Assuming Risks

The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. (Matthew 25.16-18)

Mutually Beneficial Outcomes

Business that took me to San Diego last week offered an opportunity to visit with our financial advisor, his wife, and their two-year-old son. Before their recent move to the West Coast, Walt and I counted them among our favorite couples to spend unhurried evenings with, and the chance to see how they’re doing in their new place—if only for an hour or so—gave us too much important stuff to talk about to discuss money. As it is, my financial conversations with Byron are typically brief for two reasons. My head isn’t wired for money matters; it shuts down the instant the charts and graphs come out. More important, we have total faith he has our best interests at heart. Because he knows and cares for us, and wants to please us, he treats our assets like his own.

Our discussions usually begin by him saying, “Here’s what I’m doing with our money,” and end with me saying, “If it works for you, it works for us.” In between, he’s legally obliged to disclose risks we assume if we take his advice. Given his faithfulness as our friend and advisor, precautionary measures seemed silly at first. Then he explained why they're important to him. “You stand to lose money—which is never pleasant, but can always be remedied. I stand to lose your friendship, trust, and respect. That can’t be fixed. If the law didn’t require it, I’d still go over what’s at risk to assure you I’ve weighed the options to make the wisest decision—for both of us.” The explanation beautifully summarizes the investment dynamic Jesus describes in Sunday’s Gospel (Matthew 25.14-30). His story of a man who entrusts large sums to three servants is all about assuming risk, weighing options, and wise decisions—and how honoring the master’s faith yields mutually beneficial outcomes for two of the three servants.

No Growth Without Risk

Matthew buries the parable’s lead by not telling us much about the master’s character until the third servant scrambles to justify not generating gains with what he’s given. “Master, I knew you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed,” he says. “So I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” (v24-25) These days, when we’re inundated with exposés of Ponzi schemers, robber barons, and Wall Street flim-flam artists, we immediately suspect this guy’s working some kind of angle. We’re suddenly very wary when he hands one servant five talents, another two, and a third a single talent before departing on a trip. (Scholars estimate one talent equaled 15 times an average worker’s annual income. Jesus is talking a lot of cash here.) We shudder as the first two rush off to wheel and deal with his money—and we’re relieved they’re able to double it. Imagining their fate if things went wrong, the third servant’s decision to bury his talent doesn’t look so foolish after all. With the least to gamble, he’s got the most to lose.

So why does the master call him “wicked and foolish” (v26) and those who take big chances “good and trustworthy” (v21)? Why does he reward their risky behavior by giving them more, while taking back what he gave the other servant, saying he should have known not to play it safe? (To add insult to injury, he hands the talent to the first servant, who risked more than the others combined.) Why does he invite the first two to “enter the joy of your master,” yet banish the third to “outer darkness” (v30)? If he’s as greedy and conniving as we’re led to think, avoiding his wrath at all costs is the smartest thing a servant can do, as it witnesses true loyalty and respect.

The master doesn’t see it like we do, because he’s not the predator we presume him to be. He’s a brilliant venture capitalist in the business of funding risk. He reaps where he doesn’t sow and gathers where he doesn’t scatter seed in return for providing the seed and ground it grows in. Expecting those he entrusts with wealth to assume risks to create more wealth, it’s his right to demand they weigh the options and make wise decisions that benefit him and them. What the third servant views as harshness is really sound management. The master empowers his people to take risks, and those who know and understand him don’t hesitate do so. They’re less concerned with results than honoring his trust. As a canny investor, he’s aware that markets and harvests fluctuate. He knows taking risks invites potential disappointment and frustration. Yet it’s nothing to be afraid or ashamed of, as there can be no growth without risk. The first two get that. The third earns his master’s ire by lacking will to grow. Poor grasp of his master’s plan and fear of punishment witness not a shred of faith in the one he serves. It’s true: he’s wicked and lazy and deserves to be fired on the spot.

Them That’s Got Shall Get

According to Matthew, this is Jesus’s final parable before He’s arrested. In light of its timing, then, we ascertain Jesus refers to Himself as the demanding master who endows his servants to manage his investments while He’s away. He cautions us we’ll be judged and rewarded in scale with what we’ve done with what we’re given, which is by no means a negligible sum regardless how our talents compare to others’. The only commentary Jesus inserts into the story surfaces in the master’s fury with the risk-averse servant—and it’s a stunner: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” (v29) Jesus wants us to recognize the value of what we possess and He expects us to risk all we have to create greater wealth from the wealth He’s entrusted to us. Burying it where no one can find it may seem smart. But it’s a wicked, lazy approach that reveals not a shred of understanding or trust in Christ.

I’m also convinced the parable contains less overt messages that we need to hear. While faith is our most precious and holy possession, we’re foolish to imagine it needs our protection. What’s more—and you may want to fasten your seatbelt for this—fearing God’s wrath does neither God nor us a service. Indeed, Jesus says what comes of being afraid of God’s punishment is the surest way to experience it. We are not called to spiritual stasis. We’re called to grow. That demands courage to assume risks, weigh options, and make wise decisions. In 2 Timothy 1.7 Paul writes, “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” Burying our talents for fear of losing them puts us at greater risk than any chance we’ll ever take to grow the power, love, and self-discipline God entrusted to us. Jesus couldn’t be more explicit in warning us risk-averse cowardice leads to an unhappy ending. And it’s no surprise we should find this so surprising. As Billie Holiday put it, “Them that’s got shall get; them that’s not shall lose. So the Bible says, and it still is news.”

Lord, You know better than anyone we’re surrounded by third servants frozen with fear of Your wrath. Assuming risks to generate growth is anathema to them. Reignite the power, love, and self-discipline You placed in us so that we’ll reject fear and honor Your trust. For Your sake and ours, strengthen our will to grow. Amen.

Safeguarding our talents may seem like a wise strategy, but it ends up putting us at greater risk than using what God has given us to generate more growth.

Protect Your Light

Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. (Matthew 25.1-4)

Too Many Variables

Regardless what scenario their creators dream up, apocalyptic movies always include a scene that beefs up the pathos. It usually ends what film teachers call “the second act.” The characters are established. Chaos has laid waste to most of the landscape and extras. The hero’s crew has gathered everything they need to survive. Uncertain when the crisis will end, they use resources sparingly. They find a safe hideaway and hunker down, awaiting the climactic confrontation that—sure enough—explodes in Act Three. For now, they’re grateful for calm before the storm. Then someone shows up, begging them to share their shelter and supplies.

As is our nature, compassion comes quicker for strangers. When they’re former friends and neighbors, shared history complicates the issue. After ignoring early signs of looming disaster, they hear the answer they dread: “There’s not enough to share. Sorry, you’re on your own.” But simply saying that triggers a change of heart and hero relents. We enter the final act, our restored faith in humanity promising a happy ending—even though we don’t believe it for a second. There are too many variables in play to risk survival on heedless latecomers. In the real world, the hero’s “you-made-your-bed-sleep-in-it” reflex would kick in. Of course, since reality rarely intrudes on apocalyptic movie logic, we let it slide and gear up for the big finale. Not so in the parable Jesus tells in Matthew 25.1-13 (Sunday’s Gospel). Realism flows through His bridesmaids’ tale like an icy stream rushing toward tragedy—which is precisely where half the wedding party lands.

A Horror Story

Artificial light spoils our ability to react to the story in the same manner of those who actually hear it. The darkest night we’ll ever know would look like dusk to ancient eyes. In Jesus’s time, darkness is deadly. After nightfall, you don’t venture beyond your village walls unless you’ve got a reliable lamp to light your way. That’s why so many of Jesus’s parables in Matthew end with a terrifying shocker: the careless character(s) is thrown into “outer darkness”—i.e., run out of town in the middle of the night—“where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” It’s also why anyone expecting night travelers stands ready to go out to them the instant their lamps are sighted.

The ancients put great stock in hospitality and protocols because keeping them keeps danger at bay. In fact, many of our customs—leaving a porch light on, for instance, or wedding and funeral processions—evolve from a pre-modern compulsion to ensure safe travel for one’s friends and family. No matter how close they are when watchmen first spot them, it’s never so close to shrug one’s duty to meet them. Should their light fail and darkness swallow them, death and harm are merely a step away. The host, attendant, or servant unprepared to bring them light justifiably earns the traveler’s contempt, often at a great price. And all of this—fear of the dark, personal risk, inhospitality, thoughtless irresponsibility, and tragic consequences—figure into Jesus’s tale, which sounds to His listeners more like a Stephen King novel than a fable.

A bridegroom assembles a party of 10 maidens to usher him into town when he arrives. Five of them understand what’s required of them, while the other five apparently don’t. Jesus calls the prepared maidens “wise,” and the unprepared ones “foolish.” A new wrinkle spotlights their idiocy. On hearing the groom is delayed, they don’t use the extra time to fix things. Instead, they nap with the wise maidens. At midnight, the watchmen wake them. The groom is coming. The wise maids fire up their lamps. The foolish ones beg them for oil. Sadly, they haven’t any to spare. “Find a dealer to sell you some,” they say. And while the foolish maids run around town, the wise ones go into the night to meet the groom. Without asking about the missing maidens, he takes them into the wedding banquet and shuts the door. When the foolish maids show up, he disowns them. “I don’t know you,” he insists. Jesus closes with an ominous moral: “Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” (v13)

Ours to Keep

That’s it? No gruesome violence, no big “Boo!” to scare us out of our socks? How is this a horror story? What makes it tragic? So what if they didn’t get into the banquet? There’ll be others. We might think so, but Jesus’s listeners don’t have to be told there will not be other parties. The foolish maidens prove themselves unworthy of so much as a welcome. Selfishness, carelessness, laziness—call it what you will; all of them fit—renders them invisible. They’ve no right to ask anyone for anything. Worst of all, there will be no one to venture into the night and guarantee their safe travel. They are no longer known. Jesus doesn’t describe their panicked screams when reality jumps out at them. His listeners can already hear them, and they’re chilled to the bone.

Like all the parables, this one gets interpreted every conceivable way. Some think the oil symbolizes the Holy Spirit, and take it to mean believers who ignore the Spirit’s guidance invite foolish risks. Some read it as a warning to stay ready for death or the Second Coming. Some take it as another of Jesus’s lessons urging His followers to own responsibility for the flock after He’s gone. Yet in all of these, one truth cannot be ignored. We possess light. And with that comes the privilege of bringing it to night travelers. It makes no difference whether they travel with their own lamps, or how close they may be. Duty compels us to go out, meet them, and bring them safely home. Napping when we should be getting our act together is foolish—and faithless. In the end, we pay for our indifference. It’s a fate we can avoid by protecting our light at all costs. Once it’s ours, it’s ours to keep—and ours to bring. Be wise. Protect your light.

Open our hearts to our neighbors’ needs, O God, and make us ready to meet them. Amen.

We possess light. It’s ours to keep, and ours to bring.

No Place Like Home

Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God. (Psalm 90.1-2)

Get Up Everybody and Sing

Was I really 20 when Sister Sledge released “We Are Family”? It’s one of those tunes you feel like you’ve known your entire life. Even after you Google it and learn it was released in 1979—despite reminding yourself it’s a disco hit that, at the very earliest, wouldn’t have run the charts until the late 70s—you’re apt to scratch your head. How can that be? As far as disco tunes go, “We Are Family” was remarkably tame; the beat and the music laid back and the four Sledge sisters stepped forward to sing:

We are family

I got all my sisters and me

We are family

Get up everybody and sing!

Their song celebrated their family, not the human family or the “circle of life” or other grandiose concepts so big they get away from us before the singing ends. If you remember the lyrics (and I’ll bet you do), rerun them in your head. It’s about them. The image of family unity they presented was worth singing about. It touched us on a primal level, reminding us family, by nature, should foster togetherness and accord. “We’re like birds of a feather,” they sang. “We're giving love in a family dose.” In some ways their song counterbalanced Carly Simon’s hit, “The Way I Always Heard It Should Be,” which portrayed misgivings about the whole marriage-and-children thing based on her own family’s dysfunction. When Kim, Debbie, Joni, and Kathy Sledge rejoiced, “We are family!” they told the world, “This family idea works!” No wonder their song spoke to us in a timeless fashion.

Alive and Together

Millennia before “We Are Family,” Moses also composed a timeless hit about family, Psalm 90. “Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations,” he sings in the first verse, going on to praise God’s faithfulness and the enduring nature of God’s people in the midst of constant change. And Moses immediately announces that this realization touches a primal nerve by predating our existence: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God,” verse 2 observes, as the poem goes on to contemplate the brevity of life and how each of us fits in the ongoing epic of familial longevity. “We’re like grass,” Moses says. “We sprout in the morning. By evening, we wither away.” Yet his metaphor for transience doesn’t dismay him in the least. Thrumming beneath his adoration of the eternal God, one senses undiluted family joy of being alive and together. Moses says, “Look at us, tiny blades of grass closely rooted beside each other, growing and thriving!”

Moses is the last Bible hero we’d expect to write a song that rhapsodizes God’s faithfulness, and rejoices about family and rootedness. He’s the Old Testament’s poster foster child. He’s born into a loving family of Hebrew slaves, only to be ripped from its bosom before he can walk and grows up as an Egyptian prince. That he’s not related to Pharaoh’s family by blood is apparent from his first glance in a mirror. We don’t know if anyone ever told Moses how he came to live in the palace. Yet it must be disconcerting for a privileged child to recognize a closer familial resemblance to his slave nurse (and true mother) than those claiming to be his elders and siblings.

The identity crisis that surfaces in a persistent stammer and lifelong insecurity surely begins there. Just when he’s poised to come into his own, a desperate attempt to reclaim his ethnic roots makes him a fugitive. Wanted for killing an Egyptian who abuses a Hebrew slave, Moses flees to the outback, where he’s adopted again—giving him three families in all before starting his own. Then, once he settles into life as a husband and father, God sends him back into the mess he managed to escape. The Hebrew slaves distrust him. His Egyptian family can’t believe the gall to demand freedom for captives that form the backbone of their economy. And whom does God assign to compensate for Moses’s inadequacies? His blood brother, Aaron—a stranger with no cause to help Moses! None of this sounds like the way Moses (or anyone swept up in his saga) “heard it should be,” let alone something to sing about. Nor does it get better as the story goes.

Securing the slaves’ freedom tasks Moses with leading thousands of legitimately anxious people he’s never met in search of a Promised Land. He has no map or timetable. For 40 years, he pushes them to keep moving. Two generations are born and two generations buried in the wild. By the end, impermanence is all that most of them know. Yet along the way, Moses teaches them his song about God’s faithfulness and human frailty and rootedness—a song about family. Despite every reason why it shouldn’t, the song resonates. It’s a big hit, an instant classic, they sing over and over. It survives Moses. It survives them. It’s a song we sing and generations after us will, too. God is our dwelling place. We’re rooted in God. For the brief time we’re alive, we grow up together in God. We flourish, fade, and a new generation takes root to replace us. We are family.

One Roof

We can regard “God is our dwelling place” as poetic metaphor and leave it at that. But in doing so, we drain Moses’s song of its power to make the metaphor real. If God truly is our Home—if, as Paul testifies in Acts 17.28, “we live and move and have our being” in God—what does that say about us? It seems fairly obvious. As people of God, we share one Roof with all people of God. Sheer size of our family precludes knowing most of them personally, and diversity of backgrounds alone advises against assuming we should like, agree with, and relate to every member of the family. Merely by the millions of ways we come to God, we can rid ourselves of expecting we’ll blend into some kind of homogenized, harmonious “Brady Bunch” dwelling in a spacious, suburban comfort. Residing in God makes for overcrowded, tumultuous conditions. We are, by nature, a family on the move. Impermanence is all we know. New infants are born into our family and beloved elders pass on. Our only sustenance comes from God. We have no map or timetable. It should neither amaze nor alarm us to encounter family members with radically different notions about where we’re going or how we’ll get there. It’s no surprise when far removed relations adamantly refute our claim as kin. We’ve done it; why shouldn’t they?

Yet for all our jostling and anxiety and skepticism, the constant transitions and uncertainties of our pilgrim lifestyle, we celebrate our common roots in God. We rejoice in the gift of growing side-by-side, alive and together, flourishing as individuals under one roof. “Teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart,” Moses’s song prays (v12), concluding with an entreaty that summarizes what dwelling in God is ultimately about: “Let Your work be manifest to your servants, and Your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands—O prosper the work of our hands!” (v16-17) The work we do and legacy we leave behind are most important. It makes us anxious to concede many we find so disagreeable, and vice versa, are kin with whom we share a common dwelling. That’s not the way we always heard it should be. Nonetheless, that’s the way it is. We are family. Puts a new spin on “No place like home,” doesn’t it?

O God, as You’ve always been and forever will be, You are our dwelling place. Endow us with courage to overlook differences so we may celebrate our common roots in You. Prosper for us the work of our hands—O prosper the work of our hands. Amen.

With God as our dwelling place, we share one roof with all God’s people. Sure, our Home is overcrowded and our family stays on the move. Yet we’re closely rooted, alive and together.

Postscript: “We Are Family”

Just in case you couldn’t recall all the words…

The Great Contradiction

The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. (Matthew 23.11-12)

Between Us

Last week’s Gospel looked at The Great Commandment: Love God entirely and neighbors unconditionally. This week’s passage illuminates what we might call “The Great Contradiction.” It launches a three-chapter sermon that, in many ways, serves as the bookend for the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus delivers at the outset of His mission. What starts out as high-flown ideals in the first lesson looks a bit battered and sounds a whole lot grittier this time around. After three-and-a-half years of itinerant ministry, Jesus and the disciples may be a little worse for wear. Yet experience has definitely made them wiser and bolder.

Matthew presents Jesus in full-blown Messianic mode this time. Shades remain of the Philosopher Prince, Whose gentle voice inspired the masses with divine imperatives. Yet, without question, the Preacher in chapters 23-25 stands His ground as authoritative King and Prophet. If we were to imagine both sermons as movie sequences, the Sermon on the Mount would be shot in long, fluid takes underscored by swelling strings and French horns to amplify the virtues Jesus extols. This sermon, however, would be rendered in tight close-ups, reaction shots, and jarring jump cuts set to staccato brass flares, dissonant winds, and agitated percussion. We’d also note differences in Jesus’s audience. Pharisees and other religious types spotted in the first sequence don’t appear in the second. (Jesus sent them packing after He issued The Great Commandment and blew the doors off their myth that Messiah belonged exclusively to them.) The sick and troubled are also reduced. Jesus hasn’t done much in the way of healing and miracles lately. He’s focused on putting things in order, calling out wrongs where He finds them and prepping His followers to carry on when He’s gone. The absence of adversaries and needy folks who’ve come for His touch, not His words, frees Jesus to speak His mind. A detectable “between us” element in this sermon—which we don’t find in the Sermon on the Mount—charges every statement with inescapable urgency.

Enemies Make Everything Happen

This is the last sermon Jesus preaches, and ironies abound. The opposition’s disappearance by no means indicates it’s moved on. He’s very much top of mind for them, just as they’re top of mind for Him. While He spews a volcano of rage against them—climaxed by wrathful predictions of their destruction—they’re putting final touches on their conspiracy to crush Him and His movement. Thus, in a sense, Jesus is talking in the wind, since His listeners aren’t guilty of the evils He rails against. (We’ll get to them momentarily.) But, in every sense, His adversaries are spitting in the wind. Like previous schemes to unmask Him as a charlatan and heretic, their plot will backfire, this time on a scale they can’t possibly imagine. Their hatred and intolerance become levers God uses to exalt Jesus as the definitive example of love and forgiveness for all time.

In the process, Jesus’s foes set the stage for His demonstration of The Great Contradiction that prefaces His diatribe against their hypocrisy, spiritual laziness, and moral mediocrity. Three days from now, as His followers watch Jesus being lifted on a cross—unjustly accused and tortured as though He were the scum of the earth—these words will echo in their ears: “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Matthew 23.11-12)

Jesus’s enemies make everything happen. By the time Matthew pens his Gospel (circa 70-80 CE, in the wake of Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem’s Temple), Jesus is widely proclaimed and worshiped as The Christ—God’s Anointed, the Promised Redeemer of humankind. The Great Contradiction is fervently taught and practiced as Christianity’s modus operandi. Prominent Pharisees like Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and Saul of Tarsus—along with thousands of rank-and-file members of the religious majority—have broken with tradition to follow Christ. Virtually every woe and prophecy Jesus declares in His final sermon is validated. At best, His adversaries are an afterthought. Their Roman allies will join other Jewish and pagan defectors; 200 years after Matthew writes his Gospel, Christianity will stand as the Roman Empire’s sanctioned faith. While many factors help bring this about, the Early Church arrives at its position for one reason. Ancient Christians—most never possessing and the rest surrendering any pretense to power and position—intuitively grasp The Great Contradiction’s core principle. In kneeling, we rise. In serving, we command. At our least, we are greatest.

Revolutionary Changes in Us

The Great Contradiction was never intended as a subversive, countercultural strategy. And it’s ludicrous to suggest otherwise, as nothing in apostolic or historical texts supports such an idea. Early Christians embrace the principle simply because Jesus told them to and showed them how to do it. No loss is ever too great—not even life itself—since greatness can only be found in loss. Paul’s sentiment in Ephesians 3.8 expresses their prevailing attitude: “I have suffered the loss of all things,” he writes, “and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” The Great Contradiction changes them, and submitting to its demands permits them to change the world.

Thus, The Great Contradiction presents us with two equally important questions: Am I willing to lower myself so that Christ’s greatness may arise from my losses? And, do pure motives drive my methods? The faintest hint of “what’s in it for me” negates the entire principle. Lowering ourselves to get the upper hand will never work. True sacrifice asks no reward. Real forgiveness wants nothing in return. Genuine humility seeks not to achieve greatness; it strains to allow greatness to come forth. Of course it makes no sense. It’s a contradiction.

Jesus introduces His principle by citing its Pharisaical opposite. “Don’t be like them,” He says. “They put on a terrific show, but their behavior is too transparent to hide their actual motives.” To embrace The Great Contradiction is to invite revolutionary changes in us. If we genuinely humble ourselves, allowing those changes to take root in our hearts and minds, the greatness they bring forth can, and ultimately will, change the world.

We have heard Your words, O Christ, and grasp their contradictory truth. We kneel to rise. We surrender to be saved. We count all we have as loss so that Your greatness may come forth in us. Now we pray Your strength to steel our resolve long after The Great Contradiction’s romance dissipates and daily life tests our commitment to follow Your teaching and example. Amen.

Of course, The Great Contradiction makes no sense. Yet Jesus’s accomplishment on the cross and what the Early Church achieved by following His example prove its power to change us is what ultimately permits us to change the world.

Ours for the Sharing

So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us. (1 Thessalonians 2.8)

Turnarounds and Transitions

Standing amid Sunday’s selected texts, one feels like Dorothy Gale soon after landing in Oz. People come and go so quickly here! Obviously or obliquely, the readings describe turnarounds and transitions. Deuteronomy 34.1-12 records the death of Moses and Joshua’s succession as Israel’s leader. Psalm 90 ponders the passage of time, both on Creation’s grand scale and the human scale of daily life. In 1 Thessalonians 2.1-8, Paul fondly recalls his recent visit with the church, while also responding to reports his teaching has come under fire there. He makes two things very clear: he’s a trustworthy Apostle and the Thessalonians are very precious to him.

Yet Sunday’s Gospel (Matthew 22.34-46) unequivocally overshadows the companion texts, for in it Jesus fuses two Mosaic edicts—love God with all your heart, mind, and soul (Deuteronomy 6.5), and love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19.18)—into the Great Commandment, on which, He says, “hang all the law and prophets.” (v39) As Christians, we revere this text as our spiritual and ethical mother lode. Virtually every choice we make in relationship to God and one another traces back to it. For the Pharisees, who actually hear Jesus issue His commandment, it’s a stunning turnaround, however. Perhaps facetiously—or perhaps not—one of them asks Jesus to identify which law He considers the greatest of all. The only acceptable answer in Pharisaical terms would be, “None is greater than the rest. They all must be obeyed to the letter.” The expected reply sets Jesus up, though, because He has a long history of setting aside religious mandates that impede His determination to care for anyone in need. Meanwhile, singling out one above the rest constitutes heresy. Jesus ingeniously neutralizes the question by citing two laws and vesting them jointly with final authority as Judaism’s preeminent principle.

In essence, the Pharisees get a legally correct answer. But Jesus packages it in revolutionary language that tells the Pharisees they’ve got it backwards. He asserts God’s edicts are given to engender love, not fear—commitment, not conformity. The sheer thought shocks the Pharisees speechless. They can’t wrap their heads around Jesus’s answer, let alone how it works. (Being religious practitioners, as opposed to practicing divine principles, what and how are all that matters to them. Why holds little to no interest.) While they balk at His turnaround, Jesus indicates the entirety of their belief is in transition. He foresees what they can’t possibly perceive: soon-coming events will reestablish God’s law on God’s terms—forever rescinding legalistic inequities and exclusion by redefining the prophetic import of God’s covenant to include all of humankind.

Chasing a Fantasy

Much like we accept the Great Commandment without objection, Jesus puts a question to the Pharisees that sounds benignly academic to us—no more than a standard-issue Socratic supposition to spark learned debate. Not so. His question rattles the Pharisees so thoroughly verse 46 says, “No one was able to give Him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask Him any more questions.” Jesus asks, “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” (v42) The premise is fraught with cognitive and emotional complexity for the Pharisees. Their answer, saying the Messiah is the “son of David,” upholds Israel’s core belief in itself as God’s Chosen People and its sustaining hope for a Deliverer to end its perpetual cycle of pagan oppression. As a Jew steeped in Messianic prophecy, Jesus surely holds sacred the inner strength and longing their answer conveys. Nonetheless, He refutes its validity by quoting Psalm 110, where David refers to the Messiah as “my Lord” instead of “my son.”

A great deal more than solving a theological riddle is at stake here. If the Messiah is “the Lord”—i.e., God’s Son, hence Ruler of All Creation—Israel is chasing a fantasy. Its doggedly nationalistic, religiously egocentric bubble bursts. The Messiah destroys walls that divide beneficiaries of God’s grace and acceptance into “haves” and “have-nots.” Inequality and intolerance of any kind are taboo. A new covenant replacing God’s covenant with Israel launches global access to God’s love. Erasure of all differences between and among us changes everything. Previously admissible excuses for hatred, prejudice, and violence no longer exist. Every person one encounters must be embraced, treated, and loved as a neighbor no less worthy or acceptable than oneself. This is precisely what Jesus infers by posing His seemingly benign question—and why the Pharisees are shaken so terribly when they can’t answer. They don’t disengage Him from further discussions because He’s part of the lunatic fringe. He’s frightened them beyond reason. In just two steps, He’s totally dismantled their theology, politics, and history. He’s left them no mooring from which to fight Him off.

Disruptive Force

Let’s pause to contemplate how radically improbable what Jesus implicitly describes sounds to us, even though it supposedly drives our faith and cultural ideals. Merely scratching its surface would permanently disrupt our way of life. Modern tendency to focus on what and how would prove useless in a world revolving around why. Self-serving ideologies couldn’t survive the pressures of selfless love and commitment’s sacrosanct principles. Yet this overwhelming vision rests in the heart of Christ’s Gospel. It’s what makes our faith supremely powerful. It’s why love and commitment to God and our neighbors comprise the greatest, most disruptive force we’ll ever know. And it’s why we frighten people beyond reason and they disengage from further conversation with us. They have no answer when we question their claim to exclusive favor with God and superior social standing, because none exists.

This is a lot to absorb—too much, in fact. Thus, Jesus commands our commitment to love God without restraint and our neighbors as equals. He calls us away from all that we think we know to discover two preeminent truths: His Gospel is trustworthy and every life we touch is precious. “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us,” Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 2.8. The Gospel that reestablishes God’s laws of love and redefines the prophetic import of God’s covenant reestablishes and redefines us. Its power defies human theology, politics, and history by ordering turnarounds and transitions on the grand scale of Creation. Its message and promises aren’t only ours for the taking. They’re ours for the sharing. So deeply do we care for those around us that we’re determined to share with them not only the Gospel, but also our own selves. In doing so, we barely scratch the surface. Yet it’s enough to disrupt the way of the world and witness Christ’s power and presence to a profoundly troubled, spiritually disengaged planet.

O Christ, we heed Your command to love God unequivocally and our neighbors unconditionally. Sharpen our will and wits to scratch the surface of what You’ve entrusted to us. Reestablish and redefine us as the supremely powerful, disruptive force You desire us to be. Amen.

The revolutionary power of Christ’s law of love and vision of a world that honors it entrusts us with the supremely potent, disruptive ability to reorder life as we know it.

While We Wait

Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. (Daniel 10.12-13)

Gateways to the Ineffable

My mom occasionally warns me about overthinking Scripture. “Let It speak,” she says, “and then give yourself time to let what It’s telling you sink in.” There’s more to her counsel than a mother’s concern her son’s too busy burning up brain cells to get the point. The real wisdom buried in her advice reminds me approaching God’s Word purely on an intellectual level often erects barriers to hearing what It wants to me know, because modern mentality isn’t always amenable to accepting what It says.

Certain aspects of Scripture defy human comprehension. They always have and always will. Yet the Bible is also crammed with supernatural events—visions, miracles, out-of-body experiences, and natural disasters—practically begging us to debunk them with scientific and literary analysis. We don’t need much to get really smug really fast. We pity our forebears for naïvely taking these tall tales at face value. We look down at those who ignore common fact and theory to believe everything in the Bible occurred exactly as recorded. That’s tough for many of us. For example, it’s a stretch to concede the sun and moon actually halted in the sky, as Joshua 10.13 says, to give Israel extra time to win a battle. It may be the crude account of a solar eclipse, or a clumsy metaphor for God’s intervention. We’re good with whatever it is, as long as it saves us from taking it as written. If what Joshua reports truly transpired, it would have hurled the planet into deep space. Since it obviously didn’t, it’s obviously not what happened, and it’s a joke to imagine it did.

If we’re not careful, though, the joke will be on us, as we fall prey to the same fault we disdain in illogical literalists by imposing literal logic on everything we find in the Bible’s pages. Implicit in my mom’s advice is a wise precaution to know when Scripture invites us to forget facts so faith can appear. Its incredible tales shouldn’t discounted as no more than big-fish stories—including the big-fish story of Jonah for which fantastic yarns are named. The Bible’s mind-bending accounts are given so we’ll discover something greater than ourselves. They’re gateways to the ineffable, that mysterious space where God lives and moves in our behalf. Doubting their accuracy or granting them poetic license is fine, if doing so moves us past logic that cripples faith. Getting hung up on Biblical impossibilities defeats their purpose, however. It bars us from entering a place of illumination with no other means of access. And whether or not the stories are real, where they take us is as real as real can be.

21 Days

Logical literalists won’t find very much to digest in the Book of Daniel. The straightforward narrative portions read like fairy tales. Daniel starts off as a young Hebrew captive in Babylon whose prophetic gifts vault him to heights of power and favor. Envy drives his rivals to plot his demise. They throw him to lions, toss him into a fiery furnace, and constantly test his scruples in ways that might anger the king. Yet Daniel survives every attempt unscathed. Those unable to swallow his outrageous exploits won’t have a clue about what’s going on when the book kicks into high gear. It turns out that Daniel’s a true-blue mystic, and chapter after chapter relates his visions and encounters with celestial beings. It’s like he’s in a perpetually altered state that opens his eyes to a secret dimension. Is all of this legit? Or is Daniel an excitable crackpot? Either way, he’s pretty spooky. But if we can get past trying to figure him out, where his story takes us is amazing.

Chapter 10 takes place after Cyrus the Great conquers Babylon and frees the Jews to return to Israel. Having quit government service not long after the liberation, Daniel chooses to remain. (He’s older by now and Babylonian life is all he knows.) He’s swept up by a puzzling vision of a great war that he desperately prays to decode. When no answer comes, he goes into mourning, limiting himself to a subsistence diet and basic hygiene. This lasts for three weeks. Then, while standing at the Tigris River, an otherworldly figure appears to him. No one but Daniel sees him. The messenger says he’s come to explain Daniel’s vision. But first, he explains what took him so long to show up. “Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them,” he says. “But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days.” (Daniel 10.12-13)

Between God and Us

I’d venture it’s better to find all of this incomprehensible than not. And despite scholars doing an ingenious job of working out the vision’s meaning, verifying its legitimacy with historical events that soon followed, this episode opens a gateway that, for us, has very little to do with history. The key is the messenger’s comment about why he’s late. God hears Daniel the instant he prays for understanding and dispatches an emissary to answer his prayer. Between God and Daniel, however, the messenger runs into interference from a malignant force—“the prince of the Persian kingdom,” i.e., a celestial being determined to foment multinational war. He struggles with the prince for 21 days to reach Daniel, who has no way of knowing that the answer is on its way. From where he sits, it appears no answer is forthcoming. So he mourns a tragedy he senses, yet can’t fully understand.

If we’re too smart about Scripture, we’re apt to rule out the reality of wickedness that wedges itself between goodness we pray for and God’s response. While we wait, conflict erupts in the ineffable, invisible realm across which our answers and explanations must travel. That’s what Daniel’s story wants to tell us. As Paul writes in Ephesians 6.13, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Delays that disillusion and frustrate us have nothing to do with God or us. We’ve not done anything so wrong that God would abandon us—the very idea refutes all we know God to be. Nor have we presented God with a problem too big or impossible to handle. If just one human dilemma or crisis fit that bill, God wouldn’t be worthy of our faith and trust. When tempted to blame God or ourselves with delayed answers to prayer, we resist by acknowledging there’s more going on than meets the eye.

There are powers of darkness in our world. There are forces of evil in heavenly realms. Entering the ineffable—letting Scripture speak and giving It time to sink in—frees us from logic-bound literalism that would dismiss this truth as myth and metaphor. It’s as real as real can be. Thus, Scripture overflows with admonitions to cling tenaciously to faith that God hears and answers prayer. “I waited patiently for the LORD,” Psalm 40.1 says. “God turned to me and heard my cry.” If we made of list of every prayer we’ve prayed, we could check all of them off as “answered,” though we’d also mark many “TBD” in the “Date” column. Daniel teaches us why surrendering our confidence and hope to powers we can't see is not an option while we wait.

We come to You, O God, fully confident You hear us and move for us without delay. Open our minds to know delayed answers to prayer are neither Your nor our fault. Increase our patience and tenacity to wait. Amen.

Malignant forces wedge themselves between our prayers and God’s answers, causing delays that have nothing to do with God and us. Realizing there’s more going on than meets the eye enables us to wait patiently and confidently.

Mixologists

They sent their disciples to Him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that You are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for You do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what You think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” (Matthew 22.16-17)

Taboos

Although I’m fairly sure the rule no longer applies, it’s often said three topics are taboo in polite American conversation: sex, politics, and religion. Lord knows, we should be eager and at ease to discuss all three, as they inform much of what contributes to our national distress. Meanwhile, Parisian friends confess they’re often perplexed and always amused to see how eagerly and easily we’re scandalized by subjects we should have put to rest long ago. “Here, sex and politics are the first things we talk about,” they say. (As devoutly secular people, the French seldom mention religion, which isn’t to say it’s off-limits.) It took several years, but Walt and I slowly discovered Parisians have a few taboos too, the greatest being money. What one earns or owns simply isn’t discussed. The reason may not be what you suspect. They don’t think money is too personal to talk about. It’s too impersonal. Financial worth has no bearing on friendship.

Sunday’s Gospel (Matthew 22.15-22) brings to mind American and French conversational taboos, with three of the four shaken together into a nasty cocktail contrived to do Jesus in. Only sex gets left out, and had the devious mixologists who serve up the noxious frappé—the Pharisees—found a way, they’d probably have tossed it in. They do a swell job as it is, distilling a vindictive brew of politics, religion, and money into a trick question they hope will knock Jesus senseless. Their audacity to confront Him with these topics has nothing to do with taboos, though. All three subjects are widely discussed and, in fact, routinely figure into Jesus’s sermons, parables, and conversation. The lethal scheme laced into the Pharisees’ cocktail is what makes it offensive.

This Is It

All along, the Pharisees and other sects have tried to stump Jesus with cleverly devised brainteasers. But such tests are customary in rabbinical circles, with Jesus’s adversaries employing them to refute one another as well. This one is different, because it seeks to destroy, not merely discredit, Jesus. The whole thing reeks of conspiracy; every detail is calculated to belittle Him and erase all doubts about the Pharisees’ endgame. The leaders who poison their proposition don’t even show Jesus proper respect to present it personally. They ship it via their followers, backed by a cadre of Herodians. Their sole agenda is protecting the dynasty of paranoid puppet-king, Herod the Great, whose son (and Israel’s current ruler), Herod Antipas, beheaded John the Baptist.

While the overtly displayed hostility escapes no one, least of all Jesus, the question poses the gravest insult to His intelligence. It masks politically volatile ingredients with sweet talk and tangy religiosity, as if Jesus is too thick to detect what’s really going on. Not only is He savvy to the set-up. He’s played a major role building up to this showdown. Since His triumphant arrival in Jerusalem for Passover, He’s done nothing but humiliate His detractors with lacerating criticism and stupefying challenges. The air hangs thick with “give it your best shot.” Once Jesus gets a whiff of the Pharisees’ concoction, noting they’ve arranged for plenty of loyal onlookers to testify against Him when He chokes, He knows this is it. As the Herodians lean in to catch every word, the underlings spill the question. No doubt all involved naïvely expect it to go exactly like they rehearsed: flattery first, then the fall. “Teacher, we know that You are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for You do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what You think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” (Matthew 22.16-17)

Everything they say about Jesus is true, of course. But coming from their mouths, it’s a lie that exposes the deceit swimming beneath the question’s surface. If He approves paying tribute to Caesar, He’ll be vilified as a traitor to His people; they’ll run Him out of town and that will be that. The alternative is worse. Suppose Jesus takes the popular religious stance, insisting Jewish Law forbids idolatry—which imperial taxation basically amounts to, since the Romans worship Caesar as a god. The Herodians will pounce on that, declaring Him an insurgent. The king will see He’s delivered into Roman hands by sundown; by sun-up, the Baptist’s fate will look like a cakewalk compared to what He’ll face. To His inquisitors’ amazement, Jesus refuses to swallow one drop of their venomous swill. First, He calls them on their treachery. “Why are you putting Me to the test, you hypocrites?” He replies. (v18) Then He asks for a coin. “Whose head is this, and whose title?” He demands. (v20) They answer, “The emperor’s,” to which Jesus says, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (v21) Foiled once again, they walk away.

Panic

The incident speaks volumes to our duty to honor obligations as believers and citizens. And it’s often cited as clear-cut doctrine supporting separation of church and state. Most of all, it depicts the deviance people knowingly resort to when their beliefs are threatened. As long as the Pharisees call the shots, provoking Jesus is no big deal. It’s another story when He turns the tables with challenges they can’t answer. Then they put their heads together to mix up their mash of tasty controversies and make a point of lengths they’ll take to regain control. They have no business teaming up with Herodians. Pharisees are all about God’s Law. Herodians are all about placating Roman power. It makes no sense.

We observe similarly mismatched mixologists in our time. It astounds us when vehemently professing Christians join ranks with political groups that directly oppose the Gospel of compassion and peace. We can’t imagine what causes them to think we’ll swallow their toxic cocktail. We’ll never figure out why they don’t realize we smell and taste the venom in their love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin sweet talk and boldly bigoted religiosity. Not that it matters, since we’re not Who’ll ultimately demand an explanation for their treachery. What we’re asked to take from this story is a keener grasp of severe panic set off by any threat to their beliefs. We hear it in cries to “take back” America and “return to God.” We see it in resorting to sin as the only means to defeat sin. We sense it in desperate alliances forged with extremists. It’s a sad, sad sight to behold.

It only takes a penny to turn down their yeasty cocktail. What’s God’s is God’s, what’s Caesar’s is Caesar’s. But there’s a far more troubling question we have to answer. Can we follow Jesus all the way to the cross, look into the faces of those who desire our destruction, and pray, “Forgive them. They know not what they do”? That calls for selfless sacrifice at a price we must be willing to pay.

Most holy and righteous God, we’re forever grateful for spiritual discernment to detect poison laced in devious challenges to our faith. Now grant us the discipline to repay evil with good, malice with mercy, and intolerance with grace. Amen.

Like the Pharisees, many who perceive threats to their beliefs will concoct ridiculously obvious and contradictory arguments to eliminate their challengers. Dismissing their ploys is easy. Forgiving them isn’t.