Born in Zion

Indeed, of Zion it will be said, “This one and that one were born in her, and the Most High will establish her.” The LORD will write in the register of the peoples, “This one was born in Zion.” (Psalm 87.5-6)

Too Far

One can’t help wondering how the congregation reacts when the Sons of Korah—a musical brood David tasks with composing new hymns—trot out Psalm 87. The first stanza is terrific, an anthem to Jerusalem, which is at its zenith as Zion, the city of God crowned with Solomon’s breathtaking temple. But one imagines tilted heads, startled glances, and flat-out consternation as the song progresses. Are they hearing the lyrics correctly?

Dead-center of the psalm, the Korah Boys run down a short list of the Jews’ perennial adversaries: Rahab (a poetic allusion to Egypt), Babylon, Phlistia, Tyre, and Cush. With that, their hymn takes a surprising turn. Instead of proclaiming Jerusalem’s God-given superiority over her enemies, the song predicts she will claim them as her own: “Indeed, of Zion it will be said, ‘This one and that one were born in her, and the Most High will establish her.’” (v5)

Who are they kidding? Sure, Jerusalem’s rapid ascent as a glittering capitol increases the odds the Jews will finally win their neighbors’ respect. And it's entirely possible that people whose ancestors sought to destroy the city will one day peaceably conduct business and secure friendships with its citizens. But the Sons of Korah go too far by envisioning a time will ever come when Jews regard former foes as family. Other than big-city culture and (recently acquired) sophistication, they have nothing in common with these outsiders. They worship different gods. They eat different food. They subscribe to different values. They dress differently, act differently, think differently, talk differently, and hold different political views.

An Act of God

Accepting outsiders—former adversaries, no less—expects the Jews to disavow their hatred of lifestyles that contradict everything they believe is holy. It ain’t gonna happen. Rejecting any variance from their way of life is baked into the national character. Besides, too much blood has been shed to protect Jewish traditions to back down now. The Sons of Korah apparently anticipate outraged response to their anthem, because they end its main chorus with a sobering fact. Acceptance is not an option Jerusalem has. It’s an act of God: “The LORD will write in the register of the peoples: ‘This one was born in Zion.’” (v6)

No one understands the transformative power of acceptance better than the Korah Boys. By all rights they have no business being near the Temple, let alone leading its worship. Their patriarch launched a revolt against Moses that ended in horrible death for him and his supporters; the earth split open and swallowed them alive. (Numbers 16) What’s more, the uprising is especially notorious for being a congregational coup: Korah tried to seize political power by forcing his way into the priesthood. Yet God’s grace becomes evident in the musical talents God invests in his survivors. They possess gifts that God’s people need. The unthinkable happens. David puts the Sons of Korah in charge of sacred songs, ordaining them as ministers in God’s house. They’re chief among the instruments God employs to reshape Israel’s liturgical customs and mindset to reflect its new era of spiritual maturity.

Thus, the topic of birthright is a vitally important to the Sons of Korah. For God to rewrite Jerusalem’s story to ensure their nemeses’ acceptance transcends religious, social, and political agenda. It attests to God’s grace—grace the Sons know first-hand. Based on their experience, it’s ridiculous to say, “It ain’t gonna happen,” when they know it can and will be done. By reframing inclusion as an act of God secured by divine writ, they change the conversation from piety to obedience. They ask, “Dare we cling to religious prejudices that defy God’s will?”

Embracing Spiritual Maturity

Not only are the Korah Boys confident inclusion can and will happen, they know how it happens. Psalm 87’s coda is their testimony of the impact God’s grace has on all who are welcomed into the faith community: “As they make music they will sing, ‘All my fountains are in you.’” (v7) Inclusion isn’t about embracing people we fear. It’s about embracing spiritual maturity that conquers fear—a new way of life all around. It calls for new songs we’d never dream of singing before we outgrew our childishness, opened our gates—which, according to verse 2, God loves more than all our dwellings—and widened our borders to include everyone.

“All my fountains are in you” is the zinger, since Jerusalem’s water source sits outside the city. When the Sons of Korah introduce this song, inside her walls she’s as a dry as a bone. God desires to fix that by enlarging her family with children she never knew she had—never conceived of having. God intends to force Zion’s expansion by rewriting her story. Her suspicious nature has blinded her to talents God invested in people she needs—people God wants to use to usher in her growth.

What Makes Radical Inclusion “Radical”

The Sons of Korah open their central chorus with, “Glorious things are said of you, city of God.” (v3) Yet by the song’s end, it’s very clear greater glory awaits her if—and it’s a big “if”—she overcomes her phobias and hatred in obedience to God’s will. Her success doesn’t rest on whether or not outsiders join the family. That’s a done deal; God sees to it. Zion’s future is solely predicated on her willingness to honor God’s desires and intentions. As history proves, stubborn refusal to obey repeatedly results in tragic downfall.

When we transpose Psalm 87 to a contemporary setting, Zion becomes the Church and its rivals become marginalized believers who frighten those clinging to heterosexist, patriarchal traditions. Through the centuries, the Church has constructed elaborate dwellings and doctrines—and shed much blood—to defend its insular way of life. But God loves its gates more than all its dwellings and has plans to expand the Church’s reach by rewriting her story, equalizing one and all by divine birthright. It’s time to make new music, sing new songs, and make room for new fountains.

While the inclusion battle rages, both sides fail to acknowledge their conflict is futile. What we do, believe, or prefer is ultimately immaterial. By divine writ, we are all born in Zion. We’re all members of God’s family. We all have divinely endowed gifts God wants to use and God’s people need to mature and grow. No one's shut out. Everyone's in. So the real issue isn’t whether we accept or reject one another, but whether or not we obey God’s will. One side needs to open up and the other needs to show up. Obedience, and only that, is what makes radical inclusion “radical.”

“Here is the church; here is the steeple; open the doors and see all the people” is more than a charming nursery rhyme. According to Psalm 87, it’s an act of God secured by divine writ.

Postscript: "How Many?"

(May 5; 4:30 PM CDT) Just before checking comments this afternoon, I opened an email with a link to the video below. In it, Minnesota State Representative Steve Simon challenges the wisdom and religiosity of his state's opponents to marital equality with moving--and remarkably sensible--conviction. The friend who forwarded the video link to me wrote, "Very eloquently put! Or better yet, just plain friendly!" I contemplated attaching the video here, but hadn't reached a decision, when I opened comments to find Sherry quoting Rep. Simon in her response. So, as the Bible says, "Out of the mouth of two witnesses..." I believe you'll find this well worth sharing.

Now What?

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13.34-35)

The First Order

Last Thursday I finally tracked down the answer to a question that skates through my mind every Holy Week: What does “Maundy” mean? Since it’s exclusively attached to Thursday’s commemorations of The Last Supper—the symbol-laden repast in which Jesus prepares the disciples for His death—I thought it might be an archaic term for “mourning.” Or perhaps it was derived from the same root as “mundane,” underscoring Good Friday’s Eve as Jesus’s last night of “normal,” i.e. mortal, existence. With Holy Communion as the focus of Maundy Thursday rites—celebrating the Eucharist’s open table (rather than the Old Testament’s hidden altar) as Christianity’s central metaphor—surely the word alludes, in some fashion, to the ultimate sacrifice that made redemptive grace possible. Not so.

“Maundy” derives from the Latin “mandatum” (“commandment”), the first word in the invocation traditionally spoken at Holy Thursday Mass: Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos. Or, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13.34) While Maundy Thursday liturgies have evolved to emphasize the Eucharistic precedent—in some cases, also recreating the washing of disciples’ feet that precedes it—it fascinates me our ancestors placed top priority on the new edict, to the point they named the day “Commandment Thursday.” Unlike modern believers, whose exposure to unjust atrocities and psychology’s blame-games steers Holy Week emotions toward guilt and regret, it appears medieval Christians celebrated Maundy Thursday as the start of something new—the new commandment Jesus issues, the new covenant sworn in His blood, and the new life that forever redefines mortality. Thus, Jesus’s final mandate to the disciples at table becomes the first order of business for all disciples who join them at table: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Unity and Continuity

Hindsight equips us to detect the new command’s urgent reasoning. Yet it completely escapes the disciples. They can’t possibly know they’ll be Leaderless in less than 24 hours, a crucial concern for Jesus, as they’re by nature a quarrelsome, unruly bunch. His handpicked successor, Peter, is impetuous, given to rash talk and even rasher reactions—not someone who works best under pressure. James and John shamelessly jockey for position. In Mark 10, after Jesus predicts His death a third time, they respond by requesting, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.” (v36) Judas, of course, has already checked out mentally and will soon permanently remove himself from the company. Yet his indignation at Jesus’s permitting a woman to anoint Him with costly ointment and the extreme action he takes because of it surely heighten the group’s tensions. Mary Magdalene’s invaluable role as Easter’s first messenger confirms her prominence. Her influence among Jesus’s female disciples is evident when she organizes and leads their predawn procession to the Tomb. She too will have a voice in their future and sizeable support for her opinions. Jesus’s mother and siblings will need to be consulted as well, while the remaining disciples form alliances based on friendships, family loyalties, and blind faith. The outlook for future stability is not good.

With Jesus presumably dead and gone—His promised resurrection never quite sticks in their minds—the disciples’ immediate question will be, “Now what?” How do they implement His teaching without His guidance? Who among them understands it well enough to build on? Who would deign to take charge in His absence? Jesus knows His disciples better than they. His physical presence is their only bond. Without it, they’re destined to splinter into competing factions. Weaknesses and vanities will destroy their unity of purpose to continue His work. He has tasked them to start something new—a revolutionary way of life founded on faith in the impossible, driven by love’s power to defy earthly logic and mortal terror, even the fear of death. Bearing these concerns in mind, He answers the “Now what” question in advance with a new commandment that ensures unity (“Love another”) and continuity (“as I have loved you”). Albeit not without tremendous difficulty and occasional failure, the Apostles’ love for one another becomes their sustaining strength and most powerful witness as true disciples. They create something new and make it last by replicating Christ’s patient, selfless, and unequivocal love for each of them and every believer who joins their ranks.

Commandment Day

Although the Church’s emergence as an unparalleled spiritual, cultural, and political institution has fostered grievous disregard—and blatant disobedience—of Christ’s mandate, it remains a cardinal rule no faithful disciple can ignore. In fact, given how criminally we’ve abused the Maundy charter, determination to honor it at all costs has never been more urgent. We’re by nature a quarrelsome, unruly bunch. Foolhardy refusal to place Christ-like love for one another above human ambition has repaid us with crippling hatred, suspicion, prejudice, and divisiveness. Deficient discipline to love each other as Jesus commands—patiently, selflessly, and unequivocally—has turned our attention from creating something new to perpetuating antiquated ideas and customs. We fight to the death, figuratively and literally, to protect the Church’s “integrity,” never realizing animosities in our walls give lie to the integrity of our witness in the world.

Absence of love is why we feel no compunction about fighting over doctrine and dogma. It’s why we splice Scripture to slice each other to shreds. It’s why Christ’s principles of compassion, justice, and equality get trampled in pursuit of self-idolatry, advantage, and conformity. It’s why one denomination conceals and excuses pedophiles, another funds a proposition to deny same-sex partners their Constitutional right of legal union, and numerous others pollute their pulpits and pews with inflammatory rhetoric about anyone or anything that contradicts their views. Dissect our sources of conflict to your liking. In the end, they all expose deafness to Christ’s new command. If we truly love one another as Jesus loved us, we’ll die for one another before differences destroy us, our witness as Christ’s disciples, and our commitment to Christ’s work.

And so, by definition, the Maundy Thursday we observed one week ago—and will hopefully observe to the end of time—was originally ordained to coalesce around Jesus’s mandate for unified love. It’s the spiritual surrogate of His physical Presence that seals our common bond. It’s the supernatural force that transforms the Eucharist into Holy Communion and exalts the thankless task of washing another’s feet into an act of grateful humility. It signifies the creation of something new, something we make new with each new day. Once we grasp the gravity of Christ’s new command, we’ll no doubt echo the disciples’ question. Now what? Perhaps we start by liberating “Maundy” from Holy Week and celebrating every day God gives us as “Commandment Day.”

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

In obedience to Christ’s new command, we greet each dawn as the start of something new made possible by our uncompromised love for one another.

Then Comes Sunday...

Two rebels were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads. (Matthew 27.38-39)

Bound to Happen

Jesus enters and exits human life—and spends most of His time in between—where He shouldn’t be, with people He shouldn’t be around. At least, that would be the landslide opinion if He were alive today. It’s certainly true in His time. Naturally, His message and miracles provoke criticism. He persistently crosses lines by shaving taboos from Scripture and religious practice. He builds His ministry-launching Sermon on the Mount by taking misinterpreted texts apart and reconstructing them, not as hard-and-fast divine edicts but sacred guidelines. (“You have heard it said… but I say…”) Urgent demand, not time-held convention, drives His decisions to heal and help. A surprising number of miracles set off controversy because He performs them on the Sabbath! Yet when critics can find nothing specific to oppose, Jesus’s overall behavior gives them plenty grist to grind. Instead of conforming to holy-man expectations, He’s always in the wrong company, hanging with “sinners”—a catchall for pagans, lawbreakers, and diseased people banned from Temple worship or banished from community.

So seldom is Jesus where He should be, with people He should be around, when He does enter that realm, ugly scenes break out. When He returns to His synagogue in Nazareth, His sermon enrages His hometown to the point it tries to kill Him. No sooner does the Triumphal Entry wind down than Jesus heads for the Temple, where He ousts merchants and moneychangers, lashing together Isaiah 56 and Jeremiah 7 to declare, “My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.” The implications, which Temple nabobs instantly get, are huge. Isaiah 56 is God’s promise of inclusion for eunuchs and foreigners; Jeremiah 7 is God’s outcry against Israel’s hypocrisy, greed, and social injustice.

Knowing what first-century Jews find impossible to believe, that Jesus is God Incarnate, we cheer Him on. Yet would we be any less outraged if a pastor were constantly seen in “wrong” places with “wrong” people—not mingling with them as a do-gooder, but befriending them and loving them without condition? Would we tolerate one who challenged our sincerity at every turn? How soon would phones ring and emails land charging her/him with reckless behavior and apostasy? How long before consensus agreed he/she had to go? Although Jesus’s adversaries realize He’s Big Trouble from the first, it takes three-and-a-half years to get rid of Him. Today, we’d probably finish Him off in a few months. We’d shake our heads in bafflement over why so many fell for His charisma and radical ideas, when anyone with half a brain could tell something about Him wasn’t right. Hearing He’d run afoul of the law, lost every legal appeal, and been executed as a common criminal, a rebel crucified with two other rebels, we’d shrug, “It was bound to happen.” Some would go so far as sarcastically describing Jesus’s fate as poetic justice. “He died like He lived—hanging with the wrong crowd.”

As It Began

On that last point, we’d be partially correct. When we review the Life hideously snuffed out on Calvary’s hill, we discern uncanny poetry in Its finish. Jesus’s mortal existence follows a divine rhyme scheme by which it ends precisely as it began—in an overcrowded, unfriendly city during a national event, in humiliating, unwholesome circumstances, surrounded by irregulars. It all comes full circle. The human journey commenced in a kindly offered barn concludes in a kindly offered tomb. Yet we underestimate the polarities of Jesus’s birth and death by reducing them to poetic clichés like “He died as He lived,” or “He was born to die.” Everything we observe in Bethlehem confirms Jesus was born to live as He lived, which explains why He dies as He lived. The intricacy with which God plots the details of Christ’s life proves Jesus comes to the world to embody the full extent of God’s love and acceptance. If the fabled Nazarene were born in the friendly confines of home and laid to rest in His family crypt, we could describe His life as one committed to the poor, sick, and rejected of society. We could rationalize His identification with marginalized people as altruistic charity. But nothing in Jesus’s personal history, from birth to life, remotely indicates His habitual presence in wrong company and repeated sightings in wrong places are conscious ploys to highlight social misery or condemn those who cause it.

Jesus is always in the wrong company because that’s where He belongs. He’s one of them by birthright—a Lowlife of questionable paternity born to homeless parents who immediately become political targets and go underground. His dubious origins permit childhood friends and neighbors to turn on Him; Nazareth cries for His death long before Jerusalem does. He lives hand-to-mouth, relying on strangers’ hospitality without benefit of social status or family support. (At one point, He’s such an embarrassment to His family, they think He’s gone mad and try to reel Him in.) Not once is Jesus shocked when His alleged “betters” confront and ridicule Him. Not once does concern for reputation goad Him to back away from tax collectors, volatile personalities, unrefined men, women with sketchy backgrounds, or shortsighted radicals. No, He seeks them out as constant companions and travels openly with them, calling them disciples. They’re drawn to Jesus, not because they admire His desire to be like them, but because He’s one of them. They’re safe around Him, understood by Him, and free to be real with Him. They drop their nets and quit their pasts, trusting Him by virtue of recognizing on sight He’ll never desert them. His meager circumstances will never allow Him to forsake the margins His critics revile Him for embracing.

From our side of history, we observe Calvary’s torment and indignity with horror. Everything about Jesus’s abuse is unjustly beneath Him. Yet to all but His most loyal followers, the manner of His death seems justly inevitable. He dies as He lived, in the wrong company—a born Outsider Whose audacity to speak truth to power sets His collision course with a cruel cross. And that’s that. By Friday night, hardly a soul notices He’s missing. Saturday comes and goes without disruption. Then comes Sunday. The rumor mill spins with news that turns the world inside out. Jesus may have been born to live among the low and oppressed. He may have died as One of them. But He’s not at all like any of them. He’s not like anyone who ever lived. He’s defeated Death. Jesus is alive.

A New Reality

Easter rests so far beyond human comprehension, we understand it no better today than did Mary Magdalene, Peter, and everyone else who met the Risen Christ or gazed into His empty tomb. Some of humanity’s brightest minds have invested lifetimes attempting to prove its reality; others have done the same hoping to debunk it. None has succeeded on either front. The resurrection confounds logic, science, history, and poetry. Easter is a thing so distinctly unto itself it has neither reason nor rhyme. Easter simply is. Either we believe it, or we don’t. Yet if we dismiss it as too incredible to believe, with the Risen Christ goes all meaning we draw from the birth, life, and death—i.e., the mortality—of Jesus. He becomes the greatest of all prophets, idealists, and progressives, the Best of the best, not Least of the least, which is precisely what Bethlehem destined Him to be. To enshrine Jesus as the Ultimate Do-Gooder, Who willingly identified and defended the poor and oppressed is to seal off His connection to humankind. A Jesus Who volunteered to be like us is a far different thing than a Jesus Who obediently became one of us.

The destitute Birth begetting a dispossessed Life that ends in dishonorable Death reveals us at our lowest and worst, as oppressed and oppressor. It’s a saga with which every human, regardless of status, can relate, because no mortal completely eludes social anxieties and rejection. None of us achieves such exalted status we’re above pushing or being pushed. The cross reminds us our lives are designed so birth, death, and our time between them rhyme in uncanny ways. Easter—not Calvary—changes that. It opens a new reality that defies reason and rhyme. It can’t be explained, but must be believed. Death’s defeat offers something infinitely more powerful than abstract “life.” It invites us to live as Jesus lived, free of fear about who we are, how we’re viewed, or what becomes of us after we die. What becomes of Jesus after He dies—the phenomenal transformation that raises the lowly Mortal into the triumphant Christ—is God’s promise to every one of us. As formidable as life’s pressures and defeats may be, they’re never final. Jesus, always in the wrong company, always in the wrong place, lives as He is born and dies as He lived, an Outsider with no social or religious means of ever getting “In.” Then comes Sunday…

It all makes sense—the rhyme and reason in Jesus’s birth, life, and death—until a new reality emerges on Easter morning.

Birth of an Era

The Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!” (John 12.19)

What’s Happening

A bout of spring flu the past few days irritated me twice over by preventing me from posting on Palm Sunday. Opening Monday’s Lectionary to find John’s account of the event brought a sigh of relief, as he connects the dots between Lazarus’s resurrection and the impromptu coronation initiating Jesus's final week of mortal life. And it’s a rollercoaster by any standard, a white-knuckle frenzy of dazzling ascents and dizzying plummets held to the tracks by the centrifugal force of divine destiny propelled by human hatred.

At first, the brevity of John’s treatment surprises us—more for its abrupt departure in style than glossing over information the other Gospels highlight (procurement of the donkey Jesus rides into Jerusalem, His remark about “rocks and stones” singing His praises when Pharisees disdain the crowd’s exuberance). Up to now, John is to the rest what long-form maestros like Norman Mailer and Susan Sontag are to newspaper reporters. He’s a poet with a sharp eye for telling details that bring hidden nuances to light. While Matthew, Mark, and Luke outpace him in scope, their concise, linear approach primarily focuses on what happened. John’s episodic structure and specificity—time of day, social dynamics, personal histories, and so on—illuminate what’s happening. Subtext is everything to him, which is why we read him for truths that emerge in his lengthy scenes and metaphorical dialogue without burdening him with historical reliability. So it’s a bit startling when John squeezes this signal moment in Jesus’s story—the proverbial point of no return that flips everything upside-down—into seven verses offering little in the way of drama or history.

Full-Blown Crisis

It appears John condenses his narrative for dramatic effect, inferring by the time Jesus reaches the capitol, the conspiracy against Him and surge of adulation are at critical mass. Although He’s escaped assassination attempts before, Jesus can’t avoid what awaits Him in Jerusalem. Curiously, however, John back-times the genesis of this fateful moment to Lazarus’s resurrection in nearby Bethany. There Jesus’s indisputable authority over Death unleashes a tidal wave of new followers, on the eve of Passover no less, when Jerusalem will teem with excitable provincials sure to be swept up by the sudden furor. This Self-styled Rabbi from Nazareth has been a problem from the start. But now the powers that be realize the Lazarus feat has created a full-blown crisis.

To make matters worse, John tightens the screws by inserting a scene in which Mary, Lazarus’s sister, anoints Jesus with expensive perfume before the Triumphal Entry, thus setting Judas Iscariot’s betrayal in motion to coincide with Jesus’s enemies’ urgency to eliminate Him. (Matthew and Mark place the controversy later in the week, near the Last Supper; Luke puts it earlier in Jesus’s ministry with no mention of Judas; all three locate it in the home of another Bethany resident, Simon the Leper, and don’t identify the woman who honors Jesus with her costly gesture. Ergo, discrepancies abound across the board.) The chief priests essentially declare a state of emergency; in typical political overkill, they scheme to end the problem by murdering Jesus and Lazarus. Meanwhile, the Pharisees—those enthusiastic enforcers of religious order—toss in the towel. “This is getting us nowhere,” they concede. “Look how the whole world has gone after Him!” (John 12.19)

Not One Word

This being John’s version, we fully expect to hear from Jesus as the ominous storm coalesces around Him. Is this not the Gospel that defines Jesus as “the Word made flesh”? (John 1.14) Is Jesus not at His most eloquent, probing, and assertive in John’s narrative? Does He not consistently proclaim, “I am,” in these pages? “I am the Bread of Life” (6.35), “the Light of the World” (8.12), “the Gate” (10.9), “the Good Shepherd” (10.11), “the Resurrection and the Life” (11.25), “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (14.6), and “the Vine” (15.5)—boldly (to many, heretically) declaring He is God, the I AM of Exodus, Who ordains Moses to liberate the Hebrews? What does Jesus say to His disciples, His fans, and His enemies while seated on a young donkey, making His way to Jerusalem on a road paved with palms of victory and garments of praise? As John tells it, not one word.

John takes Matthew’s lead, underscoring the Messianic import of Jesus’s mode of transportation: “See, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.” (Zechariah 9.9) The donkey is a loaded symbol, signifying the wealth and nobility of its rider, whose shoes never graze the ground, while also a stark contrast to horses exclusively employed for warfare. The colt’s youth heightens the effect; it’s an untried, untamed beast, verifying Jesus’s docile strength as a gentle Master. And, still, the absence of Jesus’s voice in John pierces the majestic aura of Zechariah’s Sovereign to pinpoint Isaiah’s Sacrifice: “He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” (53.7) The other Gospels will get there as well, when Jesus refuses to answer His accusers in Herod’s court. But John’s unusual decision to mute Jesus completely—withholding any comment about the crowd’s adulation or reproach for the Pharisees’ outrage at its raucous behavior—fairly explodes with bone-chilling subtext. This isn’t a coronation parade; it’s a funeral procession. These aren’t faithful adorers; they’re fickle adversaries. They will be the death of Him. Though they bellow, “Hosanna!”—“Save us!”—they’ll not spare His life. It’s a done deal before Jesus dismounts in Jerusalem. It’s over before it’s begun.

Life Now. Life Always.

For the first time in three-and-a-half years of constant bickering, Jesus and the Pharisees see eye-to-eye. Practically overnight, this thing has escalated in speed and scale until it’s bigger than all of them. Both He and His dogged detractors sense they’re witnessing the birth of an era, an irrevocable changing of the guard that will conclusively reverse humanity’s march into the abyss. Inescapable Death that ushers Jesus into Jerusalem will be met and answered by Indomitable Life—not the gossamer-and-pearly dream of Life Forever After, but Life Now, Indomitable Life Now. The resurrection of Lazarus was also a done deal when the Word Made Flesh declared, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” John couldn’t be more correct in citing that statement—Life Hereafter and Life Here—as the catalyst for this tumultuous week we commemorate.

The Pharisees couldn’t be more right in their resignation. As they watch what’s happening before their eyes, what else is there to say but, “This is getting us nowhere”? Peter’s already expressed their sentiment in John 6.68: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Of course, as the Pharisees observe, “The whole world has gone after Him!” Every step in Jesus’s natural existence has mounted to this pivotal event, when human lack acquiesces to divine longing: “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send God’s Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”

This week we quit Lent’s desert and proceed into Jerusalem, not as palm-waving fanatics, but as true disciples eternally grateful to live in the Era of Resurrection and Life. We go after Jesus with billions across the ages, knowing anything less gets us nowhere. He has the words of eternal life. Life Now. Life Always. Indomitable Life that meets and answers Inescapable Death.

By muting Jesus, John replaces Zechariah’s Sovereign with Isaiah’s Sacrifice. But the Inescapable Death ushering Jesus into Jerusalem will be met and answered by Indomitable Life.

Fortresses and Façades

Because they lead my people astray, saying, “Peace,” when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash, therefore tell those who cover it with whitewash that it is going to fall. (Ezekiel 13.10-11)

Midnight of the Soul

On this date, 150 years ago, Confederate soldiers sweep into Charleston Harbor and attack US troops stationed at Fort Sumter. Their gunfire rings in America’s midnight of the soul—an hour whose darkness grows so impenetrable it hovers above us still. It was destined to happen, of course, this violent reckoning with contradictions the Founders naïvely entrust future generations to reconcile. Democratic ideals like personal freedom and social equality are too rich for our pragmatically capitalist blood. While a federal government ensuring states’ rights works in principle, it’s stubbornly impracticable. The revolutionary pledge to promote such inalienable human rights as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness only holds for male landowners of European descent. The Founders aren’t so naïve they don’t notice potential cloud chambers pocking their Great Experiment’s fortress of freedom. They see where its walls are flimsy, its joints weak. As Founders, their first duty is laying solid groundwork for upcoming architects and builders to refine their original design and shore up its initially patched-together construction. In this, they’re utterly magnificent.

Their faith that future Americans will heed their precedent of revering national unity above political ideology and personal ambition is naïve to the point of foolishness, however. Succeeding generations find choosing sides far less demanding than compromise. Greased palms feel friendlier than hands calloused from tireless labor to build an increasingly great nation. Instead of bolstering the Founders’ beacon against clouds that dim its brilliance, they settle for slapping on a fresh coat of red, white, and blue from time to time in the name of “patriotism.” Then April 12, 1861 arrives. Before God’s sun rises, our midnight lands in a blaze of artillery. America’s bastion of liberty all but implodes as nearly a century of pent-up bickering and neglect eclipse the horizon.

Naturally Superior and Morally Bound

We’re well versed in mounting conflicts that erupt into Civil War. We’re taught the South’s agrarian economy can’t survive without slave labor; the real issue is states’ rights, not slavery; slave trade has become such a fixture in Southern culture few who benefit from it question its justice. Yet when we envision hundreds of gray-clad youths stealing into position to slaughter their fellow countrymen, we can’t discern what they hope to gain by use of violence. What’s in it for the wealthy elite—plantation owners and merchants reaping huge profits at human expense—is too apparent to refute. Nor is it sane to suggest anything but wealth and favor motivates toadying politicians and preachers who hawk distorted ideology and diabolical doctrines of racial inequality. Confederate military command is decidedly upper crust, either ardent slave owners or their sons. But the faceless troops—hardscrabble farmers, day laborers, millworkers, and miners whose misery mirrors slavery more closely than the privileged manner they volunteer to die for—what’s in it for them?

The standard answer: they fight to protect their way of life, a laughable conclusion about an average Confederate soldier with neither means nor need to own slaves. No, these men risk their lives because they’re seduced to believe they’re inherently superior to slaves and morally bound to murder anyone opposed to their belief. (Sidebar: how is it we Americans harshly reproach Germans who tumbled for Hitler’s evil while sentimentalizing our very same dance with the Devil?) Without a morally sound foundation on which to build, the Confederacy’s architects erect a façade that mimics America’s freedom fortress. Borrowing from their recently disavowed compatriots’ playbook, they mask their rickety structure in red, white, and blue patriotism—cleverly sticking to stars and bars and all that goes with inflaming unwary American minds to hate, wound, and kill for “love of country,” rather than defending their nation’s ideals. (Remember: that’s really hard work to be avoided at all cost—“cost” being the operative term.)

Thus, in the first instance of what would become a deadly habit, decades of lazy politics and poor citizenship lead America to equip enemies of freedom and equality. The young Rebels have absolutely nothing to gain by killing and maiming their brothers. If anything, the slavery crisis provides their generation’s best reason for uniting to remedy a fundamental flaw in the Founders’ plan—to make the freedom’s fortress sturdier, more impregnable to threats of tyranny, corruption, and senseless violence. With neither side having witnessed this, though, taking up arms seems logical to both; a lifetime wasted on watching paint dry conditions North and South alike to turn a blind eye to their civic duty to uphold moral principles and social justice. When midnight descends on the American soul, the Union stumbles and staggers in search of a way out. Meanwhile, the Rebels can’t see they’ve elected to be slaves to slave-owner wealth and power. Lives across the divide are cheapened past the price of the cheapest slave—and debt our nation accrues in the process has yet to be cleared. April 12, 1861’s toll on racial harmony, equal rights, and personal freedoms may never go away.

Addicted to Whitewash

Inattentive upkeep of fortresses and fondness for façades are neither recent phenomena nor uniquely American. They’re common to a universal tale as old as time. Ezekiel’s prophecy addresses a nation born in bondage and nurtured in freedom, only to be divided into two kingdoms, north and south, that turn on each other and consequently fall captive to Babylon. (Their 70-year exile is lamented to this day as the midnight of the Jewish soul.) The prophet is a captive through whom God charges the people with apathy that accounts for their demise. Content to watch paint dry, they disregard the hard work of building their nation. Convenient ignorance evolves into a crippling habit they can’t break. In Ezekiel 13.10-12 we see an oft-repeated pattern throughout the prophecy. God cites leaders for abusing their nation’s trust but ultimately indicts the people for letting them get by with it: “Because they lead my people astray, saying, ‘Peace,’ when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash, therefore tell those who cover it with whitewash that it is going to fall. Rain will come in torrents, and I will send hailstones hurtling down, and violent winds will burst forth. When the wall collapses, will not people ask you, ‘Where is the whitewash you covered it with?’”

America has become addicted to whitewash. No sooner do we kick the habit than we permit leaders to seduce us with fresh paint. Our resistance weakens with each relapse. Cycling up to deadly overdoses takes less time: 80 years to the Civil War; 60 tolerating robber barons and political graft before crashing into Depression; 40 excusing paranoid propaganda and moral hypocrisy before the Sixties unleash a tsunami of unrest and violence; 25 pretending not to see the Religious Right creeping into bed with neoconservatives and big business; 15 tuning out cautions that rampant materialism and media overload will be our undoing. And every cycle cheapens lives past the cheapest slave’s price.

Every time our walls cave, we grab the whitewash and leave freedom’s trowels and hammers to somebody else—somebody who doesn’t exist, never did, and never will. Out of the mouth of God we’re warned that whitewashed walls will surely fall. The most patriotic façade is still a façade. It cannot endure. Fortresses require constant attention and fortitude to strengthen ramparts, seal cloud chambers, and mend moral decay. As believers who know the ways of justice and righteousness, we have no excuse for not speaking out against moral apathy or conveniently ignoring flaws we can remedy. If no one else pitches in, with God’s help we can do the hard work of liberty and equality. We can break the whitewash habit and kill our contentment to watch paint dry. May it be so.

On April 12, 1861, eight decades of convenient ignorance erupted in a blaze of brother-on-brother violence. Since that day, our whitewash addiction has escalated into increasingly shorter cycles between calamitous overdoses.

Love Among the Ruins

Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (John 11.35-37)

People of Substance

A lot has changed in the three years or so since Jesus found Peter and Andrew on the seashore and began assembling a core group of followers. For one thing, the need to recruit disciples has long passed. Jesus is an established Rabbi known for His provocative preaching and miracles. There’s always a show when He comes to town. People drop everything and flock to Him. Although it sounds crass, the comparison seems accurate: Jesus is a celebrity activist akin to Bono or Oprah—Someone Who wields His fame to change lives. That broadens His appeal significantly. By the second year, many people of substance actively court Jesus. They invite Him to banquets, prevail on Him to heal their sick, and ask to join His entourage. Since wealth and status don’t impress Him, He rebuffs those whose self-interest is obvious. Yet we’re given more than a few instances when Jesus befriends people who don’t fit the downtrodden mold. Besides, assuming Jesus confines His interest to the outcast and impoverished contradicts His message of radical inclusion in John 6.37: “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”

It should be noted, however, the better advantaged of Jesus’s followers are exceptions to their class. Unlike Bono, Oprah, and their ilk, Jesus never obtains the kind of superstar glamour that swings wide the gates to upper crust society. That’s why when we see Him dining in finer homes, clusters of unhappy neighbors gather in protest. It’s why Nicodemus, the highly regarded Pharisee, sneaks off in the night to visit Jesus. It’s also why the disciples balk when He decides to return to Bethany—the Jerusalem suburb where his dear friends Martha, Mary, and Lazarus live—after He learns Lazarus is gravely ill. The last time they visited that part of the country, its residents tried to stone Him.

Completely Out of Character

Although John’s Gospel doesn’t explicitly say so, Jesus appears to share the disciples’ concern. Something’s amiss—that we know. News of Lazarus’s sickness reaches Him and He reacts completely out of character. He’s indecisive and hesitant. It takes two days to make up His mind to go see about His friend. In retrospect, we realize Lazarus couldn’t have got sick at a worse time. Jesus’s arrest and execution will occur in a matter of weeks. Returning to Bethany puts Him within two miles of enemies conspiring against Him. His sense of foreboding must be unbearable, as must knowing His friends need Him desperately. Lazarus, Mary, and Martha never hesitate to welcome Jesus to their home. The sisters lavish Him with care, feeding and housing Him in grand style. On one occasion, Mary empties an expensive box of perfume on Jesus to signify how dearly He’s loved. Yet Jesus waits. He waits so long by the time He tells the disciples they’re going to Bethany He’s confident Lazarus is already dead.

John, whose main purpose for writing his Gospel is deifying Jesus as “the Word made flesh” (1.14), gives the impression Jesus lingers on purpose to set the stage for a final, unprecedented miracle that foreshadows His own death and resurrection. He confides to the disciples, “For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.” (11.14) But if we accept that, we also accept that Jesus delays coming to His friends’ aid for heartlessly selfish reasons. What could be crueler than ignoring their urgent request for help—to allow Lazarus to die, while his sisters cope with undue stress wondering why Jesus hasn’t shown up? Clearly, Mary and Martha are wounded when Jesus arrives. Mary stays at home and lets Martha go out to greet Him as He nears the town. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” she says. (v21) Jesus doesn’t acknowledge her grief, however. He promises Lazarus will be revived, saying, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” (v25) When he asks about Mary, Martha brings her to Him and she says exactly what Martha said: “If You had been here…” Again, Jesus overlooks her sorrow, asking, “Where have you laid him?” (v33) Mary leads Him to Lazarus’s grave, with a gaggle of neighbors trailing after them. At the tomb, the weight of the entire ordeal buries Jesus. His disconcerting detachment vanishes. In the presence of beloved friends and cynical onlookers, He weeps.

A Horrible Situation

What is Jesus feeling? The episode is so fraught with conflicted emotions and behaviors attributing His grief to any of them amounts to speculation. Mourning Lazarus doesn’t prompt His tears; in mere minutes, He will restore His friend’s life. We want to agree with neighbors who say, “See how He loved him!” (v36) Then again, the cynics have a point when they counter, “Could not He Who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (v37) John’s reason for Jesus’s delay is moot when we observe how it affects Mary and Martha. The purest of intentions don’t change the fact Jesus walks into a horrible situation of His own making. Is that what we’re meant to see? Should we even question why Jesus falters? Perhaps the most obvious answer is the best one.

When Jesus reaches the graveside, regret, confusion, disappointment, and every other feeling we associate with human frailty engulf Him. He weeps because His hesitance incited His friends to doubt Him. His tearstained face conveys love among the ruins. He summons all of His power not only to speak life into Lazarus’s hollow shell, but also to revive the faith and trust of those He loves. What we’re looking at is precisely what Hebrews 4.15 describes: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”

We all have uncomfortable moments when hesitance, fear, and every other imaginable internal conflict threaten the ruin of relationships with people who dearly love us and we dearly love. We cause grief and confusion about where we are and why we don’t respond sooner. When we realize what we've done, we weep. But there is life in us, because there is love in us—life we can speak that brings lost friends out of their graves and heals the pain of disillusioned loved ones. Accounting for shambles we create is never pleasant. Walking into situations where we’ve let people down is nothing we want to do, even though we know we must. At Lazarus’s graveside Jesus demonstrates the power of love among the ruins.

The humanity we witness in Jesus’s tears expresses the regret, confusion, disappointment, and every other feeling we associate with frailty.

Community

All of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. (1 Peter 3.8-9)

Organizations

When talking with LGBT and other believers who’ve withdrawn from the Body of Christ, sooner or later the conversation comes down to this: “I have faith. But I want nothing to do with organized religion.” There’s no good answer to this—even though I’m convinced avoiding religious rejection is tantamount to accepting it. When we permit unwelcoming denominations, congregations, or individuals to force our surrender from seeking inclusion where we're welcome, we reinforce the notion we're unworthy of acceptance. We become complicit to the lie—the heresy—that God prefers certain kinds of people and doesn’t love all of us equally.

That everyone who comes to God will be received isn’t open to debate. It’s the bedrock of Christianity Jesus lays in statement after statement, most famously in John 3.16 (the most-beloved, oft-quoted, and—apparently—misread scripture of many who subscribe to exclusionary doctrines): “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (Emphasis added.) Given grace’s pricelessness, however, it’s easy to understand why some try to protect it with qualifiers. No less than Peter makes this mistake. In Acts 10, it takes an epiphany for him to confess, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism.” (v34) Yet, despite Christ’s emphatic teaching and the Apostles’ determination to honor it, since the first, Christianity has been plagued by attempts to shut people out.

There’s no good answer for those who disdain organized religion because they’re absolutely correct. Organized religion falls short of its higher purpose by trying to safeguard core ideals with government and guidelines. Since faith is a human endeavor, it lends itself to a human approach. Thus we define what it is by what it isn’t—the same way we organize everything in life. From there it’s a hop, skip, and jump to categorizing who can and can’t believe, and what does and doesn’t evidence belief. Harms caused by our instinctive “this-not-that” scheme explain why so many resist organized religion. But, if we step back to see the wider perspective, we recognize their complaints focus on symptoms of a rarely acknowledged paradox: organizations are natural enemies of faith. By design, they set parameters and implement procedures, whereas faith breaks barriers by imparting principles to overcome them. That’s why “churches,” i.e., religious organizations, remain at perpetual loggerheads with The Church, the transcendent, universal community of faith—the Body of Christ, the physical entity that expresses God’s presence and fulfills God’s purpose in the world.

Organisms

The Apostles struggle mightily with this conflict. As we read the Book of Acts and the Epistles, we’re consistently struck by the Early Church’s fragile condition. Its leaders and people are keenly aware they’re doing something new and revolutionary. They have no template, model, or precedent, let alone a formally adopted text or theology, for reference; basically, they’re inventing The Church as they go. Its phenomenal growth—starting with 3000 at Pentecost, with hundreds being added by the day—as well as its unheard-of diversity (based on adamant belief in unrestricted inclusion) and rapid expansion across the Roman Empire create organizational nightmares. Urgency to adhere to Christ’s principles generates urgency to institute lines of authority so the teaching and far-flung congregations stay intact. After much prayer and discussion, the Apostles meet this challenge in a unique fashion. Instead of institutionalizing Christianity as a religion, they revert to its roots as a community of like-minded believers. Faith for them surpasses religion’s legal and ritualistic impositions on constituents’ lives. It’s a way of life that all believers share in common, yet each expresses individually in relation to Christ, just as the original disciples related to Jesus.

Therein lies the distinction between churches and faith communities. The former are organizations striving to protect ideals they profess by conforming to time-honored governance and guidelines pursuant to faith. The latter are organisms whose faith evolves with time, as they pursue commonly held ideals in response to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. In other words, churches are built; communities grow—if not numerically, always in spirit, knowledge, and obedience to Christ’s commands. Churches foster allegiance to their leaders, who are no less fallible than those expected to comply with their direction. Faith communities honor their leaders’ service to God, as Paul explains when chiding the Corinthians’ organizational disputes over leadership. “Since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned each to his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.” (1 Corinthians 3.5-6)

Reliable Indicators

Differences between churches/religious organizations and communities/spiritual organisms are subtle, yet nonetheless huge. What makes things all the trickier is faith communities are most commonly housed in churches. That’s why writing off organized religion is unwise. Believers in search of community who’ve also been hurt by church have to separate the two, realizing they’re unlikely to find one without the other. Now the question turns to how does one know he/she’s found an organic faith community nested in an organized church?

Contrary to popular thought, size, structure, style, activity, and/or presentation aren’t reliable indicators. Many large, enthusiastically run and supported churches thrive as organizations. Yet they falter as organisms by neglecting to nurture the common purpose and interpersonal dynamic 1 Peter 3.8-9 describes as chief markers of authentic faith communities: “All of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.” Community is where we practice our faith. It’s where we join with other believers in like-minded obedience to Christ’s commands. It’s where our capacity for sympathy, love, compassion, and humility is tested, where failure is forgiven and frailty is overcome. It’s where we learn how to answer our calling to repay wrongs and insults with blessings. Community is where we grow.

When we enter a church and observe these traits, we’ve crossed the threshold from organized religion to organic faith. And while it’s true, one need not be in community to have faith it’s no less true faith is unlikely to grow without it. Our gifts and needs ache to be expressed. Our faith longs to grow. Dismissing The Church as a monolith of organized religion—a human institution as apt to harm as to help—only hurts us. There is community somewhere inside its walls and not until we overcome our phobias to seek community where we’re genuinely welcome and accepted can it be found.

Churches are built. Faith communities grow.