The Heart of the Matter

"Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders?" Jesus was asked this question by his critics. It's not an easy question. What would you have said then and what would you say now if asked such a question? Jesus' response is harsh yet sophisticated and he strongly rebukes his interrogators. Was Jesus being cavalier and dismissive of tradition? Not exactly--but his answer to the question isn't what anyone expected. In fact, it would take his followers decades to grapple with his answer and work through its implications. The heart of the matter is the heart.

Steve Engstrom+

Walk in Love

"Walk in love," Paul says in his letter to the church in Ephesus (chapter 5). And he wasn't being sentimental. He plows right into the most sensitive applications: sexual conduct, permissible speech, alcohol consumption, family relationships, and servitude. He wasn't simply laying down moral rules, though. There is something that holds all this together and it isn't simply an effort in moral rectitude. On the contrary, Paul says that in the center of all this is a profound mystery that will make us wonder whether we're walking on our own or being carried along.

Steve Engstrom+

The Saints Have Their Eyes Wide Open

“The Christian saint always has her eyes wide open.” This is G.K. Chesterton’s gloss on the primary difference between Christian and Buddhist iconography, or paintings and visual representations of the truths of faith. Self-denial means something different for each. The Buddhist denies their experience in order to clarify their inner identity, he says, but the Christian does the opposite: the Christian denies their inner identity in order to clarify their experience. Self-denial for the Christian is about putting our desires in order so that we can be tenaciously, gently and above all truly present to God and to the world outside ourselves. It’s about learning to accept a gift which comes from outside yourself. I don’t know enough about Buddhism or Eastern culture to know whether Chesterton’s contrast is accurate, but he has heard a true thing about the gift we receive as Christians: God works in, with, through and under us to accomplish the giving of the gift, but fundamentally it comes to us from the outside. So keep your eyes open, and your hands outstretched. You will know it in the breaking of the bread.

On the Prowl

In his 1979 theological memoir Christianity Rediscovered, Fr. Vincent J. Donavan reflects on a conversation he once had with a Masai elder, to whom he had been witnessing as a missionary for some time. Donavan is a Roman Catholic, and the two work out together how the tribe, as a tribe, might do things like Eucharist, naming and baptism in a manner true to their context as a non-Westernized African tribe. In one of their conversations, the elder and Donavan take up and debate the word "faith." Donavan writes:

"[The Masai elder] said for a man really to believe is like a lion going after its prey. His nose and eyes and ears pick up the prey. His legs give him the speed to catch it. All the power of his body is involved in the terrible death leap and single blow to the neck with the front paw, the blow that actually kills. And as the animal goes down the lion envelops it in his arms [...] pulls it to himself, and makes it part of himself. This is the way a lion kills. This is the way a man believes. This is what faith is.

I looked at the elder in silence and amazement … But my wise old teacher was not finished yet.  "We did not search you out, Padri," he said to me. "We did not even want you to come to us. You searched us out. You followed us away from your house into the bush, into the plains, into the steppes where our cattle are, into the hills where we take our cattle for water, into our villages, into our homes. You told us of the High God, how we must search for him, even leave our land and our people to find him. But we have not done this. We have not left our land. We have not searched for [God]. [God] has searched for us. [God] has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the lion is God."

This is where Jesus is in this week's Gospel reading - God on the prowl.  God trailing the scent.  God, ready to pounce.

Family Memory

One of the facts of adulthood that we all grapple with is that none of us get to decide who our parents were. For some of us this is a huge blessing, and for others it casts a pall and can determine whole chapters. In some sense, liberation from our families is what we all want, but then again none of us wants to be alienated or estranged. What is in the 'gap' between these possible experiences? Jesus and the crowd in this week's gospel are negotiating the family memory, looking to see how they can be determined by the God of the Exodus but not defined by the experience of their ancestors. It's a high-level and tense conversation, and the result is by no means obvious at the outset. Hint for the ending: love.

Lack of Evidence

"Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence!" This is what the brilliant, atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell exclaimed a generation ago. But maybe the problem isn't really a lack of evidence. The disciples had plenty of evidence and so did a lot of other people when Jesus taught in the villages around the Sea of Galilee--and it wasn't enough. It wasn't evidence they lacked, but something else. What that might be is what we'll explore on Sunday together.

A Merrier World

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." Thorin says this to Bilbo Baggins in Tolkein's "The Hobbit," shortly before he dies. What is it about "food and cheer and song" that could be of more value that gold? We learn a lot about God and His "merrier world" through the metaphors and experiences of eating, culminating in this life around the table of Lord's Supper and in the life to come, around a lavish Messianic feast. This Sunday, we'll explore Jesus' feeding of the 5,000--no mere magic trick. On the contrary, he shows us not only the amazing things he can do, but the kind of person he is--and that is of more value than hoarded gold, indeed.

Tested Faith

Has your faith ever been tested? Have you ever felt like you don’t have what it takes to accomplish what God is asking of you?

In our gospel passage for this Sunday, Mark 6:7-13, Jesus began to send out the twelve in pairs, and gave them authority over unclean spirits.

The Apostles had not yet proven themselves to be strong pillars of faith so far in Mark. The previous time Jesus spoke to them was in the boat when he calmed the storm, he was not complementary: "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40). They were not even allowed anything for the journey, no bread, no bag, no money - just a staff. Jesus even promised them that they would experience rejection, just like he did in his own hometown.

This begs the question, "what was Jesus doing by sending out the twelve in this way, unprepared, un-provisioned, with a low expectation of success?" This sounds like a major test of faith to me. Yet in the end the twelve were successful, they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.

The power to do the miraculous doesn't necessarily depend upon the faith of the messenger, but rather on the authority and power given by Jesus. Maybe we aren’t under-qualified either to do the work of the Lord.