over the world we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!” With this faith, we’ll sing it as we’re getting ready to sing it now. Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore. And I don’t know about you, I ain’t gonna study war no more.
10 bonus points to the person who knows where the title of this post comes from. This is a long story, but I hope it will bless you as much as it has me.
As I mentioned yesterday, my husband somehow left his iPhone in San Jose, Costa Rica, on the last day of our visit there. This last day, I must say, can barely be considered a day. We arose around 3:30 in the morning. Possibly the only thing that got me out of bed that early was that our awesome AirBnB host had promised coffee and breakfast would still be ready, even before the actual crack of dawn, and so I dragged myself out of bed, did my last bit of packing, and enjoyed fresh bananas with granola, and home baked bread, and some of the most delicious coffee in the world. We were in a bit of a rush to eat breakfast, get a taxi, get to a bus stop, and take that bus to the airport in order to arrive by 4:30 am for a very early flight. With steps 1 and 2 completed, we were in the taxi almost to the bus stop when Jon noticed he didn’t have his phone with him. I remind you at this point that it was insanely early in the morning, and we may not have been thinking clearly. He checked his backpack and his pockets, and didn’t find the phone. We figured he had left it by the computer he was using at the casa right before we left, and pondered if we could go back for it, but realized we couldn’t if we wanted to make our flight. We decided we would have to email our hosts when we got back to the States and see if they could send it back to us.
As we rode the bus to the airport, we saw many pilgrims walking along the sides of the road to a city in Costa Rica called Cartago. An estimated 2 million people all over the country were walking, many for days, to reach this city in order to show thanks to God for their blessings, and, for many, to ask for healing. Our friends in San Jose had told us of a man in the papers who had already received the miracle of being healed of his blindness during this year’s pilgrimage. Seeing them walk along the road, carrying only small backpacks, in the wee hours of the morning was a great blessing. I’m not sure I can really explain why, but their devotion and dedication and sacrifice touched my heart, and as we roared past each little group in our great big bus, I said a little prayer that God would bless them for their faith. God certainly blessed me with their faith.
We made it onto our plane and eventually arrived home in Arkansas. Here is where I also pause to mention that it is difficult to secure a ride home from the airport without a phone, especially now that airports, realizing that most everyone has a cell phone, have eliminated pay phones. And, in the event that one does manage to find an actual payphone in actual working order, who still has any phone numbers memorized that he or she could call? Not us! A taxi home was the way we had to go, as we were weary and absolutely could not face the prospect of yet another bus.
We finally arrived home, and Jon emailed our hosts explaining the lost phone situation. We then headed to church, happy to connect with our friends there after a week away. That night, Ryan preached on what is commonly known as the Golden Rule, from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We discussed how that verse marks a transition, where Jesus turns from speaking about our relationship with God (“ask, seek, knock”), to our relationship with each other, a relationship that should be characterized by us doing what is good and loving to others, even when, and perhaps most especially when, it is no guarantee that this goodness and love will be returned. We do not participate in goodness and love in order to receive it, but because when we participate in goodness and love, we participate in the very character of God, a character perhaps best illustrated in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, in which God is radically UNfair, bestowing love and goodness even when it is least deserved.
The next morning, Jon received an email from our hosts Darrylle and Juan Carlos telling their side of the story of the lost iPhone. I asked for their permission to share this story:
As soon as we received your message we searched the house and found no sign of your iphone. We were so sad for you as we knew that if you’d lost it in the street or in the taxi or bus that there would be only a chance in a million that we could find it. We called the number to see if we could hear it ringing somewhere in the house or if someone would answer. After many rings a woman answered and when Juan Carlos spoke with her she asked if the phone was his. He told her that it was and she said that we could pick it up. She lives high up in the mountains near Turrialba about 2 hours southeast of San Jose.
We jumped in the car and headed toward the area. The road to Cartago was packed with pilgrims walking in the rain and it was amazing to experience their dedication and determination. By the time we got to her area it was dark and raining. After seeking information from people along the road and calling her on numerous occasions, we finally found her standing in front of a small shanty along a little road way off the main highway deep into the countryside. She is a single mother working nights in San Jose and takes this long two hour trip daily. She had found the phone in the back of the taxi about 5 a.m., at first thought of giving it to the driver, but then had second thoughts. She said she knew if she gave it to him he would make no effort to find its owner. Throughout the day she told several people she had found the phone and received several offers to buy it. Of course, she could have used the money, but decided that she would keep it for several days and if the owner didn’t appear that she would then sell it.
When we met her along side the road, she just walked up to the car window and handed us the phone and didn’t ask for anything. Unfortunately, we’d left the house in a hurry so I only had ¢10,000 ($20), so I gave it to her but she seemed happier to have found the owner than to have received the money. It was a blessing to be in the presence of this sweet, happy, honest and caring woman. Juan Carlos and I had spent time together yesterday morning, as part of our daily spiritual practice, discussing how if we keep our minds in synch with thoughts of goodness, if we hold the intention to bestow rather than to receive, if we focus on our true Self rather than our illusionary ego, that miracles will appear. As we reached the main road to return to San Jose we simultaneously expressed our realization that we had just experienced a miracle and our minds filled with light and joy. Everybody gained, there was no loss and each and every one of us received a blessing of love. Thank you so much for providing the opportunity to experience God in our lives. It was amazing.
Amazing indeed. Jon and I both choked up as we read the email and realized what a miracle this was. Sure, it’s just a returned iPhone. Why would God care about such a thing when there are literally blind people walking to Cartago in need of sight? Because this story is not about the iPhone, but about the goodness at the heart of people everywhere. I personally believe this goodness is the image of God. It’s the goodness that inspires someone to get up insanely early to send a traveler off with a good breakfast. It’s the goodness that inspires people to walk for days and days in order to say thanks and perhaps beg for a miracle. It’s the goodness that inspires people to drive for 4 hours for someone else’s phone. And it’s the goodness that inspires a woman living in poverty to do someone a great kindness, even when doing the opposite would help her provide for her children. It’s the goodness that lies at the heart of the God of the universe, a goodness that lives inside each one of us, if we choose to honor and nurture the image in which we are created.
I needed a reminder of this goodness. When we arrived in Atlanta, it was a rude welcome home to the States. The customs agent who checked my passport said something very ethoncentric about people who speak other languages. The man in front of me in the security line acted absolutely beastly to everyone he encountered. And my personality is such that I often tend to dwell on those people who don’t nurture their inner goodness, rather than those who do. And yet, here in front of me, here in my life, I have been given a miraculous reminder of the nature of God and the true nature of all God created and declared good. And I am so truly thankful.
I saw a tweet about how today you can choose to celebrate the Earth OR you can choose to celebrate the One who made it. As if that were an either/or proposition. I’d like to suggest that in taking care of the Earth, we serve and indeed worship our Creator.
In the past few years, my faith has sort of shifted directions. I feel like I’ve gotten to know Jesus better and been drawn closer to him. As this has been happening, my understanding of what is important about Jesus has shifted slightly. Rather than being focused solely on Jesus’ death and resurrection, I’ve broadened my focus to what Jesus said his mission was– to proclaim the gospel that the Kingdom of God is at hand (that is, available to us right here and right now), a kingdom characterized by resurrection, renewal, and the return of all of creation to the way things were meant to be. This means the saving work of Jesus, which was his life, death, AND resurrection, is not just for my soul, but for all of the earth. And that’s where Earth Day comes in.
Part of the beauty of the Creation story* is that we were placed in a beautiful garden in order to enjoy and care for it. As I mentioned in a post about faith and food that was inspired while listening to a Rob Bell sermon, God told Adam that he was put in the garden to work and to take care of the Garden. Bell noted that the Hebrew words for “to work” and “to take care of” used to describe Adam’s (if I was going to get literary here I’d say that at this point Adam is a symbol for why all of us were created) role in the garden are usually used elsewhere to describe the act of serving and worshipping God. Basically, to worship God was to TAKE CARE OF what God created in the garden (aka the world).
I believe a great window into just how far we have fallen from the ideal to which we were created is to see just how warped our relationship with creation has become. A relationship that was supposed to be characterized by reverence and care has become a relationship characterized by exploitation, destruction, and abuse. This is also reflected in our relationships toward our fellow creatures, human and nonhuman, and even in our relationship toward God. We cannot properly love the Creator while destroying the creation.
When Jesus put on human skin and lived with us, he preached the coming of the Kingdom. He modeled Kingdom life, a way of living characterized by right relationship: to God, to each other, and to creation. He taught us to live as children of God, that we might be a blessing to all of creation, as described in Romans 8:18:
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.”
The saving work of Jesus, the liberating work of Jesus, is for us, and for creation itself.
So how does this tie in to Good Friday? On Good Friday, we remember a savior who came to teach us how to live as we were created to live, but who allowed us the freedom to refuse to live it out. He allowed us, rather than responding to him in the relationship that we should have, to reject him and subject him to violence. He modeled a love that, rather than lashing out against enemies, tells us to put away the sword and then reaches out to heal even the one who comes to kill us. He modeled a love that, even as it hung suffering and dying on the cross, was moved to forgiveness. He modeled a love that somehow is not destroyed by evil, violence, and death, but which submits to it, only to come back again. Through this love, we are enabled to transcend evil, violence, and death. Through this love, we become partners in first dying to the old ways, and then in rising to participate as partners in the resurrection and renewal of all things, which will culminate in the New Jerusalem, a place here on earth, in which everything works the way God planned it, and everything is made right.
So on Good Friday, we sit with the wrongness. We sit with the brokenness. We sit with the realization that we are fallen. Fallen so far that we would kill the one who came to save. And we marvel in the love that would let us. And this Sunday, we rejoice in the love that was not destroyed, but resurrected to bring renewal to us and to all things. The experience of Holy Week is very spiritual, but it should move us to very earthy action.
*I believe the creation stories in Genesis are less statements of fact than they are statements of purpose. They tell the “why” of creation rather than the “how.” Thus, I believe in evolution, even as I affirm a Creator God who made everything with divine purpose. As a literature student, I find the language-centered aspect of the story, that God literally spoke things into being, particularly fascinating, but that’s not particularly important for the scope of this post.
Rachel Held Evans, whose blog is really fantastic and which you should be reading, shared yesterday why she is a Christian, and asked her readers to do the same. I really relate to Rachel because she is often a doubter and a skeptic and writes a lot about her experiences living an examined, questioned faith. Her post was about how the major reason why she’s a Christian is because she was born where she was born, when she was born, into the family she has. And I think it’s a really great answer, because honestly, who knows where I’d be if I wasn’t born in the Bible belt to people who raised me in church, and who knows where I’d be if that church hadn’t been an awesome Presbyterian church which nurtured my curiosity, wasn’t afraid of my questions, and didn’t belittle me for who I am. But that’s not why I’m a Jesus-follower today (I don’t usually prefer the word Christian, but I’ll go with it for the sake of this post and because that’s how Rachel phrased the question).
I mean, if I had my way, I might not be a Christian today. Often I am frustrated with what feels like my own lack of belief, though in those moments, I always seem to end up praying to God to give me my faith back…
Anyway, this is how I answered Rachel’s question:
I am a Christian because, despite my doubts, despite the fact that my cerebral nature often keeps me from ever making a true leap of faith, despite my stunning capacity for existential crises in the middle of the night, despite my inability to believe every word of the bible or check every box in any creed…Jesus will just not let me go. He calls me back to his simple Way again and again, and I am unable to stop loving him or to stop believing that the way he lived is the most authentic, human, kind way to live. I am a Christian because I love Jesus. Not because I believe everything the church says about him.
Every time I walk away, something draws me back.
Image via Flickr user Megyarsh.
When I wanted to abandon my faith because I lost someone I really cared about; when I woke up with a frozen and panicked feeling in the middle of the night, night after night, terrified that nothing I believed in was real; when I felt my furthest from God…at that moment, this totally non-Charismatic Presbyterian girl was given a strange spiritual gift. I say strange, because this “gift” was the weird habit of sobbing, uncontrollably, whenever I thought about God, whenever I tried to pray, whenever others talked about God, whenever others around me sang songs to God. For a period of several months. (This was super awkward at a missionary conference where everyone talked about God for an entire weekend, and I was the strange girl sobbing the entire time.) And while at first I thought this sobbing was just grief, the way it kept coming up, only in connection to God, eventually clued me in. And the best I can explain it is, God gave me tears when I had no words to show me that I didn’t need words. Which is a big deal for someone as wordy as I am. God gave me tears so that God could wipe them away. So that God could surround me with arms to hold me that reminded me that God’s arms are always holding me. God gave me tears so that I might know God’s nearness.
And though I can say that I’m not charismatic, I had then, and have had since, strange, mystical, deeply emotional encounters with God. Moments when someone told me words I needed to hear. People who crossed my path at just the right time. Encounters that point the way to Jesus and remind me that God refuses to let me go. (A commenter told me this sounds a lot like Calvinists’ view of irresistible grace, to which I have two responses: 1. The Calvinists won’t take me because I can’t check all their boxes, and 2. I believe I am very much free to walk away from Jesus at any time. His love is a healthy kind of love. It gives me a say in the matter.) And so I keep coming back to my faith. Because somehow, that strange experience with the sobbing, the kindness I am moved to do for others, and the kindness others are moved to do for me are all bound up in this person of Jesus who makes broken things whole and then tells them to go and do the same.
People often try to pin me down, ask me if I really believe the Bible. Ask me if I really believe this or that doctrine. And I’ve just never been great at really wrapping my mind around any of it. Which is, on the one hand, entirely against my entirely analytical nature, and on the other, entirely of a piece with it. All I can say is, I love Jesus. I love the way he lived and loved and lives and loves. I want to be like him. And I want to be among people for whom that is enough.
I’m not particularly interested in proselytizing. But I do love to explore and question and wonder and discuss (and, I must admit, even argue!). So I ask: why are you [whatever word you would use to describe your faith]?
This is part III of a series of posts on the Beatitudes. Check out parts I and II if you missed them.
We’ve now reached “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” I have traditionally heard this preached as “God loves the goody two shoes,” as if it says “Blessed are those who want to be good little Christians all of the time.” The problem with this reading is that this is not a light yoke or an easy burden. Those who want to be good little Jews all the time would be the Pharisees. This is not our Jesus. He didn’t go around recruiting the goody-two-shoes. He picked the folks who don’t have it all together. It would not be good news. So there must be another way to read this.
To me, righteousness is when things go the way God planned and designed them to. When we exist in right relationship to God, to each other, and to all of creation. Some folks call this right relationship God’s “shalom” which means peace.
To hunger and thirst are downright visceral feelings. To me, to hunger and thirst for righteousness is like that sick at your stomach feeling you get when you encounter something that is just so not right with the world. Something that is so clearly not God’s plan for the world. To experience the tension between what God created the world to be, and what it is like right now. But in that tension, in that lack, in that fallenness, in our frustration, and heartbreak, and longing for things to be made right, God is with us. God’s sick at God’s stomach too. God’s heart is broken too. God longs for things to be made right too.
This verse in some ways reminded me of the Japanese earthquake. Though some like John Piper might claim that God caused the earthquakes in order to teach us a lesson or send us a message, ours is a God who hungers and thirsts for a world in which these things don’t happen. Not a God who causes these things to happen. God is with us when horrible things about the world break our hearts. Not when we get them all fixed, but when we struggle, when we wonder, when we question, when we feel the disconnect between the way things are and the way they should be. This is great news, because it’s easy for bleeding hearts like me to get overwhelmed and feel hopeless and powerless because we can’t fix it all or even do something about it all. But God is with us in that place.
God can handle it when we feel like Habakkuk (Ch. 1): “How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.” God can handle our anger, can handle our sorrow, can handle our concern. In fact, God is with us in that feeling. To me, that is good news.
God is also with us when we move from tension, anger, and sorrow into action. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” To me, this is where the Beatitudes begin to move from conditions (mourning, poverty of spirit, hunger and thirst) to action. To be merciful is to have compassion for another and to be moved to action to change that situation or express love and care. I don’t have much to say about this particular Beatitude, because it seems fairly straightforward, but I will point out that it seems rather interesting that Jesus seems to be advocating a salvation based on works if we look at this line alone. Do mercy, get mercy.
A very "meek" looking Jesus preaches the Sermon on the Mount.
In case you missed it, I’m doing a blog series this week on the Beatitudes, based on a talk I gave at my church on Sunday. If you missed Part I, check it out, because it’s crucial to understanding how I’m going to look at the rest of this text.
I’m skipping “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” because Ryan covered that in a different talk.
So, moving on to “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” This one immediately made me wonder if my being asked to cover these verses was some kind of joke. I am so NOT meek, as it is usually defined, and everyone who has known me for even 5 minutes can attest. But, I was asked to speak on this text, and all I can think is, well, I guess they probably realized I wasn’t just going to say meek is being shy and pitiful and unobtrusive and that Jesus is telling us to be this way.
So I immediately set out to look for other places where the Bible uses the word “meek.” One clue as to what “meek” means can be found in Numbers 12:3, talking about Moses. My TNIV says “Now moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.” Many other translations use “meek” here instead of humble. So perhaps meek can be understood as humble. I mean, Moses stood up to Pharaoh and liberated the Israelites. Obviously he wasn’t “meek and mild” as we usually think of it. But he was humble.
Another clue can be found in who Jesus is talking to. At this time, the world had been conquered by Rome. THEY had carved up the earth. They seemed to be the ones who inherited the earth– the ones with big swords and military might. And here Jesus is saying the MEEK are the ones who are blessed. The down and out. The oppressed. The have-nots. And while some might say, well, the powerful can have the earth, because we’ll have heaven, Jesus is saying, No. The EARTH. It goes to these folks. Because ooh, baby, heaven is a place on earth (more on that in a second). And, as with “blessed are the poor in spirit,” this blessing tells us more about the one doing the blessing than the one receiving it. And what that tells us is: God is not on the side of the powerful. God is not on the side of the oppressor. God is not on the side of the one with the giant army. God is on the side of the weak, the powerless, the oppressed, the slave, the orphan, the widow, the poor, the hungry, and the downtrodden.
Now that we’ve sort of clarified that “meek” can perhaps better be understood as “humble,” and that we’ve also connected it to the fact that he was speaking to a group of people whose land was occupied by a great military empire that already seemed to have inherited the earth, we can look at the fact that by even using the phrase “inherit the earth,” Jesus is referencing a long tradition, a concept with a context.
Giving Abraham and his descendents a land to inherit, possess, and own, was part of God’s covenant with Abraham. What at first was meant as possessing the land of Israel becomes expanded and enlarged through Jesus to mean possessing the kingdom of heaven, which will literally be on the earth. You see this in prophecy in other books of the Old Testament:
Isaiah 57:13 “Whoever takes refuge in me will inherit the land and possess my holy mountain.”
Isaiah 60:21 “Then will all your people be righteous and they will possess the land forever.”
Psalm 25:8 “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways. He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful toward those who keep the demands of his covenant. For the sake of your name, Lord, forgive my iniquity, though it is great. Who, then, are those who fear the Lord? He will instruct them in the ways they should choose. They will spend their days in prosperity, and their descendants will inherit the land.”
And Psalm 37 is especially full of references to inheriting the earth:
“For those who do evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.” (v. 9)
“But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy peace and prosperity” (v. 11)
“The blameless will spend their days under the LORD’s care, and their inheritance will endure forever.” (v. 18)
“Turn from evil and do good; then you will dwell in the land forever.” (v. 27)
“The righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever.” (v. 29)
Then there’s Psalm 69:35: “God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah. Then people will settle there and possess it; the children of his servants will inherit it, and those who love his name will dwell there.”
There are other references in Ezekiel 33 and Romans 4:13, but I think you get the point. Inheriting the earth is a big part of God’s covenant with God’s people in the Old Testament, a big part of the Old Testament prophecy about what God would later do, and now, in the Beatitudes, reappears as part of Jesus’ promise/announcement to the people who will be part of God’s kingdom on earth.
“Inheriting the earth” is about a future time and place in which heaven and earth, the place of God and the place of people, become one. A place in which everything works according to the Way of Christ and everything broken is made whole, and things are as God always intended them to be. The Bible calls this the New Jerusalem. It is not a place we fly away to when we die, but a reality that we can participate in during this life, on this earth. It is a place that we can live in now, and that we can participate in bringing about. Greed, exploitation of the environment, violence, oppression, betrayal will not be part of this New Jerusalem. This is why Jesus refers to Psalm 27. Some things will wither away. Others will survive. When we focus on the things that survive, things characterized first and foremost by love, we participate in eternal life and the Kingdom of Heaven in the here and now, a way of living that will last forever.
Me giving my Beatitudes talk. No, I have no idea what is up with the claw hand.
My church, Eikon, is in the middle of a series on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (starts in Matthew 5). We just got started, so it’s a great time to join us if you’re interested. This week, I was asked to speak on the Beatitudes, and I figured I’d turn my talk into a series of blog posts to share with folks who didn’t/couldn’t attend (or just folks who didn’t catch a word I said because I’m such a fast talker). I will say that I am not a pastor or theologian. I’m just an English literature scholar/grad student who likes Jesus.
Anyway, consider this Part I on the Beatitudes!
To start, I think the way I’ve often heard the Beatitudes preached makes them out to be some sort of checklist of things we must do to be blessed by God. I’m not sure that a checklist of to-dos in order to earn God’s favor would have been considered radical, crazy good news to a group of Jews and Gentiles, so I’m pretty sure this is not how Jesus intended us to take this text. Instead, I think the Beatitudes are a sort of radical manifesto about the nature of the kingdom of God.
This reading is greatly informed by the very first Beatitude: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Right away, you can’t read this as some sort of “to-do.” Why would you want to be poor in spirit? To be poor in spirit is to not get it, to doubt, to question, to feel far from God, to be, as The Message puts it “at the end of your rope.” This is not a desirable condition. Instead, this is a statement less about the one who is poor in spirit, and more a statement about the one handing out the blessing: God. It’s not a statement about earning or deserving God’s blessing, but a statement about a God of extravagant love who pours out blessings on even, and perhaps especially, those who do not deserve it. There is no why to the pouring out of God’s blessing. Ours is a God who likes to bless, choose, and use the people that we think don’t deserve it. This is good news. Our God loves to bless all the people who don’t deserve it, who screw up, who doubt, who don’t believe all the right things, who don’t do all the right things.
In this light, all the rest of these Beatitudes are not about what we must do to earn God’s blessing. The focus is not on the condition of the one being blessed, but on the nature of the one doing the blessing, and, by extension, the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven, which Jesus repeatedly announces is at hand. This might make us look at the rest of the list in a different way, and I’ll be going through all of them step by step, every day this week.
"Penance" via Flickr user Sarah Korf under a Creative Commons License.
Today is Ash Wednesday. And while this may sound morbid, it’s the beginning of one of my favorite parts of the liturgical year. Yes, I grew up Presbyterian. We like words like liturgical.
While many see the church’s liturgical calendar as stale, dry, ritual, I see it as life-affirming rhythm. The church’s acknowledgment that life has its ebbs and flows. That to everything there is a season.
Lent is a time to “memento mori,” which is Latin for “remember you will die.” We talk about ashes to ashes and wear ashen crosses on our foreheads. For folks like me, prone to existential crises in the middle of the night, it’s a time to acknowledge one of our deepest, darkest fears: death. To name it, to acknowledge it, and to use it as a springboard for celebrating the God who conquers death and wipes away tears. But before we get to that point of celebration, we have to go through the valley of the shadow of death. We have to meditate on our mortality, our brokennes, and even broader, the earth’s mortality and brokenness. We have to find and name the cracks and fissures, so that we can allow those cracks and fissures to be filled with the love of the God of Resurrection and Renewal and Things Made Whole.
This is why we’re supposed to fast and take on new practices in Lent. Not just because we need to get rid of habits and practices that are bad for us, though all the healthy eating people try to do this time of year can never be a bad thing, but because we need to make space for meditation, time with God, time to examine ourselves and our environments. We need to get rid of the things that we use to distract us from our brokenness and mortality. We need to focus on things that do not fade. For this reason, giving something up is not the point of Lent if we’re just giving up something to give it up. The intention is to give up something in order to make space for something else, something that will bring us closer to God, or make us healthier, spiritually or physically.
This year, I am making space to read through the gospels, so that I might come to better know Jesus. I am also making space to take walks with my dogs. I hope to use this time to enjoy God’s creation and spend time with God. I hope this time will be a time of prayer and communion that will bring a bit of peace into my life.
I’d like to close by sharing a piece of T.S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” which is a beautiful meditation for this day (read the whole poem here):
Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit
of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.
Do you observe Lent? How are you observing it this year?
Update:
I just got my daily Verse/Voice email from Sojourners and was inspired to share this verse:
Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter– when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break free like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. –Isaiah 58:5-9 (TNIV)”
I have to say up front: I do not consider myself an Evangelical. I grew up Presbyterian (PCUSA) and have only gotten more “liberal” theologically from there. Jesus is still alright with me.
My friend Sarah turned my attention to recent polling of Evangelicals on the issue of the federal budget. Apparently, were they in charge of the government’s spending, Evangelicals are more likely than the average American to want to cut funding for: aid to the poor around the world, aid to the unemployed in our own country, and funding used to protect and care for our environment. From the piece: “evangelicals were more supportive of funding cuts in every area except military defense, terrorism defense, aid to veterans, and energy…Evangelicals were more likely to favor an increase in defense spending (45 percent) compared to non-evangelicals (28 percent).”
From this Jesus-follower’s perspective? Talk about bassackwards. Good gravy.
The defense spending is particularly troubling to me. We’d rather spend money to wage war against the people of the world than to spend money on foreign aid to help them build the sorts of stable economies and governments that make more less likely? And we’re not sure we’re even spending enough money on the military and war in the first place?
It makes me wonder if the translations of the Bible those other folks are reading are just WILDLY different than the TNIV I usually read. My love for Jesus compels me to care for the poor and needy and unemployed, both in my own country and around the world. My love for Jesus compels me to care passionately about God’s creation, desiring to treat it with the respect I’d treat anything I borrowed from a friend, and to preserve it so it can be enjoyed by future generations. My love for Jesus compels me to believe that even my nation’s enemies are my God’s children, and to oppose all violence and war. And if I were to be making my nation’s budget based on what I know about Jesus, I’d be cutting spending on violence and war, and increasing spending to help the most vulnerable among us, particularly during a global recession.
*Edited to add: of course I understand that many Evangelicals make care for the poor a private concern, and think that if the Church did its job, the government wouldn’t need to step in. But, when this polling data so clearly demonstrates support for militarism, I have to wonder if the public/private concern is really the issue here, and not just some really whacked out priorities.
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