Category: Living in The Story blogs

The ancient Greeks thought of themselves as the only truly civilized people; anyone who was not Greek was considered to be “barbarian.”

The ancient Israelites called those who were not a part of their tribe “people of the nations,” “ethnos” i.e. “gentiles.”

Defining who is in and who is out has been happening for much of human history and our cultural stories have always included tales of people who are “other.” But a surprising number of those stories describe outsiders whose character and courage upended “insider” expectations.

• The good Samaritan.
• The hooker with a heart of gold.
• Wisdom from the mouth of babes.

I call Job a “faithful Gentile” because his story is not told within the context of the Abraham-Isaac-and-Jacob tradition. It is not understood within the circumstance of Moses and the Exodus and so he seems to have existed apart from the claimed lineage of Israel.

Job’s tale is its own, set outside of time: “There once was a man in the land of Uz …”

Not many stories are as powerful as the drama of Job.

A righteous man, blameless and upright, “no one like him on the earth.” And then his loves, his living, his life were all placed in jeopardy by an odd divine wager unleashing mountains of troubles, oceans of despair and miserable comforters. We hear blessing and cursing and eloquent searching. We listen to assertions of innocence and guilt. We recognize calls for judgment and justice.

Growing up, the conventional wisdom from my childhood praised the “patience of Job.”

But as I came to read the story for myself instead of just hearing it in Sunday School (a very important phase in the growing up process!), I realized Job didn’t sound at all “patient.”

Like some of the psalmists, Job doubts, complains, criticizes, argues, proclaims his righteousness and challenges God to a contest of integrity.

What a relief it was for me to discover that doubt is a crucial part of faith!

Continue reading “Faithful Gentiles”

Some of us have had our cataracts removed and we still remember the amazement when the doctor removed the eye patch. It’s a sudden and startling reversal.

“I once was blind but now I see” – were the words that came to my mind at the time. It was as if “something like scales” had fallen from my eyes.

I love this story about Saul of Tarsus who becomes for us Paul the Apostle. I love the startling reversal, the U-turn in his life. I love the way the story is told, folding in so many other biblical images from so many other stories: the split open sky, visions into the heavens, a blinding light, the three days of darkness.

Three Days like Jonah in the belly of the whale. Three Days like Jesus in the tomb. Three Days of darkness that brought enlightenment.

Luke tells this story of Saul of Tarsus’ Damascus Road experience as yet another story of God’s unlikely, unexpected, unpredictable grace.

Gene Boring and Fred Craddock say:

The whole story is not about Saul’s successful quest for God, but about the grace of God that transforms a persecutor into a missionary.

Readers are called not to admire Saul, but to rejoice that they belong to a church whose mission is empowered and directed by such a God.

Eugene Boring and Fred B. Craddock, The People’s New Testament Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004) 398.

Paul’s vision, Paul’s epiphany – this moment of coming to awareness; this “ah hah!” moment; this “now I get it” moment – is a resurrection story.

Continue reading “Damascus Roads”

As we watched the powerful movie Lincoln, I was particularly moved by one scene where President Lincoln rides slowly through a still smoldering battlefield.

Everywhere he looks, the bodies of soldiers are tumbled together, a horrific grey and blue sculpture of death and destruction.

I wept.

It was just after the Civil War that the commemoration of Memorial Day began. Memorial Day was instituted because people wanted to remember the fallen soldiers from both the North and the South.

But this time of memorial also forces us to remember our warring madness and the horrible fact that in these years, 750,000 fellow Americans had killed one another.

This was also around the same time that Julia Ward Howe initiated a Mother’s Peace Day observance.

Too many mothers, too many grandmothers had lowered their bright, brave sons into graves. Too many mothers had wept in the night and still ached with each morning’s light.

“Enough is enough,” they said. Julia Howe’s call for peace is now our annual Mothers’ Day celebration but it began in 1870 as a way to remember the weeping of mothers and the waste of war.

On the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem, on the day before he carried his old rugged cross up the hillside, he wept. Not for himself, but for all those who turned their backs on the peace he offered and who instead – as people will do – turned to violence.

Continue reading “Jesus Wept”

The Book of Acts continues Luke’s Gospel by telling the story of the Spirit of the Risen Christ let loose in the church and in the world.

Throughout this second volume of Luke’s writings, he tells story after story of the church’s experience with the Spirit and of these Christians’ faithful witness to the gospel: the good news of God’s saving work of grace and redemption that has been made available for all.

Consider Luke’s story of Peter.

Since we are reading both Luke’s gospel and Acts at the same time in our Living in The Story effort, we know quite a bit about Peter. Very soon in Luke’s Gospel, we will read about Peter’s great shame: his denial of Jesus, his betrayal of love, his fear and cowardice and abandonment of everything he had come to believe in.

But when Luke describes Peter here in Acts, we see Peter’s uncompromising boldness for the gospel; we see what a miraculous work of transformation has been accomplished in his life by the power of Pentecost Spirit.

After the healing of a lame man in Acts 4, Peter proclaims: This man has been healed, has been saved by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is “the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.”

Luke’s Peter quotes Psalm 118:

Continue reading “The Cosmic Cornerstone”

During our Living in The Story effort, we’ve been following the story of one biblical family: Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Joseph to Moses and now (in Week 20) Joshua, Moses’ heir and Israel’s new leader.

After forty years of wandering in the wilderness, the people of Israel finally crossed the Jordan River under Joshua’s leadership and moved into the land God had promised to their ancestors.

During these past few weeks, we’ve also been following the Gospel according to Luke and considering his understanding of the Christ event.

Luke’s Jesus stands squarely in the lineage of Abraham and the tradition of Moses. He is a son of Israel, or as Christian theology would say it: THE Son of Israel. Jesus was the one who lived his life in perfect obedience to Torah, loving God and loving neighbor as no one had done before or since.

Now we add Luke’s second volume, The Acts of the Apostles, to our readings. In Acts, we encounter the Resurrected Christ and the Spirit of the Risen Christ moving in astounding ways and expanding  what it means to be the Chosen People, what it means to belong to the People of the Covenant.

The story in Acts 2 is the story of the ancient feast of Pentecost celebrated fifty days after Passover. For a thousand year, Pentecost, “Shavuot” had been the occasion for Israel to give thanks for the early harvest that arrived with all of its refreshing renewal.

The mystery of life, the reminder of abundance, the promise of new beginnings.

So how fitting it was that Pentecost became the occasion for this family, this one people that had grown from a small like-minded kinship group to now begin exploding into an expansive and diverse people!

This is the reign of God.

Continue reading “Pentecost People”